@Arethosemyfeet - the suspensions I've seen have been when the teacher has been doing something outside the guidelines or there has been a complaint about behaviour. Complaints about teaching materials that the school has planned to be teaching have never led to suspensions, but discussions with the parents complaining and/or the withdrawal of the materials with an apology, saying it has been pointed out that these materials could be seen as inappropriate and we will not be using them in future.
@quetzalcoatl - I did link to the Government guidance on withdrawing pupils from subjects earlier, which also gives the RE curriculum information. I found the Batley Grammar School website to ascertain they are part of a MAT. The rest I know from decades in schools, working as a teacher, supporting, SENCo or SMT, or volunteering as a governor.
Feet don't bother me. The experience of someone using a sink at higher than waist level with foot in sink and then the other in a small washrooms does. The knee is out to the side making the adjacent sink part of the ablution. The state of the washrooms is also an issue after such usage.
I'm still not really getting this. I wash my feet in my personal sink in my personal house from time to time - not because of any religious ritual, but because my feet are muddy / grassy / whatever.
If I was to leave the room in a mess after I'd done this, it would be because I'm a selfish arse who doesn't clean up after himself. Because I am not such a person, I don't leave the room in a mess.
If you have a problem with people leaving the restroom in a mess after washing their feet, it's because you've got selfish messy people - not because you've got Muslims.
No it's about foot washing in sinks not designed for this. Perhaps university students are the issue also: not socialized yet.
But in England, you would almost certainly be writing to the parents to advise them that sex education lessons were going to be happening, and what would be covered. Quite often, the parents are invited in to see the materials going to be used. And parents have the right to withdraw their children from some sex education lessons.
Parents also have the right to withdraw their children from religious education lessons and religious assemblies, all or part. I've been the go to person for a child with a Plymouth Brethren background withdrawn from all religious education in her school. So, no, in that situation, there would be a lot of care as to what was presented, particularly in an area with a high Asian population, like Batley.
The RE curriculum is not set nationally, but locally, depending on the type of school. Batley Grammar School is part of a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) that can set their own curriculum. But teachers cannot just choose to teach anything they want, there will be a set curriculum with suggested materials that they are working to. That curriculum and the RE policies have to be agreed by the Governing Body, where the buck stops for all this. And OFSTED will check the teaching against the published curriculum when they review the school on the regular programme of checks.
The fact that this teacher is suspended suggests that he was not teaching an agreed curriculum with the agreed materials. If he had been the Governing Body would be having to field all the flak for agreeing something that blew up in their faces.
I was looking for this information, as I wasn't sure if he had stepped outside the curriculum or not. The thing about Charlie Hebdo, is that some of those cartoons equated Islam with terrorism. I think there was a drawing of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, so this is an added complication. H
No. The bomb-in-the-turban was from the Danish cartoons, in 2005. The Hebdo cartoons that I saw didn't seem focused on terrorism, more just on portraying Mohammed as goofy, eg. one had him crying while sitting next to other famous religious figures, who inform him that he shouldn't be so sensitive about getting spoofed in the Hebdo.
Another one was illustrating an article about Islam and film, and featured Mohammed posing nude for Jean-Luc Godard, saying "My butt? Do you love my butt?" (A reference to the film Contempt.)
^ For the record, these are the Danish cartoons. As you can see, they weren't all attacking Mohammed, and at least two of them(the publisher with the orange on his head and the kid at the blackboard) were also attacking the newspaper that commissioned them.
There were a lot of Charlie Hebdo cartoons portraying Mohammed, but as I say, usually as a hapless goofball, not as a terrorist himself.
No it's about foot washing in sinks not designed for this. Perhaps university students are the issue also: not socialized yet.
They're just sinks - not hand-sinks, or face-sinks, or anything-but-your-feet-sinks. It's a bowl with a tap and a drain, at about waist height. I've washed babies in sinks, too - only once in a public toilet, and it was fortunate that that toilet (in a shop somewhere) had a home-style sink rather than the sort of angular industrial tile / metal constructions you get in some places. (And yes, when I washed the baby, I washed his feet, too.)
I was a dreadful teenage girl who used to wind people up. I especially liked to wind up the macho boys. I very quickly learned that they were very easily wound up about things they held dear - their penis, favourite team etc.
I am beginning to feel the same about major religions, especially in the light of this story - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-56524850. “A teacher who showed pupils an "inappropriate" cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad - sparking protests outside a school - has been suspended. The image depicting the founder of Islam was used in a lesson at Batley Grammar School on Monday. Videos posted online show dozens of people standing outside the school on Thursday, with some demanding the teacher be sacked.”
My questions -
If your God is so strong why do you need to defend him?
Why are blasphemy laws needed at all?
Surely we can’t offend God or his prophets. They are either dead, untouchable (in heaven or wherever) or too mighty to touch?
It all feels very patriarchal to me. Once again men having to appear strong by putting others down (in this case a school teacher) because, in fact, they are weak and easily rattled.
How ironic after you admit you liked to put others down.
No it's about foot washing in sinks not designed for this. Perhaps university students are the issue also: not socialized yet.
They're just sinks - not hand-sinks, or face-sinks, or anything-but-your-feet-sinks. It's a bowl with a tap and a drain, at about waist height. I've washed babies in sinks, too - only once in a public toilet, and it was fortunate that that toilet (in a shop somewhere) had a home-style sink rather than the sort of angular industrial tile / metal constructions you get in some places. (And yes, when I washed the baby, I washed his feet, too.)
And it was likely needful. As an unessential activity, not supporting. I wouldn't accept dishwashing in them either. We've also got injection drug use in some sinks. Not okay either. If a foot washing facility is needed get one. If injection drug use is needed to be done, get a safe injection site. If people want to walk build a footpath.
Specifically re babies, washrooms routinely here do have baby change facilities in them. Required by building permit for many public facilities, just as wheel chair accessible facilities are required by law.
No it's about foot washing in sinks not designed for this. Perhaps university students are the issue also: not socialized yet.
They're just sinks - not hand-sinks, or face-sinks, or anything-but-your-feet-sinks. It's a bowl with a tap and a drain, at about waist height. I've washed babies in sinks, too - only once in a public toilet, and it was fortunate that that toilet (in a shop somewhere) had a home-style sink rather than the sort of angular industrial tile / metal constructions you get in some places. (And yes, when I washed the baby, I washed his feet, too.)
And it was likely needful. As an unessential activity, not supporting. I wouldn't accept dishwashing in them either. We've also got injection drug use in some sinks. Not okay either. If a foot washing facility is needed get one. If injection drug use is needed to be done, get a safe injection site. If people want to walk build a footpath.
Specifically re babies, washrooms routinely here do have baby change facilities in them. Required by building permit for many public facilities, just as wheel chair accessible facilities are required by law.
If footwashing is part of your religious practice, and the majority non-Muslim community has not provided footsinks, then washing in the washroom sinks is needful. If I have used dishes for my lunch at work and there is no other sink in which to wash them, I will wash my dishes in the washroom sink. If there are no safe injections sites, where am I to be able to inject? If I cannot walk where there are no footpaths, so long to ever walking across an unused football field.
Trouble is, you can pronounce what ought-to-be as if from Mt. Sinai, but unless you're a city planning commissioner with a budget and dictatorial authority, it ain't gonna happen.
The baby in question was, not to put too fine a point on it, completely covered in shit. Baby wipes on a changing table just weren't going to get the job done. Fortunately, I had a capacious nappy bag.
As an unessential activity, not supporting. I wouldn't accept dishwashing in them either.
As others have mentioned, for the Muslims in question, it is an essential activity.
Given that you choose not to "accept" dishwashing either, I may as well point out that, when we all used to go to work in person, I'd often see people washing out mugs and coffee pots in restroom sinks. I'm really confused as to why this should bother me.
People have been walking since long before footpaths were invented, and walk in all kinds of places that don't have footpaths.
In fact, this isn't a bad analogy. We build footpaths in places where the foot traffic is high enough to warrant it, but in places that only get occasional foot traffic, people can walk without one.
Sinks for feet are a similar case. People who want/need to wash their feet can if necessary manage without a low sink - either by using a regular sink, or presumably they can contrive with a bowl and jug or something. Feet, after all, have existed and been washed since long before the existence of sinks and washrooms.
I think we're at the level of public prayer with must wash feet because of religion. Poopy baby is more needful. There's a line somewhere, on the other side of which I'd position feet from baby.
Not complete, but not all Muslims pray and not all who pray wash their feet. With the further discussion maybe being how much should one person's religious behaviour affect another. I'm also reminded of a podcast about people in a spin class wearing spandex by windows which made some religious people unhappy in a neighbourhood.
Isn't that the point ? You're saying - rightly ISTM - that you can't really judge because you haven't seen the images. A description - "cartoons of Mohammed" isn't enough.
Yes, a serious discussion of what images are offensive and which are not (in a pluralist culture in which people hold different values) needs to be informed by a range of examples that are seen rather that just described.
I think we're at the level of public prayer with must wash feet because of religion. Poopy baby is more needful. There's a line somewhere, on the other side of which I'd position feet from baby.
Not complete, but not all Muslims pray and not all who pray wash their feet. With the further discussion maybe being how much should one person's religious behaviour affect another. I'm also reminded of a podcast about people in a spin class wearing spandex by windows which made some religious people unhappy in a neighbourhood.
It's ok for people like you to wear spandex by windows and make religious people unhappy, but not ok for religious people to wash their feet in a public sink and make you unhappy. But it is ok for you to wash your feet in a public sink as long as it is "necessary".
The line you're drawing seems to be that you believe in tolerance for everything that a person like you might want to do, and everything that might make a person like you uncomfortable and which a person like you wouldn't want to do ought to be banned from public space.
I think we're at the level of public prayer with must wash feet because of religion. Poopy baby is more needful. There's a line somewhere, on the other side of which I'd position feet from baby.
Not complete, but not all Muslims pray and not all who pray wash their feet. With the further discussion maybe being how much should one person's religious behaviour affect another. I'm also reminded of a podcast about people in a spin class wearing spandex by windows which made some religious people unhappy in a neighbourhood.
It's ok for people like you to wear spandex by windows and make religious people unhappy, but not ok for religious people to wash their feet in a public sink and make you unhappy. But it is ok for you to wash your feet in a public sink as long as it is "necessary".
The line you're drawing seems to be that you believe in tolerance for everything that a person like you might want to do, and everything that might make a person like you uncomfortable and which a person like you wouldn't want to do ought to be banned from public space.
Hey, watch yourself. Hold on there with assumptions. Did I say I was approving of the spandex? We're discussing I thought. I've experienced the foot thing, trying to look for comparisons and parallels. It'd be more helpful to propose your own. I posted "With the further discussion maybe being how much should one person's religious behaviour affect another."
(Not that I've ever been to a spin class or worn spandex.)
Isn't that the point ? You're saying - rightly ISTM - that you can't really judge because you haven't seen the images. A description - "cartoons of Mohammed" isn't enough.
Yes, a serious discussion of what images are offensive and which are not (in a pluralist culture in which people hold different values) needs to be informed by a range of examples that are seen rather that just described.
Well, a more thorough description might do the trick. I wouldn't want, for example, to have to watch extreme sex or violence "verbatim" in order to determine whether they were acceptable family viewing.
With the knowledge that many Muslims forbid illustrations of the Prophet, I would have thought that a description of cartoons depicting Mohammed would be sufficient to stimulate a discussion, without showing pictures to a class with a significant percentage of Muslim students.
(I wonder why blasphemy would come into this at all as we no longer have an offence of blasphemy in England, haven't had since 2008.)
With the knowledge that many Muslims forbid illustrations of the Prophet, I would have thought that a description of cartoons depicting Mohammed would be sufficient to stimulate a discussion, without showing pictures to a class with a significant percentage of Muslim students.
It would depend what arguments the teacher is responding to. If someone made a content-based criticism of the cartoons(eg. the cartoons were offensive because they portrayed Mohammed as a terrorist), then it would be relevant to examine the specified cartoons.
I wouldn't want, for example, to have to watch extreme sex or violence "verbatim" in order to determine whether they were acceptable family viewing.
I think you can decide that after the first scene in the movie which fails the test, without needing to sit through the rest of it.
And if you're making the decision for your own family then it seems to me perfectly reasonable to go by what someone else who has seen it has said.
But if you're the Official Censor whose job it is to decide what other people may see, then I think you do have to watch the material.
Totally agreed. Though in the case under discussion, the regulating body is a school board, who are somewhere between a parent and a state censor, in terms of their right and responsibilities in making these sorts of decisions.
A parent has the luxury of being wrong, because he's only making decisions for his underaged kids, who are not bound to his diktat for life. A state censor has more of an obligation to get it right, because people have no choice but to follow his decisions.
A school board isn't practicing legally enforced censorship on a wide scale, but, like a state censor, their decisions do carry the implied imprimatur of the government.
(I wonder why blasphemy would come into this at all as we no longer have an offence of blasphemy in England, haven't had since 2008.)
Because Muslims find pictures of Mohammed offensive because they consider them to be blasphemous? Blasphemy didn't stop being a word or a concept just because it stopped being a specific crime. (The English offence of blasphemy wouldn't have applied to blasphemy against Islamic beliefs anyway - see, for example, Lord Scarman in Whitehouse vs Gay News Ltd.)
But if you're the Official Censor whose job it is to decide what other people may see, then I think you do have to watch the material.
Such people have at various times created blanket rules about things that are and are not permissible. If my blanket rule is "no visible nipples, penes, or vulvas" then I don't have to watch your hardcore porn movie to know that it's going to fail. And I can also tell you what my blanket rules are, and if you keep submitting material that obviously fails them, I can stop taking you seriously, and automatically reject any and every submission from you unseen.
Isn't that the point ? You're saying - rightly ISTM - that you can't really judge because you haven't seen the images. A description - "cartoons of Mohammed" isn't enough.
Yes, a serious discussion of what images are offensive and which are not (in a pluralist culture in which people hold different values) needs to be informed by a range of examples that are seen rather that just described.
I used to have a Gary Larson 'Far Side' cartoon book. One of my favourite cartoons was of a very sweet and benign looking Mohammad in his front room looking enquiringly out of his window, while knocking at the door on the outside was a large hill. The caption was 'well, if Mohammad won't come to the mountain...'
I would like to think I'm generally respectful of the religious sensibilities of others, even those I don't share a faith with. But I've laughed at this cartoon many times without denigrating Mohammad. Have I been committing a hate crime, all this time? Should Larson be preparing himself for his Fatwah any time soon?
I think there is a fundamental question here: why does Islam get the right to censor all discourse about it? Why are non-Muslims being regarded as automatically bound by the taboo within the faith regarding the creation of images? I know of no parallels in the case of other religions. Why should a secularist state such as France come under such opprobrium for refusing to be bound by Islam's internal regulations? This is not to say that they have no right to object, but it seems to me to be dangerous to allow any ideology the total unequivocal right to create its own narrative about itself. And yes, I would definitely include the church in that, however defined.
It is, at least, some considerable number of years since we stopped expecting non-Christians to self-censor in their description of Christianity.
I know, I'm going to be accused of islamophobia, but I don't think that's reasonable. There is a distinction, surely, between attacking the adherents of a faith, and making them uncomfortable, and between what a faith can regulate in terms of its adherents, and when it can be said to have some kind of right to control external groups.
I think there is a fundamental question here: why does Islam get the right to censor all discourse about it? Why are non-Muslims being regarded as automatically bound by the taboo within the faith regarding the creation of images? I know of no parallels in the case of other religions. Why should a secularist state such as France come under such opprobrium for refusing to be bound by Islam's internal regulations? This is not to say that they have no right to object, but it seems to me to be dangerous to allow any ideology the total unequivocal right to create its own narrative about itself. And yes, I would definitely include the church in that, however defined.
It is, at least, some considerable number of years since we stopped expecting non-Christians to self-censor in their description of Christianity.
I know, I'm going to be accused of islamophobia, but I don't think that's reasonable. There is a distinction, surely, between attacking the adherents of a faith, and making them uncomfortable, and between what a faith can regulate in terms of its adherents, and when it can be said to have some kind of right to control external groups.
I think the spandex and gym issue I previously posted about was a Jewish group which didn't like to see bodies in this way.
I'm still mulling over the where line should be drawn with respecting religious sensitivities.
it seems to me to be dangerous to allow any ideology the total unequivocal right to create its own narrative about itself. And yes, I would definitely include the church in that, however defined.
One thing I will say in defense of the French is that they did have a history of formal neutrality in regards to religious matters, and are arguably just applying the same policy to Islam that they had previously applied to Catholicism etc.
This distinguishes their approach favourably from that of, say, the UKIP in Britain, most of whom I'm guessing never had a problem with eg. the aforementioned Gay News prosecutions(*), but are now suddenly fired up about the inalienable right to insult Muslim religious figures.
(*) I'd also guess that most Ukippers, even the Non-Conformists among them, never thought that England's state church was an affront worth fighting against, but I really don't know. Reasonably certain that almost none of them ever marched to defend poetry about Christ getting blown on the cross.
I think there is a fundamental question here: why does Islam get the right to censor all discourse about it?
Isn't this just the same question as asking why, for example, gay people get to decide which terms for them are OK and which terms aren't?
We're not talking about censoring discourse about Islam here - we're talking specifically about images of Mohammed. (I've probably seen the Far Side cartoon that @Anselmina references. It's quite amusing. I wouldn't show it to an audience that might contain Muslims, in case anyone took offence.)
I think there is a fundamental question here: why does Islam get the right to censor all discourse about it?
I'm not sure this question is about Islam's "rights" or otherwise. Islam clearly has no "right" to censor what others say beyond the law of the land, any more than any other group. However, Muslims have a complete right to believe what they believe and they also have a right to be upset by things that upset them, even if those things don't make sense to non-Muslims. They also have a right (freedom of speech) to say that they are upset.
We, as UK citizens, have the right to listen and adapt when people are upset, or not. We generally exercise our right to respond to other groups' upset through democracy and government structures. As part of being citizens of the UK, we have a right to be complete ****s (within the bounds of the law) but we can choose not to exercise that right. I would like to exercise my right to be kind and understanding to the beliefs of others when they don't hurt me or anyone else.
And yes, I'm conscious that was immensely pompous. I'm exercising my right to be pompous. You may wish to exercise your right to take the ****.
Well, it's not as if gay people haven't heard all the terms before, and been oppressed because of them. Not by them, but because of them.
I think this is where this whole question is worth interrogating. Other than the breaching of the taboo re. images, which is properly speaking a matter of internal regulation, what has anyone done in this scenario to harm Islam? Is all offence the same in this regard?
I tend to stand with Stephen Fry (another gay man) in wondering how important it is that a remark offends someone. If it harms them, that's a different matter, but when did offence become harm?
I suppose growing up as AIDS was striking gave me a high threshold in terms of being offended, though it also taught me all the weasel ways used to mask attacks. But that is the diifference - I am talking about an intent to harm, not just to offend.
I'm not sure that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons aren't attacks - they may well be an attack on Islam and/or its adherents. A group's founder or leader is, among other things, a metaphor for the group. But the fact that they are offensive to Moslems is possibly not the most important element in that.
I'm also not sure at the moment where "incitement to hatred", as I believe our legislation puts it, sits on that spectrum. Is an infraction of a rule of itself an incitement to hatred? I would argue not.I would argue that this has to go beyond the breaking of a taboo, but it does depend on the specifics of the act, not just a report of offence.
I think intent does come into it. Often the use of the cartoons is deliberately intended to provoke and offend. And yes, often that desire is born out of contempt for Islam and those who practise it, other times out of the conviction that free speech is ensured by deliberately offending others.
As to whether we should abide by someone else's taboo, my question is simply how inconvenient is abiding by it, and how close is that taboo to the heart of the religion? Not picturing Mohammed is pretty darn straightforward and causes no great hardship to anyone, and is clearly very important to many Muslims. It would be different if the demand was to respect, say, the prohibition of pork or alcohol.
I think there is a fundamental question here: why does Islam get the right to censor all discourse about it?
As previously mentioned, we're not talking about "all discourse" but whether it's appropriate for an agent of the state (such as a teacher at a state-funded school) to deliberately denigrate a specific religion.
I don't really understand the notion of hate speech in English law. Well, the bit about inciting violence seems clear, but what is hatred, and how does it relate to offence? I'm not dissing the whole notion, as it's likely that it leads to violence. I guess it's made more explicit in law.
I tend to stand with Stephen Fry (another gay man) in wondering how important it is that a remark offends someone. If it harms them, that's a different matter, but when did offence become harm?
Politeness and courtesy are the grease that oil the wheels of society. Offence is grit that gets stuck in them.
I've heard plenty of comedy that I find somewhat offensive, and also funny. I find myself being able to appreciate the wordplay and the structure of the humour, and perhaps the wider point that the comedian is trying to make, whilst still feeling a bit uncomfortable about the offensiveness, and wishing the comedian had found a better way of making their point. If I was a little more inclined to vapours, my response would probably be completely dominated by the offence.
I'm not sure that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons aren't attacks - they may well be an attack on Islam and/or its adherents.
There's also an element of generic dickishness in there. On one level, publishing those cartoons is saying "I've got the right to publish these, so I'm going to, and there's nothing you can do about it- fuck you, Muslims!" which is a bit of a dick move, really.
It's possible that someone who publishes those cartoons thinks that what they're doing is leading a spirited defense of free speech. But it's hard to escape the possibility that they might also be being dicks.
I don't really understand the notion of hate speech in English law. Well, the bit about inciting violence seems clear, but what is hatred, and how does it relate to offence? I'm not dissing the whole notion, as it's likely that it leads to violence. I guess it's made more explicit in law.
It’s a bit long to try and summarise on the thread, but the Wikipedia entry in the subject is helpful, I think.
I am buying a car, handover is due to be Friday. Despite I am a Quaker - and we generally don’t go in for liturgical calendars - I have felt uncomfortable enough to email the salesman and say is there any chance we can do the handover a day earlier. I don’t really know why, residual piety - the sense it is some how offensive to do something enjoyable on good Friday. But then how do you usually spend a bank holiday.
I don't really understand the notion of hate speech in English law. Well, the bit about inciting violence seems clear, but what is hatred, and how does it relate to offence? I'm not dissing the whole notion, as it's likely that it leads to violence. I guess it's made more explicit in law.
In addition to @BroJames' useful link I think it's useful to remember that there's a distinction between hate speech laws and hate crime laws as legal terms of art. The two are often conflated in discussions like this, much to the detriment of clarity. Hate speech laws criminalize certain expressions of hatred towards groups with certain characteristics. Hate crime laws are typically add aggravating penalties to acts that are already crimes if motivated by hatred towards certain groups.
For example, in the United States the First Amendment makes hate speech laws unconstitutional so you can express your racism as clearly as you want without facing legal penalty*, but many American jurisdictions have hate crime laws on the books.
It's possible that someone who publishes those cartoons thinks that what they're doing is leading a spirited defense of free speech. But it's hard to escape the possibility that they might also be being dicks.
I think there is a fundamental question here: why does Islam get the right to censor all discourse about it?
Isn't this just the same question as asking why, for example, gay people get to decide which terms for them are OK and which terms aren't?
We're not talking about censoring discourse about Islam here - we're talking specifically about images of Mohammed. (I've probably seen the Far Side cartoon that @Anselmina references. It's quite amusing. I wouldn't show it to an audience that might contain Muslims, in case anyone took offence.)
No it is not the same as gay people. The difference is that being gay is not a religious practice, it's rather an inherent human characteristic, with evidence indicating it's got biology as a foundation. I know that Islam and racism is conflated in some places (I gather that it is in the UK). This makes it more difficult: if all the members of one religious group a visible minority, then it is hard to determine what the like/dislike, wish to restrict what they do etc is about. However, Islam is a religious faith and practice, not biology, and thus involves some matter of choice, even if some Muslims hold that it is not allowed to change one's faith, while also acknowledging that there is to be no coercion in religion.
Muslims do not have the ability to restrict images of Mohammad, but they would AFAIK in Canada have the ability to cite that an image was being used to promote discrimination or hate, and it could become illegal at that point. I know that both the response of the people expressing that they were offended, and the intent of the person who displayed the image are both factors.
I'm still on washing feet too. Me not wanting to have sinks in a busy (not presently, but were in the before times) public washroom being also used for religious purposes of foot washing, doesn't appear to be the same as images. The offending behaviour is expressed by the religious group, not (potentially) toward the religious group, as it is with images.
I'm also still thinking of the spandex and the religious group which did not want to see people so attired.
All of which makes me wonder, are we actually talking about how to get people to be reasonable and decent to each other? I would think that images of Mohommad are allowed but not to express hatred or discrimination, that foot washing should not be accommodated in public washrooms but in separate foot sinks, and that it'd be okay for the spandex to be worn but to might be kind to change something about the windows or active public display. I don't know. This is difficult stuff to sort out.
Hey, watch yourself. Hold on there with assumptions. Did I say I was approving of the spandex?
My apology for misunderstanding. You seemed to be implying that it was underasonable for the religious group to object to the spandex, but that it was reasonable for you to object to footwashing.
I've experienced the foot thing, trying to look for comparisons and parallels. It'd be more helpful to propose your own. I posted "With the further discussion maybe being how much should one person's religious behaviour affect another."
I see no reason to think that the word 'religious' should make any difference there, except perhaps to make a presumption that it's of personal importance to the religious believer. The word 'religion' is decidedly difficult to define, religion being really a concept of the Western Enlightenment with no exactly corresponding word in other cultures.
The fundamental rule ought to be that public space ought to welcome as many people's behaviours as possible and people ought to be as tolerant of other people's behaviour as they would hope those other people to be of them. That means non-Muslims either allow for the provision of foot basins in public space or accept that Muslims have to wash their feet in handbasins, and Muslims, Jews, and other people accept that some people want to dance or exercise in spandex.
One oughtn't to be rude about other people unless there's a good reason to justify it such as legitimate criticism or informed satire (and even then one ought to minimise the rudeness to the minimum necessary). One ought never to bully people. Criticism and satire aimed at people who find it difficult to answer back, or to be heard by your target audience, is uncomfortably close to bullying.
The fundamental rule ought to be that public space ought to welcome as many people's behaviours as possible and people ought to be as tolerant of other people's behaviour as they would hope those other people to be of them. That means non-Muslims either allow for the provision of foot basins in public space or accept that Muslims have to wash their feet in handbasins, and Muslims, Jews, and other people accept that some people want to dance or exercise in spandex.
One oughtn't to be rude about other people unless there's a good reason to justify it such as legitimate criticism or informed satire (and even then one ought to minimise the rudeness to the minimum necessary). One ought never to bully people. Criticism and satire aimed at people who find it difficult to answer back, or to be heard by your target audience, is uncomfortably close to bullying.
Thanks, @Dafyd - you put this concisely and well. And I can't help but think that most, if not all, of the famous "Mohammed cartoon" use falls into your bullying category here. There are plenty of ways that one could make a point about free speech; if one chooses to do so by picking on everyone's favourite target minority, one is being a dick.
Comments
No it's about foot washing in sinks not designed for this. Perhaps university students are the issue also: not socialized yet.
We occasionally had to wash our feet.
I can Never recal there being an issue with this.
But that was the 70s
No. The bomb-in-the-turban was from the Danish cartoons, in 2005. The Hebdo cartoons that I saw didn't seem focused on terrorism, more just on portraying Mohammed as goofy, eg. one had him crying while sitting next to other famous religious figures, who inform him that he shouldn't be so sensitive about getting spoofed in the Hebdo.
Another one was illustrating an article about Islam and film, and featured Mohammed posing nude for Jean-Luc Godard, saying "My butt? Do you love my butt?" (A reference to the film Contempt.)
There were a lot of Charlie Hebdo cartoons portraying Mohammed, but as I say, usually as a hapless goofball, not as a terrorist himself.
They're just sinks - not hand-sinks, or face-sinks, or anything-but-your-feet-sinks. It's a bowl with a tap and a drain, at about waist height. I've washed babies in sinks, too - only once in a public toilet, and it was fortunate that that toilet (in a shop somewhere) had a home-style sink rather than the sort of angular industrial tile / metal constructions you get in some places. (And yes, when I washed the baby, I washed his feet, too.)
How ironic after you admit you liked to put others down.
Then you admit putting people down is bad.
I interpreted that as being the point of her post. This is a nasty habit she had as a kid, and so she recognizes the fault when she sees it in others.
Such as those that criticise capitalism, for example...
I think @mousethief is saying that the post is in fact putting Muslims down and that it is therefore ironic that it is framed in this way.
Personally I don't think that anyone in this saga or any poster is necessarily putting anyone else down.
And it was likely needful. As an unessential activity, not supporting. I wouldn't accept dishwashing in them either. We've also got injection drug use in some sinks. Not okay either. If a foot washing facility is needed get one. If injection drug use is needed to be done, get a safe injection site. If people want to walk build a footpath.
Specifically re babies, washrooms routinely here do have baby change facilities in them. Required by building permit for many public facilities, just as wheel chair accessible facilities are required by law.
If footwashing is part of your religious practice, and the majority non-Muslim community has not provided footsinks, then washing in the washroom sinks is needful. If I have used dishes for my lunch at work and there is no other sink in which to wash them, I will wash my dishes in the washroom sink. If there are no safe injections sites, where am I to be able to inject? If I cannot walk where there are no footpaths, so long to ever walking across an unused football field.
They exist in several public toilets round here - no outrage.
I’ve seen them at airports too, but I’ve forgotten which.
The baby in question was, not to put too fine a point on it, completely covered in shit. Baby wipes on a changing table just weren't going to get the job done. Fortunately, I had a capacious nappy bag.
As others have mentioned, for the Muslims in question, it is an essential activity.
Given that you choose not to "accept" dishwashing either, I may as well point out that, when we all used to go to work in person, I'd often see people washing out mugs and coffee pots in restroom sinks. I'm really confused as to why this should bother me.
People have been walking since long before footpaths were invented, and walk in all kinds of places that don't have footpaths.
In fact, this isn't a bad analogy. We build footpaths in places where the foot traffic is high enough to warrant it, but in places that only get occasional foot traffic, people can walk without one.
Sinks for feet are a similar case. People who want/need to wash their feet can if necessary manage without a low sink - either by using a regular sink, or presumably they can contrive with a bowl and jug or something. Feet, after all, have existed and been washed since long before the existence of sinks and washrooms.
Not complete, but not all Muslims pray and not all who pray wash their feet. With the further discussion maybe being how much should one person's religious behaviour affect another. I'm also reminded of a podcast about people in a spin class wearing spandex by windows which made some religious people unhappy in a neighbourhood.
Isn't that the point ? You're saying - rightly ISTM - that you can't really judge because you haven't seen the images. A description - "cartoons of Mohammed" isn't enough.
Yes, a serious discussion of what images are offensive and which are not (in a pluralist culture in which people hold different values) needs to be informed by a range of examples that are seen rather that just described.
The line you're drawing seems to be that you believe in tolerance for everything that a person like you might want to do, and everything that might make a person like you uncomfortable and which a person like you wouldn't want to do ought to be banned from public space.
Hey, watch yourself. Hold on there with assumptions. Did I say I was approving of the spandex? We're discussing I thought. I've experienced the foot thing, trying to look for comparisons and parallels. It'd be more helpful to propose your own. I posted "With the further discussion maybe being how much should one person's religious behaviour affect another."
(Not that I've ever been to a spin class or worn spandex.)
Well, a more thorough description might do the trick. I wouldn't want, for example, to have to watch extreme sex or violence "verbatim" in order to determine whether they were acceptable family viewing.
(I wonder why blasphemy would come into this at all as we no longer have an offence of blasphemy in England, haven't had since 2008.)
It would depend what arguments the teacher is responding to. If someone made a content-based criticism of the cartoons(eg. the cartoons were offensive because they portrayed Mohammed as a terrorist), then it would be relevant to examine the specified cartoons.
Well, the fact that Muslims consider the cartoons blasphemous is the reason they're considered offensive, isn't it?
I think you can decide that after the first scene in the movie which fails the test, without needing to sit through the rest of it.
And if you're making the decision for your own family then it seems to me perfectly reasonable to go by what someone else who has seen it has said.
But if you're the Official Censor whose job it is to decide what other people may see, then I think you do have to watch the material.
Totally agreed. Though in the case under discussion, the regulating body is a school board, who are somewhere between a parent and a state censor, in terms of their right and responsibilities in making these sorts of decisions.
A parent has the luxury of being wrong, because he's only making decisions for his underaged kids, who are not bound to his diktat for life. A state censor has more of an obligation to get it right, because people have no choice but to follow his decisions.
A school board isn't practicing legally enforced censorship on a wide scale, but, like a state censor, their decisions do carry the implied imprimatur of the government.
Because Muslims find pictures of Mohammed offensive because they consider them to be blasphemous? Blasphemy didn't stop being a word or a concept just because it stopped being a specific crime. (The English offence of blasphemy wouldn't have applied to blasphemy against Islamic beliefs anyway - see, for example, Lord Scarman in Whitehouse vs Gay News Ltd.)
Such people have at various times created blanket rules about things that are and are not permissible. If my blanket rule is "no visible nipples, penes, or vulvas" then I don't have to watch your hardcore porn movie to know that it's going to fail. And I can also tell you what my blanket rules are, and if you keep submitting material that obviously fails them, I can stop taking you seriously, and automatically reject any and every submission from you unseen.
I used to have a Gary Larson 'Far Side' cartoon book. One of my favourite cartoons was of a very sweet and benign looking Mohammad in his front room looking enquiringly out of his window, while knocking at the door on the outside was a large hill. The caption was 'well, if Mohammad won't come to the mountain...'
I would like to think I'm generally respectful of the religious sensibilities of others, even those I don't share a faith with. But I've laughed at this cartoon many times without denigrating Mohammad. Have I been committing a hate crime, all this time? Should Larson be preparing himself for his Fatwah any time soon?
It is, at least, some considerable number of years since we stopped expecting non-Christians to self-censor in their description of Christianity.
I know, I'm going to be accused of islamophobia, but I don't think that's reasonable. There is a distinction, surely, between attacking the adherents of a faith, and making them uncomfortable, and between what a faith can regulate in terms of its adherents, and when it can be said to have some kind of right to control external groups.
I think the spandex and gym issue I previously posted about was a Jewish group which didn't like to see bodies in this way.
I'm still mulling over the where line should be drawn with respecting religious sensitivities.
One thing I will say in defense of the French is that they did have a history of formal neutrality in regards to religious matters, and are arguably just applying the same policy to Islam that they had previously applied to Catholicism etc.
This distinguishes their approach favourably from that of, say, the UKIP in Britain, most of whom I'm guessing never had a problem with eg. the aforementioned Gay News prosecutions(*), but are now suddenly fired up about the inalienable right to insult Muslim religious figures.
(*) I'd also guess that most Ukippers, even the Non-Conformists among them, never thought that England's state church was an affront worth fighting against, but I really don't know. Reasonably certain that almost none of them ever marched to defend poetry about Christ getting blown on the cross.
Isn't this just the same question as asking why, for example, gay people get to decide which terms for them are OK and which terms aren't?
We're not talking about censoring discourse about Islam here - we're talking specifically about images of Mohammed. (I've probably seen the Far Side cartoon that @Anselmina references. It's quite amusing. I wouldn't show it to an audience that might contain Muslims, in case anyone took offence.)
I'm not sure this question is about Islam's "rights" or otherwise. Islam clearly has no "right" to censor what others say beyond the law of the land, any more than any other group. However, Muslims have a complete right to believe what they believe and they also have a right to be upset by things that upset them, even if those things don't make sense to non-Muslims. They also have a right (freedom of speech) to say that they are upset.
We, as UK citizens, have the right to listen and adapt when people are upset, or not. We generally exercise our right to respond to other groups' upset through democracy and government structures. As part of being citizens of the UK, we have a right to be complete ****s (within the bounds of the law) but we can choose not to exercise that right. I would like to exercise my right to be kind and understanding to the beliefs of others when they don't hurt me or anyone else.
And yes, I'm conscious that was immensely pompous. I'm exercising my right to be pompous. You may wish to exercise your right to take the ****.
I think this is where this whole question is worth interrogating. Other than the breaching of the taboo re. images, which is properly speaking a matter of internal regulation, what has anyone done in this scenario to harm Islam? Is all offence the same in this regard?
I tend to stand with Stephen Fry (another gay man) in wondering how important it is that a remark offends someone. If it harms them, that's a different matter, but when did offence become harm?
I suppose growing up as AIDS was striking gave me a high threshold in terms of being offended, though it also taught me all the weasel ways used to mask attacks. But that is the diifference - I am talking about an intent to harm, not just to offend.
I'm not sure that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons aren't attacks - they may well be an attack on Islam and/or its adherents. A group's founder or leader is, among other things, a metaphor for the group. But the fact that they are offensive to Moslems is possibly not the most important element in that.
I'm also not sure at the moment where "incitement to hatred", as I believe our legislation puts it, sits on that spectrum. Is an infraction of a rule of itself an incitement to hatred? I would argue not.I would argue that this has to go beyond the breaking of a taboo, but it does depend on the specifics of the act, not just a report of offence.
As to whether we should abide by someone else's taboo, my question is simply how inconvenient is abiding by it, and how close is that taboo to the heart of the religion? Not picturing Mohammed is pretty darn straightforward and causes no great hardship to anyone, and is clearly very important to many Muslims. It would be different if the demand was to respect, say, the prohibition of pork or alcohol.
As previously mentioned, we're not talking about "all discourse" but whether it's appropriate for an agent of the state (such as a teacher at a state-funded school) to deliberately denigrate a specific religion.
Am I the only one who remembers the histrionic vapors Christians would get about Andres Serrano or Chris Ofili?
Politeness and courtesy are the grease that oil the wheels of society. Offence is grit that gets stuck in them.
I've heard plenty of comedy that I find somewhat offensive, and also funny. I find myself being able to appreciate the wordplay and the structure of the humour, and perhaps the wider point that the comedian is trying to make, whilst still feeling a bit uncomfortable about the offensiveness, and wishing the comedian had found a better way of making their point. If I was a little more inclined to vapours, my response would probably be completely dominated by the offence.
There's also an element of generic dickishness in there. On one level, publishing those cartoons is saying "I've got the right to publish these, so I'm going to, and there's nothing you can do about it- fuck you, Muslims!" which is a bit of a dick move, really.
It's possible that someone who publishes those cartoons thinks that what they're doing is leading a spirited defense of free speech. But it's hard to escape the possibility that they might also be being dicks.
It’s a bit long to try and summarise on the thread, but the Wikipedia entry in the subject is helpful, I think.
In addition to @BroJames' useful link I think it's useful to remember that there's a distinction between hate speech laws and hate crime laws as legal terms of art. The two are often conflated in discussions like this, much to the detriment of clarity. Hate speech laws criminalize certain expressions of hatred towards groups with certain characteristics. Hate crime laws are typically add aggravating penalties to acts that are already crimes if motivated by hatred towards certain groups.
For example, in the United States the First Amendment makes hate speech laws unconstitutional so you can express your racism as clearly as you want without facing legal penalty*, but many American jurisdictions have hate crime laws on the books.
These are not mutually exclusive things.
* Social penalties are another matter.
No it is not the same as gay people. The difference is that being gay is not a religious practice, it's rather an inherent human characteristic, with evidence indicating it's got biology as a foundation. I know that Islam and racism is conflated in some places (I gather that it is in the UK). This makes it more difficult: if all the members of one religious group a visible minority, then it is hard to determine what the like/dislike, wish to restrict what they do etc is about. However, Islam is a religious faith and practice, not biology, and thus involves some matter of choice, even if some Muslims hold that it is not allowed to change one's faith, while also acknowledging that there is to be no coercion in religion.
Muslims do not have the ability to restrict images of Mohammad, but they would AFAIK in Canada have the ability to cite that an image was being used to promote discrimination or hate, and it could become illegal at that point. I know that both the response of the people expressing that they were offended, and the intent of the person who displayed the image are both factors.
I'm still on washing feet too. Me not wanting to have sinks in a busy (not presently, but were in the before times) public washroom being also used for religious purposes of foot washing, doesn't appear to be the same as images. The offending behaviour is expressed by the religious group, not (potentially) toward the religious group, as it is with images.
I'm also still thinking of the spandex and the religious group which did not want to see people so attired.
All of which makes me wonder, are we actually talking about how to get people to be reasonable and decent to each other? I would think that images of Mohommad are allowed but not to express hatred or discrimination, that foot washing should not be accommodated in public washrooms but in separate foot sinks, and that it'd be okay for the spandex to be worn but to might be kind to change something about the windows or active public display. I don't know. This is difficult stuff to sort out.
I see no reason to think that the word 'religious' should make any difference there, except perhaps to make a presumption that it's of personal importance to the religious believer. The word 'religion' is decidedly difficult to define, religion being really a concept of the Western Enlightenment with no exactly corresponding word in other cultures.
The fundamental rule ought to be that public space ought to welcome as many people's behaviours as possible and people ought to be as tolerant of other people's behaviour as they would hope those other people to be of them. That means non-Muslims either allow for the provision of foot basins in public space or accept that Muslims have to wash their feet in handbasins, and Muslims, Jews, and other people accept that some people want to dance or exercise in spandex.
One oughtn't to be rude about other people unless there's a good reason to justify it such as legitimate criticism or informed satire (and even then one ought to minimise the rudeness to the minimum necessary). One ought never to bully people. Criticism and satire aimed at people who find it difficult to answer back, or to be heard by your target audience, is uncomfortably close to bullying.
Thanks, @Dafyd - you put this concisely and well. And I can't help but think that most, if not all, of the famous "Mohammed cartoon" use falls into your bullying category here. There are plenty of ways that one could make a point about free speech; if one chooses to do so by picking on everyone's favourite target minority, one is being a dick.