Blasphemy law is no answer to bigotry in the wake of Denmark’s Qur’an burnings.
From the article:
All book burnings are, to my mind, senseless, whether it be Christian pastors torching LGBTQ+ books or trans activists torching copies of Harry Potter. They are at best crude attempts to make a political point. Nor should one forget the long history of state-enforced book burnings aimed at buttressing tyrannical rule and often targeting vulnerable social groups.
Can’t really agree with this line. The world in which you might hope to eliminate books from local circulation by burning them is gone. While some instances of book burning may symbolically speak to an urge to wipe certain viewpoints out of existence, it would be reductive. Generally, the symbolic gestures are performed alongside commentary. And it can be a poignant gesture.
I understand authors don’t want to appear biased or they don’t want to lose their audience so they try to walk the ‘both sides’ tightrope, but it quickly becomes equivocal. The problem with Christian pastors burning 2SLGBTQ+ books is less in the book burning and more in the fact that there are well-funded conservative Christian lobby groups currently making moves. But the gesture of burning the book is far from senseless. If anything, I kind of appreciate them being so painfully fucking overt.
Nevertheless, the burning of symbolic objects, whether books or flags, has long been part of the tradition of protest, and in an age when the right to protest is continually curtailed – even within liberal democracies – we should not lightly dispense with it.
I am realigned with the article author here. One ought not burn the Quran because it is inflammatory in more ways than one. It’s like the kid in the back of the car who tries to start a fight with their sibling by hovering a finger an inch away from them while chanting, “Not touching you,” as it that technicality makes the act less aggressive and provocative. Whether physical contact is made or not, I suspect many parents don’t put up with this for very long before telling their kids to knock it off.
Burning the Quran does not justify unlawful retaliation, but it is poking the bear. These are the situations that are bound to create stress not just for the extremists, but for the everyday folk that know antagonism when they see it. The point where the law can intervene in the situation will likely be reactive, not proactive if law enforcement have to wait for a law to be broken to act. I can see why the temptation, then, is to shift the law so law enforcement can act earlier in the escalation.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the right answer.
The Iranian-born Danish artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan, a vocal opponent of Iran’s theocratic regime, has shredded the Qur’an as part of her performance art. Another Iranian-born artist, Sooreh Hera, who lives in the Netherlands, had her photographs of two gay Iranian exiles wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad and his son-in-law, Ali, censored by the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague because, in the words of the museum director, “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive”.
And this represents a big part of the reason why. Islamophobia is a thing. In Canada, we have people who ascribe to irrational fears that Muslims are taking over and that we’ll be a Sharia state any day now despite coherent evidence to support the claim. We have violence and hate targeting places of worship in some cases indiscriminately. We have people who are hellbent on making themselves the victims of Muslims in Canada when they really aren’t.
Yet there are also legitimate criticisms of Islam and of various Islamic states. While various laws in various jurisdictions have weighed in on the line between what constitutes artistic expression and what does not, it’s really not ideal.
TheEncogitationer 11 months, 3 weeks ago.
Davis.
