It is one of the defining motifs of our age: the righteous fury of the religiously affronted. It is not peculiar to any faith: in the last few decades in Britain alone, Christians have demonstrated against a musical (Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee’s Jerry Springer: The Opera), Sikhs have agitated against a play (Gurpreet Bhatti’s Behzti), and Muslims have endorsed or excused an extra-judicial death sentence handed down for the crime of writing a novel (Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses). The protesters in each case may not have been representative of the majority of their co-religionists, but they have wielded sufficient numbers, and sufficient menace, to encroach upon the fundamental freedoms of speech, thought and expression.
Read Full Article »
