Speak for your Self

Will Self is a mock-profound peacock. Every obscure word flaunted is an eye on his fantastical, extravagant tail.

Despite that, BBC Radio 4 intended to set him up as their “writer in residence” - before someone got cold feet. (A shy BBC peahen perhaps).

In some ways it's a shame the channel didn't have the courage of its convictions. Will Self is the embodiment of so much of the underlying spirit of BBC Radio 4 that he would have represented its 'official point of view' splendidly. 

And as proof of that...

His latest 'A Point of View', reacting to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, accorded perfectly with this past week's series of Letters from Europe  - Radio 4's specially-commissioned series reacting to those attacks (see various recent posts). A snugger, more slipper-like fit between the one and the other could scarcely be imagined. 

Will en utilisant des phrases françaises obscure de montrer son plumage extravagant...but, despite that, the thrust of his argument was crystal clear to any English speaker. 

He argued that French secularism is built on quicksand, that it's "a form of imperialism". 

And as for Charlie Hebdo and its "seeming satire", well, he most definitely is not Charlie. 

He thinks Charlie Hebdo published the wrong sort of satire - the kind that "afflicts the already afflicted" [guess who?] and that's "merely offensive or egregiously offensive". It's not "constructive". It doesn't want to make society "more equal, more fair, more just". [Doesn't it, Will? Weren't the murdered cartoonists left-wingers like you, who were into such things?]

Nasty, nasty Charlie Hebdo, forcing poor Will Pecksniff and Radio 4 to have to "re-think" their long-held positions on satire...in order to make them fully conform to their core beliefs - and not offend they-who-must-not-be-offended, or satirise those they think shouldn't be satirised. 

Yes, make that man Radio 4's official writer in residence now!

P.S. In scanning Google Images for an apt image of Will for this post, it becomes as plain as a pike on a pecksniff that Will loves posing for photos. No multinational is as image aware as Will Self. So much so that he should be re-named 'Will Selfie'.

The right time

"That perhaps is a debate for another time", says Kevin Connolly, after finding out that one of his interviewees blames the media, at least in part, for the current atmosphere, and argues that it has tended to demonise Israel in recent years in the wake of events ranging from the first Gulf war to the first and second Intifadas.

“It's only fair to point that out” says Kev, before moving on.

When is this ‘other time?’ Will it be quite soon? It seems the media is only interested in the blasphemy and freedom of speech questions.

For example: Today, about 8:08 am. Sima Kotecha went to investigate British Muslims in Slough. 

Sima

“A small supermarket specialising in Indian and Pakistani foods. The manager is carrying out an inventory. He’s originally from Lahore and he’s a practicing Muslim. I asked him about Charlie Hebdo’s new front cover. He agreed to speak anonymously.

This magazine cover, another cartoon of the prophet Mohammed, how does that make you feel?

Anon

“Upset. I think it’s disrespectful, I think it’s escalating things further when there was a chance to just draw a line under it they’re just basically purposefully trying to antagonise and irritate people and they’re gonna get a reaction from it, I think.

Sima

But they are saying that we forgive you. They’re basically saying that we forgive the killers

Anon

Okay I didn’t realise that, but why are they doing a picture again of our prophet?

Sima

What would you say to those people who say we live in a society where you are allowed to offend in certain respects?

Anon

That’s fine, that’s fair enough, but then at the same time they can’t get upset when things happen as the consequences of that.

Sima

Are you concerned that that might happen in this country?

Anon

Um yeah, I think there’s a distinct possibility.

Sima

He believes that the re-publication of the prophet caricature in France will worsen relations between different communities here in Britain.

Anon

All it’s gonna do is just pull them further apart. it’s not gonna help bring anybody together because whether Muslim people say it or not, deep down they’re probably happy with what happened.

Sima

What do you mean by that?

Anon

Not in the sense that people have lost their lives, but in the sense that something needs to be done to stop people from disrespecting our prophet.

Sima

Are you really saying that what’s happened has taught those who insult Islam a lesson?

Anon

It’s not as if anybody’s gonna be jumping around the streets for joy, but it’s not as if anybody’s gonna be mourning their deaths. In my opinion.

Sima

Other Muslims here are simply scared. Scared that people on the street will increasingly develop anti-Islamic views, which could translate into violence. Some moderate believers say they’re frightened to defend the argument for free speech because they fear it would aggravate Islamist extremists, as this woman who was too afraid to give her name, explains.

Woman

I’m caught between wanting peace but also defending what’s right.

Sima

And what do you think about whether this is going to stoke more anger?

Woman

It could do, again, if you take the extremists’ view, it will do. So it’s quite a conflicting time I think for Muslims living in this country, wanting freedom of speech but also being persecuted for it if you do speak out.

Sima

Three quarters of those I spoke to expressed moderate views. Across the street I’m told by a young Muslim ‘We are bound to fall under more suspicion now.’ He said ‘this attack will lead to the authorities casting more doubt on us than ever before and this will lead to further friction between us and them’.

In a Pakistani sweetshop around the corner a customer is convinced it’s only a matter of time before the tension fuelled by this attack has serious repercussions in this country.

Customer

I think personally they’re gonna make matters worse than what they are. This cartoon business happened a few years ago and this is the backlash now. So obviously they’re gonna provoke more people along the same kind of tracks, and maybe a few months down the line, or maybe a year down the line we’re gonna get something similar to that again.

That’s the end of Sima K’s report from the Muslim world. Next Sarah talks to Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy.

“We monitor this.....There’s a huge matter of concern but it doesn’t mean it will translate into violence. .....A lot of Jewish people are very fearful at the moment; a lot of Muslim people are very fearful at the moment...... They ought to come together and have open debates.........We have to be very active about community cohesion.......... The situation in Palestine brings out some very heated feelings.”

That’s a cross between a summary and a bit of cherry picking, but I hope you get the drift. Either Sir Peter Fahy is Pollyanna’s big brother, or he’s got some serious catching up to do. 

I would like Sima Kotecha or any of the BBC’s intrepid reporters who venture into the heart of Muslim world with the intention of ‘telling their story’, to mention the 'Jewish question'.

It’s very enlightening to hear the predictions of the man from Lahore (who speaks English so like a native that I suspect he is a native) about his fellow Muslims’ probable response to Charlie Hebdo, and their attitude to freedom of speech. Yes, I do want to know what they have to say, and, because it’s so antithetical to my own views, yet so understandable from someone with his, it is definitely something that needs to be brought out, chewed over and if possible resolved.

However there’s still this painfully obvious reluctance on the part of the BBC to bring in the matter of Muslim antisemitism. I realise that the BBC has publicised the latest polls about the shocking number of negative feelings in the UK towards Jews, and soon I hope it will be the right time to debate the media’s role in that. 

But I want Sima Kotecha to tease out the antisemitism that the man from Lahore, the woman who was afraid to give her name, the moderate Muslims with the ‘friction’ and the man in the sweetshop have had drilled into them as part of their religious education, if indeed it has been, and I don’t want it to be passed off as understandable because of “what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.”

Hearing Sir Peter Fahy bringing that in as well, means the time for that debate about the media is long overdue.

I’d like now to draw your attention to an item I saw on Sky.  Extra Jewish patrols in London after attacks.

It’s not the article itself. It’s the comments below that amply demonstrate the very same anti-Jewish attitudes that must have been recorded for that poll.  It’s the sheer factual inaccuracy and ignorance that needs to be addressed. I mean, “where,” in the famous words of Gillian Duffy, “does it flock from?”

The media. It has to be.

Incidentally, I noticed that today the BBC has brought back the ‘H’. They’ve stopped using the French, silent H, pronunciation of Hebdo. Was that some sort of dictat? 

Incidentally again, I’d like people to lay off Tim Willcox a bit. Yes, his attitude is appalling. However, we might make allowances for his ignorance. He didn’t seem to understand the first thing about Israel or where Muslim antisemitism is rooted. He should be forced to read up about it (proper Jewish/ Israel history) before he’s let back off the leash. So should the whole lot of them.

Muslims complain that they’re the new Jews, and say they’re being demonised by us Islamophobes, just like the Jews in the 1930s. We know this is a travesty. But making a whacking great fuss and calling for Tim Willcox to be hung, drawn with a Hitler mustache and quartered, we’re in danger of acting a bit like grievance-mongers ourselves. Then we turn into the new Muslims. We wouldn’t want that, now, would we?

Necessary disputatiosity

Today Radio 4. At about 7:45 we heard from Zineb El Rhazoui, “a Charlie Hebdo columnist who was on holiday in her native Morocco when the attack happened and who has been part of putting together the latest issue.”

I was mildly interested in the background of  one of Charlie Hebdo’s contributors with such an ‘Arab-sounding’ moniker. Well it seems she Tweets about Sweden’s decision to recognise Palestine, and about this.  Israelis breaking out the popcorn to enjoy the spectacle of the “bombs falling on Gaza.” (or the iron dome preventing bombs falling on them)

The jury’s probably still out on that. 

In her interview she kept on mentioning a mysterious Michael Eagues, which (silly me with my cloth eared inability to adjust to the French accent) was her pronunciation of ‘my colleagues’.

Not so cloth-eared was my instinctive apprehension at the way she was trying to defend Charlie Edbo’s attitude to Islam.’ Attacking Islam is no different from attacking any other religion’ is what she was saying. “It’s our way of recognising that Islam is an ordinary religion, just like any other” 

Well, that’s not very encouraging to some of us.

Boycott Israel shirt on Charlie march

What was Angela Tilby on about on this morning’s Thought for the day?

She went into a considerable amount of detail with a graphic and heartfelt summary of the Dreyfus affair. But the message she drew from it, if I’m not mistaken was we must never demonise the ‘other’. My instinctive apprehension detected that in this instance she was not only talking about the Jews. In fact, not even talking about them. Please correct me if I’m being unnecessarily disputatious.

“That inclination to disputatiosity is how Jews are, thank Marduk. (and that verbal borderline sacrilege is also how they/we are; lightening the truly serious.)” from a comment on H/P of which more later. Sorry, must dash.
Update.
I had to go to the dentist. (all clear!) Now I’m back, and I can link to the item, which is now available here. It’s the last bit that is rather menacing. I’m sure the message is supposed to be ‘beware of Islmophobia’.  I wonder if Angela Tilby watched last night’s Panorama?

(I thought it was perceived opinion that Jews are not a race, but as a secular individual with no religious education or cultural connections, where has my disputatiosity come from? )

True confessions

Anyone watching Q.T. retrospectively would have known that at some point during the programme David Dimbleby was to read out BBC editorial guidelines stating that the prophet Mohammed must not be represented in any shape or form. 

The tenor of the conversation that preceded this shamefaced admission gave extra tension to the lead-up to what was a much anticipated announcement.  How long could Dimbles hold out, one wondered, before he was forced, nay, could do nothing but - own up? 

“Everyone should stand shoulder to shoulder with the French” the panel said, with varying degrees of sincerity, “and simultaneously flood the media and the internet with images of the prophet.” 

“If only the newspapers had not bottled it” said Julia Hartley-Brewer. Unfortunately the cameras weren’t pointing at Dimbles whilst she was delivering her eloquent speech.

On to Vince Cable, clearly demonstrating why the Lib Dems are unworthy of one’s (anyone’s) vote. A young lady in the audience asked, with a menacing stare: “How can we say that Britain is defending democracy and freedom of speech when somebody like Theresa May is proposing to stunt freedom of movement by confiscating suspected Jihadis’ passports?”

Good question for Vince. 

“I don’t think you can link those two things at all actually, but on the broader issue of response to this crisis I’ll quote Voltaire - ‘the thing that we should be most intolerant of is intolerance’ - but I think we should be careful that we don’t have intolerance directed at the Muslim community, and we tend to overlook that the day before these atrocities there were people marching in the streets of Germany - in cities where there were no Muslims at all  - condemning ‘Islamicisation’ of Europe. The worst individual terrorist atrocity was that man Anders Breveik, and other neoNazi......” 

Dimbles started looking increasingly shifty and said: “But was the attack directed at Charlie Hebdo for the cartoon, or for merely representing images of Mohammed?  Or were they really ‘looking for a target’?”

Sailing close to the wind there one would think, with retrospective knowledge that he was about, sooner or later,  to ‘fess up to the BBC’s official craven capitulation to the sensibilities of Islam - the “Islamicisation” of the BBC. But when?

What was he up to? Dipping a toe in so to speak? Tentatively exploring whether everyone would gang up against the BBC’s policy over “Political, Religious and Topical sensitivities”? 

Over to David Davies.

“The French authorities will resist it, like the Norwegian authorities. They said we’re not going to put up with...’

Even Liz Kendall, whose entire outrage smacked of political posturing, skated dangerously close with the ‘freedom of speech’ riff, the Salman Rushdie riff, the our freedoms are hard-fought riff. That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back; the thing that finally forced Dimbles to bring out the bit of paper he’d been nursing.

“I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t read this out.” Almost like the abdication speech. “I have not forgotten my duty to you.....” 

People are wondering whether BBC Watch’s exposure of this embarrassing clause in the BBC’s editorial guidelines had anything to do with Dimbleby’s apparent crisis of conscience. 

Even we, in the relative backwater of the blogosphere sometimes hope that some of our sentiment trickles down to them indoors.  We sincerely hope so.

Drawing a veil

What a day! I was riveted by the BBC’s reporting. 

Why oh why did the BBC turn to Mohammed Shafiq, and allow him to all but justify, by stealth, the motivation, if not the method, of the attack by bringing in ‘anger about Israel and the Palestinians’. And the odious Tariq Ramadan - an Oxford professor, don’t you know - who spoke about the backlash and said this was “nothing to do with Islam”  (because violence is unIslamic or some such utter tripe).

I saw Martin Rowson who was so angry at the slaughter of his fellow cartoonists that he had the nerve to say some unequivocally condemnatory things about the r.o.p., but the twist in the tail is that his cartoonist’s ire has been mostly levelled at Jews. (Or should that be sting in the tail - I prefer twist somehow)

Oddly enough, several people commenting over at Harry’s Place who had seen his interview on the BBC confused Rowson with Steve Bell. Hardly surprising; they’re evil twins as far as Jews and Israel are concerned. Cheap’n’lazy antisemitism and quite badly drawn I think.

For much of the afternoon Phillipa Thomas was the anchor. At one point she got quite animated about ‘not jumping to conclusions’ and ‘not the real Islam.’ 

We have also seen analysis by Frank Gardner and repeated interviews with the lady terror-attack expert who was in awe of the professionalism, expertise and marksmanship displayed by the gunmen. They must be professionals, she opined, flatteringly.

The BBC has not shown the most disturbing footage - that of the cold-blooded shooting of the injured policeman who was pleading for his life. It did not, however, shy away from reporting the fact that the attackers were heard to say they had avenged the profit Mohammed, Allahu Akbar and all that idiotic claptrap that these not-the-real-Islamists are prone to chant. 

I know we’re in for an avalanche of warnings about the backlash, which I suppose will be a diversion from electioneering.