Uganda Humanist Schools Trust benefits from PTT

This blog’s parent organisation, the UK gay humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT), has become one of the sponsors of the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust (UK).

The UHST was established as a charity in 2008 to raise funds to support schools founded by the Uganda Humanist Association. The schools offer “an alternative liberal-secular education, are open to all children irrespective of their family beliefs and reject all forms of indoctrination”.

The PTT was set up in 1992 to advance the education of the public, and particularly of lesbians and gay men, in the principles and practice of humanism, and to advance the education of the public, and particularly of humanists, about all aspects of homosexuality.

Its work to date has included the nationwide provision of humanist “affirmation” ceremonies for same-sex couples as the alternative to a Christian “blessing; the publication of a unique online (and formerly print) magazine, Gay & Lesbian Humanist; the publication of a variety of leaflets “Introducing the Humanist Tradition”; setting this blog and an e-discussion list, Gaytheist (see sidebar for how to join up).

Last year it became a sponsor of the UK LGBT History Month and it has now provided funding for a storeroom at one of the Uganda Humanist Association schools so that books and other resources can be stored securely.

The PTT secretary George Broadhead said, “The PTT trustees think it is very important to support humanist projects as well as gay ones and the one in Uganda is obviously a very worthy recipient.

“The Uganda Humanist Association is a beacon of light in a country that seems riddled with religious bigotry and where draconian antigay legislation is still pending.”

Spineless UK government acts to prevent arrest of Ratzo – surprise, surprise!

We knew it would happen, of course. The spineless UK government is trying to prevent attempts to have that nasty piece of work from Rome arrested when he plonks his dainty red jackboot on our (i.e. British) soil in September.

Well, I agree, it would be a diplomatic disaster – but changing laws for the sake of a child-abuse conspirator who deals out death with his edicts on condoms and abortion and the dignities and rights of gay people?

Values? Don’t talk to me about values!

Gay marriage in Argentina is the work of the Devil, says a Catholic – so it must be right, then

Gay marriage in Argentina? Who’d have thought it?

But it’s happening.

This blog’s parent organisation’s secretary, George Broadhead, is chuffed about it:

“What is so welcome about this is that, like the Spanish, the Argentine government has cocked a snook at the dominant Catholic Church and no doubt enraged that frightful homophobe in the Vatican.”

Pink News, linked to above, says: “The Pope’s number one in the country, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, even claimed it was the work of the devil.”

Yeah. Well, if there is a devil, you are his spawn, and so is the entire Catholic hierarchy. God had to get something wrong, and he did it when he allowed his fallen angel to create organised religion.

It was probably on the seventh day, when he was supposed to have rested, but got so pissed he made his own pact with the Devil, and challenged him to create an organisation that could totally fuck up the world. The Devil succeeded.

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner supports the legislation, and says that sentiments such as those of mentally subnormal Cardinal Bergoglio (my description, not hers!) “send us back to medieval times and the Inquisition”.

UK government shuts down pope petition rather than risk embarrassment – claim

Peter Tatchell

It seems that the UK’s toff leader and prime minister David Cameron has shut down a petition on the Downing Street website so the government won’t be embarrassed about Pope Ratzo’s visit in September.

That’s if Peter Tatchell is to be believed. And, since everything is verifiable, why not?

Tatchell is furious. More signatures would inevitably have been collected if the petition had run to September, as he says it was intended to do.

As you can see from the link above, the government’s response to the petition that many of us signed is just the usual whitewash.

A good day for the Daily Hate

Some interesting words from the never-less-than-interesting Symon Hill at the ever-helpful Christian think tank Ekklesia, concerning gay asylum seekers, which, of course, to the brain-deads in Tabloid World are the ultimate evil.

Under the heading A field day for the right-wing press, he begins with an old joke: “[T]he way to confuse Daily Mail readers is to tell them that asylum-seekers are the natural enemies of homosexuals.

“This wouldn’t have worked last week,” he writes “when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of two gay asylum-seekers, giving the right-wing media the opportunity to go into full scaremongering mode, firing off prejudiced comments about two groups handily combined into one.”

His article continues:

“Now asylum if you’re gay” roared the front-page headline in the Daily Express, as if asylum had been guaranteed to all gay people – which, of course, it has not.

The Supreme Court has ruled that people fleeing homophobic persecution should not simply be sent back and told to hide their sexuality. This has previously been common practice.

Helped along by an extremely ill-chosen comment by one of the judges, the papers were able to quote his words with no context and promote homophobic stereotypes about gay people going to Kylie concerts and drinking cocktails.

Anti-immigrant prejudice was also in full swing, with the Daily Star publishing an editorial headed “No room for gays”. It claimed that “millions more people” will now be able to claim asylum and get “a cushy life in Britain” (it doesn’t explain what’s so cushy about living in a country in which the media daily encourage your neighbours to fear and hate you).

The Daily Mail enthusiastically quoted Andrew Green, the scaremongering chairman of Migration Watch, who said, “This could lead to a potentially massive explosion of asylum claims as it could apply to literally millions of people around the world”.

His claim is as inaccurate as it is irresponsible. Recent analysis showed that 98 per cent of people fleeing homophobic persecution are refused asylum in the UK, compared to 77 per cent of asylum-seekers generally. Even if the number of successful gay asylum-seekers increases several times over, it would still be pretty small.

Also, as Paul Canning writes on the website of LGBT Asylum News, there have not been floods of LGBT asylum-seekers to Canada, despite its far more welcoming policy.

In an attempt to whip up even more fear, there have been claims that Britain will now be flooded not only with gay asylum-seekers but with people “claiming they’re gay” (to use the Daily Star’s words). The implication is that sexuality can’t be proved, so anyone could claim to be gay or bisexual.

But nor can religion be proved. Anyone fleeing an oppressive Islamic regime could claim to be Christian and at risk of religious persecution. The possibility of making such a claim untruthfully hasn’t caused a flood of asylum-seekers from such countries.

The homophobia implicit in the reporting reveals that – despite how far we’ve come – we still have a very long way to go to achieve a general recognition of the rights of sexual minorities. The xenophobia with which it has been combined is characteristic of the tendency of certain papers to blame Britain’s problems on the most vulnerable groups in society. Anyone would think that the economic crisis had been caused not by bankers and millionaires but by a sinister coalition of asylum-seekers, benefit claimants, gay people and Muslims.

The last year has seen growing support for democratic reform and changes to political systems so that powerful people are held to account. We need to recognise that the press is one of the most powerful institutions in our society. With parts of the press consistently using their power to attack the most vulnerable, we need to ask how that power can be challenged and changed. Freedom of speech means little when some have freedom to be heard and others do not.

Well said. Short of censorship and state interference, I don’t know how you combat this, but I guess it has to begin with individuals. The snivelling tabloids, and some of the broadsheets, would sit up and listen if the bottom line were in jeopardy.

Who profits from AIDS?

An international conference in Vienna later this week will be considering the following questions:

– Why has there been no AIDS epidemic in Europe or North America, despite repeated predictions over the last 25 years?

– Where is the vaccine against HIV that’s been “just around the corner” since 1985?

– What’s happened to the tens of billions of dollars invested in AIDS over the last 25 years?

– How did Africa manage to double its population in the last two decades while we were told the continent was drowning in disaster?

– How did Uganda become one of the fastest-growing countries today, even though it’s been hit harder by HIV/AIDS than any other African nation? And how did it overcome the epidemic without AIDS drugs?

– Why has the discoverer of HIV, Prof. Luc Montagnier, declared that “someone with a good immune system can get rid of HIV within a few weeks”?

Have you ever asked yourself these or other questions? Do you wonder why there are so few critical comments about HIV/AIDS in the public discourse? Are you curious to know who’s profiting from the HIV/AIDS hysteria? AIDS – Cui bono?

Do you suspect we might have been misled or fooled with HIV, just like we were fooled with “swine flu”, “bird flu”, “mad-cow disease” and other epidemics that failed to materialise?

You’ll remember the big row that developed over the question of whether HIV causes AIDS. G&LH carried an article by John Lauritsen, the well-known American “AIDS dissident”, and Digital Journal reported on that, and got oodles of comments below the story.

The Vienna conference is being held on 16–17 July (Friday and Saturday of this week).

John Lauritsen told me what his role would be. “Among other things I’ll argue that the AIDS holocaust didn’t just happen, but is based on ancient superstition – ultimately the taboo on sex between males in the Holiness Code of Leviticus. Also, of course, the AIDS holocaust rests on the huge profits of the AIDS Industry.”

Let the firefight begin!

Ratzo the Vile: he should
be crawling on bended
knee to the victims of
priestly child abuse

“Nobody should be pressing the Pope to meet victims of abuses to make a good photo opportunity,” says the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, Vincent Nichols.

Then, referring to the countries worst hit by the sex scandal, he says: “The visit is in the UK, which is not Belgium, not Ireland, not the USA.”

Does that, then, diminish any one of the abuses carried out in Britain?

Does it make any one person who got boffed by a fat sweaty priest (or even a thin one) feel one iota better to know that more children suffered in Belgium and the States?

Just shows how out of touch these bloody Catholics are.

The Pope ought to be crawling to them on bended knee.

As for the cost of this bloody visit – well, keep in touch with the Protest the Pope website and see what you can do by way of campaigning.

Fancy a new look? Don’t let it go to your head!

If you fancy a fancy haircut in Iran, forget it. Mullets are out. So are ponytails and fancy quiffs and spiky hairdos.

All in the name of Islam, of course. Such hairstyles, you see, are decadent and Western and un-Islamic.

But you can have a bit of gel, it seems (don’t make it out of pork fat, though), and you don’t really have to wear a beard as a sign of religious devotion. Oh, well that’s OK, then.

More on council prayers

My blog colleague George Broadhead has been keeping his typing fingers hot recently on the question of prayers before council meetings.

We carried a post recently about the Mayor of Leicester and his decision to scrap this nonsense. We quoted a letter George had had in the Leicester Mercury, and now they’ve published another one.

Here it is:

The Bishop of Leicester rightly points out that the public proceedings at the council should not “assume an adherence to a faith where none exists” and his declaration of respect and value for those whose outlook is secular is welcome, if somewhat patronising.

Indeed, this is a sign of progress as I am sure that many Christians still cling to the notion that everyone must have some sort of faith or be beyond the pale.

However, does the bishop not realise that holding prayers at council meetings involves precisely that – an assumption? It assumes that everyone present has a religious faith and worships a deity or (in the case of Hindus) deities.

Does he not realise how uncomfortable, not to say squirm-inducing, it is for those who are atheist, agnostic or humanist (now a sizeable proportion of the population, according to recent surveys) to have to sit through what to them is meaningless mumbo-jumbo? In any case, surely the proper place for prayers is the church, mosque, synagogue or temple, not a public building.

Secularism – truly the work of the Devil himself

His sodding holiness (stupid title) wants to tackle secularism in the West, it seems. Secularism is the Devil in his mind, obviously.

Secularism, presumably, has been responsible for deaths in Africa and elsewhere, for overpopulation, for the lack of women’s power over their own fertility, often leading to death, and the deaths of gay Catholics who can’t come to terms with what nature intended for them, and often kill themselves.

Oh, and hundreds if not thousands of cases of abuse against children and young people in countries the world over.

Yeah, nasty thing, secularism.

Human Rights Watch apologises to Tatchell

Human Rights Watch has been having a go at the gay human-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, it seems. Now the group has issued an apology. Here is Tatchell’s press release in full:

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has made a full and unreserved apology to human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

The apology has been made by HRW’s Executive Director, Kenneth Roth, in New York.

It says sorry for a series of untrue and personal attacks on Mr Tatchell, made by the head of HRW’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) programme, Scott Long.

The apology by Human Rights Watch acknowledges that Mr Long made a series of “inappropriate . . . disparaging . . . inaccurate . . . condemnatory . . . intemperate personal attacks” on Peter Tatchell.

“I thank Kenneth Roth and HRW for their gracious and fulsome [sic]* apology. Their readiness to acknowledge the wrong done and say sorry is commendable. My appreciation also to Scott Long for conceding his false allegations and apologising. It can’t have been easy for him. He has shown dignity and humility. I appreciate that,” said Mr Tatchell.

“I accept the apologies. It is time to forgive and move on. For me, this closes the matter. The attacks on me are in the past. I look forward to working with HRW and Scott Long in the future.

“Despite this unfortunate episode, my admiration for HRW’s inspiring, effective work is undiminished. It is documenting tyranny and oppression all across the world; exposing human rights abusers and defending the victims. I urge people to support its humanitarian endeavours,” said Mr Tatchell.

Referring to the nature of the attacks on him by Scott Long, Peter Tatchell added:

“I defend the right of people to criticise me. But Mr Long’s attacks went beyond criticism. He made false allegations, which misrepresented my human rights campaigns. It is these untrue claims that are the focus of my objections.

“Mr Long’s falsehoods and personal attacks were many and varied. They included a highly libellous and defamatory essay written by him, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of the journal Contemporary Politics, published by Routledge, which is part of the Taylor and Francis publishing group:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909308032~db=all~jumptype=rss

“This essay made inaccurate allegations. It grossly misrepresented and denigrated my campaigns in defence of gay people persecuted by Iran and in opposition to Islamist fundamentalism.

“I acted in good faith when I opposed the execution of Iranians accused of homosexuality and when I campaigned against fundamentalist Islam in Britain and worldwide.

“Contrary to Mr Long’s claims, I never accused the 13-year-old victim of an alleged rape in Iran of ‘wanting the rape.’ Nor am I guilty of ‘belittling violent sexual assault, and blaming the victim.’ These are outright fabrications.

“In addition, Mr Long accused me of me ‘going after’ British Muslims and adopting a ‘bullying tone’ towards the Muslim community in Britain. This is also untrue. I have always made a clear distinction between Muslim people in general and the Islamist extremists who oppose human rights, including the human rights of fellow Muslims. Indeed, I have often defended Muslim communities, in Britain and worldwide, against prejudice and persecution. I will continue to do so.

“Sectarian smears against human rights defenders are wrong and counter-productive. We should support each other in our shared commitment to universal human rights,” concluded Mr Tatchell.

He then goes on to quote the apology in full, as having been issued today and signed by Kenneth Roth:

Human Rights Watch (HRW) apologizes to Peter Tatchell for a number of inappropriate and disparaging comments made about him in recent years by Scott Long, director of HRW’s LGBT program. We recognise that personal attacks have no place in the human rights movement.

Mr Long said: “Although we have our different viewpoints, I respect Peter Tatchell’s contribution to human rights and apologize for any condemnatory and intemperate allegations made in haste and for any inaccurate statements made in my personal capacity.”

Mr Tatchell said: “Despite the unfortunate personal attacks on me by Mr Long, I acknowledge his otherwise important contribution to LGBT human rights and I continue to value the vital work of Human Rights Watch worldwide.”

Following Mr Long’s apology and subsequent discussions, Human Rights Watch is pleased to announce that both Mr Long and Mr Tatchell agree that the movement to protect human rights, including the rights of LGBT persons, is best served when activists focus their criticism on those who abuse rights rather than those who seek to defend those rights.

Mr Long and Mr Tatchell undertake to work to ensure that any airing of disagreements on LGBT and other human rights issues takes place with honesty, civility and respect. They also agree to encourage their friends and colleagues to do likewise.

HRW hopes that this apology and agreement will enable us to move forward together to pursue our common goal: the defence of universal human rights.

__________

* He means abundant, fulsome being reserved for something that is excessively flattering, often insincere – yeah, pedantic, but let’s all agree what we mean and not have two definitions when one will do.

Let us not pray

A mayor in Leicester, UK, has decided to do away with prayers before council meetings. Nothing to do with anything, he says.

Quite right.

But what gets me in that Daily Mail story linked to above is that the lazy journos reach for the usual suspects on their contact list under the heading “Angry Christians”. Up comes our old friend Stephen “Birdshit” Green of the Wales-based little outfit Christian Voice.

Then it’s the turn of Mike Judge from the narrow-minded, right-wing, homophobic Christian Institute.

Isn’t it time journos found someone else? Anyway, what have these self-appointed “Christian leaders” got to do with Leicester? Neither of them is from Leicester, which is one of Britain’s most multi-ethnic cities – and for that reason alone Christian prayers are inappropriate (however, it’s the mayor’s atheism that’s at the heart of his decision here, it seems).

Did it not occur to the journo, Andy Dolan, to leave it to the Christian organisation in Leicester that he does consult, the Diocese of the Church of England there – assuming such an organisation needs to be consulted? And does it? Is it really necessary? Isn’t it a matter between the mayor and his fellow councillors? If they all decided to stop wearing glasses, would Mr Dolan ask Specsavers for a comment?

Prayers are something between people and their imaginary friends. It just so happens that there’s an organisation called the church that prays and believes in imaginary friends. There’s no logical reason to link one organisation’s decision to stop saying them with another organisation – be it the Anglican diocese or one of these busybody little outfits with outspoken fanatics at their helm – that just happens to say them.
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UPDATE: Since I posted the above this morning, I’ve heard that, George Broadhead, the secretary of the Pink Triangle Trust (this blog’s dear mama), has had a letter on the subject published in the Leicester Mercury. Here it is in full:

Congratulations to the new Mayor of Leicester, Colin Hall, on the stance he has taken on prayers said before council meetings. Congratulations also on appointing Humanist celebrant Eleanor Davidson as Lady Mayoress.

The British Social Survey is one of the largest and most prestigious polls of opinion in Britain and is commissioned by the National Centre for Social Research. The 2010 survey published last January revealed that 43% of the population have no religion (compared with 31% in 1983) and that atheists and agnostics amount to 37% – a sizeable minority exceeding all the non-Anglican faiths put together.

Given these statistics, which show quite clearly that Britain is becoming more and more secular, it is a absurd to continue having prayers in Council Houses and other public buildings, which take it for granted that all present have a faith of some sort and worship a deity.

The reaction of the Anglican Church to this development is equally absurd since it refuses to acknowledge the diversity that now exists in our society.

Tut-tut, Cherie!

The Independent:

The body which investigates complaints against judges has been accused of covering up the full extent of an investigation into Cherie Blair over her decision to hand down a lenient sentence to a convicted man because he was “a religious person”.

This investigation was launched earlier this year by the Office of Judicial Complaints (OJC) after a request came from the National Secular Society (NSS).

Cherie Booth (her maiden and professional name) was sitting as a recorder when this happened.

She was sentencing Shamso Miah, a 25-year-old from Redbridge, northeast London, who, says the Independent, “had fractured a man’s jaw in a fight outside a bank. In her summing up, Mrs Blair explained that she was giving Mr Miah a two-year suspended sentence, instead of a six-month jail term, because he was ‘a religious person’ who had not been in trouble before.”

Following the NSS’s complaint, the OJC released a two-paragraph statement on 10 June stating that an investigation by the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice had concluded that Mrs Blair’s “observations did not constitute judicial misconduct” and that “no disciplinary action” was necessary.

But in a separate letter to the NSS, obtained by the Independent, a caseworker from the OJC admitted that the complaint had in fact been “partially substantiated” and that, while no disciplinary action was needed, Mrs Blair would receive “informal advice from a senior judge”.

Hmm.

And is Booth/Blair religious? Is the Pope a Catholic?

Homophobic – er, ex-homophobic – rapper says gay marriage is OK

Eminem has come out in favour of gay marriage? Really? Is this the guy who rapped in the, er, rap called “Criminal”, “Hate fags? The answer’s ‘yes’”?

Oh well, we must be thankful, I suppose. Some people change, and that’s to be applauded.

For the record, he’s quoted as saying, “I think if two people love each other, then what the hell? I think that everyone should have the chance to be equally miserable, if they want.”

So in favour of gay marriage, but not too hot on marriage per se.

The realities of self-censorship

So Rory Bremner, the excellent comedian and satirist, feels he can’t do Islam jokes. Surprise, surprise!

No doubt a whole host of others – comedians, artists, writers, musicians – feel the same.

And what an indictment on the state we find ourselves in when people who are doing genuinely creative work have to self-censor because of people who run their lives according to superstition and imaginary friends and sky fairies.

I don’t object if people feel they can organise their lives according to religious principles, but they shouldn’t expect the rest of us to believe in the same things.

The price of hypocrisy

I know we keep going over this, but it can’t be emphasised enough. We don’t want to have to pay millions of pounds for a monster to visit our shores.

But we’re going to have to. That monster is Joseph Ratzinger, a pope, aged 83, of Vatican City, Rome, who kills people and makes others’ lives a misery via his network of total evil.

The National Secular Society is reiterating – and quite rightly – that the British taxpayer should not have to pay for the red carpets and the posh scoff that will be required for what is to be a state, as opposed to a mere pastoral, visit.

(Incidentally, it looks as if he won’t be attending the banquet at Lancaster House – the London mansion managed by the Foreign Office – that’s being held in his honour. How ungrateful can you get? “Would you like to come for dinner?” “Love to, but I won’t actually be there.” Priceless!)

What gets up most people’s noses, I’m sure, is the sheer hypocrisy of it all. We can, as the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith did, bar that politician-filmmaker chap Geert Wilders – who, as far as we know, hasn’t denied people lifesaving terminations, or told people that they’ll burn for eternity in the fires of Hell if they’re actively gay, or denied possibly lifesaving condoms to believers in the developing world – but we find it hard to ban this utter fiend.

Because it’s religion, you see; therefore it’s a Good Thing.

Then there’s that other hypocrisy. It could cost about £20 million to bring this vile toad here. Various figures have been bandied about, but it’s going to be in that ballpark. And what will have been the good – the tangible good – of the visit when he’s gone home and all the faithful have returned to their quotidian existence?

If they’re the faithful to begin with, will any difference have been made, other than that they may feel warm inside for a while? If there are conversions, is that going to be a good thing – yet more people to preach the poison, to tout the toxicity?

What joy or hope could £20 million bring to the lives of people in our communities who are in desperate need of funds – funds for medical and/or educational facilities and a hundred and one other schemes that might improve life for those on the edge? Multiply that by the number of countries this oaf is visiting, and you have a lot of potential good that could be done with the money he’s consuming unashamedly.

It just makes caring people want to vomit.

How Catholics predict the future

Once again we get people criticising things before they’ve even seen them.

This time it’s notable nutjobs – sorry, Catholics – who are slamming Channel 4 for choosing Peter Tatchell, the gay human-rights campaigner, to present a documentary of Pope Ratzo’s visit to the UK in September.

It’s prompted Anne Widdecombe, the former Tory MP and Catholic convert, to say that it all goes to show just how anti-Catholic Britain is.

None of the critics of this programme have seen it, because it’s not been made yet.

What if it turns out to be entirely down-the-middle impartial? Will these people come out and say they were wrong? You can bet your sweet arse they won’t.

Malawi couple freed by president

The Malawi couple jailed for 14 years – with hard labour – by a homophobic bastard in that country have now been pardoned by their president.

It was looking bad for Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, who had not only got the sentence – just for being gay, really – but had been separated.

Well it’s good news and all in gaydom are celebrating. Quite rightly. Read all about it here.

Why so coy, Mr Laws?

“Chief Treasury Secretary David Laws has apologised after it emerged he had been claiming MPs’ expenses to rent rooms in homes owned by his partner,” says the BBC.

And, whatever he says in his defence – i.e. that he didn’t consider the other person a partner in the sense that most people would – we have to ask why he would wish to keep the relationship out of the public eye.

Well, in case you don’t already know, Laws’s partner is male. And why did Laws get into this little fix? “My motivation throughout has not been to maximise profit but to simply protect our privacy and my wish not to reveal my sexuality,” he says.

So one has to ask: Why? What’s the big deal in this day and age, especially when openly gay MPs are to be found all over the place, happily getting on with being MPs?

Is Laws’s wish to keep his sexuality a secret some sort of admission that he’s ashamed of it? If he is, then perhaps he should seek counselling. But any gay man should know that being open and honest is what has helped to push gay rights as far as they have gone – not as far as they might, perhaps, but a long way from what they were a few years ago.

It’s one thing simply wanting to keep your private life private. Heterosexuals do that, too. But wanting to keep your sexuality a secret is something else, and people in Laws’s position can do a lot for the gay “cause” by simply being open. Not shouting things from the rooftops, just being open.

How many people are now looking at his story and wondering just what the hell is wrong with being gay?

Dead man with beard threatens World Cup – shock, horror!

There’s more fury over the depiction of a chap from a few centuries ago who had a beard and is now dead.

And it’s even threatening the World Cup in South Africa, we learn from Christian Science Monitor, which doesn’t reproduce the cartoon by Zapiro, which appeared in the South African paper the Mail and Guardian.

“Coming just 20 days before South Africa hosts the World Cup soccer matches,” says the paper, “the Mohammad cartoon – which is much gentler than those published by Dutch and Danish newspapers or even by the American TV program South Park – has raised the spectre of a violent reaction in South Africa from extremist groups who see themselves as defenders of the Islamic faith. One alleged Al Qaeda leader, arrested in Iraq, claimed to have been planning attacks against Danish and Dutch fans because of cartoons of Mohammad printed in their countries.”

Muslims are of course jumping up and down, screaming, shouting, moaning, not realising that, if they just weren’t so damned precious about who draws their big man, people might not do it, except possibly for illustration purposes.

You’ll have heard, no doubt, about “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”* on Facebook, sparked by threats by a radical Muslim group against the creators of the US TV series South Park for daring to depict this beardy guy in a bear suit. It was bound to get Muslims twitching, of course, but it was done to tell the world that the West won’t be bludgeoned into self-censorship.

Let’s be straight: your humble blogger respects people’s right to hold religious beliefs, even if he doesn’t respect the beliefs themselves. And he doesn’t believe we should just ridicule a religious figure for the hell of it. But it has to be done if you’re making a point about freedom of expression.

Anyway, Mohammed is a historical figure, and is as much everyone’s to do with as they will as, say, Richard the Lionheart or Abraham Lincoln is. The fact that some people revere him as some sort of religious figure is nothing to do with us. To make us respect his image (not that anyone could know what he looked like, anyway) is to make us part Muslim. Christians don’t expect Muslims to revere Jesus in the same way, or pagans ditto the moon goddess.
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* Looks as if Facebook have removed this, so the link doesn't work – certainly when we last tried it, which was 10 August 2010.