As a way of sticking two fingers up at the left-wing tradition which dominated Yale’s history, the young men who founded our club thought it a grand lark to gather every year at an isolated cave associated with these parliamentarian radicals. There they would ritually burn a biography of Oliver Cromwell.
There’s something pathetic about pretending you can combat an idea by merely setting light to the pages on which it is given printed form. Our whole gathering was sophomoric, performative and harmless.
Instead, the most recent book burnings to make the news in Europe have been stunts by those who feel themselves marginalised in the face of religious oppression. Whether they face consequences – fines, prison or even death – seems to depend entirely on whose books they dare to burn.
square KATE MALTBY JD Vance's free speech hypocrisy is a threat to Starmer - and the UK
Read More
This month, that same law was used to fine Hamit Coskun, a Turkish secularist who protested against Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s religiously conservative government by burning a copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in London.
Coskun and Frost each framed their book-burning as a protest against Islamist violence; both were prosecuted on the basis that Muslim bystanders complained about the emotional impact of watching the incident.
This week, Timothy introduced a private members’ bill which aims to protect those, like Coskun and Frost, who criticise a religion, even when they cause offence. The proposed bill would extend existing protections offered to religious critics under Section 29J of the Public Order Act, which prevents the police from charging religious dissidents with religious hate.
Few causes have galvanised anti-Islamist feeling like the murder of Momika, a survivor of Isis violence from the Christian region of Ninevah, who was murdered after live-streaming his own burning of a Quran. He left behind a colleague, Salwan Najem.
The Danish government, which argued that it was seeking to stop terrorists targeting Danes, pushed through a new law making it illegal to desecrate religious texts.
Liberals such as the NSS, however, should be cautious before turning book burners into heroes. Momika is accused of taking part in sectarian violence in Iraq; google Rabbi Odze, and you’ll get some colourful reading indeed. Burning religious texts is rarely the refuge of thoughtful men.
At the heart of these cases is the haplessness of the British justice system when faced with the job of distinguishing between people who cause offence and those who threaten violence. Previously Starmer has shown he can walk this line judiciously. Recent proposals to prevent protesters gathering outside religious buildings, if “the purpose of those organising the protest is the intimidation of others”, should be applauded by anyone appalled by the sight of rioters gathering outside mosques, or “pro-Palestinian” activists shouting at Jewish children attending synagogue classes. Such cases clearly involve an implicit threat of violence.
Islam, like Christianity, accepts adherents from any ethnic background: there is therefore no basis for the continued judicial trend to define attacks on this faith as “ethnic” hatred. Contemporary book burning is often the last refuge of the sad, the lost and the powerless. Those who respond with violence are surely the true threat to our civic life.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Book burning is a modern free speech test for Labour )
Also on site :