On his blog, Alex Gabriel (who provided much eloquent coverage of the Jesus and Mo story) displays an SWP poster with the title ‘More than opium, why the left defend religious rights’. That’s fine. I’m all for freedom of religion. I’m generally against restrictions on religious dress, and I am most certainly opposed to laws which prevent you changing your religion, practising it freely or, indeed, abandoning it. But the rest of the poster is appalling.
Religious discrimination is irrefutably on the rise at LSE. Both the Atheist Society’s efforts to publish inflammatory “satirical” cartoons in a deliberate attempt to offend Muslims, and the ‘Nazi themed’ drinking games serve to highlight a festering undercurrent of racism.
What does really lie behind the claim that religious communities cannot be the target of racists?
Is atheism the road to social progress?
Why do Marxists defend religion?
Where does one start? The Jesus and Mo cartoon in no way represented discrimination, and there is no evidence whatsoever that it was posted in order to offend. What is offensive is comparing that (mild) satire on religious figures with a Nazi game which ended in a Jewish student being assaulted. There surely is some intersection between anti-Muslim bigotry and racism, but even sharp, possibly unfair, criticisms of Islam may not be remotely racist, and to say that posting a Jesus and Mo cartoon reveals ‘a festering undercurrent of racism’ is both absurd and sinister.
Hat Tip: Butterflies and Wheels