Furthermore, I am not remotely suggesting that you could go and read the creator's commentary and an annoted version of the lyrics with embedded links to demonstrate each and every point.
All I will do is echo Matthew Parris, who seems to be coming gently back into the real world:
Against reverence and awe the best argument is sometimes not logic, but mockery. Structures of oppression that may not be susceptible to rational debate may in the end yield to derision. When people see that a priest, rabbi, imam or uniformed official may be giggled at without lightning striking the impertinent, arguments may be won on a deeper level than logic.
We should never, therefore, relinquish, nor lightly value, our right not to argue in the face of other people’s gods — but to fart.
To those of you who feel that I'm mocking Islam, I reply: I'm not. I respect your view of it. These men - the men I'm writing about - don't. You should be arguing with them, not with me.It is ironic that in this debate, ostensibly about free speech, one victim is "Patrick Henry" himself, whose site has been taken down by his ISP. Don't worry: I've got my download copy and there are plenty of others out there. If this isn't a perfect example of how free speech - with the internet as a concrete manifestation of the principle - defeats oppression, I struggle to see what would be.
Any policy - however brutally enforced - that is an affront to reason or rationality cannot survive contact with free speech. Why? Because inherent contradictions are the very source of satire.
3 comments:
noo dinnae go leapin at mah throa' - but being a mediaeval I like to make distinctions, and I think this song is rather taking the piss out of Muslims, and not Islam per se, or any particularly loved and revered figure. Not that you're suggesting they are the same thing. But there is even less reason, surely, to take down something that takes the piss out of people, than there is to take down something that takes the piss out of something sacred to people. One might wonder whether the mass republishing of the Mohammed cartoons was rather unfair on those Muslims who are not going around bombing anyone, or threatening to, but whom they hurt, but I don't see that a piss-take of those Muslims (or Islamicist politicians) who are going around winding up the disaffected of Syria or wherever, is something to be wringing one's hands about.
Ooo er...
I find it weird that he isn't allowed to keep up his site - why? Everything in that little song is true. It can be proven with actual events and facts that have occured over the last few years - so where is the offence? Other than the fact that it's true? *confused*
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