Critique of Charles Moore's commentary in the Telegraph.

An article from the Telegraph by Charles Moore, pertaining to the new anti-religious discrimination law, soon obfuscated about the "religious intolerance" of Muslims and Islamic countries

"Was the prophet Mohammed a paedophile? The question is sometimes asked because one of his wives, Aisha, was a child when he married her. As Barnaby Rogerson gingerly puts it in his highly sympathetic recent biography (The Prophet Muhammad, Little, Brown): "…the age disparity was considerable: she was only nine while Muhammad was 53". Aisha was taken from her seesaw on the morning of her marriage to be dressed in her wedding garment. After sharing a bowl of milk with the prophet, she went to bed with him.

To me, it seems anachronistic to describe Mohammed as a child-molester. The marriage rules of his age and society were much more tribal and dynastic than our own, and women were treated more as property and less as autonomous beings. Aisha was the daughter of Mohammed's right-hand man, and eventual successor (caliph), Abu Bakr. No doubt he and his family were very proud of the match. I raise the question, though, because it seems to me that people are perfectly entitled - rude and mistaken though they may be - to say that Mohammed was a paedophile, but if David Blunkett gets his way, they may not be able to."

Although this first part is not directly relevant to the new law, it should be addressed. As far as one is aware, the marriage was not regarded as abnormal at the time, with consummation of the marriage occuring when girls reached puberty. Also, given that life expectancy in those times was considerably lower than it is now, it would make sense to marry early, and one doubts that the union of prophet Muhammad (SAW) and Aisha was an anachronism. Also, the claim that women were regarded as property rather than people is incorrect. Islam gives women the right to work, inherit property which cannot be confiscated by her husband and choose their marriage partner. I recall that for a time PM Margaret Thatcher needed her husband to sign her tax reforms. Also, in this quote "By a series of acts starting with the Married Women's Property Act in 1870, amended in 1882 and 1887, married women achieved the right to own property and to enter contracts on a par with spinsters, widows and divorcees" (Mace, Marriage: East and West, op.cit., p.81.) Women also fought beside men in battles in those early days when Islam was under threat, one of whom actually fought belongside the prophet, taking a wound meant for him. So let that be an end to such nonsense talk on that subject. Also, if this is the only thing that people can find to criticise about Muhammad (SAW), then it is a good thing.

"Why is it that so many people resent religion and turn against it? Surely it is because of its coercive force, its tendency to mistake the worldly power of its priests and mullahs for justified zeal for the truth. It is not God who turns people away, but what people do in the name of God. If a law against religious hatred is passed, even when blessed by St David Blunkett, the natural consequence will be a rise in the hatred of religion.

Particularly hatred of Islam. The BNP website describes Islam in the hands of some of its adherents as "less a religion and more a magnet for psychopaths and a machine for conquest". If a law says they can't say that, the BNP will, in the minds of many, be proved right. On Tuesday, Mr Blunkett said that it would be illegal to claim that "Muslims are a threat to Britain". People already censor themselves through fear of Muslim reaction to mockery - I don't suppose even brave, incontinent, foul-mouthed Paul Abbott would write a comedy for the start of Ramadan showing Mohammed downloading dubious images from the internet. If the law criminalises such activity, the scope for resentment is huge."

This is an odd juxtaposition. Statements such as Islam being a magnet for psychopaths and muslims being a threat to Britain are not things of "mockery". Also, fearing muslim reaction to mockery hints that muslims will turn violent. In the Rushdie affair, Muslim opposition took the form of protest and rallies, not sieging Rushdie's house ( book burning incidents were few in number, yet repeatedly broadcast nonetheless, unsurprisingly ). The death threat actually came from Ayatollah Khomeini, who did not represent British muslims, and over whom British Muslims had no jurisdiction. At any rate, why would someone write a sketch as described above? Muhammad is not a cultural icon in Britain as Jesus Christ is, so such a sketch would be designed purely to offend.

"Where does all this come from? Not, I fear, from the right, if misapplied, desire for different faiths to live at peace. Incitement to violence, after all, is already an offence, and so it should be. No, the pressure is chiefly from Muslims. If we want to understand its context, we should look at what happens in Muslim societies.
According to Muslim law, believers who reject or insult Islam have no rights. Apostasy is punishable by death. In Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, death is the penalty for those who convert from Islam to Christianity. In Pakistan, the blasphemy law prescribes death for anyone who, even accidentally, defiles the name of Mohammed. In a religion which, unlike Christianity, has no idea of a God who himself suffers humiliation, all insult must be avenged if the honour of God is to be upheld.

Under Islam, Christians and Jews, born into their religion, have slightly more rights than apostates. They are dhimmis, second-class citizens who must pay the jiyza, a sort of poll tax, because of their beliefs. Their life is hard. In Saudi, they cannot worship in public at all, or be ministered to by clergy even in private. In Egypt, no Christian university is permitted. In Iran, Christians cannot say their liturgy in the national language. In almost all Muslim countries, they are there on sufferance and, increasingly, because of radical Islamism, not even on that. "

Here is the crux of the article! Yet another way of bashing Islam. The author's knowledge of Islam and Islamic countries is poor at any rate. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Sudan are only four countries in the whole Islamic world, and taking examples to represent the whole is fallacious. At any rate, the governments of the aforementioned countries are all oppressive to their own native populations, both Christian and Muslim. Also, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are both staunch allies to the West in the "war on terror".

"The ancient plurality of the region is vanishing. Tens of thousands are fleeing the Muslim world, and in some countries - Sudan, Indonesia, Ivory Coast - large numbers die, on both sides. In Iraq, the intimidation of Christians is enormous. Five churches have suffered bomb attacks this year. Christians in Mosul have received letters saying that one member of each family will be killed to punish women who do not wear the headscarf. According to Dr Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund, a charity working for persecuted Christians, "Christians in Iraq are isolated and vulnerable this Christmas, and feel that they have been let down, even betrayed, by their fellow Christians in the West, especially the Church leadership" "

Ancient plurality of the region? I thought that Islamic Law made life intolerable for religious minorities! Given that Islam has been in the Middle East for 1,400 years, one thinks that the author should go back and read some more on this topic before writing in a national newspaper about it. There is ample material to counter the assertion that Islam only leads to persecution of religious minorities in places where it is dominant. If Islam was as intolerant as this article hints, then minorities in Islamic countries outgh to have disappeared a long time ago.

Also, regarding the plight of Iraqi Christians, does the author forget the presence of a large, well-armed force of Christian extraction which has bombed, invaded and occupied all of Iraq? How about an agressively Christian President ( Although I have a feeling that if Jesus came back down to Earth in disguise and started preaching his message again, the US government would prbably lock him up in Guantanamo Bay) who has mentioned the word "crusade" and repeatedly says "God Bless America? How about the fact that Iraqi muslims are undergoing terrible suffering as a result of this large "Christian" force? At any rate, all the author can do is quote separate examples and generate an entire spectrum of suffering of minorities in the Islamic world. This is not to say that the situation is perfect, yet it is hardly the hell-hole that the author makes it out to be.

"Because it is usually called Boxing Day, people forget that December 26 is the feast of St Stephen, the first martyr. Somewhere in the Muslim world on that day, there will be more Christians martyred, as there are every day of the year. Muslims are not martyred in Britain. For once, the mote is in our own eye, and the beam in somebody else's - or will it soon be illegal to say that?"

Instead of concentrating on the new law's various points, ins and outs and so on, the author of the article instead turns the second half of his article into a list of his misplaced fears and prejudices over Islam/Muslims, making various erroneous claims. This article has not advanced the debate over the new law in any way.

Polly Toynbee mentioned this in the Guardian

"Presumably to test the proposed law to destruction, Charles Moore last week wrote a deliberately provocative article opening with the words: "Was the prophet Mohammed a paedophile?" (He married a nine-year-old.) He says the new bill might prevent some raising this question, "rude and mistaken" though it might be. It had, of course, exactly the desired effect. The bill's Muslim supporters plunged straight into his crude elephant trap.
The Muslim Association of Britain called for Moore's sacking and said the paper should have known better in the light of the Salman Rushdie affair - distinctly threatening. The Islamic Human Rights Commission called for a boycott of the Telegraph - a more reasonable riposte. Iqbal Sacranie of the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain said that linking the Prophet's name with this crime "will have shocked Muslim readers" who are "calling for safeguards against vilification of dearly cherished beliefs". And there it is. He expects the new law to protect "cherished beliefs", while David Blunkett in the Commons assured his critics it would do no such thing. Dead prophets and holy books would be as open to criticism and ridicule as ever. The law will protect the believers, not their beliefs."

Interestingly, in the same article, Toynbee quotes an earlier article written by the author of the above article, this time written for the spectator.

"Let's reprise a notorious column written a while back by Charles Moore in the Spectator: "Britain is basically English-speaking and Christian and white, and if one starts to think that it might become Urdu-speaking and Muslim and brown, one gets frightened and angry. Next door to me lives a large family of Muslims from the Indian sub-continent. We are friendly enough to one another and they have done us various small acts of kindness. During the Gulf war, however, I heard their morning prayers coming through the wall, and I felt a little uneasy. If such people had outnumbered whites in our square, I should have felt alarmed. Such feelings are not only natural, surely - they are right. You ought to have a sense of your identity, and part of that sense derives from your nation and your race." This poisonous stuff might have been penned by nationalists to stir up xenophobia in any country about any minority at any time in history: we know where it leads."

Such sentiments, unfortunately for the author, speak for themselves.