Words and their changed meaning
The process of that change fascinates me.
First we need a definition from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Then I will move on to what happened at Batley Grammar School.
The OED states that a phobia is an irrational fear of something.
So Islamophobia should therefore mean ‘an irrational fear of Islam’. Now it apparently means “a hatred of Islam”.
That change of meaning has turned into that ridiculous recent creation, viz. a Hate Crime. In my simple word world, a crime is a crime and the word should not need further emphasis.
I think it is quite rational to fear Islam because of the hatred of anything ‘other’ expressed in almost every verse of the Qur’an. The Qur’an says that Non-Muslims are to be feared, ignored, converted or killed. Other parts of the Qur’an seem to say the reverse. I just wonder why Allah kept changing her mind 😉
Therefore the word Islamophobia is just at silly as the word anti-semitic. Neither word’s current meaning is rational.
Medieval Popes used words in the Old Testament to support their killing of Muslims in the Middle East. The Crusades had the objective of conquering the Holy Land from Islamic rule. That process thankfully stopped some time later. (Well, OK a debatable point in many circles.)
I fear that several verses in the Qur’an, have made a few Muslims turn to murder and violence on an epic scale. The Qur’an tells Muslims to create a worldwide Caliphate and it says, of itself, that it is the unalterable word of God and that’s that!
Batley Grammar School
A teacher showed a cartoon from Charlie Hebdo which depicted the prophet Mohammed. The teacher was chairing a discussion group on blasphemy. The discussion was to understand why some thought blasphemy was acceptable whilst others did not.
The school was then forced to close as a consequence of a few Muslim parents protesting outside the school gate.
I congratulate Gavin Williamson (Education Minister) when he said their behaviour outside the school was “completely unacceptable”.
I cannot understand why the school felt it had to apologise for the teacher’s rational approach?
Cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad had previously been shown to pupils at a school that suspended its teacher after protests over a lesson, parents said yesterday. More than 13,000 people had signed a petition last night demanding the reinstatement of the teacher who used the caricature. Some families said he had been scapegoated over the issue. The petition was set up by pupils of Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire, which has closed and switched to online learning.
Matthew Parris, agrees with me in the Times today, and says “liberals are giving too much ground to people of any religion who claim they are offended. No religion has the right to escape ridicule.”
Teachers must be allowed to teach rationally and not be in permanent fear of upsetting somebody.
The Qur’an does not explicitly forbid images of Muhammad. There are a few hadith (supplemental teachings) that have explicitly prohibited Muslims from creating visual depictions of human figures. Hadith are unattributed and were written many years after the Qur’an and there is no proof that they are the words of Mohammed.
Offending others for holding irrational beliefs is intrinsic to freedom of speech. Otherwise we are headed back to the dark ages and freedom of speech is dead.
A little light emerges today “Students have launched a petition to save their teacher’s job after he was suspended for showing pupils a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Let there be more light please, much more.
