I’M NOT sure that this is a good use of the Government’s time, what with the war and everything, but now it has made sure that our overseas territories are either unprotected or given away, and that we remain the most unreliable actor on the international stage, it has got back to doing the thing that it does best: interfering where it’s not wanted. This time by inventing concepts.
Under the impression that it has a mandate to run the English language along with the country, the regime has refreshed its approach to policing what we can say (and therefore think) by creating a definition of ‘Islamophobia’, a word which most of us thought was (at best) a neologism anyway.
This comes courtesy of a government advisory body, or multiculturalist politburo if you prefer, headed up by the recyclable Blob perennial (Monsieur) Dominic Grieve, formerly of diverse Beaconsfield.
The groupthink stipulates that ‘anti-Muslim’ hostility will include: ‘the prejudicial stereotyping of Muslims, as part of a collective group with set characteristics, to stir up hatred against them, irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals’.
Seems to me the architects of this semantic conjuring trick are stereotyping Muslims as forming a collective which can be characterised as uniquely gifted at taking offence at slights both real and imagined.
Which I’ve come to find funny, laughter being better than despair after all. So given the ambiguity of this new definition my question is as follows. Will I still be able to laugh at the aggressive preciousness of the most vocal and visible ambassadors of a faith I find to be ridiculous in its theological assumptions and obnoxious in many of its cultural practices? Is mockery the same as hostility?
If you want to learn the fundamentals of a belief system, you can do worse than attend to its absurdities. Laughter and amusement are, in the end, ways of looking at things, and of letting a bit of ‘right hemisphere’ creativity shake up ‘left hemisphere’ literalism.
I am keen to show my respect for the teachings of the Imams and the misinterpretations of the Koran by its more gullible followers by mocking them whenever I get the chance. It is by being mocked that my own Catholic faith has been stress-tested and strengthened. It is only fair that I pass that gift on.
The government is sticking to the line that because all that has happened is that advice has been commissioned and then provided there is not much to see here. The definition, it insists, is ‘non-statutory’ and has no legal force.
Nobody is buying that. This might look harmless enough in isolation. But so does weapons-grade uranium. We know that this latest form of words will be enriched through integration into the ‘best practices’ of the public sector and by conjunction with the activist judiciary. The consequent chain reaction will make life even more uncomfortable for those of us who were perfectly happy with our own decisions around what words to use and when.
And that is the intention. Governments no longer need ‘statutes’ to get their own way, not when they can just give the nod to ideologically sympathetic outriders in the charities, public bodies, quangos and courts.
This is how I see it. The cultural Marxists, having infiltrated the relevant institutions of influence and seeded their malice therein, are doing what they do best, which is to have the first and final say on what meanings go with what words and who is allowed to use those words and when and under what circumstances. All on the assumption that a government which trolls us relentlessly is well placed to give lessons in good manners.
It’s all very ingenious, this alchemy of outrage and indignation, this ersatz scientific process which fashions 24-carat grievance from the base metals of ordinary discourse.
If you let government take charge of what words mean, then you’ve given up on freedom. Price controls are harmful enough, but to allow the application of central planning to the discourse economy is surely worse, if only because you surrender the possibility of expressing any criticism of such a policy, unless you find a way of whistling it or something.
The cultural Marxists are good at this stuff, to be fair. They are sensitive to the interlacing of thought and speech. It’s tempting to conclude that they are occultists, and that their ideologies and theories are spells or Satanic practices. And the reason why it’s tempting is that it’s very likely true. There is no better explanation for how it is that anyone can believe that a man can turn into a woman by an act of will. The person who does believe such a thing has surely been intellectually compromised, corrupted by an agency which doesn’t have his best interests at heart.
On the specific case of Islamophobia, a proposed redefinition of a fake word, there is more to be said. We should certainly take a moment to admire the cleverness of the strategy. The motivation, we are told, is entirely benign: to give clarity and precision to a concept which has become muddled and unclear. This is a species of dishonesty which the philosopher Harry Frankfurt called bullshit.
In truth the ‘definition’ will be sanctioned only when it is sufficiently ambiguous and weaponised to ensure that anybody accused of it will, as a matter of logic, be unable to offer any defence.
I don’t know what it is about Islam that makes followers of its more petulant strands so given to taking offence. Religious fervour? Lack of appreciation of the spiritual properties of alcohol? I do know that if somebody is desperate to take offence then it’s only polite to give it to them.
