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Stephen Fry in the ‘Once Hallowed But Now Tarnished’ Hall of Fame.

TWO OF BRITAIN’S liberal intelligentsia have recently found themselves relegated to the ranks of the Once Hallowed But Now Tarnished, namely Professor Dawkins and Stephen Fry (maybe I’m flattering Mr Fry by calling him an intellectual, but let it pass).

Dawkins, in rising to the challenge that his atheism has allowed him to criticise Christianity but not Islam by tweeting, last August, “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge”, and other comments, has provoked the wrath of the bien pensants.

Owen Jones declared “not in our name”, wanting nothing to do with Dawkin’s “bigotry”, Caitlin Moran accused him of “gearing up to atheists declaring war on Muslims” and Martin Robbins lambasted him for knowing “the definition of everything but the meaning of nothing”, which is a corker from someone writing for The New Statesman.

None of these people responded like this to his comments about the Catholic church being a bunch of paedophiles and demanding the Pope be arrested on his visit to the UK.

On the contrary, they loved him for it. Ironically, of course, because it proves precisely the point of his critics, that for the liberal establishment Christianity is fair game but Islam is untouchable.

Now the goodly Fry is receiving similar treatment for defending Dawkins and finds himself in “the absurd liberal court of inquisition”, as he calls it:

The squeezed liberal finds himself in the position that he cannot criticise Islamofascism because it’s somehow ‘racist’ (although Islam encompasses many many races) or because it encourages acts of violence against innocent law-abiding honourable Muslims, which I would never for a second endorse. It is a topsy-turvy smothering of debate and an Orwellian denial of free-speech to declare that speaking out against violence will cause violence. I’m all for insult, as it happens, as long as it’s funny. But I have no time for assault. Only a few letters’ difference, but the two are a world away.

THUS MR FRY receives a belated welcome to the topsy-turvy Orwellian world of all those who have been sneered at by his fellow liberals as racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and what-have-you for having the “wrong” opinions. It should prove a useful experience provided he doesn’t carry on with the desperate attempts to re-ingratiate himself with commonplace justifications.

He should abandon, for instance, the tired excuses usually employed to defuse the charge of Islamophobia — that there was an Islamic Golden Age, for instance, in which Muslims produced a multitude of developments in science while living in harmony with their Christian and Jewish subjects, a claim many scholars would dispute; and that Christian and Jewish “extremists” not only exist but pose a similar threat to Islamist ones, for example.

Mr Fry receives a belated welcome to the topsy-turvy Orwellian world of all those who have been sneered at by his fellow liberals as racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and what-have-you for having the ‘wrong’ opinions.

Just as he should junk the religious relativism of today’s liberal atheist. To claim that all religions are equal because they are all equally untrue is fair enough, but it’s illogical to conclude that they are thus all equal in their actions and consequences. Even the briefest glance at the most troubled spots in the world makes that plain.

It’s also surprising (maybe it shouldn’t be) that Fry fails to acknowledge that the Judaeo-Christian heritage he reviles is integral to the civilisation he grew up in and loves, a tradition that to a large extent has endowed him with the freedoms he now enjoys. He should perhaps spend more time defending their good points rather than simply joining in the cliched chorus of condemnation.

The tone of Fry’s blog post is that of a man genuinely hurt and puzzled by the venom which his opinions have provoked. He seems truly bothered about being called an Islamophobe. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t give a damn now that he’s found out that many freethinking atheists are not so free in their thinking at all, and the one thing his liberal companions are most liberal with is abuse.

Michael Blackburn.

 

Minor copy edit to resolve name error 8 Sep 2013.

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