Position of the Humanist Party UK on the cartoons

Humanist Party UK – press release

Who is anyone to decide what someone else finds to be offensive?

Recent events in the right-wing Danish press and propagated in other European Media have produced exactly what was intended – a nasty and violent backlash from Islamic fundamentalists; allowing the right-wing press to re-enforce their opinions to their readership about what a nasty religion Islam is and what an enlightened place Denmark is and wouldn’t Denmark be better off without all these Muslims anyway and shouldn’t we close our borders to any more immigrants.

The apology of the Danish President for the hurt feelings of Muslims is like punching someone in the nose and then saying sorry that their nose is bleeding.

What are the issues raised in this specific case?

1.    Does any newspaper or any individual have the right to print images or stories that are bound to be inflammatory?  Or does freedom of the press signify carte blanche to print anything, no matter how offensive?
2.    Does any individual or group who are offended by such inflammatory behaviour have the right to respond with violence?

As far as we are concerned the answer to both questions is no.
Followers of Islam ask that images of their most important prophet are not produced, no matter what people in the “civilised” west may consider it is a fair request.  If it is a matter of importance that this request is respected is it too much too ask?
According to the Muslim Council of Britain; “Mainstream British Muslims have been deeply hurt both by the provocative actions of the newspapers that printed and reprinted these caricatures of our beloved Prophet, but also by the disgraceful actions of a tiny group of extremists who have once again rushed in to sully our good name.”
In the UK press we see a small band of violent people and because they are Muslim we are fed the impression that this small band is somehow representative of a supposedly-violent majority, in this way feeding the islamophobia and lies about Islam being a violent religion which is also connected in the consciousness with the need to close UK borders to more asylum seekers.  Of course when the same actions are carried out by the BNP the press is only too quick to point out how unrepresentative they are of British public opinion.
It is important to see this episode as part of a growing trend that must be seen in a global context.  The global vision of the West to economically control all parts of the planet requires that the Islamic world succumbs to this model.  It is even more important given that vast areas of the Islamic world float on oil.  The Islamic world has taken on the role previously fulfilled by the Soviet Union.
The US, with the UK in tow, behaves like the worst kind of bully, threatening, bombing and invading in the name of human rights; slaughtering tens of thousands of people in the process, no doubt for their own good.
What is needed now is not more wars, more threats, more innocent lives lost.  Now we require a dialogue, not just a dialogue between different cultures but a dialogue also within different cultures.  We need to rescue the truly humanist elements of culture and consign everything else to pre-history.  We need a society where violence in all its forms is eradicated, a society where diversity is valued, where people’s beliefs and ideas are respected, where the limits of knowledge are constantly pushed for the benefit of all human beings.  We need a society without discrimination – a society where the value of human life is the central value, above money, power, the state, religion and anything else which is justified to act violently towards others.
What is required now is a humanist alternative.
So let us not be surprised when someone responds with an explosion of physical violence if we have subjected them to inhuman psychological pressures or the pressures of exploitation, discrimination or intolerance.  And if this response should surprise us it is either because we are an interested party of the injustice (in which case our “surprise” is also a lie) or because we only see the effects without noticing the causes that determine this explosion.