The difference between a bad joke and a death threat
Posted on Friday 12 November, 2010
Filed Under International
SAKINEH Mohammadi-Ashtiani currently faces the threat of being stoned to death, at the hands of a vile theocracy that regularly exacts such punishment. My assumption would have been that anyone who presents themselves as a liberal, a leftist or a progressive would regard it as an elementary duty to do everything they possibly can to speak up for the victim.
In one of this week’s more unlikely stories, it seems a group of topless Ukrainian feminists got ‘em out in solidarity at an Iranian cultural event in Kiev, chanting slogans in Ashtiani’s support as they disrobed. That’s certainly imaginative, especially as one suspects that it must be a bit nippy in that part of the world right now.
British pundit Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, metaphorically speaking anyway, chose to keep her kit on. I did not hear her appearance on a recent Radio Five Live chat show, but reportedly she expressed the view that the United Kingdom has no right to object to the exaction of the death penalty, in whatever form the Iranian judiciary sees fit to enact it.
Not only do I consider that stance wrong, and demonstrably an instance of moral cowardice, but I would even say I find it offensive. Then again, just about every strong sentiment in politics will be offensive to someone.
If my mother was one of the 20,000 women raped during the Kosova conflict, I would probably have found Boris Johnson’s recent invocation of that war to condemn his own party’s housing benefit cuts more than simply risible. And imagine how ginger rodents must feel when they are routinely compared to Danny Alexander.
But no-one enjoys a legal right not to have their feelings injured, and that goes a fortiori for those who make an appreciable living from dishing out strident opinions.
Nevertheless, Alibhai-Brown has seen fit to report a Tory councillor to the police, after he responded to her comments with a jocular tweet that someone should stone her to death instead.
Gareth Compton was thereafter arrested, although he has subsequently been released. The worrying thing is that he lives in Birmingham, not Tehran.
Of course the joke was not remotely funny, even by Brummie standards. I rather imagine that Cllr Compton can fairly be described as an obnoxious Tory twat. However, I think I can bank on him not dobbing me into the cops for saying that.
Unless he has some clandestine following among radical shi’ites or carries sufficient weight among Islamic jurists to be in a position to pronounce a fatwa, Alibhai-Brown’s contention that a bad wisecrack equates to a death threat is hard to sustain.
Sakineh Ashtiani is just the woman to explain the difference to her. If she lives much longer, that is.
<<Go back
Comments
18 Responses to “The difference between a bad joke and a death threat”
Leave a Reply
Spot on.
We should expose the hypocrisy of the indignation levelled against Iran and the silence that greets, say, Saudi Arabia.
As Amnesty say:
“Saudi Arabia, one of the last places on earth where capital punishment is a public spectacle. Decapitation awaits murderers, but the death penalty also applies to many other crimes, such as armed robbery, rape, adultery, drug use and trafficking, and renouncing Islam. There’s a woman on death row now for witchcraft, and the charge is based partly on a man’s accusation that her spell made him impotent.”
The ‘United Kingdom’ will say anything that serves it’s interets, so anything they do say should be taken with a pinch of salt.
So as long as the Saudis do it we have no right to condemn the Iranians?
How long has this moronic argument been employed by so-called anti-imperialists now? – 60, 70, 90 years?
I can’t recall it being used before the Russian Revolution – did Marx and Engels for instance refuse to join bourgeois liberals in condemning Bismark’s Kulturkampf and anti-socialist laws because other bourgeois nations had even more oppressive laws against the left and ethnico-religious minorities?
And if it was to be applied to Israel you’d be the first to ridicule it…
Woger,
Did I say we shouldn’t condemn the Iranians? No I didn’t. I specifically said we should see through the United Kingdoms condemnation for the hypocrisy it is. So that moronic argument is a figment of your imagination I am afraid. By highlighting this hypocrisy we can ask why are they hypocritical and begin to see their motivations. Dave’s article failed to pick up on this important point.
As socialists of course we should roundly condemn capital punishment of any sort, whether practised by Iran, China or the USA.
As for Israel, the same principle would apply.
Dean. Whether it is hypocritical or not Britain should still condemn the stoning. I do not think the person about to be stoned will be much concerned about hypocrisy.
Do you, Deen or Dean, condemn the stoning to death of women for adultery?
Iran is far better than Saudi Arabia. In every respect except teh amout of oil.
DO, good post. Totally in agreement.
Yeah, I wished I lived in a country where teh Government and the population willingly accepted stoning as a method of execution. It would be so much more authentic and I wouldn’t have to feel like a hypocrite.
Agree in general, but there are grey areas here. This was not “just a gag”. Brown is a Muslim woman, and I think its pretty clear that there was a subliminal racist “treat em as they should be treated, shut the bitch up” thought process behind Compton’s comment. In my private life I’ve heard plenty of right-wing yahoos “joke” about killing blacks,pakis, queers, lefties….did they mean it? Not literally. Does it show that they genuinely do in fact value the lives of those groups less than others? Yes, quite probably. All the same, should Compton have been prosecuted? No, as this was not genuine incitement. Let’s not pretend it was ‘just a joke’ though.
When Charlie Brooker made a subtler, funnier, though in essence similar gag about George Bush, he was not prosecuted. He was however showered with death threats from irate Americans, as well as reported to the FBI. If someone japed about wanting to see David Cameron shot on Have I Got News For You there would be uproar – the programme would be taken off air even if a prosecution didn’t ensue. Social and political pressure can be exerted without the need for trigger-happy use of incitement legislation. Is this right or wrong? Arguments both ways, but once again, it wouldn’t be seen as ‘just a gag.’
And as a final comment, Brown is right to say that if a Muslim youth tweeted a joke about blowing up Compton, he’d be visited by the police a damned sight quicker than any action taken against Compton in this instance.
Arthur Seaton. In general when muslims threaten to do something nasty they usually admit to it sometimes to the extent by printing it on a placard. It was a joke a sick one with no intent to actually kill someone. I reckon it is more to do with the system trying to apply the law equally however flawed in an attempt to pacify muslims.
My I am learning. Has anyone any interest left in bothering to understand why we ‘lumpen’ UK public are seemingly just begging for the Cameron crew to trash our lives, jobs, homes, welfare, the lot. Rolling over, as if they just want to tickle our bloody belly.
If so,read much of the above microcosm. All is explained.
Offence looked for and found where none was meant. Wilful misinterpretation and misreading. Precious time trashing each other over the likes of ‘Bismark’s kulturkampf’(that is not wise or clever Roger and helps no one, it makes you look a tosser in these dire times. I wonder if Sakineh knows that one)
Deliberately, desperately, trying to point a finger at someone here SR, anyone, who supports the state death penalty, never mind stoning. No one does I imagine. But some have to imagine or make up someone, call him Dean, David or Rumpelstiltskin. So understandably angry but unable to hit out, they misinterpret any full stop written. You can hit out here though. Bit futile and self defeating what?
After I read the thought provoking opening post, I thought it had been invaded by ‘Conservative Youth’, judging some of the irrelevant and diversionary posts that followed it.
Cameron sleeps easier for shit like that. Sakineh does not.
martin. You do not need to beg for it. It will happen if the Libs stand by the Tories. Then if we do get an interim election the Tories may win a majority and then do their usual.
“Do you, Deen or Dean, condemn the stoning to death of women for adultery?”
Absolutely. Strange you should ask.
As I said I was pointing out the hypocrisy of the ‘United Kingdoms’ selective outrage. I did this because the article made specific reference to the UK.
There’s plenty of hypocrisy floating around, but not only from the British ruling classes concerning Saudi Arabia and other dictatorships, that hypocrisy is also going to be found on the minor political classes, the “anti-imperialists”, the Dean’s of the world.
Instead of acknowledging that the situation in Saudi Arabia *and* Iran is incredibly poor for women, and that these capital sentences are wrong he goes off in another direction.
Dave was very optimistic when he wrote:
That hasn’t happened.
The intensely small-minded “anti-imperialist” mindset takes over, any consideration for *people* in the Middle East as individuals is gone, rather a crude geopolitical mindset takes over.
It is the vuglarist of politics, it is the Henry Kissinger view of the world.
I’d have thought Pakistan worth a mention in such discussions:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/nov/13/pakistan-blasphemy-law-asia-bibi
Apart from being run to pander to religious bigotry, and a key US ally, it’s one of the most racist countries in the world.
Jimmy, ‘You do not need to beg for it. It will happen if the Libs stand by the Tories’
I give them a year at the outside, how about you? Already most of the parliamentary party want to be in the loo come a voting division. Except for the half of them given jobs. The Lib Dem position is about as surreal as Salvadore Dali. Though thankfully less profound or lasting.
I believe you have Dali’s ‘The Christ of St John on the Cross’ in Glasgow. Magnificent. That’s coming from a devout atheist.
You will still have it whatever happens. The Tories and Lib Dems will never get a majority again after this. Even when Labour continue to do their worst. As they will. Students, unemployed, workers, pensioners together on the street. Thatcher had the tactics to deal with em one by one. Thank god Cameron was not in charge of us in El Alamein.
Where did I put that London street map?
martin. It is on loan. But will be back. My favourite museum and the best in Britain. I remember my teachers taking the class along in the Tramcar. My Da was hingin aboot El Alemein. He always said he picked up Winstons cigar butt along with thousands of other claimants.
Getting rid of stoning is worth waging war. Like getting rid of slavery, people will defend it with their lives.
Islam has many issues like this one. This helps explain why so much violence occurs in the many place of the world where Islamic law is in contact with the non-Islamic world.