I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Voltaire. Well, he abhorred organised religion and he was French – that’s two counts in his favour to start with. Not one to shun controversy, he incurred the wrath of the Islamic community with the writing of his play “Fanaticism, or Mohamet the Prophet”. Well, with a catchy title like that, I’m not surprised the Muslims of the day didn’t like the idea very much. The trouble is, the modern day ones are reigniting the grudge.
That’s the thing about a good grudge – it isn’t a good one unless you’ve nurtured it and allowed it to fester for a couple of hundred years or more. Then it’s a good grudge, good and mature like a stinking bishop, you can feel the hate oozing and palpitating with bile; almost alive with malevolence.
As others have noticed, in the provincial French town of Saint-Genis-Pouilly near the border with Switzerland, they are putting on Voiltaire’s play. And, the local Muslims don’t like it. Well, that’s their prerogative – no one is making them like it and no one is making them go along and watch it. Ah, but no, that’s not enough, is it?
‘This play … constitutes an insult to the entire Muslim community,” said a letter to the mayor of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, signed by Said Akhrouf, a French-born cafe owner of Moroccan descent and three other Islamic activists representing Muslim associations. They demanded the performance be cancelled.
Oh, no, not going to see it isn’t enough. No, these people want it cancelled. If this was the UK, they might stand a chance. While the BBC may resist the exhortations of Christians who want the rather dire Jerry Springer, the Opera show cancelled, we do dhimmitude in a big way in this country. After all, the safety elephant has accused the Danish government of making a mistake over the cartoons affair. Clearly, unlike his Danish counterparts, he does not understand the relationship between free speech and the role of government.
Fortunately the French do, though:
Instead, Mayor Hubert Bertrand called in police reinforcements to protect the theater. On the night of the December reading, a small riot broke out involving several dozen people and youths who set fire to a car and garbage cans. It was ”the most excitement we’ve ever had down here,” says the socialist mayor.
France had a revolution whereby they threw out the church (and chopped off a lot of heads into the bargain) and imposed a strictly secular state. When Napoleon Bonaparte allowed the church back, it was on his terms and, so, France retains her secular status. Fortunately, this means that unlike the UK, they are less inclined to dhimmitude.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire (1906)
Says it all, really.