Taken In Vain

Salman Rushdie has never liked Britain and has never made any attempt to disguise that fact. He ended up as pretty much the only person in the world keeping up the idea that the fatwa against him was still a genuine threat. He regularly did so live on BBC Two late at night, not to mention about the bars and restaurants favoured by the London literati. Who'd have thought to look for him there, eh?

As for Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's call for some sort of universal blasphemy law, Tony Blair tried to introduce such a thing in Britain, and only failed by one vote after the then Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, sent him home because she had thought that it was in the bag. It is a bad idea. But it is not an idea peculiar to bearded, exotically named, brown men in flowing robes and turbans.

This country did have a specifically Christian blasphemy law until very recent years. One of the MPs who voted against its repeal is now the Attorney General. And why not? There is all the difference in the world between having a blasphemy law and executing people for breaking it. We had a blasphemy law until very recently. One of the MPs who voted against repealing it is now the Attorney General. And why not? There is nothing wrong with proclaiming within and through the law the things that are most fundamentally sacred to the society in question.

But there is a great deal wrong with not doing so, or with restricting that proclamation to the values, themselves read through a later prism, of the French and American Revolutions. That is hardly even neoconservatism. That is no conservatism, no critique of either capitalist or Marxist materialism, and from the West's point of view no defence against Islam.