I’ve been reading the twitter spat between Julie Burchill and the hard left political activist Ash Sarkar with, I have to say, varying degrees of interest. I have never been a big fan of Burchill’s writing, even if she attended Brislington School at the same time I did. I know she’s good – you don’t last as long as she has without having a bit about you – but her stuff is not for me. As for Sarkar, she’s a self-styled luxury Communist, whatever that means (nothing, obviously) and a ‘contributing editor’ to the hard left crank Novara media organisation, which closely resembles a sixth rate sixth form debating society. And, until recently, the devout Muslim Sarkar informed us on her twitter handle that she ‘fucks like a champion’. I’m not over familiar with the Qu’ran, so I am guessing she is probably not quoting from it? Anyway, this spat.
Sarkar had been referring to an old quote by the Sun columnist and Burchill friend Rod Liddle, who said he could not have been a teacher because, “The only thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. We’re talking secondary level here, by the way – and even then I don’t think I’d have dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called.” Given those children were aged 13/14, you can see what Sarkar was suggesting
Burchill retorted: “But Ash, I don’t WORSHIP a paedophile. If Aisha was 9, YOU do. Lecturer, lecture thyself!” For information, Aisha was Aisha bint Abu Bakr who married the Prophet Mohammad when she was seven years old, but to be fair to him they did not consummate the marriage until two years later when the the great man was 53 and she was nine.
I leave you, my loyal reader, to decide who is in the right and wrong and make no comment myself, not least because Sarkar, adding she has been subjected to islamophobia, says in the classic manner of hard left comrades, “I’m discussing my options for further action with my lawyers.” Only a luxury Communist could afford not just one lawyer, but lawyers.
Naturally, Sarkar’s fellow hard left political activist, the former journalist and bandwagon enthusiast Owen Jones joins in to gloat about the fact that Julie Burchill’s book contract has been cancelled by her publisher Little, Brown. Sneeringly – because that’s how behaves towards anyone who doesn’t share his narrow rose-coloured glasses of hard left socialism, Jones adds: “Burchill’s book hasn’t been banned. A publisher has decided it doesn’t want to publish a book by someone who has been gratuitously racist. No one is banning Burchill from speaking about it either, as she begins her ‘I’M BEING SILENCED!’ grand media tour.”
Has Burchill been “gratuitously racist”? There is no race of Muslims anymore than there is a race of Christians or a race of Mormons or a race of scientologists. Or is Burchill just supposedly hurting Sarkar’s feelings to the extent that she is considering legal action against her?
Personally, I do not like the idea of books being cancelled so let’s look at the words used by Little, Brown:
“We will no longer be publishing Julie Burchill’s book. This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We believe passionately in freedom of speech at Little, Brown and we have always published authors with controversial or challenging perspectives – and we will continue to do so.”
“While there is no legal definition of hate speech in the UK, we believe that Julie’s comments on Islam are not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint, that they crossed a line with regard to race and religion, and that her book has now become inextricably linked with those views.”
Burchill has given her views on Islam. Should she not, in a country that believes “passionately in freedom of speech”, as Little, Brown claim to do, be allowed to express them? Why should religion – any religion – not be mocked or even ridiculed, just like, say, politicians are on a daily basis? And if we are to believe literally in the word of whichever God you believe in, are you supposed to only believe in the good bits? For example, the God of the Old Testament was the biggest mass murderer in the history of fiction, killing at least 2,821,364 people, a figure estimated to be nearer 25 million if you include things like the flood of Noah which took some 20 million people. But here’s the thing: would Burchill have been picked up on this if she had been critical of an aspect Christianity with some pound shop celebrity Christian? Look what happened to Salman Rushdie when he wrote the Satanic Verses.
I have no truck with Burchill or Sarkar but I do believe in free speech and unlike Little, Brown I wouldn’t ban it just because it was the kind of free speech I didn’t like.
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