{"id":2511,"date":"2012-04-02T07:17:37","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T11:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmatt.net\/?p=2511"},"modified":"2012-04-02T07:17:37","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T11:17:37","slug":"bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC leader says race trumps religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The full-page New York Times<\/em> advertisement<\/a> by the Freedom From Religion Foundation was certainly blunt \u2014 starting with its headline telling \u201cliberal\u201d and \u201cnominal\u201d Catholics that \u201cIt\u2019s Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative Catholics were outraged and called the newspaper\u2019s leaders hypocrites, claiming they would never dare to run such a fierce and offensive ad that targeted believers in other faiths, especially Islam.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, a group called Stop Islamization of America immediately produced a full-page advertisement that precisely mirrored the images and rhetoric of the anti-Catholic effort, including a headline telling \u201cmoderate\u201d Muslims that \u201cIt\u2019s Time to Quit Islam<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative Catholics were outraged \u2014 again \u2014 when Times<\/em> leaders refused to run the anti-Muslim advertisement, claiming that to do so would endanger American troops.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, the offended Catholics had little reason to be shocked if members of the Times hierarchy based their decisions on convictions similar to those recently aired by the leader of the British Broadcasting Corporation, another of the world\u2019s most influential news organizations.<\/p>\n

For BBC director-general Mark Thompson, the key is to understand that Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and believers in other minority religions share a \u201cvery close identity with ethnic minorities\u201d and, thus, their beliefs deserve to be handled with special care. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he said it\u2019s acceptable to subject Christians to more criticism and satire, to treat their beliefs with less sensitivity, because Christianity is a powerful, secure, majority religion \u2014 even in an increasingly secular age.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is very different to talk about Christianity in the United Kingdom: a very broadly, literally established, but also metaphorically established, part of our kind of culturally built landscape,\u201d said Thompson, in an interview recorded<\/a> for the FreeSpeechDebate.com<\/a> project produced by St. Antony\u2019s College, Oxford.<\/p>\n

Christianity, he argued, is a \u201cbroad-shouldered religion, compared to religions which in the UK have a very close identity with ethnic minorities, where, you know, it\u2019s not as if as it were Islam is randomly spread across the UK population. It\u2019s almost entirely a religion practiced by people who may already feel in other ways isolated, prejudiced against, and where they may well regard an attack on their religion as racism by other means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, Thompson said, it\u2019s appropriate for media and government leaders to use a more protective, cautious standard when judging the contents of news and entertainment that could be viewed as threatening to believers whose faith is in some real way tied to their racial identities.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he stressed, \u201cI do not think that it\u2019s appropriate that there should be laws inhibiting freedom of speech in the interest of protecting religions. That
\ndoesn\u2019t mean I think necessarily you should publish or broadcast anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muslims, for example, are more offended by criticism or satire of Muhammad than most Christians are of similar media products about Jesus, said Thompson, who identified himself as a moderate, practicing Catholic.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a Muslim, a depiction \u2014 particularly a comical or demeaning depiction of the Prophet Muhammad \u2014 might have the force, the emotional force, of a piece of a grotesque child pornography. One of the mistakes seculars make is, I think, not to understand the character of what blasphemy feels like to someone who is a realist in their religious belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, debates on this subject have also been shaped by political and religious realities in an increasingly tense world. It\u2019s hard, said Thompson, to hold discussions of sacrilege and blasphemy in England and the western world without mentioning Salman Rushdie and \u201cThe Satanic Verses,\u201d his 1988 novel that was in part inspired by the life of Muhammad. The book was burned and banned in some parts of the world and, ultimately, led to a fatwa urging all devout Muslims to kill Rushdie \u2014 who continues to live in hiding decades later.<\/p>\n

Historian Timothy Garton Ash, who conducted the Oxford interview, said this threat of violence is a \u201crather nasty ace\u201d that can be played by those who are willing to say, \u201cI feel so strongly about that; if you say it or broadcast it, I will kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson responded: \u201cWell, clearly it\u2019s a very notable move in the game, I mean without question. \u2018I complain in the strongest possible terms\u2019 is different from \u2018I complain in the strongest possible terms and I\u2019m loading my AK47 as I write.\u2019 This definitely raises the stakes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The full-page New York Times advertisement by the Freedom From Religion Foundation was certainly blunt \u2014 starting with its headline telling \u201cliberal\u201d and \u201cnominal\u201d Catholics that \u201cIt\u2019s Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church.\u201d Conservative Catholics were outraged and called the newspaper\u2019s leaders hypocrites, claiming they would never dare to run such a fierce and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[106,145,1537,540,595,720],"class_list":["post-2511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-godbeat","tag-bbc","tag-broadcasting","tag-islam","tag-media-bias","tag-new-york-times","tag-religion-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBBC leader says race trumps religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The full-page New York Times advertisement by the Freedom From Religion Foundation was certainly blunt -- starting with its headline telling "liberal" and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"BBC leader says race trumps religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The full-page New York Times advertisement by the Freedom From Religion Foundation was certainly blunt -- starting with its headline telling "liberal" and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Terry Mattingly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-04-02T11:17:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/\",\"name\":\"BBC leader says race trumps religion\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-04-02T11:17:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-04-02T11:17:37+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"The full-page New York Times advertisement by the Freedom From Religion Foundation was certainly blunt -- starting with its headline telling \\\"liberal\\\" and\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/04\/bbc-leader-says-that-race-trumps-religion\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"BBC leader says race trumps religion\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\",\"name\":\"Terry Mattingly\",\"description\":\"On Religion\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\",\"name\":\"tmatt\",\"description\":\"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. 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