You might recall that an adjunct professor was let go from Hamline University after a Muslim student complained about a depiction of the prophet Muhammad shown in class.
“In reality a trigger warning is an indication that you are going to do harm.”
oh, yawn. are we channeling a 19-year-old college sophomore campus activist here?
“you’ve seen what happened in the horrible tragedies of Charlie Hebdo...”
jesus f’n christ, my dude, are you trying to tell us that every aggrieved Muslim will shoot we Great Satans in the streets with glee and abandon? the CAIR rep who visited my own college after 9/11 took great pains to say the exact opposite.
One thing that struck me about the whole Hamline incident was that it didn’t seem to be about religious freedom at all, but rather was about a member of a group considered oppressed under the progressive stack being offended. A Christian creationist would not have had any sway in kicking out a professor that teaches evolution even if it was deeply offensive to the creationist. Jewish pro-Zionist students don’t have sway even if they think BDS groups actively harm them.
The whole part about discrimination based on religion (et al) in the Human Rights stack has been increasingly interpreted left and right as a defence against being offended or criticised. Muslims have been using it a lot, but also Orthodox Jews for example here in Canada where I live, where they forced a local gym to screen out its windows because the male students of a religious school across the street could not bear to see women in scant clothes working out. Zionists have used it both in Britain and Canada to suppress critics of the state of Israel, and successfully. Internationally, states use it left and right, in particular the ones who want to suppress someone else. Wait a little and the Christians will be at it as well.
It is just an overblown and vague interpretation of the protection of Human Rights. Just as the conflation of hurt, upset and harm that has produced things like the expansion of the concept of rape and sexual assault well beyond any form of violence, to behaviours that are interpreted as insulting, offensive or even simply awkward (at least it is so in Britain and Canada). It all comes from the obsession with "offending" things that has increased dramatically in the last 20 years, and people do not realise how the loss of common sense in these things is damaging society as a whole.
Yes, but I'd say the shift started earlier. The islamophobia scare has been on the decline since the early 2010s and the concept has been getting less and less useful as a rhetorical cudgel; what happened at Hamline is the fall of its last redoubts. Even five years ago, people were trying to cancel Rukmini Callimachi over bullshit accusations of islamophobia and it didn't stick at all (although her getting duped by a fabulist source did her in eventually).
“In reality a trigger warning is an indication that you are going to do harm.”
oh, yawn. are we channeling a 19-year-old college sophomore campus activist here?
“you’ve seen what happened in the horrible tragedies of Charlie Hebdo...”
jesus f’n christ, my dude, are you trying to tell us that every aggrieved Muslim will shoot we Great Satans in the streets with glee and abandon? the CAIR rep who visited my own college after 9/11 took great pains to say the exact opposite.
One thing that struck me about the whole Hamline incident was that it didn’t seem to be about religious freedom at all, but rather was about a member of a group considered oppressed under the progressive stack being offended. A Christian creationist would not have had any sway in kicking out a professor that teaches evolution even if it was deeply offensive to the creationist. Jewish pro-Zionist students don’t have sway even if they think BDS groups actively harm them.
I wrote about this a few weeks ago: https://societystandpoint.substack.com/p/haram-at-hamline
The whole part about discrimination based on religion (et al) in the Human Rights stack has been increasingly interpreted left and right as a defence against being offended or criticised. Muslims have been using it a lot, but also Orthodox Jews for example here in Canada where I live, where they forced a local gym to screen out its windows because the male students of a religious school across the street could not bear to see women in scant clothes working out. Zionists have used it both in Britain and Canada to suppress critics of the state of Israel, and successfully. Internationally, states use it left and right, in particular the ones who want to suppress someone else. Wait a little and the Christians will be at it as well.
It is just an overblown and vague interpretation of the protection of Human Rights. Just as the conflation of hurt, upset and harm that has produced things like the expansion of the concept of rape and sexual assault well beyond any form of violence, to behaviours that are interpreted as insulting, offensive or even simply awkward (at least it is so in Britain and Canada). It all comes from the obsession with "offending" things that has increased dramatically in the last 20 years, and people do not realise how the loss of common sense in these things is damaging society as a whole.
I do very much hope so, Mr Meskhout. The day that people are prosecuted for disrespecting religion (of any kind) is a dark day for the Western world.
Yes, but I'd say the shift started earlier. The islamophobia scare has been on the decline since the early 2010s and the concept has been getting less and less useful as a rhetorical cudgel; what happened at Hamline is the fall of its last redoubts. Even five years ago, people were trying to cancel Rukmini Callimachi over bullshit accusations of islamophobia and it didn't stick at all (although her getting duped by a fabulist source did her in eventually).