In lieu: Cineworld's cowardice and religious bullying
I was pondering what to write this week, but the ideas I had will take a little longer to develop. So, instead, I present my piece on Cineworld, religious bullying, and free speech, published on the Free Speech Champions comment page and mentioned in this newsletter previously.
As chance would have it, I am currently re-reading Salman Rushdie's memoir Joseph Anton. So, when fanatical Muslims demanded (and were fearfully given) the cancellation of a film they disapproved of, it felt almost ominous. More than 30 years after Rushdie, a British citizen, was sentenced to death by a foreign theocrat for insulting Islam, here we are again: the sensitivity of members of a certain religion is to decide the limits of free speech, and of art.
I have not seen The Lady of Heaven, but the complaint seems to be that it is a piece of Shia propaganda that demonizes Sunni Islam, whose adherents make up the bulk of Muslims worldwide. Ironically, the Shia theocrats of Iran, spiritual descendants of the ayatollah who hurled a fatwa at Salman Rushdie, have labelled the film “divisive” and banned it. And so, faced with a mob of zealots, not even of one religion against another but of one sect of one religion against another sect of same, Cineworld announced that it has cancelled all screenings of the film.
Read the rest of this piece here.