Secularists reverse course on religious defamation

After years of defending repressive religious practices as symbols of cultural diversity, Britain’s secular left has reversed itself and now vigorously opposes the U.N.’s proposed ban on the defamation of religion, according to religion and media analyst Dr. Jenny Taylor.

‘If it weren't so serious, it would be funny,’ Taylor, executive director of the U.K.'s Lapido Media, told a Media Project-sponsored gathering in Jakarta.  

‘Left-wing secularists have been fellow travelers with Islamists for decades, in order quite literally, to subvert the State.’

Secularists even helped Islamists establish outposts in London as a kind of counterweight to Anglo-Saxon, Christian culture, Taylor said.  So it is ironic in her view that the same secularists have become such ardent defenders of the persecuted and some of the very few voices publicly opposing Muslim-sponsored U.N. initiatives to ban speech deemed blasphemous or defamatory. 

From her post at Lapido Media, which works for religious literacy in world affairs, Taylor closely monitors religion in the public square in the U.K., Europe and beyond.  What Taylor sees in the new secularist approach to religion is not a carefully worked out discourse, but a slow awakening to the anti-defamation movement's potential for ‘back-door’ repression.

‘The secularists are slowly discovering that religion is about a lot more than private opinion,’ Taylor observed. ‘Hateful thoughts emerge as hateful speech, and speech acts.  Whole societies of injustice are based around religiously derived and reinforced cultural practices...’

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