Resur erection

It's funny that the decents leap to the defence of cartoonists who caraciture Mohammed and publishers who publish them in the name of free speech, yet fall silent when the target of irreverence is sacred icons of western culture. Another example of the double standards and hypocrict highlighted in How are thinktanks shaping the political agenda on Muslims in Britain? By Arun Kundnani. (Thanks be to Lenin for pointing this excellent study out).

Here at REL, we are firm atheists, and are neutral as to whether Mohammed should be depicted or not or whether a model of Christ should sport an enormous erection. It's when these finer points of theology get used in the increasingly unpleasant racial context of Western Europe that we begin to get upset. The double standard (prosecute the anti-christian - though since Jesus was made in man's image and his Dad was a carpenter, he must have had wood more than once - yet defend the free speech of those 'insulting' Islam) is nothing other than racism disguised as cultural supremacy. Mind you. . .

"The artwork was part of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art's September 2007-January 2008 exhibition Gone, Yet Still, by the controversial Chinese artist Terence Koh, which featured dozens of plaster figures including Mickey Mouse and ET - all in some state of arousal."

. . . doesn't really sound like good evidence for the supremacy of western culture.