In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in France, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, has spoken out to warn against “knee-jerk authoritarianism”. He said, “in a free society people have to be free to offend each other.” However, similar sentiments expressed by liberal-leaning news outlets in the USA have been called hypocritical, because several major publications called for free speech and the freedom to offend but refused to published the Charlie Hebdo cartoon that allegedly offended the terrorists, which showed insulting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and a Jewish rabbi, to avoid offending Muslims. Publishers singled out for particular blame include the Associated Press, which claimed it did not want to “gratuitously offend” but was simultaneously selling an artwork on its website called “Piss Christ” that was designed to offend Christians; and the New York Daily News, which published the offending cartoon with Mohammed’s face pixellated but the rabbi’s unaltered.
The response of Muslims to the terrorist attacks has been similar to that in the West; even Arab language newspapers have published cartoons condemning the terrorists. And there has been praise for a Muslim worker in the kosher supermarket where hostages were taken, who hid six people in a walk-in freezer, and then calmly left the building to tell police what was going on.
Meanwhile in Canada, a Christian man has been given an 18 month jail sentence for sitting on a subway train and loudly criticising Islam during a debate with a fellow passenger. He claimed in court that he had been carrying out a “social experiment”; he had deliberately dressed in the colours of the Israeli flag, and had a friend video record the debate. He was arrested after another passenger pulled the emergency alarm.
In Pakistan, where a Christian couple accused of ripping pages out of the Koran were burned alive by an angry Muslim mob some months ago, Pakistan’s Supreme Court has called for the arrest of two clerics who allegedly incited the mob, and has taken disciplinary action against five police officers who did nothing to prevent the mob killing. And an American socialite, who briefly found fame when she made a complaint to the police about being cyberstalked which ended with the resignation of CIA Director General David Petraeus in 2012, has bought a house for the murdered couple’s three children to live in, using a Pakistani Dominican priest as a go-between.
The Church of Scotland’s presbyteries have voted by a majority to allow the ordination of gay ministers, including those in civil partnerships (gay marriage was only introduced in Scotland last week). The decision has to be ratified by the Kirk’s General Assembly in May, but this seems likely to happen, after several years of votes which have increasingly opened the Church to gay clergy. However, the inclusion of those in civil partnerships is likely to be divisive, as many traditional Christians make a sharp distinction between those with gay feelings and those who openly practise gay sex.
A former High Court judge has proposed that married couples should receive tax breaks when they reach their fifth, tenth and twentieth wedding anniversaries. He said that the system would publicly recognise the fact that marriage saves the taxpayer money.
Andrae Crouch, famous gospel singer, has died at the age of 72 from a heart attack. Crouch was one of the most famous of all gospel singers for decade or two, and some of his songs are sung in congregational worship today. The chorus of one of his most famous songs was, “Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King”.
In technology news, Volvo are trialling a new app-based system that lets a car driver know when a cyclist is near, and also the cyclist’s speed and trajectory, even if the car driver cannot see the bike. The (somewhat complicated) system requires the cyclist to wear a “smart helmet” which communicates with popular smartphone fitness monitoring apps. The information is then sent to Volvo and is shared with drivers equipped with Volvo’s City Safety system.
And finally, a man from Houston, Texas wanted to propose to his Harry Potter-mad girlfriend in style – so he flew both of them to Britain so that he could propose to her at Surbiton station, which features in one of the Harry Potter films. However, having planned to propose on the last day of their visit, he discovered that the train service was shut down for the weekend for maintenance. He somehow managed to concoct an excuse to get his unwitting girlfriend to take a one-hour bus ride from London to Surbiton station, and then persuaded the station staff to let them onto the platform. She said yes.
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