Politically motivated J&M this week. It's alluding to the recent attempt by Naz Shah to piggy-back anti-blasphemy baggage onto the proposed bill to protect emotional harm connected with the damaging of statues. Her argument is that the sense of connection and reverence that people feel for, say, a statue of Winston Churchill is the same as the feelings Muslims have for their deity, ergo, people shouldn't be allowed to insult or mock the religion or its key figures. There are several problems with this argument, firstly it's not illegal (nor should it be) to mock Winston Churchill, but more fundamentally a statue of Cecil Rhodes actually exists. It's a bogus bit of kvetching on the part of Shah, and should be ignored.
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