Life On The Road

In the meantime, here's what Waterstone's had to say:

"Many thanks for your email and please rest assured that we understand your concerns. You will find a statement below that we hope explains our position:

Waterstone's does occasionally receive requests that we remove books from sale. Our answer is always that we do not act as a censor, and we cannot and should not decide what the public may or may not read, and we will only remove a title from sale on the advice of the publisher. That remains the case for Mr Jones' book, and it remains available from Waterstone's. Any questions or comments regarding the content of the book should be directed towards the Welsh Books Council.

The poetry reading was organised and planned in good faith between our store and the publisher. However, it would appear that shortly before the event took place, the author deliberately took provocative action to create a furore around the publication of his book. These actions were taken without prior discussion with the store or their consent and altered the nature of the pre-agreed event. For this reason and because of the risk of disruption to the store, our staff and customers we felt it appropriate to cancel the event".

Okay, in some circles "creating a furore" might also be seen as "generating publicity", but as this is a religious issue the rules appear to be different. If it was poetry about, say, the Iraq War, perhaps insulting one of the prominent people involved then I suspect that there would have hardly a ripple among the public. As to where all this will lead is another matter, and I think one to be watched: I'll report back after December 11th and we'll see if the UK has balls enough to stand up to yet another vociferous religious group. Incidentally, it's interesting to note that although the christian faith in the UK is in the majority at 71.6% with Muslim trailing at 2.7%*, the level of noise when an alleged atrocity occurs is disproportionately low. Whether this will change in time is unclear, but lets wait until December and see what happens.

Stop Press: here's a selection of comment excerpts from a well-known online book retailer:

"This is a fine book. The absurd over reaction by parts of the Christian Church and the pathetic reaction by a Cardiff Bookstore, are a sad indictment of the state of free expression in this country. The book has enormous artistic value and if people don't like it they are quite at liberty not to read it. But the attempts by certain groups and individuals to stop others from reading it is a disgusting symptom of reactionary Britain."

"An excellent book. Both moving and thought provoking. Qualities obviously feared by those 'religious' Bigots that recently 'forced' a main highstreet bookstore in Cardiff to cancel a planned booksigning by the author! This is BRITAIN, we have FREE SPEECH still, don't we?"

"Truly awful, I'm disappointed to say. Freedom of speech and expression *are* incredibly important, and being controversial, as well as being a good money-spinner, has always kept art moving forward. Sadly, this is no more art than are the profane dawbings of Tracy Emin. Like Emin's works this drivel represents a teenage hypostasis rather than the true expressions of beauty that art and poetry should aspire to"

So there you have it: the public have spoken, and even the bad reviews uphold the freedom of speech/expression that we still hold in this country. For now. Roll on 11th December..

Oh, sorry, you thought it was another bunch of towel-head extremists? Oh no, these are the home-grown variety and in my opinion, just as dangerous. You'll note that they're not doing for themselves; it'll be for the Lord, who's obviously outraged and indignant that a Welsh poet has written about domestic abuse against men. He also ..addresses bullying, religious fundamentalism and the way children are taught at school. In a poem entitled valley comprehensive he asks, ‘shouldn’t education be about teaching children how, not what to think?’. And another poem, "dedicated to Waris Dirie (former Chanel model and humanitarian worker born into a nomadic tribe in Somalia, who aged five, had her genitals hacked away and vagina sewn up by her mother and another local woman), condemns female genital mutilation for cultural and religion reasons". So someone actually has the courage to speak out against barbaric customs, both here and abroad, and then gets pilloried for it? Isn't that just religious extremism all over? Of course, if our extremists had been muslim, a fatwah would no doubt have been issued, but these are christians and nothing like that has been forthcoming as yet.

Stephen Green (National Director of Christian Voice who allegedly issued the fatwah orders) concluded: 'Even after the abolition of the law against blasphemy, companies need to think twice before insulting Jesus Christ'. See the link here. But have they actually insulted Jesus Christ or just another religious extremist group's interpretation of the smoke and mirrors that we call religion?

What concerns me most is that this country has yet again been dictated to by a group of people that wish to express their personal opinions, right or wrong, and will enforce that expression by using bully-boy tactics. In fact, if you read their mini-treatise (I did, as a "non-believer") on Islam, they say that "Muslims have been allowed to get away with the contention that they have a monopoly on practical spirituality..their religion rules the whole of their lives and they say it should rule the whole of politics. Reformed Christianity should be the same..Islam truly presents a complete way of life. It is time for the Church to confirm that Christianity does too. Allah says, "Die for me." Jesus says, "I died for you." Who will you follow?". Now if that isn't dangerous religious extremism I don't know what is. And we thought we had enough problems with Al-Qaeda..

In the meantime it's been noted that Waterstones are still selling the book, which they are perfectly entitled to do: if they have any sense they'll carry on doing so and the freedom of speech that we're working so hard to preserve will be around a for a little longer.