December 01, 2007 ... Ding - dong.

In 1977, The Sex Pistols unleashed their vinyl album Never Mind the Bollocks to a storm of legal controversy, which, due to its allegedly obscene title, led to the prosecution (under Section 28 of the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, now the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981) of the owner of a Nottingham record shop (and label owner Richard Branson) for having it on display. Subsequently, at Nottingham Magistrates' Court, expert defence witnesses testified with reference to the historical record that, ‘Bollocks’ was an ‘Old English’ term for a priest, which, in context, meant ‘nonsense’. As a result, the court was obliged to conclude:

Much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty of each of the four charges.

With today's 24/7 media getting itself and its audience into a lather over Mohammad the Teddy bear and UK school teacher Gillian Gibbons’ ‘minor cultural faux pas’, it is worth remembering that the UK has not always been as enlightened as it now proclaims to be, in comparison to the culturally primitive Sudanese administration.

For instance: In 1526, upon the introduction of William Tyndale’s English language printing of the Bible users were likely to face burning at the stake or, if fortunate, the possibility of lesser punishments: A good kicking and one’s bible burned, for example. From 1645-1647 the Witchfinder General and his associates roamed the countryside and deployed rather unscientific criteria--the float test--allied to expert witness testimony to justify death by burning at the stake. More recently, this practice has been transformed: Witches are now baby-killers, and courts with the aid of celebrity and expert witnesses armed with exceptionally dubious statistics can jail them for life. Well, at least the death by burning at the stake has been abolished. Progress of sorts, one must acknowledge.

Of lesser impact to life and limb: In the 1960’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover warranted a national outcry and hugely expensive Court action. And, returning to the 1970’s, a national outcry was deemed the proper response to Chuck Berry’s My Ding-a-Ling by Christian morality-cop and Christain fundamentalist Mary Whitehouse.

The politically motivated show-trials of Conrad Black and the Nat-West-Three could also be invoked as examples of morally unacceptable behaviour, but not for this Op-Ed.

The main point of this Op-Ed is that the UK government in consort with its EU and US counterparts can capitalise on Gillian Gibbons’ ‘minor cultural faux pas’, not by waggling their cultural ding-a-lings to be compared to the Sudanese’s cultural ding-a-ling, but by securing the rights of Muslims, in the face of violence and intimidation from vicious Muslim radicals, so that they may freely express their embarrassment and dismay at the Sudanese response to an inconsequential misdemeanour.