John Cleese Can Say Whatever The Hell He Wants About Islam

    Imagine devoting 65 years of your life to entertaining our mother country of England, if not the whole world, only to be told by a gang of pious pricks that you are no longer welcome in England’s second city. That has been the fate of the great John Cleese. He has given all of us 6 decades of brilliant comedy, yet still he finds himself mobbed by hysterics who want to muzzle his wisecracking mouth. His crime? You already know. Sancho knows. Your pets know. Everyone knows. It is the same ‘effing’ thing every time! He took the “holier-than-thou” out of Islam.

    Cleese is currently touring England with a live stage show celebrating the great and hilarious…did I mention, GREAT… Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Please, show some respect and give me a belly laugh for, “It’s just a flesh wound!” He screens the 1975 classic and takes questions from the audience. That, dear reader, is a pretty stand-up thing for a comedy giant in his late 80’s to be doing. Not in the eyes of Islamo-narcissists, however. They are amazed Cleese can even show his face in public following his numerous sins of blasphemous thought. Nothing makes the pious quiver with fear and anger like a comic chortling at their superstitions. “Bring out your dead!”

    Cleese took his show to what many Brits call the Islamic Republic of Birmingham last Sunday night. News of the blasphemer’s arrival caused a wave of horror among that city’s legion Islamo-nitwits. One group, by the name of Deenified, put out a hilarious/sinister video in which young men upbraid Cleese for ‘attacking Islam’. You are a ‘hate preacher’, they cry. Think about that for a second. Islamic agitators calling others hate preachers? May “irony” Rest In Peace. “She turned me into a newt!” “A newt?” “I got better.”

    They called on Birmingham Town Hall, where Cleese was appearing, to “align with its duty of community respect” and “cancel the show.” “Align with its duty of community respect”. What a chilling, slippery euphemism. Perhaps they were worried they’d give the game away if they said “Silence the blasphemer!” Unfortunately for them, we infidels aren’t as dumb as we look. Well, not all of us. We know that lurking in that velvet glove of community-speak is the iron fist of a medieval intolerance for the greatest liberty of all: The liberty to speak.

    What sacrilegious utterances has Cleese made to earn such ire? He said, “The Koran’s teaching is ALL about acquiring power.” Well, it is. He said Britain’s “cultural heritage” is “vastly superior” to the Islamic way of life.well, duh! He said ‘Islamophobia’ is a sinister term designed to ward people off from “criticizing a religion.” Nitpicking, but true. He said too many comics hold back from mocking Islam because they don’t want to be murdered. He said some Muslims behave like “a bunch of five-year-olds,” wailing whenever someone mocks their beliefs. I think we have a winner. Cleese wins! In a landslide. 

    Okay. What’s the problem? All of this falls squarely within the realm of legitimate discussion of an ideology. He is right that living in Britain or America is better than living in a desert state where women are put in trash bags and you can be whipped for dissing Allah. He is right that people have been slain for “insulting Islam.” Just ask the heroes of Charlie Hebdo. As for his claim that some Muslims behave like five-year-olds – the Birmingham mob’s horror at such ‘hate speech’ might carry more weight if they weren’t behaving like five-year-olds. 

    Even if Cleese has said things that don’t stack up, so what? Neither does the claim that Muhammad flew to heaven on a horse, yet I’d fight to the death for your right to peddle such medieval crap. It is why I talk and argue with evangelical friends about their, from my perspective, absurd beliefs in literalism. But I will fall on my sword to allow them to preach them. You have the liberty to believe whatever you want and the rest of us have the liberty to rip the living crap out of your beliefs. It is the Western, enlightened way. If the fine Birmingham is falling to a non-British ideology, one that treats criticism of Islam as a moral offense punishable by exile or death, then we need to take action. Firm action. Now. 

    In the end, Cleese’s show went ahead. But we still need to talk about the sheer gall of these self-appointed blasphemy police who think they have the right to crush speech that wounds their porcelain-like feelings. In 1979, it was Christian nitwits who came for Cleese and the other Pythons over their ‘blasphemous’ brilliant film, Life of Brian. Now it’s Islamic hotheads hounding Cleese for his profane chatter. What a brilliant, terrible snapshot of the slow-motion conquering of our cultural realm by the unforgiving Islamist mindset.

    It was Western society’s suicidal indulgence of Islam that gave rise to these insufferable, preening, lily-livered Islamo-censors. For too long we’ve bowed to the backward idea that demurring from Islam is a species of racism. We have institutionalized the thought-strangling ideology of ‘Islamophobia’. Even now, Britain’s Labor government and the slow and steady embracing of socialism/Islam by America’s Political Left, is rustling up yet another definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that aims to punish impious speech. Every time our ‘betters’ turn a blind eye to acts of Islamist intolerance, their censorious arrogance feasts and fattens on our cowardice.

    Enough. We now have a moral duty to make fun of Islam, and Christianity, and Judaism for that matter, in order that we might puncture this sanctimonious regime of silencing that our idiotic establishment helped to birth. Specifically, Cleese is doing a great service to the historic cause of British liberty by dislodging the deranged idea that one religion should still enjoy protection from blasphemy. Stop it. Our British and American forebears had their tongues torn out and their faces branded for the crime of speaking frankly about God and religion. We finally abolished our blasphemy laws in 2008. We didn’t go through all that only for people to risk losing their jobs, and in some cases their lives, for saying that God, Yahweh, and Allah, are literary characters (Yes, I have said and typed those very words, numerous times) and should be treated as such. 

    The Life of Brian ‘scandal’ helped to push Britain closer to the promised land of liberty. Cleese and the other Pythons took to the airwaves against priests and bishops to defend the hard-won right to ridicule religious dogma. Comedians and cultural figures backed the Pythons. Where are those people now? Why are they silent as Cleese is insulted by religious cranks? Why have they not spoken about the pre-emptive crushing of art that might offend Muslims? Give me Cleese’s satiric commentary over such ass-covering cowardice any day of the week.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com