The oh-what-a-surprise cellroom re-recanting of David Irving (and the breathless press commentary in its wake) is a reminder of what a pointless exercise the criminalization of historical opinion is. A bad scholar, and probably a bad man too, but a worse law.
Posted by Alan Allport at February 26, 2006 05:45 AMI quite liked this part of the story about Irving's brother:
"...Meanwhile, in Wiltshire, his elder brother, John, campaigns against exactly the sort of prejudice that Irving displays. John Irving, 75, is chairman of Wiltshire Racial Equality Council and a devout Muslim. Living on a pig farm in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, John Irving is also, probably, Britain's only Muslim pig farmer. He converted to Islam in 1981 while commanding troops for the Sultan of Oman and now attends Trowbridge's mosque on a regular basis..."
He sounds like somebody out of Anthony Powell.
> John Irving, 75, is...a devout Muslim. Living on a pig farm
> in Trowbridge, Wiltshire...
I guess we can add 'devout' to the list of words that don't mean what they used to. In Islam, swine are considered unclean. It is forbidden not only to eat them, but even to touch them or have anything to do with them.
(Dogs are in the same category, by the way. I once had a group of students become _seriously_ upset because one of our textbooks contained a picture of a puppy.)
Mr Irving may think of himself as a Muslim but he's in for a big surprise on judgement day (as too of course are all of these 'cafeteria Catholics' who think they can pick and choose which tenets of the dogma to accept and which ones to reject, according to their own convenience).
cheers,
Henry
Posted by: Henry Larsen at February 27, 2006 06:11 AM