I don’t often venture over to The Daily Blog (maybe twice a year) and yesterday was the day I donned my raincoat and gumboots (to protect me from all the spittle and muck) and waded in to see what well-know political commentator Martyn Bradbury AKA Wrongly Wrongson had to say about the coming election.
The following statement stood out for all the wrong reasons. It is the equivalent of accusing vegetarians of eating meat because they had expressed a dislike of meat-eaters. Think I am exaggerating?
Check out his description of the new political party Vision NZ. He thinks he is being funny but his humour falls spectacularly flat as for something to be funny there needs to be an element of truth in it.
Vision NZ:
Hates all the same things as the New Conservatives but hates Muslims most. Brian Tamaki claimed yesterday at his central Auckland protest that Labour will make NZ a ‘Socialist country’ and I’ve NEVER been so excited & happy in my life. Reading through their policy, you suspect they consider eclipses to be inspired by Satan and believe Jacinda is the daughter of the Devil’s third cousin. I think Libraries and clitorises would be banned if Vision NZ came to power.
There is so much wrong with this statement that I hardly know where to begin so I will start with the bit that jumped out at me immediately; his comment about banning clitorises. Islam is the religion associated the most with female circumcision, which is a euphemistic term to describe the barbaric partial or full removal of the clitoris. It is one of the many reasons that Christians and non-religious people alike rightly criticise Islam for its religiously sanctioned ill-treatment of young girls and women.
The World Health Organisation describes it as:
a violation of the human rights of girls and women. It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children. The practice also violates a person’s rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.
In addition to his comment about banning clitorises, Bradbury’s defamatory claim that Vision NZ “Hates Muslims” simply because they are a Christian based party is outrageous. Imagine if a political commentator claimed that a Muslim based party hated Christians. There would be hell to pay and rightly so. People like Bradbury throw words like hate around lightly with no concern for accuracy. Criticism is not hate. If it were then Bradbury himself would be one of the most hateful political commentators in New Zealand.
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