{"id":27537,"date":"2013-04-06T12:29:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-06T08:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=27537"},"modified":"2013-04-06T12:32:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T08:32:00","slug":"the-fine-art-of-political-insult-bahrain-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-politics-analysis\/the-fine-art-of-political-insult-bahrain-style\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fine Art of Political Insult, Bahrain-Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bahrain-national-assembly-e1333560272310\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Those temperate souls in the Bahrain Parliament were at it again last week.<\/p>\n

The Gulf Daily News \u2013 demonstrating what a bastion of unbiased reporting it is \u2013 took a break from reporting the daily condemnations by leading ministers of the \u201cthugs and terrorists\u201d who are blamed for the current state of the country. Instead, they chose to sit in on a lively debate in parliament. Since the political composition of the lower house has been somewhat skewed by the resignation in 2011 of the 19 members of the Al-Wefaq political society \u2013 the group that has taken much of the blame for the troubles of the past two years \u2013 you would expect that the current members would be violently agreeing on most matters placed before them.<\/p>\n

Apparently not.\u00a0According to the GDN<\/a>, in yesterday\u2019s deliberations, Islamist MP Abdulhaleem Murad said this about remarks by a fellow member:<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the words of infidels and atheists, which reflect the philosophy of the person saying them. The person saying those words has been silent for numerous sessions, but when he spoke the words of infidels came out.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat nonsense comments have come out of his mouth? We should not stay silent against those silly words. There are no loopholes in religion, with good and evil being clear. Those words only come from a devil with satanic intentions.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

So what were the devilish, satanic, atheistic ideas being thus condemned? You might think that the object of such contempt was proposing something seriously radical, such as the abolition of religious teaching in schools, or the incorporation of the religious holidays of other faiths into the national holiday schedule.<\/p>\n

Not so. The recipient of the broadside was suggesting that it was a mistake to establish a government-funded academic institution for exclusively for women. Again according to the GDN:<\/p>\n

\u201cBahrain Bloc MP Ali Al Durazi had criticised the Islamist MPs\u2019 plan, saying males and females should mix and it was up to them to control their desires. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if females and males are segregated or are mixed in classrooms, lectures or even at work and in general life,\u201d he said.\u201dDesire is found in everyone\u2019s soul.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t stop people from fulfilling their desires if they want to do so and it is a choice to control it or let go. The problem is within people themselves, when they lose their senses and shut off their conscience.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I suppose the idea that people should act according to their consciences is pretty radical. And there are countries nearby where, if he had made those statements, Mr Al Durazi would be in fear for his safety at the very least, and in real danger of being hauled off to jail.<\/p>\n

Mr Murad apparently had the last word:<\/p>\n

\u201cActing parliament chairman Abdulla Al Dossary ordered the comments to be removed from the official record, but Mr Murad said they were already recorded in God\u2019s eyes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s all right then. No one can say they weren\u2019t warned of the coming retribution.<\/p>\n

When I read about the exchange, I thought to myself how different were the proceedings to those of my own dear Parliament in the UK. But then I thought of Oliver Cromwell\u2019s words when he shut down the Rump Parliament that had lingered on after the demise of King Charles I, as reported by Thomas Salmon in his Chronological Historian:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Cromwell] commanded the Speaker to leave the Chair, and told them they had sat long enough, unless they had done more good, crying out You are no longer a Parliament, I say you are no Parliament. He told Sir Henry Vane he was a Jugler [sic]; Henry Martin and Sir Peter Wentworth, that they were Whoremasters; Thomas Chaloner, he was a Drunkard; and Allen the Goldsmith that he cheated the Publick: Then he bid one of his Soldiers take away that Fool\u2019s Bauble the mace and Thomas Harrison pulled the Speaker of the Chair; and in short Cromwell having turned them all out of the House, lock\u2019d up the Doors and returned to Whitehall.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Not being a journalist or an academic, I unapologetically thank Wikipedia for that quote.<\/p>\n

More recently, we have had our share of ripe insults in the House of Commons. In 2010, the Health Minister was reported as muttering under his breath that the Speaker, John Bercow, was a \u201cstupid, sanctimonious dwarf\u201d. Then there was Denis Healey\u2019s famous remark when, as the UK\u2019s Chancellor of the Exchequer, he likened the criticism of his budget by his opposite number Geoffrey Howe to being \u201csavaged by a dead sheep\u201d.<\/p>\n

Even in New Zealand, that great exporter of dead sheep, and not a country with a reputation for rabble-rousing, parliamentarians have got into trouble for little gems such as these:<\/p>\n

\u201cIdle vapourings of a mind diseased\u201d
\n\u201cHis brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides\u201d
\n\u201cEnergy of a tired snail returning home from a funeral.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Again my thanks to Wikipedia, this time for the wisdom of the Antipodes.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s contretemps in Bahrain\u2019s parliament is not the first of its kind. A few months ago, for example, another MP almost set off the sprinklers by\u00a0burning an Israeli flag<\/a>\u00a0in the chamber.<\/p>\n

Whatever your thoughts about the current situation in Bahrain, you have to have some sympathy for a government pincered between opposite extremes of the sectarian spectrum.<\/p>\n

You could even understand if, in their darker moments, there were not ministers who might dearly wish that they could adopt Cromwell\u2019s tactics with the Rump Parliament \u2013 minus the insults of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STEVE ROYSTON: Yet another lively debate in the Bahraini parliament this week and the insults were running thick and fast. They follow in a long line distinguished (or not!) company <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":27540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,154,173,83,60,482],"tags":[16987,16986,18303,16985,16983,16984],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27543,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27537\/revisions\/27543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}