From The New Statesman
by Mehdi Hasan
Who’d have guessed that 2013 would be the year in which Aaron Sorkin would come to the rescue of Islam? To clarify: the creator of The West Wing hasn’t converted and become a Muslim. He probably doesn’t have a clue how significant his (inadvertent) contribution has been to the struggle against Islamophobia – and that, too, in the mother of parliaments.
Let me explain. In a debate in the House of Lords on 19 November, the former leader of Ukip Lord Pearson asked why the Prime Minister had refused to blame Islam for acts of terrorism. Doing his best impression of Darth Vader, Pearson said, “I fear the dark side is moving strongly within Islam,” and cited various blood-curdling verses from the Quran.
The government’s response to his hate-mongering comments came from Baroness Warsi, the Muslim Tory peer and minister for faith and communities. Warsi decided to address Pearson’s bigotry by quoting from a West Wingepisode from 2000.
In the show, President Jed Bartlet takes on a Christian evangelical radio presenter who had called homosexuality an “abomination”. “I don’t say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr President. The Bible does,” she replies, citing Leviticus 18:22. To which Bartlet responds:
“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I’m interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7 . . . What would a good price for her be? . . . My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it OK to call the police? . . . Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you?”
It was the perfect riposte from Warsi, who went on to point out to Pearson that “texts from the Old Testament” can also “easily be manipulated to cause mischief”. Being a person of faith, she added, requires understanding of not just the values but “the context in which that faith was formed. To be an adherent, one must also be a historian.”
