Runcie's error on BBC banquet

ROBERT Runcie is a man much aware of his national responsibilities. As Archbishop of Canterbury he is ever anxious to speak for all believers in this country and not just his Anglican flock. Such solicitousness is to be admired as we have stated before in these columns. But surely over the BBC television programme "The Blasphemers' Banquet", the archbishop went too far.
Before the programme was broadcast on Monday evening in BBC l's excellent "Byline" series, in which distinguished experts put over a personal viewpoint on a current issue, Archbishop Runcie had been pressing the corporation to postpone the showing. Straight after the transmission went out, he was condemning the programme for the hurt it would have caused Moslems in this country.
But the archbishop surely missed the point of this rather clever and on balance very fair programme. Tony Harrison was arguing that all religions, all denominations in the past have attempted to silence their critics. He quoted the example of such historical figures as Voltaire and Byron to demonstrate that the Christian tradition has condemned those who criticise it with all the vehemence that Moslems are currently directing at Salman Rushdie because of his novel The Satanic Verses. Intolerance has always greeted those who have pointed out the faults of denominations. When churches are at their most fundamentalist as with Islam now they have always stamped on those who seek to point out the errors of their ways.
A perfectly fair point for Mr Harrison to make, and one which at least one Moslem councillor in Bradford accepted when speaking the morning after transmission on Radio Four's Today programme. So why did Archbishop Runcie kick up such a stink? It was not that he wanted to deny past intolerance by the Christian churches, but rather he wanted to protect the sensibilities of Moslems, to make of them a special case.
The Rushdie affair has polarised non-Moslem opinion in this country between those who uphold freedom of expression at all costs as a basic human right, and those who are bending over backwards to alieviate Moslem upset at the book and are prepared to backtrack on fundamental freedom. Archbishop Runcie has, this week by his intervention most clearly Put in the ratter r.OlegorY (no,,doubt with the best of intentions), But he must surely recognise that the BBC cannot start taking off relatively inoffensive programmes just because the mention of Moslem intolerance might upset sections of the community. While it is right and just that everything possible should be done to make Moslems feel part of a multi-racial, multi-faith, multi-cultural Britain, they too have to make an effort at tolerance.
That Archbishop Runcie should make such an unreasonable demand of the BBC over this programme puts him in the camp of those intolerant of anything that offends their delicate sensibilities and goes against all recent attempts by the churches to co-exist with secular society.
Such vulnerability to criticism as the Moslems have demonstrated of late will only encourage more Salman Rushdies, and more brutal critics with less insight than Mr Rushdie. If the Christian churches have learnt anything in their relatively recent opening to the secular world and its cynicism, it is that to try and suppress something because you don't like what it is saying about you is the best way of ensuring it gets maximum publicity.
Archbishop Runcie should have held his peace.