Courageous conversations?

Philip Mathews reports in The Press:

“We bent over backwards to follow the letter of the law,” says Canterbury Museum director Anthony Wright.

“I’m not surprised or offended by anti reactions at all,” Wright says. “Museums are about sparking courageous conversations and I’m proud that we do that. We don’t kowtow to undue pressure.”

Really? Courage would be showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Actually courage would be showing any depiction at all of Mohammed, even a benign one.

Between unpacking the offensive shirt in December and applying for an exemption to show it in January, the Charlie Hebdo shooting happened in Paris. Wright says that did not give him pause.

“I can’t imagine any context in which we would be doing anything on Mohammed,” he says.

Of course not.

But the hypothetical question is obvious. If one of Charlie Hebdo’s obscene drawings of Mohammed had been on a T-shirt that Zammit submitted, would the museum show it?

“You can make anything a hypothetical,” Wright says. “It’s just light years different. I was personally shocked when connections were made with things like that.”

Wright should have the courage of his convictions and spark a “courageous conversation” about the purported Quranic ban on depictions of Mohammed. Hard to argue it is not topical issue.

But of course he won’t. Because that would in fact take courage.