The uproar over the Jyllands Posten "Muhammed cartoons" is the latest chapter in the tragic-comic deterioration of relations between "the Islamic world" and "the West." At this point questions about the right of Jyllands Posten to publish the cartoons and the nature of the response in the Islamic community have been discussed ad absurdum in the blogosphere and beyond. Having come to this party too late and having too little of profit (or Prophet) to say, I must restrict my comments to the "Western" reaction to this fracas. Violence and death threats are obviously a vile response to a series of cartoons, but little progress will be made by fighting intolerance with more intolerance. Though I sympathize with the civil-libertarian impulses behind a website like The Face of Muhammed,it does little to foster mutual understanding. Pronouncements like-
For 1400 years, Islam has waged war on all surrounding non-Muslim civilizations. During the course of history, Christianity was reformed, Europe colonized the world and set it free again, dictators lived, reigned and died, and totalitarian regimes emerged and vanished.
But Islam stayed, unreformed. And today, it imprisons more than 1 billion people, moderate and radical souls alike, in a huge gap of difference to the rest of us. Across political divides, across national boundaries, across various degrees of freedom, across race, people or religion, black or white, rich or poor; it stands out as our opposite. Only Muslim reformists seek to lessen the gap. And their voices are quickly silenced.
In modern times, waves of immigrants from Muslim countries have entered Europe. All European countries have been subject to islamization; the process of slowly incorporating Islamic values and Muslim customs into our way of life. Far East countries like India, Thailand, Indonesia and China are experiencing the Muslim Jihad. Israel lives with it. America feels it. Africa suffers from it, and is too weak from disease and poverty to resist.
It is suddenly coming to our attention that Islam is not, cannot, and will not be integrated or assimilated to the values of freedom and democracy. Islam is not only a religion; it is a totalitarian and expansionistic political ideology.
-harken back to hysterical 19th century rhetoric against the "Yellow Peril" or the "Elders of Zion." The idea that Europe and Christendom have evolved and changed while Islam has remained static is fundamentally ridiculous, as is the notion that while Islam "has waged war on all surrounding non-Muslim societies" Europe has only been so benign as to "coloniz[e] the world and set it free again." One would imagine that the Crusades had never happened and the British Raj was a giant tea party.
Only marginally better are more academic flights of ethnocentrism like this one by Theodore Dalrymple:
Anyone who lives in a city like mine and interests himself in the fate of the world cannot help wondering whether, deeper than this immediate cultural desperation, there is anything intrinsic to Islam—beyond the devout Muslim’s instinctive understanding that secularization, once it starts, is like an unstoppable chain reaction—that renders it unable to adapt itself comfortably to the modern world. Is there an essential element that condemns the Dar al-Islam to permanent backwardness with regard to the Dar al-Harb, a backwardness that is felt as a deep humiliation, and is exemplified, though not proved, by the fact that the whole of the Arab world, minus its oil, matters less to the rest of the world economically than the Nokia telephone company of Finland?
I think the answer is yes, and that the problem begins with Islam’s failure to make a distinction between church and state. Unlike Christianity, which had to spend its first centuries developing institutions clandestinely and so from the outset clearly had to separate church from state, Islam was from its inception both church and state, one and indivisible, with no possible distinction between temporal and religious authority. Muhammad’s power was seamlessly spiritual and secular (although the latter grew ultimately out of the former), and he bequeathed this model to his followers. Since he was, by Islamic definition, the last prophet of God upon earth, his was a political model whose perfection could not be challenged or questioned without the total abandonment of the pretensions of the entire religion.
This kind of pseudo-historical analysis falls flat on many fronts, foremost of which is the latent assumption that a comparison between Christianity and Islam can account for the sum total of the human experience. Many, many societies and cultural traditions did not develop a "distinction between church and state." China did very well without it until 1911, Judaism was no different than Islam in this regard (Moses provided the model of a prophet-king Dalrymple perceives in Muhammed).
Moreover, Dalrymple vastly overstates the positive light in which Christianity and "Western" society may rest after a genuine historical comparison to Islamic civilization. Dalrymple complains of a lack of seperation between church and state in Islam, but temporal and religious authority were much more distinct in the Islamic caliphate of medieval Spain than in the Christian kingdom of Ferdinand and Isabella which succeeded it. The caliphate saw a golden age of interfaith tolerance and flourishing humanistic culture, the Christian era brought forced conversion, expulsion, and the Inquisition.
Indeed, for most of the past millenium Islamic societies were far more open and tolerant of religious and intellectual diversity than those in the "West." Conversion under threat of death made sense within a Christian theology, as the flames of Hell awaited infidels sooner or later. By contrast Muslims were specifically forbidden to use such methods upon "People of the Book," a designation originally meant for Jews and Christians but ultimately extended to Zoroastrians and Hindus.
"Westerners" are prone to adopt an air of superiority because the forces that condition global modernity- industrialization, nationalism, market capitalism- first took root in Europe and the Americas. But a complacent feeling of superiority conveniently overlooks the facts that a)none of these "Western" achievements would have been possible absent much that was learned or acquired from Asian, African, Native American and Islamic civilizations; b)these forces have transformed the world at a terrible cost. The same societies that cultivated the "freedom of the press" so vaunted (and so abused) by Jyllands Posten also gave rise to the Atlantic Slave Trade, the Holocaust, two World Wars, the Soviet Gulag, the massacre at Srebenica, etc., etc., etc. It is difficult to find a crime committed by an Islamic society to match the worst offenses of "the West." The economic and technological conditions of Islamic societies may have changed more slowly than those of "the West," but at the same time their histories have been marked by less violence. Where is the Islamic Antietam or Verdun? "The Face of Muhammed" would label Islam a lumbering, changeless monolith, but can its author have forgotten that some of the worst totalitarianisms produced by "Western civilization" only fell 17 years ago?
Finally, all of the lamentations about poor, changeless Islam ignore the intense diversity of Islamic communities around the world today. The most egregious violence engendered by "Cartoongate" has transpired in the Arab world, but that community houses less than 1/4 of the world's Muslims. The largest Muslim communities in the world are in South and Southeast Asia (in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia...), and in those societies the response to the Jyllands Posten flap has been far less extreme. Do these responses manifest Islam's incompatibility with modernity? Of course not. The Jyllands Posten cartoons, all considerations of "religious taboos" aside, were genuinely offensive. The kind of anger on display in much of the Islamic world is not far from what a series of cartoons featuring hook-nosed, money-counting rabbis would occasion in the world Jewish community.
Reductionist analyses like those of "The Face of Muhammed" or Theodore Dalrymple recapitulate the same error of the original Jyllands Posten cartoons. To caricaturize Islam as regressive or incompatible with modernity is to play into the hands of those who would truly like to make it so. If Europeans and Americans keep sermonizing Muslims about their chronic inferiority, more and more of them, out of sheer exasperation, will turn to those like Osama bin Laden who will feed them equally ridiculous pabulum about Islamic superiority. To deny that some aspects or segments of the current Islamic community should change would obviously be wrong, but insisting that Islam itself precludes any community from ever changing is patently ridiculous. No one living in Ferdinad and Isabella's Spain could ever predict that that society would embrace the liberal ideals championed by Jyllands Posten. Declaring any culture or society absolutely incapable of change is to deny the humanity of its inhabitants, and dehumanizing others is the surest route to strife and sorrow.
17 comments:
Dear Madman,
"The same societies that cultivated the "freedom of the press" so vaunted (and so abused) by Jyllands Posten also gave rise to the Atlantic Slave Trade, the Holocaust, two World Wars, the Soviet Gulag, the massacre at Srebenica, etc., etc., etc. It is difficult to find a crime committed by an Islamic society to match the worst offenses of "the West." The economic and technological conditions of Islamic societies may have changed more slowly than those of "the West," but at the same time their histories have been marked by less violence. Where is the Islamic Antietam or Verdun? "The Face of Muhammed" would label Islam a lumbering, changeless monolith, but can its author have forgotten that some of the worst totalitarianisms produced by "Western civilization" only fell 17 years ago?"
-- So you want to lecture Westerners not to feel superior by pointing out that they are somehow more violent, and therefore presumably *inferior*? Where is the Islamic Antietam? I don't know, but since the "Islamic world" engaged in and benefitted from the slave trade, and since slavery still exists in the Islamic world, maybe they need an Antietam. In any event, I would chalk the relative lack of mass atrocities (on the scale of Verdun or the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century) up to the fact that the "economic and technological conditions of Islamic societies have changed more slowly. Srebenica was a horror, but I'd say Islamic societies in recent times have reached at least the same body count -- or does Sudan not count?
"The kind of anger on display in much of the Islamic world is not far from what a series of cartoons featuring hook-nosed, money-counting rabbis would occasion in the world Jewish community."
-- Really? So did the "Jewish Street" explode over the *award-winning* Sharon eating Palestinian babies cartoon? Or over the almost daily vile depictions of Jews which appear in Arabic newspapers? Did they burn down embassies and carry signs saying "Freedom go to hell"? And why, by the way, did the "Arab street" *not* explode when the cartoons appeared (front page) in an Egyptian newspaper five months ago?
As for the offensiveness of the cartoons, they are -- by the "abusive" standards of the Western press -- only moderately offensive. Here's a nice analysis of the original cartoons' intrinsic worth from Left2Right:
http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2006/02/from_the_scanda_1.html
I agree with you that Dalrymple treats Islam as a monolith and in a reductionist fashion, but he asks a fair question -- one that has become almost verboten these days but one which historians and other scholars have always asked about religion and its impact on cultures and societies. And his point about the engagement of Islam with modernity in a context in which Muslims can see the consequences of "Reformation" is also a fair one.
I agree with you that it's offensive to treat Muslims as inferior. Given the current context of the controversy, however (in which the violent reaction of the radical Muslims is partly an attempt to intimidate/bully Western media), I'm kind of fascinated by the impulse to scold the Western press as abusive and to chastise Westerners for their smugness.
Sometimes it's not just all about "the other" (Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike). Sometimes it's about us and standing up for the bedrock principles of liberal democracies. If large groups of Christians started burning museums, throwing petrol bombs, and carrying signs that said "Behead the insulters of Christianity" in response to "Piss Christ" I'd have that stupid photograph plastered all over my blog.
And would you write the same post in response to the Salman Rushdie controversy? If not, why not?
(Sorry this comment is kind of disjointed. I'm in a hurry.)
And while we're scolding the Western press for its offensiveness, why not lecture them about their hypocrisy as well? Tim Rutten does a rather nice job of it here:
http://www.calendarlive.com/columnists/rutten/cl-et-rutten11feb11,2,2047978.column
His editorial touches on an issue that was reportedly one of the reasons for the publication of the Danish cartoons -- to what extent does the Western media self-censor with regard to Islam/Muslims? And how much of that self-censorship can be chalked up to "sensitivity" and how much to fear and intimidation?
One more thing. The Dalrymple essay was not a response to the cartoon controversy, as it was written in 2004.
Dear Madman,
I'm sorry. I don't mean to deluge you with comments, but this Christopher Hitchens piece makes the point that I consider most important regarding what should be the reaction of the Western media and others in the West:
http://www.slate.com/id/2135499/
"Can the discussion be carried on without the threat of violence, or the automatic resort to it? When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, he did so in the hope of forwarding a discussion that was already opening in the Muslim world, between extreme Quranic literalists and those who hoped that the text could be interpreted. We know what his own reward was, and we sometimes forget that the fatwa was directed not just against him but against "all those involved in its publication," which led to the murder of the book's Japanese translator and the near-deaths of another translator and one publisher. I went on Crossfire at one point, to debate some spokesman for outraged faith, and said that we on our side would happily debate the propriety of using holy writ for literary and artistic purposes. But that we would not exchange a word until the person on the other side of the podium had put away his gun. (The menacing Muslim bigmouth on the other side refused to forswear state-sponsored suborning of assassination, and was of course backed up by the Catholic bigot Pat Buchanan.)"
Discussions of the propriety of using images of Mohammed, debates about the West's reductionist view of Islam (or about the "Islamic world's" reductionist view of the West), arguments about what is offensive and about how the Western press abuses its freedoms, are all well and good. But until the extremists on one side (and no, they aren't all, or even mostly, extremists) put away their guns, what's the point of wagging your finger at those on the other side?
Dear Kate Marie,
This post obviously hit some kind of nerve with you, but for much of your comments you seem to be shooting past or around (rather than at) my basic point. In general you seem to feel that I am trying to invert the whole "West superior-Islam inferior" fallacy, when really I'm just trying to dispense with that kind of absurdity altogether. Let me address some of your criticisms in detail, though-
"So you want to lecture Westerners not to feel superior by pointing out that they are somehow more violent, and therefore presumably *inferior*?"
Presumably? Your presumption, not mine. I only sought to point out some of the intrinsic ironies in a position like those I cited. I am a happy denizen of "the West" and presume it inferior to no one, but being proud of one's heritage and losing all perspective on how it relates to that of the rest of humanity are very different things. If we love "our" civilization then we have to own it, warts and all.
"Where is the Islamic Antietam? I don't know, but since the 'Islamic world' engaged in and benefitted from the slave trade, and since slavery still exists in the Islamic world, maybe they need an Antietam."
They need an Antietam? Please, Kate Marie. Nobody "needs" an Antietam. Equating the experience of slavery in the "Islamic world" (again, you are generalizing to the entire Islamic world from what is principally the Arab world) with that in the Americas is a fallacy. Yes, there was slavery in pre-Colombian Africa and yes, Muslims were involved, but it took the participation of Europeans and Americans to create the obscenity of Atlantic chattel slavery (in reality a wholly different phenomenon then what had existed before in Africa).
"In any event, I would chalk the relative lack of mass atrocities (on the scale of Verdun or the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century) up to the fact that the 'economic and technological conditions of Islamic societies have changed more slowly.'"
This is a kind of moral relativism that is unworthy of you, KM. Are you really going to give all of Western society a pass on the basis of some half-baked dialectical materialist historicism? Have you ever considered that you might have it the wrong way around, that the material conditions of Islamic society might have changed more slowly because its inhabitants wouldn't make the kind of moral compromises that facilitate "progress?"
"Srebenica was a horror, but I'd say Islamic societies in recent times have reached at least the same body count -- or does Sudan not count?"
Here again this game of tit-for-tat is beneath you. Are you shooting for two wrongs make a right? My point was to rebut the notion that "Islamic society" was somehow "flawed" in a way that "Western society" is not, not to claim that one is worse than the other.
"Really? So did the "Jewish Street" explode over the *award-winning* Sharon eating Palestinian babies cartoon? Or over the almost daily vile depictions of Jews which appear in Arabic newspapers? Did they burn down embassies and carry signs saying "Freedom go to hell"? And why, by the way, did the "Arab street" *not* explode when the cartoons appeared (front page) in an Egyptian newspaper five months ago?"
No, the "Jewish Street" has not reacted in the ways you describe. But had similarly anti-Semitic cartoons appeared in a *Danish* newspaper you would have seen an angry reaction among Jews. Even moreso had they been published in a mainstream American newspaper. All this is to say that context matters. Jews do not react aggressively to anti-semitic messages in the Islamic press because a)in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict it is expected; b)to the extent that (European and American) Jews pay attention to Arab culture at all, they view it as subaltern. Part of what has animated the cartoon fracas is the context of recent Muslim immigration to Europe and the feeling among Muslim immigrants that they are being increasingly marginalized in European society. This does not excuse the extremity of *some* Muslims reactions (*they* did not carry signs saying "Freedom Go to Hell," a few of *them* did), but it does make is less than the wild irrationality many would claim it is.
'As for the offensiveness of the cartoons, they are -- by the "abusive" standards of the Western press" "
I can't tell whether you are misunderstanding or willfully mischaracterizing my use of the term "abuse." I was not referring to Jyllan Posten's "abuse" of Muslims, but of their abuse of freedom of the press. They would not have willingly and uncritically published cartoons lampooning the Holocaust (though now it seems they may feel compelled to- aargh), they should have shown better judgment with regard to Islam. Is Jyllan Posten free to publish the Muhammed cartoons? Sure, but it is an irresponsible use of that freedom, and does little to help those who cherish and defend it.
-- only moderately offensive.'
I haven't looked at the blog you linked to, but straight from the hip I'd have to disagree. The cartoons, in very succinct and viscerally effective imagery, make the same kind of reductionist arguments declaimed more verbosely on sites like "The Face of Muhammed"- that terrorism is somehow the natural and inevitable product of Islamic faith. This of itself would be an offensive message about any religion (and yes, I know similar things are said about Christianity in the Western media), but given the surrounding contexts (escalating tensions between Europeans and Muslims over terrorism, immigration, etc.) it is destructively and negligently inflammatory. It was the cartoon equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater. Your outrage at the "bullying" tactics of radical Muslims is clear, but have you considered that the widespread anger among Muslims, especially in Europe, might be rooted in fear? You might say pish-tosh, but given facts like the massacre at Srebenica and the feeding of 6 million members of a minority into ovens not so long ago could you truly blame Europe's Muslims if they are afraid? The Holocaust required no 9/11 or 3/11 as provocation, after all.
"I agree with you that Dalrymple treats Islam as a monolith and in a reductionist fashion, but he asks a fair question..."
Take another look at what you wrote here KM, and tell me if you can find your point. One might paraphrase your statement as "Dalrymple asks a fair question to which he gives a patently unfair answer." The point of my post is that yes, the question is fair, but it is far too important and complex to be approached in this kind of ham-fisted manner. This condition is made more urgent by the fact that answers like Dalrymple's, when broadcast and (God forbid) acted upon in the current world have serious and detrimental political consequences.
"I agree with you that it's offensive to treat Muslims as inferior. Given the current context of the controversy, however (in which the violent reaction of the radical Muslims is partly an attempt to intimidate/bully Western media), I'm kind of fascinated by the impulse to scold the Western press as abusive and to chastise Westerners for their smugness.
Sometimes it's not just all about "the other" (Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike). Sometimes it's about us and standing up for the bedrock principles of liberal democracies. If large groups of Christians started burning museums, throwing petrol bombs, and carrying signs that said "Behead the insulters of Christianity" in response to "Piss Christ" I'd have that stupid photograph plastered all over my blog."
You would paste up "Piss Christ," but if Jews were violently protesting against a series of Nazi cartoons would you paste that to your blog? You fail to see that the Jyllans Posten cartoons have the same kind of execrable *political* valence as Nazi propoganda, they are not just the violation of a religious taboo but a gratuitous attack against a community living in precarious circumstances.
What worries me so much is that the perspectives expressed in both the Jyllans Posten cartoons and the "Western" response to the ensuing fracas are both similarly reductionist and destructive, portending a continuing downward spiral. The very fact that in Dalrymple and "The Face of Muhammed" we have such a structurally similar perspective being packaged in both "high brow" and "low brow" terms points to the possibility that this position is becoming "hegemonic" in European and American society. The day when everyone in "West" takes for granted that Islam is "naturally inferior" and a harbinger of terrorism (and it seems like that day may already be here) the world as a whole is in a heap of trouble.
We are all in hysterics over the violent reaction to Cartoongate, but the fact is that the violence is being carried out by a tiny minority of Muslims in a very small segment of the Islamic world as a whole. Given the natural tendency of the media to sensationalize and play to our basest impulses, don't you think it is possible that the Western press has overemphasized the destructive aspects of the Islamic response and underreported (virtually left unreported) the real voices of outrage AGAINST the death threats and violence throughout the Arabic and Muslim communities? "The West" and "the Islamic world" are two communities viewing one-another through a prism made heavily distortional by thick history and murky politics. In those circumstances any reflex perception of "the other" demands critical study.
"And would you write the same post in response to the Salman Rushdie controversy? If not, why not?"
My response to that controversy would have been somewhat different, but there the context was not at all the same. First of all, remember that I absolutely condemn the intimidation leveled against the Danish editors as I did in the case of Rushdie. But Rushdie was criticizing Islam from within, his comments could not be perceived as a "tribal" threat the way the Danish cartoons may. In Rushdie's case I would agree the wiser course was to "circle the wagons" and defend civil liberties, though even then I would have argued very forcefully against anyone who presented that case as evidence of the intrinsic "incompatibility" between Islam and modernity. Moreover, the Rushdie case transpired in a world that had not yet seen 9/11, 3/11, the invasion of Iraq, etc., and the current context demands a very high degree of sensitivity toward the "other" in all interactions between "the West" and "Islam."
You seem to feel that I am misguided in addressing the flaws in Western perceptions of Islam when the threat of intolerance within the Islamic community is so real, but I would contend that in viewing the latter as a greater threat than the former you are ruled by the same bias I seek to redress in my post.
The Sharon eating Palestinian babies *was* published in a European paper, Madman. It won awards.
I understood that you were referring to their "abuse" of press freedom. I simply used the adjective "abusive" in a way that wasn't clear or didn't make sense. There is no comparison between publishing cartoons lampooning the Holocaust and publishing the cartoons they did publish. A better comparison is between publishing the cartoons they published and cartoons/representations which are deeply offensive to people of particular religions because they are perceived as mocking/blasphemous, etc.
You haven't looked at the blog I linked to, but without looking at it, you'd have to disagree? Okay. Several of the cartoons make no such reductionist argument at all, but if you don't want to look at the argument, don't look at it. Do you understand the context in which the cartoons were sought and published? And I'm sorry, but your suggestion that the Muslim reaction may be one of fear or that a Muslim Holocaust might be just around the corner strikes me as rather absurd, Madman. Most of the evidence suggests that Jews still have most to fear in Europe -- or people who criticize Islam (see Theo Van Gogh or Hirsi Ali).
"You would paste up "Piss Christ," but if Jews were violently protesting against a series of Nazi cartoons would you paste that to your blog? You fail to see that the Jyllans Posten cartoons have the same kind of execrable *political* valence as Nazi propoganda, they are not just the violation of a religious taboo but a gratuitous attack against a community living in precarious circumstances."
--If Jews were burning embassies and trying to intimidate Western media I just might. And so should Western media, especially when the cartoons become news. Saying that the cartoons have the same political valence as Nazi propaganda is, again, absurd. Are you telling me that the "precarious circumstances" that Muslims in Denmark or other European countries live under are akin to the "precarious circumstances" that Jews lived under in Germany in, say, the Thirties? What's your evidence for that?
"Moreover, the Rushdie case transpired in a world that had not yet seen 9/11, 3/11, the invasion of Iraq, etc., and the current context demands a very high degree of sensitivity toward the "other" in all interactions between "the West" and "Islam."
-- In other words, since we've now had mass murders by Islamist extremists against the West, we have to be extra careful about upsetting them? If Rushdie had written the Satanic Verses after 9/11 you just *might* be scolding Rushdie instead of the petrol bombers? That's comforting.
"You seem to feel that I am misguided in addressing the flaws in Western perceptions of Islam when the threat of intolerance within the Islamic community is so real, but I would contend that in viewing the latter as a greater threat than the former you are ruled by the same bias I seek to redress in my post."
-- I view the latter as a greater threat than the former because the current evidence suggests that it *is* the greater threat. If you have better evidence than "The Face of Mohammed" and the Dalrymple essay, please let me know. And please give me a break with the "bias" stuff, Madman. You know what, though? I admit it. I am biased in favor of "the West," of Western culture, and of the values I associate with it. How big of you to be above all that.
And by the way, I am the Underminer. I am always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me.
P.S.
You say, "Are you really going to give all of Western society a pass on the basis of some half-baked dialectical materialist historicism?"
-- I think you misunderstood my point here about the influence of technology. I never meant to give all of Western society a pass. I was responding to what appeared to be an attempt by you to give Muslim societies a pass. In any event, I wasn't making a dialectical materialist point but a "human beings are bad and the scale of their badness is sometimes proportionate to their technological capacity to fulfill their evil intentions" point. The Hutus in Rwanda slaughtered over three quarters of a million Tutsis, mostly with machetes. That number of dead may be chump change compared to WW1, but I don't think it's because the Hutus were unwilling to make the "moral compromises" that facilitate progress.
And how does your claim that the violent reactions of Muslims might have been born of "fear" sqare with the fact that most of the violent protests are happening in non-Western, Muslim countries?
Finally, I just noticed your claim that the cartoons were the equivalent of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That's one of the most questionable things you've said. Are you suggesting, then, that the cartoons should not be considered protected speech?
Dear Kate Marie,
"The Sharon eating Palestinian babies *was* published in a European paper, Madman. It won awards."
I don't get what you read into this. Does the fact that Jews can absorb this kind of insult with more equanimity somehow prove that Judaism is compatible with modernity where Islam is not? There are plenty of Jewish fanatics out there, just ask the widow of Yitzhak Rabin. The same can be said of Christianity, ask any of the many justices and lawyers associated with Roe v. Wade who have been the object of death threats or assassination attempts. Every religious community has "hot button" icons and issues that will smoke the fanatics from the trees. The fact that *European* cartoons elicits a strong response from the Islamic community says much about the current (geo)political and social conditions impacting the Muslim community, and little about Islam's relative "compatability" with modernity.
"There is no comparison between publishing cartoons lampooning the Holocaust and publishing the cartoons they did publish. A better comparison is between publishing the cartoons they published and cartoons/representations which are deeply offensive to people of particular religions because they are perceived as mocking/blasphemous, etc."
This simply isn't true. Imagine if an American newspaper had elicited a group of depictions of Moses. About half of the portraits turn out to be innocuous or conventional. The other half depict Moses eating Palestinian babies, or fabricating lies about some "Holocaust" that is supposed to have happened, or conspiring with Aaron and Joshua to take over the world financial system. The newspaper decides to go ahead and publish all of the pictures anyway, explaining that it is all an exercise in explorating freedom of the press. If the American Jewish community's reaction to "The Passion of the Christ" is any gauge by which to judge, there would be a huge outcry, and (unlike in the case of the Gibson epic) it would elicit enough sympathy from the wider American community that (in the metaphorical sense) heads would roll.
The "Moses cartoons" would warrant that kind of response NOT because they defamed a religious ideal but because they were politically anti-semitic, and because modern political anti-semitism has been shown to be a potentially catastrophic evil.
The Muslim cartoons are offensive in the same way because anti-Muslim sentiment has been shown (a la Srebenica) to have comparably catastrophic potential in world politics. Even more than that, "the West" is now engaged in a deadly struggle with an enemy that hides within the larger Islamic community, cloaks itself in the mantle of Islamic pietism, and exploits Arab and Muslim grievances against "the West" to fraudulently garner political support. It is essential that that struggle not be allowed to persist or expand, and the only way to preempt an endless cycle of violence is to discredit the propoganda that Al Qaeda and its ilk use to con complacency or support from the larger Islamic community. If we allow this conflict to degenerate into a "clash of civilizations" Al Qaeda wins, and the Jyllans Posten cartoon fiasco was a step in that direction.
"You haven't looked at the blog I linked to, but without looking at it, you'd have to disagree?"
Please, KM. I disagreed with your assertion that the cartoons were "only moderately offensive," not with the article I hadn't read, ergo the phrase "from the hip." Having read your article my views are unchanged, though. The fact that just over 1/3 of the cartoons contained anti-Islamic sentiments doesn't detract from the poor judgemnt of the editors (see my "Moses cartoon" hypothetical). Tappenden seems hell-bent to give the cartoons the most innocuous reading possible. I don't see any ambiguity in what he calls Cartoon #2 (the crescent-horns cartoon. His discussion of Cartoon #9 ignores the fact that Muhammed is drawn with a black bar blocking his eyes, teeth bared, dagger drawn. This is not just a cartoon about the subordination of women, it depicts Muslims (through Muhammed as proxy) as blindly homicidal. As far as I can see no mention is made of the "No More Virgins" cartoon, which is in perhaps the worst taste of all of them. And in discussing #11 (the notorious bomb-turban portrait) he says:
"A reasonable person can hold the position represented in cartoon 11; the fatwa on Rushdie ensured that, and the smoldering embassies reinforce it. The issue is not what is true, but what a reasonable person could take to be true. If the picture is effective in making the point, so be it."
This is the worst kind of "plausible" reasoning. The same kind of logic could be applied to the "Sharon eating babies" cartoon or any of the "Moses" cartoons I described above. If you accept this argument you can't object to the publication of the "Sharon" cartoon (you can take offense, but you have to conceed that it was a completely acceptable and responsible exercise of free speech).
"Several of the cartoons make no such reductionist argument at all, but if you don't want to look at the argument, don't look at it."
Huh? Wha? Oh...two different arguments...Well, I looked at them both, so there!
"Do you understand the context in which the cartoons were sought and published?"
Yes, and I'm unimpressed. If the newspaper had run an article with 12 portraits of Muhammed absent political messages (or even absent heinously and unfairly anti-Muslim political messages) the only thing I would have to say about this case is that those issuing death threats and intimidation are execrable. As it is I still have that to say (as I would if death threats were made against the creators of anti-semitic Moses cartoons), but the potentially destructive political contexts into which the Danish cartoons transgress demand conscientious criticism.
"Saying that the cartoons have the same political valence as Nazi propaganda is, again, absurd. Are you telling me that the "precarious circumstances" that Muslims in Denmark or other European countries live under are akin to the "precarious circumstances" that Jews lived under in Germany in, say, the Thirties? What's your evidence for that?"
I realize that here I was unclear, I didn't mean "Nazi propoganda" of the past, but Nazi propoganda of the present day. In other words, as I have explained above, anti-Muslim cartoons like these promote the same kind of execrable evil as anti-semitic cartoons (whoever creates or disseminates them). The conditions of Muslims today may not be comparable to that of Jews in the Thirties, but certainly it is similar to that of Jews in the Twenties. Arguably it is worse, as many Muslim immigrants are living in a kind of desperate poverty that most Western European Jews did not experience. Jews in the 1920's had little inkling of how bad things would become very shortly, and the same kind of rising tide of anti-Muslim fascist political agitation is occurring in Europe today as occurred against Jews back then. Am I predicting another Holocaust, this time against the Muslims? No, but I cannot blame Muslims for being angry and afraid.
"In other words, since we've now had mass murders by Islamist extremists against the West, we have to be extra careful about upsetting them? If Rushdie had written the Satanic Verses after 9/11 you just *might* be scolding Rushdie instead of the petrol bombers? That's comforting."
"In other words?!" Please don't presume to fabricate words and call them mine. I made no such claims in my comments, your inferences are wholly unwarranted. Sensitivity toward Islam is essential because, as I explained above, if current political conditions degenerate into a "clash of civilizations" Al Qaeda wins. I don't give a damn about upsetting Al Qaeda, as you should well know, but I do worry about persuading the great mass of otherwise peaceable Muslims that we view ourselves at war with Islam. I wouldn't "scold" Rushdie in any context unless he made a harmfully reductionist argument. I've never read the "Satanic Verses," but from what I have read about it what Rushdie was trying to accomplish in it was provocative but far from reductionist and gratuitously defamatory. I believe in an artisit's right to be *creatively* provocative as much as any "Westerner," and I don't think artists should necessarily be sanctioned for being destructively provocative. But when they are destructively provocative, as some of the Jyllans Posten artists were, it is our responsibility to call them on it.
"I view the latter as a greater threat than the former because the current evidence suggests that it *is* the greater threat. If you have better evidence than 'The Face of Mohammed' and the Dalrymple essay, please let me know."
I'm at a bit of a loss here, KM. If you can't see the dangers of an ever-widening "clash of civilizations" I don't know how to make the scales drop from your eyes.
"I wasn't making a dialectical materialist point but a "human beings are bad and the scale of their badness is sometimes proportionate to their technological capacity to fulfill their evil intentions" point."
I see, yours is not a half-baked historicism, but a half-baked ahistoricism. Well, you subvert your own point by reference to the tragedy in Rwanda, which demonstrates that genocide does not require industrial technology. Muslims and Europeans were technologically on a par with one-another until the 1ate 18th century, but using the same technology Europeans turned slavery into a far more heinous institution than it had ever been in the Islamic world. China did not possess the industrial technology of the US, but the Taiping Rebellion was a far more bloody conflict than the contemporary US civil war in per-capita terms. Your "human nature remains constant, only technology changes" theory just doesn't account for the degree of variability we see in the historic behavior of different societies at different times.
"And how does your claim that the violent reactions of Muslims might have been born of "fear" sqare with the fact that most of the violent protests are happening in non-Western, Muslim countries"
Aaargh- I never made such a claim. Go back and reread: I asked if you had considered whether the "widespread anger" might be a product of fear. As to why that anger expresses itself violently in certain societies and not others, I would of course contend that it has much more to do with the particular social, political, and economic conditions of that society than with any intrinsic incompatabity between Islam and modernity.
"Finally, I just noticed your claim that the cartoons were the equivalent of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That's one of the most questionable things you've said. Are you suggesting, then, that the cartoons should not be considered protected speech?"
No, like most ACLU-supporting liberals I would insist that virtually no speech should be controlled unless it is certain to endanger life or property in the very moment of its utterance. But in the long term I think the destructive potential of messages like those in the Danish cartoons is comparable to that of the proverbial "fire" scream.
Madman,
Let me start with your last point first:
"No, like most ACLU-supporting liberals I would insist that virtually no speech should be controlled unless it is certain to endanger life or property in the very moment of its utterance. But in the long term I think the destructive potential of messages like those in the Danish cartoons is comparable to that of the proverbial "fire" scream."
-- I'm not understanding your point, in my typical half-baked, ahistorical, ignorant way. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is given as an example of speech that is unprotected precisely because it is likely to endanger life or property in the moment of its utterance. It's not meant to describe the long term "destructive potential" of speech, and speech which is "potentially destructive" in the long term is, as far as I know, protected by the First Amendment. So are you standing by the "fire a crowded theater" remark or retracting it?
The Sharon cartoon, or the hypothetical Moses cartoon, *is* a completely acceptable exercise of free speech -- at least depending on one's definition of acceptable. I happen to think it's also irresponsible and disgusting, but I'm used to the press being irresponsible and disgusting, at least in their editorial pages. And if we lived in a context in which a small but vocal and extremely influential faction of Jewish people routinely
rejected the founding rights and principles of Western liberal democracy and actually threatened or committed violence against those who exercised those rights, and if Jews started rioting in the streets and threatening the "insulters of Judaism" I would reluctantly stand up for the disgusting cartoon. My problem with your position is that I think it's wrong in a context in which one side essentially has a gun pointed to its head by a small group of extremists on the other side.
"The Muslim cartoons are offensive in the same way because anti-Muslim sentiment has been shown (a la Srebenica) to have comparably catastrophic potential in world politics."
-- Anti-Christian sentiment has been shown (a la Sudan) to have comparably catastrophic potential in world politics. Anti-homosexual sentiment has been shown (a la Hitler) to have comparably catastrophic potential in world politics. Anti-Armenian sentiment has been shown (a la Turkey) to have comparably catastrophic potential. I can't think of any examples of anti-Armenian sentiment in the media lately, but I can think of examples of anti-Christian and anti-homosexual sentiment. Seems to me you have a lot of scolding to do, Madman. And I presume you also mean to scold the producers of South Park, which included a depiction of Mohammed in one of their episodes a while ago (no riots, though), and the Egyptian newspaper which included the cartoons as a front page story five months ago, and the newspaper editors in Jordan (since jailed) who printed some of the cartoons when they became news.
I *don't* object to the publication of the Sharon eating babies cartoon. Like you, I think it's extremely disgusting, and I certainly wouldn't have published it, but the paper that published it has every right to publish it. And I have every right to protest against it, just as the Muslims who are offended by the Danish cartoon have every right to protest loudly and peacefully, to counter that speech with speech of their own, and to organize boycotts against the newspaper and its sponsors.
"Well, you subvert your own point by reference to the tragedy in Rwanda, which demonstrates that genocide does not require industrial technology."
-- But that was precisely my point. The scale of a genocide gets bigger with industrial technology, though. And your examples of historical variability don't in any way refute the notion that human nature remains constant.
My claim that the latter (the threat of intolerance within the Muslim community) is a greater threat than the former (the threat of flawed Western perceptions of Islam) was a response to this statement of yours:
"You seem to feel that I am misguided in addressing the flaws in Western perceptions of Islam when the threat of intolerance within the Islamic community is so real, but I would contend that in viewing the latter as a greater threat than the former you are ruled by the same bias I seek to redress in my post."
-- I never made any claims about the danger of an "ever-widening clash of civilizations," Madman. I made a claim that you have failed to prove that there are any significant movements in the West which presage or contribute to such a clash in any way that's as clearly threatening as the intolerance on display in the cartoon controversy. Forgive me for not considering "the Face of Mohammed," Theodore Dalrymple and some vague, half-baked pronouncements about the "desperate poverty of Muslims" and the "rising tide of anti-Muslim fascist political agitation." I gave you specific examples of the ways that Muslim extremists have threatened, intimidated, and murdered those who dare to criticize them. Pim Fortuyn. Theo Van Gogh. Hirsi Ali. The Muslim Danish member of Parliament who has to live under police protection (a state of affairs that existed long before the cartoon controversy). The desecration of synagogues. Rising threats and attacks against Jews in France and several other European countries. Recent beatings of gays by Muslims in Denmark. Those are specific examples of radical Muslim intolerance of Western values that had specific violent consequences.
By the way, I haven't personally argued that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with modernity.
Finally, I will concede that your post struck a nerve with me, and I will also concede that, after rereading your post, I think that what you were arguing is somewhat more modest than I had originally thought. Nevertheless, I think there is still a sense in which your post -- especially its final paragraph -- can be interpreted as painting the entire "pro-cartoonist" side as biased against Islam, as attempting to "sermonize" Muslims about the West's superiority. To be honest, I think *that* kind of generalization is beneath *you,* though I wouldn't have intially put it that way, because, well . . . it sounds kind of obnoxious. It's as plausible to paint the defenders of the cartoons as generally biased against Islam as it is to paint all Westerners who take your line as decadent and self-hating. And I wondered why you were concentrating on a reaction (biased, flawed perceptions of Islam) that wasn't characteristic of most of the commentary.
"I'm not understanding your point, in my typical half-baked, ahistorical, ignorant way."
Oy. I'll repeat my point, let's see if you get it on a second go: a)yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is rightfully punishable by law because it can cause death and injury in the very moment it is said; b)the cartoons don't meet that standard and should not be punished by law or anything else, but have the potential to cause just as much death in the long run.
"The Sharon cartoon, or the hypothetical Moses cartoon, *is* a completely acceptable exercise of free speech -- at least depending on one's definition of acceptable."
Here's where it gets very murky for me. You say you find the Sharon cartoon irresponsible and disgusting, which is in essence what I have said about the Jyllands Posten cartoons, so where do we disagree? Maybe here-
"...if Jews started rioting in the streets and threatening the "insulters of Judaism" I would reluctantly stand up for the disgusting cartoon."
What would this "standing up" look like? Condemning those who make threats and riots? Read my post again, I do that right away. Would "standing up" entail calling the cartoons other than disgusting and irresponsible, or even failing to note how disgusting and irresponsible the cartoons were? If not them I'm very confused how your "standing up" would look any different than what I do here.
"Anti-Christian sentiment has been shown (a la Sudan) to have comparably catastrophic potential in world politics. Anti-homosexual sentiment has been shown (a la Hitler) to have comparably catastrophic potential in world politics. Anti-Armenian sentiment has been shown (a la Turkey) to have comparably catastrophic potential. I can't think of any examples of anti-Armenian sentiment in the media lately, but I can think of examples of anti-Christian and anti-homosexual sentiment. Seems to me you have a lot of scolding to do, Madman."
So you are retracting your denial that the Danish cartoons have the same political valence as Nazi anti-semitic cartoons? The suggestion criticizing the Jyllands Posten cartoons is somehow invalid because there are lots of other injustices out there to oppose is just nonsensical. It is reminiscent of those who would argue that the invasion of Iraq was illegitimate because dictatorships in Burma, North Korea, etc. etc. remain standing and free from attack. Moreover, you ignore one of the central concerns of my post. I find speech like that in "The Face of Muhammed" and Dalrymple and Jyllands Posten not merely because my heart bleeds for the world's Muslims but because such speech is so tactically idiotic in the political struggle against Islamic extremism. Broadcasting that we "Westerners" view Islam as fundamentally opposed to modernity and irreconcileably at odds with Western values is the surest way to drive Muslims into the ranks of Al Qaeda.
"But that was precisely my point. The scale of a genocide gets bigger with industrial technology, though."
You are missing my point. If you conceed that genocide does not require industrial technology one should be able to find numerous examples of genocide in Islamic history despite the fact that industrialization only came to Islamic societies partially and late, and one cannot. The Turkish genocide against Armenians is the first clear example, and that was much more a result of conversion to secular nationalism (i.e. an accomodation to "modernity") than anything traditional or intrinsic to Islamic doctrine. Prior to the twentieth century Islamic societies were as a rule more tolerant of ethnic and religious difference than European societies, so how does that support your contention of the constancy of human nature?
"I never made any claims about the danger of an "ever-widening clash of civilizations," Madman. I made a claim that you have failed to prove that there are any significant movements in the West which presage or contribute to such a clash in any way that's as clearly threatening as the intolerance on display in the cartoon controversy....I gave you specific examples of the ways that Muslim extremists have threatened, intimidated, and murdered those who dare to criticize them."
If you can't see "specific examples" of events and trends in the "West" that contribute alarmingly to a "clash of civilizations" then you just don't have your eyes open, Kate Marie. The extended detention without charge of thousands of innocent American Muslims in the wake of 9/11, Abu Ghraib, the vandalism of mosques, attacks against Muslims (or people perceived as Muslims), the advocacy by a US Congressman that America threaten to bomb Mecca. You might contend either that none of these rise to the level of killing artists or that some of these mistakes were made in the context of a war against a dangerous enemy, but my point is not to weigh blame in the scales. My concern is tactical as much as moral. THe struggle against Al Qaeda assymetical on both the military AND political fronts. Every political slip that "the West" makes costs it more in the propoganda war against Al Qaeda then vice-versa. Every misstep that arises to any degree from anti-Muslim prejudice or even ignorance costs heavily in what is already an uphill struggle against Al Qaeda. In that context messages like those of Jyllands Posten, Dalrymple, and "THe Face of Muhammed" are doubly damaging in that they both reaffirm Western bigots in their biases and preconceptions and presents the worst possible "Western" face to the Islamic world. The intolerance promoted by Islamic extremism do far less to genuinely erode Western liberties than reductionist depictions of Islam do to alienate Muslims from the West and push them closer to Al Qaeda.
"Oy. I'll repeat my point, let's see if you get it on a second go: a)yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is rightfully punishable by law because it can cause death and injury in the very moment it is said; b)the cartoons don't meet that standard and should not be punished by law or anything else, but have the potential to cause just as much death in the long run."
-- Since you persisted in using the phrase (shouting fire, etc.) to describe the potentially dangerous *long-term* effects of the cartoons, I think my question made sense. It's clear, then, that the cartoons are *not* comparable to shouting fire in a crowded theater, except in that special way that things that can *potentially* cause long-term destruction are comparable to shouting fire in a crowded theater. Or, if the shoe doesn't fit, force it ... and suggest your interlocutor is stupid.
"Standing up" for the disgusting Moses cartoon would mean linking to it, or posting it on my site, and *focusing* my criticism on the extremists who are rejecting the principles of Western liberal democracy by means of violence and threats.
And please don't tell me I don't have my eyes open regarding the potential threat of bigoted Western responses to Islam, Madman. I'm not required to make your points for you. You seemed to suggest the threat of Western intolerance of Islam was equally as dangerous as, or even more dangerous than, the threat of Muslim intolerance of Western liberal ideals. I provided specific examples for my belief that the latter is more threatening. If you want to make your case, go right ahead, but don't throw in the "you haven't had your eyes open" line. Do I assume, then, that since you didn't mention all of the instances of radical Muslim intimidation of Jews and Westerners that *you* haven't had your eyes open? If I were prone to sweeping generalizations and reductionist arguments (which, come to think of it, I am, according to you) I would say that your understanding of the context here is filtered through an anti-Western bias.
"The intolerance promoted by Islamic extremism do far less to genuinely erode Western liberties than reductionist depictions of Islam do to alienate Muslims from the West and push them closer to Al Qaeda."
-- First, reductionist or monolithic depictions of Islam are not necessarily bigoted. I would venture to guess that most people who are steeped in the traditions of their own culture and religion are casually reductionist in their ideas about other cultures/religions. For instance, I have a good friend who had assumed that because I went to Catholic schools, I was never taught the theory of evolution. That may be a reductionist view of my religion, but I didn't consider it bigoted in any way.
What bothers me most about your post is its characterization of the entire "Western" reaction to the cartoon controversy as bigoted, and its concommitant assumption that your own position is more enlightened than all of those "sermonizers" in the West. You seem, at the same time, to be treating the "West" as monolithically and in as reductionist a fashion as the "bigots" you despise, and to be holding "the West" to an almost impossible standard of "sensitivity" -- one which requires that all of our decisions about artistic and political expression be constrained by considerations of foreign policy and international relations and sometimes measured against standards which are antithetical to our own culture. Fine -- just don't ever let me hear you arguing that the Patriot Act is a "shredding of the Constitution."
Kate Marie,
I can see where my use of the "fire" metaphor was unreasonable now. Comparing speech that has the potential to kill people in ten seconds with speech that might kill the same number of people in ten days is a real stretch.
"I'm not required to make your points for you."
Oh, so you knew there was evidence supporting my case but were denying it by way of some kind of test? That's generous, especially since you hadn't mentioned any "specific" cases (Pim Fortuyn, Theo Van Gogh, etc.) of Muslim intolerance (other than the cartoon flap itself) until the post previous, but I had admitted from the outset that it was a serious problem. And now that I have given you specific evidence (to which I would include the ban on Muslim headscarves in France) your answer is "you didn't say those before so they don't count?"
As for your response to the hypothetical "Moses cartoons" I've done the first part. My criticism is not *focused* on the intolerance of the extremists because 1)they are not likely to receive it, or to care even if they did; 2)as a denizen of the "West" I see my more useful role (and my duty) as critiquing the position of those I can reach within the group of which I am a part.
With regard to the "Moses cartoon" hypothetical, what would you feel obligated to say to or about the vast mass of Jews who were justifiably and vocally angry yet who had not indulged in violence or intimidation?
As for your understanding of "bigotry," it is deeply flawed. I've met people who thought that Jews had horns because they had been told that and didn't know any better. The fact that their bigotry was born of ignorance rather than malice made it less blameworthy but no less bigoted, and no less potentially harmful if allowed to persist.
"What bothers me most about your post is its characterization of the entire "Western" reaction to the cartoon controversy as bigoted,"
I've done no such thing. I joined in the condemnation of violence and intimidation, which is part of the "Western" response and in no way bigotry. What I find bigoted is the tendency toward reductionist views of Islam and blank pronouncements about its incompatibility with modernity. I gave some specific and obvious examples (or are you arguing now that neither "The Face of Muhammed" or Dalrymple are bigoted?). Trends like the banning of headscarves in France, detention of innocent Muslims in the U.S., Abu Ghraib, etc. etc. demonstrate that these attitudes are fairly widespread and find expression in policy in "the West."
"...and its concommitant assumption that your own position is more enlightened than all of those "sermonizers" in the West. You seem, at the same time, to be treating the "West" as monolithically and in as reductionist a fashion as the "bigots" you despise, and to be holding "the West" to an almost impossible standard of "sensitivity" -- one which requires that all of our decisions about artistic and political expression be constrained by considerations of foreign policy and international relations and sometimes measured against standards which are antithetical to our own culture."
I do no such thing, I'm only arguing that we should a)extend the same sensitivity to Muslims that we extend to groups within our own community (such as Jews); b)at the moments when those standards of sensitivity are breached (as they are occasionally in the case of groups like the Jews) and evoke an angry reaction from Muslims not to leap to the conclusion on the basis of a small group of extremists that Muslims were unworthy of that sensitivity in the first place or shouldn't merit it in the future.
You keep sounding the theme of guilt and blame, but if you would give a fair reading to my post and comments you would see that these are not at all my concerns. I love "the West" warts and all and want to see it continue to flourish. The chief goal of my criticism is to see "the West" play smart in a dangerous conflict so as to minimize the destructive consequences to ourselves, our children, and the world at large.
"Fine -- just don't ever let me hear you arguing that the Patriot Act is a "shredding of the Constitution.""
This is just a complete non-sequitur.
"I can see where my use of the "fire" metaphor was unreasonable now. Comparing speech that has the potential to kill people in ten seconds with speech that might kill the same number of people in ten days is a real stretch."
-- Yes, that's partly why it's unreasonable (though there's a difference between potentiality and likelihood) and partly that shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is used generally used an example of *unprotected speech.* In any event, it took -- not ten days -- but five months for the cartoons to fulfill their "potential" for destructiveness, as I'm sure you're aware.
"And now that I have given you specific evidence (to which I would include the ban on Muslim headscarves in France) your answer is "you didn't say those before so they don't count?"
-- No, that was decidedly *not* my answer. My answer was don't patronize me. At the outset and subsequently, you seemed to claim Muslim intolerance was less serious and dangerous than "Western" intolerance of Muslims -- I assumed that was one of your reasons for focusing on it in your post. I disagreed. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I persist in "blindly" believing that, at this point, the threat of violence from radical Muslim intolerance of the "West" is greater than the threat of Western intolerance of Muslims.
P.S. And since you want to include the detention of "thousands" of "innocent" Muslims after 9/11, am I allowed to include 9/11, Bali, 3/11, 7/7, etc.? I left those out as example of the threat of Muslim intolerance.
Dear Kate Marie,
"No, that was decidedly *not* my answer. My answer was don't patronize me."
If my comment about "open your eyes" was patronizing I apologize. It was largely rhetorical, which is to say that didn't mean to imply that you didn't know about the evidence of Western intolerance toward Muslims, just that your insistence that it needed to be enumerated seemed tendentious.
"At the outset and subsequently, you seemed to claim Muslim intolerance was less serious and dangerous than "Western" intolerance of Muslims -- I assumed that was one of your reasons for focusing on it in your post."
I focused on Western intolerance and bigotry because a)it is something that we as Westerners have much more direct power to do something about, and there is the hope that redressing the problem might contribute to decreasing Muslim intolerance of the West, if only by facilitating communication across the divide; b)in very real ways Western bigotry toward Islam poses a greater threat to the West than Muslim intolerance because it saps the West of effective force in the political struggle against Al Qaeda. Not every intolerant Muslim will necessarily join Al Qaeda or support its activities, but Western bigotry, through playing to Al Qaeda propoganda about a war between Islam and the West, will drive more Muslims into Al Qaeda's fold. It seems intuitively obvious to me that if changing minds is a key goal, bigotry will do more to change minds in a negative direction than a defense of Jyllands Posten's right to publish their cartoons will in a positive direction- the minds of those who feel inclined to issue a death threat over the cartoons are pretty well set.
"We'll have to agree to disagree on this one."
Fair enough, but if you allow that this point is negotiable it is difficult to see on what definitive grounds you would persist in objecting to my post.
"And since you want to include the detention of "thousands" of "innocent" Muslims after 9/11, am I allowed to include 9/11, Bali, 3/11, 7/7, etc.?"
Sure, I would just insist that, because of its peculiar nature and content, the first essential step in combatting that particular kind of intolerance is guarding against Western anti-Muslim bigotry.
Okay, Madman, and I'm sorry if I was testy in my original comments and if I mistook your rhetoric as patronizing. Our clashes always seem to involve an escalation of sarcasm.
It seems a sliver of heavily mined land separates us from occupying common ground on this issue. I *do* think we ought to be concerned, both morally and tactically, about anti-Muslim bigotry in the West. I don't, on the other hand, consider Theodore Dalrymple to be the Western counterpart to Islamist extremism. And I think Westerners may be at a tactical disadvantage here, as we *tend* (at this point in history) to be relatively more sensitive to different traditions, cultures and religions, and relatively more willing to criticize the West's flaws and warts.
I think think there are issues about which Westerners should be willing to exhibit a certain solidarity, and -- in my opinion, of course -- this is one of them. And I'm not convinced that "Westerners" who *do* focus more on the principle of free expression than on the principle of "sensitivity" and "tolerance" in this instance are necessarily helping al Qaeda. It seems plausible, at least, that many moderate Muslims remain silent on these kinds of issues partly because they see the "West" as divided and unwilling to speak up for its own ideals. That's a point that Dalrymple and other "anti-multi-culturalists" make about the integration of non-Western immigrants into Western societies. When Western societies don't ask immigrants to assent to any Western principles and ideals, why *should* they?
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