Month: February 2006

How do you find a Danish flag to burn in Gaza? Some Muslim entrepreneurs have led the way.

Jack Balkin saves you from reading the transcript of the AG’s defense of illegal wire-tapping. Here’s the synopsis:

"What we did was legal, or, in our opinion, could have been legal. Since there are arguments on both sides, we will rely on our opinion. However, we won’t let a court decide the question, because then we wouldn’t be able to rely on our own opinion.

We won’t answer hypothetical questions about what we can do legally or constitutionally. We also won’t tell you what we’ve actually done or plan to do; hence every question you ask will about legality be in effect a hypothetical, and therefore we can refuse to answer it."

Simple, really.

I’ll be on Anderson Cooper’s show again tonight, debating the cartoon issue. Around 10 pm, they tell me.

A group of Muslim youth in Denmark and Norway renounce the violence of others. This is a good sign – one of several emerging in Europe’s Muslim population – who are often themselves the targets of Islamist intimidation and violence.

Dan Savage notices a poster that just went up in a very liberal neighborhood. I think the American right and left can and should unite over this – and defend freedom against intimidation.

A reader writes:

"Let me ask you a question now: don’t you feel offended and so angry to a point you want to commit violent acts when you hear the media talking about homosexuals in a bad way? I’m sure you do and that’s how homos like you feel when the media talks against them. And of course you don’t consider it a freedom of speech when they insult homosexuals. So what do you expect when a great man like the prophet gets mocked? If the filthiest humans on earth (homosexuals) get angry and do everything in their power to stop the world’s media from talking bad about them, so I think the Muslims have the right to stand up and defend their prophet."

Sure, defend your prophet. But quit the threats of violence and acts of violence. It’s that simple. As for my own position, I have long argued against hate crime laws to protect gays (or anyone); I have defended the right of the Boy Scouts to discriminate against gays; I have defended the right of the St Patrick’s Day March to exclude gays; and I will defend the rights of bigots or sincere opponents to say whatever they like about gays, including your right to call them "the filthiest humans on earth." (Weren’t you forgetting the Jews, by the way?) Any violent threat against anti-gay speech would provoke the same response from me as the vile threats from Islamists against cartoonists and writers. I believe in freedom, see? And one day, you may understand what that means.

Father Neuhaus has thrown down the gauntlet to Pope Benedict XVI. He’s not conservative enough! The Catholic magazine, Commonweal, responds to his provocations.

And his explanation is explosive.

One assumption behind some of the debate over the Danish cartoons is that blasphemy is always antithetical to religion. But, of course, many great religions began in what was then deemed blasphemy. Jesus was a blasphemer, and he died in part because of his blasphemy. Religions that enforce rules against blasphemy are defensive, cramped faiths, closed to the possibility of error, which is to say, closed to the possibility of a greater truth. A reader echoes this point:

"I’m a religious person, Jewish by birth and still identify as such. But I have read widely in other religious texts – Christianity, Islam and also Eastern religions like Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Anyone who has really thought much about God, and anyone who has real respect for God, knows that each of these religions has something good to say on what God is about.

What the fundamentalists fail to understand, and this is how they land up betraying the greatness of God, is that none of us humans, small and probably insignificant creatures in a huge cosmos, really can claim to know anything about the mind of God, the nature of God, and what he or she or it truly is. All we have is hints, and all we can do is grasp, often unknowingly, to try and touch and understand God’s greatness."

I couldn’t put it better myself. I have a great deal of respect for Islam – for its ritual simplicity, its artistic and scientific legacy, its insistence on prayer. But God is – no, God must be – beyond the reach of even our greatest religious teachings. Humility first. Which is to say: fundamentalism can sometimes be the real enemy of faith, not its ally.

"We are constantly apologizing, and we don’t notice how much abuse we’re taking. Meanwhile, the other side doesn’t give an inch," Ayaan Hirsi Ali, telling the truth. More truth-telling here from Germany. I’m  encouraged that many Europeans, including Muslims, are finally saying enough to these illiberal, Islamist outrages.