Month: February 2006

Let the nominations commence.

The Supreme Court building has a visual depiction of Muhammad on it. Oh horror!

My Time essay on the issues behind the Danish cartoons. Money quote:

"Muslim leaders say the cartoons are not just offensive. They’re blasphemy–the mother of all offenses. That’s because Islam forbids any visual depiction of the Prophet, even benign ones. Should non-Muslims respect this taboo? I see no reason why. You can respect a religion without honoring its taboos. I eat pork, and I’m not an anti-Semite. As a Catholic, I don’t expect atheists to genuflect before an altar. If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one. Freedom means learning to deal with being offended."

A reader writes about his dad:

"I’m a hetero male (what a stupid label, but effective for a quick intro) who lives and works in Los Angeles – I don’t care if someone is gay or straight. I’m part of the Brokeback target audience so my opinion is easy to guess. My recently widowed dad however is a different story – 70-years-old, Irish Catholic, retired Chicago Fire Fighter, ex Air Force, one-time union electrician and big rig driver. Until recently lived in rural Tennessee. Went to see Brokeback by himself on a recent afternoon in Ventura County, CA. The place was packed. My dad loved the movie. And, ultimately, I think it’s for the reasons that your sister raised – my dad’s entire immediate family is dead, his wife is dead. All that’s left is me (his son), his daughter-in-law and his grandkids. He spent years caring for his demonic father who used to bust dinner plates over his head and drove his wife (my dad’s mother) to suicide. He needed to create an emotional wall (and did this initially through drink). More than anyone I know, he is a victim of this macho-agressive dynamic … and that wall has crumbled this past year for him. Brokeback, I think, helped him realize this."

There’s more of a connection than you might think. Great to see a Daily Kos diarist on the alert.

"I think they figure that pornography is an easy target. It’s what Congress asked for, and funded. Nobody wants to come out for porn. They’re all sucking up to the religious right. Plus they’re control freaks themselves. And this operation misdirects attention away from the results of their own insidiousness and incompetence. To tell you the truth, the guys I had worked with, they all thought it was just a big joke. This was in an FBI field office where there are really important projects – involving national security, high-technology crimes and public corruption – but I was feeling burnt out. I needed something less stressful. So I applied for the Hard-On Hunters, which is how my old buddies refer to it. They still razz the hell out of me. One guy says, "Hey, I thought there was supposed to be a war on terror going on." Then another guy says, "Yeah, and I thought it was supposed to be urgent that we develop better resources for espionage." And the first guy says, "I guess we must have been wrong." – an FBI agent recently recruited for the "war on porn."

Yep, I guess we were all wrong. When the religious right calls, this administration answers. If it means scanting the war on terror, so be it. They’ll fire gay Arab linguists in the military and divert precious FBI resources to monitoring porn. Whatever Mr Dobson wants …

We are at a critical moment. Dissident Muslim Ibn Warraq urges the West not to waver – for the sake of Islam.

Now: a defense. The original criticism I linked to can be found here.

"Look at the wives of the [Egyptian] generals. Many of them are wearing traditional head scarves. This was not so ten years ago. And this tells you where we are heading. When the women of Egypt’s pro-Western military √©lite are dressed like that, you know that the Hamas victory is not about Palestine. It’s about the entire Middle East," – Shalom Harari, a former Israeli Military Intelligence officer.

At last, some good news. Many moderate British Muslims are appalled at the violence and threats of violence being parlayed by some demonstrators. Money quote:

"In London, Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said the extremists should be prosecuted. ‘The Metropolitan police should now consider all the evidence they have gathered from the protests to see if they can prosecute the extremists,’ he said. ‘It is time the police acted, but in a way so as not to make them martyrs of the Prophet’s cause, which is what they want, but as criminals. Ordinary Muslims are fed up with them.’"

Here’s hoping he’s right. More on Brit Muslim reax here.