Month: February 2006

A consumer’s guide.

"I cobble together a verse comedy about the customs of the harem, assuming that, as a Spanish writer, I can say what I like about Mohammed without drawing hostile fire. Next thing, some envoy from God knows where turns up and complains that in my play I have offended the Ottoman empire, Persia, a large slice of the Indian peninsula, the whole of Egypt, and the kingdoms of Barca, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. And so my play sinks without trace, all to placate a bunch of Muslim princes, not one of whom, as far as I know, can read but who beat the living daylights out of us and say we are ‘Christian dogs.’ Since they can’t stop a man thinking, they take it out on his hide instead," – a passage from Beaumarchais‚Äô Marriage of Figaro, Act V, Scene 3.

One meme that deserves to be nipped in the bud is that the original Danish cartoons were somehow intended purely for offense. Since most American papers and magazines will not publish the cartoons, many people might actually believe this. In fact the context of the publication reveals a much more important point. From Wikipedia’s summary:

The drawings, which include a depiction of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, were meant as satirical illustrations accompanying an article on self-censorship and freedom of speech. Jyllands-Posten commissioned and published the cartoons in response to the difficulty of Danish writer K√•re Bluitgen to find artists to illustrate his children’s book about Muhammad, for fear of violent attacks by extremist Muslims.

The point was to expose the bullying of Islamists. And boy, have the cartoons succeeded.

A reader writes:

You ask ‘What is it about contemporary Islam that seems to make it clearly incompatible with Western freedom of speech?’

The answer is contemporary Islam now embodies the core principles of fundamentalism: absolute certainty and the subsequent stifling of any dissent.  Everything in the liberal tradition of the West is built on exactly the opposite: the virtue of questioning and ability to voice those questions. How can the West coexist with current Islamist views? ‚Äì it can’t. In its watered down form, we see the growing conflicts with our own Christianists in the U.S. Couple their fundamentalism with the current martyr/death complex of Islam and we would have the same problem on our shores. The West has been there before, albeit 600 years ago. I’ll pose a question back: ‘How do you make up for 600 years overnight, or for that matter in a lifetime?’"

I don’t know. And if we didn’t rely on Muslim states for energy, and if they weren’t on the brink of getting weapons of mass destruction, we might be able to walk away. But we cannot. And so we have to try and open up democratic space in the Middle East and hope we can achieve enough incremental change in time. I’m not an optimist on that front. But in the meantime, we don’t have to apologize for freedom. And we should do everything in our power to defend it. If the State Department doesn’t understand that, it’s long past time someone told them.

Jihadists are letting us know how they feel. Michelle Malkin has a stunning photographic line-up of protesters and placards in London. Here are some of the slogans: "Butcher Those Who Mock Islam"; "Exterminate Those Who Mock Islam"; "Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust". And so on. And these people have a right to say these things – the very right they are trying to deny others with the threat of violence. The only word that describes these people, taking to the streets and threatening the lives and security of people who exercize freedom of speech, is an obvious one: brownshirts. There is no compromise with them. And no way to appease them short of surrendering the bedrock of our civilization.

Some readers have made this worthwhile point. European countries would be in a stronger position to defend press freedom if they practised it more often. There’s a bill in the British parliament right now to make offending people’s religion a legal offense. Germany bans depictions of the swastika and makes Holocaust-denial a crime. One reason I love America is its First Amendment. I suspect it has something to do with the more moderate Muslim population in the United States, compared with Europe’s. Once you start censoring people, you have to deal with the problem of double-standards. If you defend free speech in every case, you’re on firmer ground.

The pictures of this morning’s John Bartlett fashion show are now up. More here. (Full disclosure: Bartlett and a couple of the Junior Jew bears are friends of mine.)

Now, they’re after showing opera to kids. Yes, an elementary school teacher is in hot water for showing a video with "the soprano Dame Joan Sutherland and three puppet friends discussing Gounod’s ‘Faust.’" "I think it glorifies Satan in some way," says a parent. Sigh.

The State Department response to the completely anodyne cartoons published in Denmark can only be described as pathetic appeasement. You’d think that no one in Foggy Bottom was aware of the intimidation of free thought in Europe by Islamist thugs. The cartoons were not designed to "incite religious or ethnic hatreds." They were designed to protest such incitement – and we have the corpses of Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn as useful proof. It reminds me of the pusillanimous response of the first Bush administration to the despicable threat against Salman Rushdie. Clinton, of course, has been even worse. Then there’s this:

"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images or any other religious belief," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

So where are the State Department condemnations of vile anti-Semitic cartoons published by government-run papers in the Middle East? Why the double standard? And just for the record: statements that offend people’s religious beliefs are perfectly acceptable in a free society. They may not always be admirable; they may even be objectionable. But freedom does not distinguish between "acceptable" words and "unacceptable" ones, when it comes to commenting on public matters, including – and especially – religion. And there is no more pressing public matter today than the intersection of fundamentalist extremism and politics. In this war, the Bush administration just made a strong statement. For the other side.

"Mona Omar Attia, Egypt’s ambassador to Denmark, said after a meeting with Rasmussen that she was satisfied with the position of the Danish government but noted the prime minister had said he could not interfere with the press. ‘This means the whole story will continue and that we are back to square one again. The government of Denmark has to do something to appease the Muslim world,’ Attia said." – from a Reuters report.

They still don’t get it, do they? And perhaps they never will.