Category: The Dish

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.

That’s the number of blogs now in existence. The blogosphere is doubling in size every five and a half months. And I can remember five and a half years ago … They grow up so fast these days.

… and now Howard Stern. This morning the shock-jock apparently endorsed Mickey’s favorite movie. Here’s one account:

Last night [Howard] thought about masturbating but decided to watch "Brokeback Mountain" instead. Howard said he tried to watch that "Wife Swap" show but it was horrible. Artie said he tried watching "The Bachelor" and he doesn’t know how Howard can stand it because it’s so bad.

Howard said that "Brokeback Mountain" might be one of the best movies he’s ever seen. There’s one ass scene that doesn’t last all that long. The movie is a very moving love story and he wishes that they would force the religious right fanatics to watch it to show what happens when gays are forced to remain closeted. He told Artie that he would like the movie if he saw it. Artie figures that the producers of the movie must love that Howard is giving his blessing on the movie. Howard said the movie was so good that he couldn’t turn it off.

I’m waiting for Bill O’Reilly to have the balls to watch it.

Fouad Ajami is on form today:

"Hitherto, we had granted the Arab world absolution from the laws of historical improvement. We had ceded it a crippling ‘exceptionalism.’ We explained away our complicity in its historical decay as the price paid for access to its oil, and as the indulgence owed some immutable "Islamic" tradition. To be fair, we could not find our way to its politically literate classes, for they were given to a defective political tradition. American power now ventures into uncharted territory; we have shaken up that world, and broken the pact with tyranny. In the shadow of American power, ordinary men and women who had known nothing but the caprice of rulers and the charlatanism of intellectual classes have gone out to proclaim that tyranny is neither fated, nor ‘written.’"

Fouad is right, as he often is. And that’s why the cartoon controversy, pace Hugh Hewitt, is good for the war on terror. One massive supporting pillar of Jihadism has been the West’s refusal to treat the Islamic world as it would any other part of the world. If Chinese radicals were ransacking Western embassies because of a cartoon, and were backed by the Chinese government, we would be outraged, demanding apologies, severing relations, and so on. But when Muslims do it, backed by Islamist governments, we are supposed to take it on the chin, to "respect" their religious traditions, issue mealy-mouthed statements, etc. In many ways, this is the real offense: treating Muslims as if their violation of global norms, and thralldom to medieval conceptions of politics and religion, were somehow acceptable. They are not acceptable. Islam must reform itself if it is to have a proud and noble place again among the great religions of the world. Muslim countries must allow freedom of religion for other faiths – and allow their citizens free votes in free elections. Dabbling in Holocaust denial by a current government should be treated as a form of insanity or fascism, rather than as some kind of thing to be "understood". Those who are addicted to the narcotic of religious fanaticism do not need enabling or excuses. They need an intervention. Especially when they are on the verge of wielding nuclear weapons.