Category: The Dish

Here’s a sentence about the publishing of the Danish cartoons that should bring anyone up short:

"This was a case of seeking a reason to exercise a freedom that had not been challenged."

The body of Pim Fortuyn was not challenge enough? The fatwa on Rushdie? The murder of Theo van Gogh? Maybe if the Boston Globe had covered these events with a greater sense of their importance, they would understand why Danish artists were and are living in a climate of fear. Then there’s this:

"Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance."

Can someone let me know if the Globe has ever editorialized against the publication of vicious anti-Semitic images in the government-run Arab press?

"In between our last two posts I went to Drudge to see what was happening in the world. The lead story was about a ship disaster in the Red Sea. From the headline picture, it looked like a cruise ship. I therefore assumed that some people very much like the Americans I went cruising with last year were the victims. I went to the news story. A couple of sentences in, I learned that the ship was in fact a ferry, the victims all Egyptians. I lost interest at once, and stopped reading. I don’t care about Egyptians," – John Derbyshire, National Review Online.

A reader remonstrates:

"1. The State Department’s comment on the Danish cartoons was brilliant. This is a European problem and we owe Europe nothing. The comment a) gave us a small chance to look good to Muslims (even if the comment was admittedly bullshit) b) allowed the focus of the anger to remain on the Europeans which will only reinforce the truth that Islamic extremism is a threat to the entire West, not just the United States and c) frankly, it was a nice "fuck you" to Europe. I LOVED it. Of course, given that it was the State Department, they probably had none of these things in mind, but hey, whatever.

2. Your continued equivalence of Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism on anything more than the most abstract of levels is beyond the pale, absurd, ridiculous, etc. You may be right that both of these fundamentalisms at their core share common notions and beliefs. At that level, it’s an intelligent discussion, but admittedly, not one I’m particularly interested in. However, FUNCTIONALLY, there is NO similarity. Islamacists MURDER innocent men, women, and children. "Christianists" oppose gay marriage. PLEASE stop this insane equivalence–it’s offensive, irrational, and fevered."

I couldn’t agree more on the latter point. The difference between Islamists and Christianists is that the former are using violence to achieve their ideal society and Christianists are, almost entirely, using peaceful, democratic means. That’s a huge deal. It’s also worth comparing Christian fundamentalist response to the latest Rolling Stone cover, featuring Kanye West as Jesus. Complaints, sure. But are the editors of Rolling Stone now in hiding? The thought is preposterous. The habits of Islamists and Christianists are on different planets. Nevertheless, the fundamentalist mindset is similar in both: the sense that there can be no legal neutrality between faith and unfaith; the expectation of the Apocalypse; the submission of all reason to faith; the inerrancy of certain texts or authority figures; the shared notion of blasphemy; the subordination of women; the anathematization of gays; the extreme regulation of sex and gender. The difference in methods is one of kind. The difference in mindset is one of degree.

Since the Danish cartoons were first published last September, why the uproar now? The whole event has been orchestrated by an Islamist lobby group, taking the cartoons around the country. They apparently added three especially offensive cartoons that were not in the original bunch; and refuse to identify the artists. Could the three extra ones have been faked? Gateway Pundit wants to know.

The intimidation escalates. Danish artists are now in hiding. I’m not surprised a regime like Syria’s unleashes this kind of fury. It distracts from its own decrepitude.

"When Muslims put the Prophet on a pedestal, we’re engaging in idolatry of our own. The point of monotheism is to worship one God, not one of God’s emissaries. Which is why humility requires people of faith to mock themselves – and each other – every once in a while … Clearly, I‚Äôm as impure a feminist as I am a Muslim.  The difference is, offended feminists won‚Äôt threaten to kill me. The same can‚Äôt be said for many of my fellow Muslims. What part of ‘no compulsion’ don’t they understand?" – Irshad Manji, Wall Street Journal today (subscription required).

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.