The Dish

The Danish cartoon clash has been illuminating in many ways. Now, we see where this Pope stands – and, of course, it is against the unfettered right to freedom of speech:

"The right to freedom of thought and expression … cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."

The Vatican, while deploring violence, urges legislation banning anti-religious offensive expression. In the end, the real fundamentalists are on the same side.

The Islamist threat, elaborated …

Matthew Parris knocks it out of the park. Money quote:

"Offence implicitly offered, and offence actually taken, are two different matters. On the whole Christians, for example, take offence less readily than Muslims. The case for treating them, in consequence, differently is obvious, but we should be wary of it. It means groups are allowed to be as thin-skinned as they wish: to dictate for themselves how delicately we must tread with them — to create, as it were, their own definition of respect and require us to observe it. Those who do this may not always realise that that they create serious buried resentments among those of fellow-citizens who are more broad-shouldered about the trading of insult."

European Muslims – all Muslims in the West – need to develop the thick skins freedom demands. In the meantime, the violent demonstrators owe the West an apology, not the other way round.

What’s the response to the rioting and violence after the publication of mere cartoons? About what you’d expect.

She’s always been wiser than me. Her response to the movie was not to see the gay versus straight issue at all – but to see rather the plight of stunted maleness, of emotionally shut-down masculinity, gay and straight, that is a form of fear and a lack of courage. Her emailed stream of consciousness:

"Went to see Brokeback with Grace last night: moving, sad, enlightening and encouraging for us married hetros. My first words to Grace at the end of the film, ‘Well at least we now know they are as uncommunicative with each other in love as the straight guys are with us girls.’ She laughed! Enlightening in that all that male aggression is taken out on each other, the references to their fathers and how distant they were from them, the very sweet, sad mum at the end smuggling the ashes out to him with the shirts, her innate understanding, the father’s too but his clear intention not to admit it, achingly sad for the wives and children but mostly gut-wrenching for the turmoil in those men, the shutdowness of such a big part of themselves that shut down so much else with it, a life half lived. I think we have moved on in some places, in some societies. The more people see it, the more, little by little, it might change."

Here’s hoping.

"A film made of any typical morning in my house would look like an old Marx Brothers comedy. I wash the dishes, rush the older children off to school, dash out in the yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting, help the youngest child build a blockhouse, spend fifteen minutes skimming the newspapers so I can be well-informed, then scamper down to the washing machines where my thrice-weekly laundry includes enough clothes to keep a primitive village going for an entire year. By noon I’m ready for a padded cell. Very little of what I’ve done has been really necessary or important. Outside pressures lash me though the day. Yet I look upon myself as one of the more relaxed housewives in the neighborhood." – a Nebraska housewife with a Ph.D. in anthropology, in Betty Friedan’s "The Feminine Mystique.

It is quite fashionable to regard feminism as a somewhat exhausted movement. That may be, but the rescuing of many women from the constrained choices they once faced is surely one of the most important and humane changes of the last century.

The Republicans now believe that it’s government’s job to help you have a better marriage. Hey, it’s not like we don’t have $750 million to throw around.

The European Union muckety-mucks are now weighing how to curb press freedom in Europe – with criminal sanctions if necessary as a possible consequence. We’re not there yet – but there’s a worrying trend here. The lesson? If you threaten to kill people, you can get governments to respond. Turkey is proposing full-on theocratic censorship, which, in my view, should in itself bar Turkey from EU membership. One option European countries might want to pursue: all immigrants should be required to sign a declaration supporting the right of free speech, even blasphemous speech, as a condition of entering the West. Why not? Meanwhile, in London, we have the following:

"Anjem Choudhary, one of the leaders of the demonstration, refused to condemn the threat of another suicide attack in London on the scale of the July 7 bombings as a result of the perceived insult to Islam. ‘I am not in the business of condoning or condemning,’ he said. ‘The fact is that 7/7 was brought upon the people of London and Britain by the foreign policy of Tony Blair. There is no reason why there should not be more suicide bombings in London.’

Passersby stopped police officers to ask why the marchers were being allowed to carry banners threatening further suicide attacks in the city. One police officer replied: ‘Don’t worry. We are photographing them.’"

So it’s illegal in Britain to incite religious hatred; but it’s legal to threaten innocent civilians with future massacres, dictated by Allah.

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?