Wow, but this post has inspired so many misconceptions.
I do not think Muslims should be insulated from satire. I do not think there is parity between a cartoonist drawing a picture someone doesn’t like and a Muslim calling for the execution of the cartoonist. I am not on the Muslim’s side here, and I am uncompromising in condemning rioting and destruction as criminal.
I do think religion needs to be thoroughly criticized—you haven’t been reading Pharyngula for long if you think otherwise, and I thought I’d been quite careful to spell out that religion was a hate-amplifier in this situation—and I do think that Islam in particular needs to be taken down a peg or two (I only hesitate to say that because too many of our home-grown Christians would interpret it as approval for their sanctimony). I think some of those crowd photos show a deeply evil mindset at work.
But here’s the thing, that liberal-lefty perspective: those Muslims are people. You know, human beings with needs and desires and families and aspirations, etc. We have to live with them, unless you’re calling for their extermination or banishment (and no, we aren’t. I hope.) They’ve got this horrible, evil idea of religion stuck in their heads, and the long-term solution is to educate them and imbed more secular ideals in their communities—my objection is that I don’t see that the Danish newspaper was trying to do that. A majority poking a minority with a sharp stick is not a confrontation or an argument. It’s just being mean and petty. It’s yet another kick when they’re down to a group of people who are already marginalized.
I’d be curious to know what solutions are being planned in Europe. Maybe someone who thinks a sign that says “Butcher those who mock Islam” is irredeemable and ought to be kicked out of the country, but I suspect, optimistically, that most of the Muslims in Denmark aren’t quite that far gone; are there any constructive ideas to weaken the grip of religious foolishness on immigrant populations? Or is it all going to be a process of clumsily beating them down with simple force? Maybe some of the Danish readers here can tell us what is going to be done (oh, and if the solution is to prohibit the mockery of religion by newspapers, I’m doubly against that: it violates free speech, and it doesn’t address the real source of the conflict at all.)
I’m all for ripping into religion with wild abandon. I just think it’s obvious, though, that there is another dimension to this problem than simply the god business, and too many of us are ignoring the human/social issue to blame only a convenient religious handle on the riots.
You can find 2% of any group who will react in inappropriate ways to provocation. The cartoons (which I saw a couple of months ago) were designed to provoke such a reaction. The newspaper acted completely irresponsibly.
The other 98% of Muslims deserve as much respect as we would offer any person – especially as they try to rebuild their region after 50 years of bloody Western interference and brigandage.
Since you have opened up a second thread to yesterday’s discussion, I am re-posting my comment which is at the end of the last one. Not a good practice but I did want to make some points which were not addressed in the 100+ comments on the previous post.
“Freedom of expression is paramount in democratic societies, including the right to criticize, vilify and mock religion – all religions. No contest there. Having said that, so is the wisdom to not waste this freedom in making trivial and predictable points. What did the Danish cartoons accomplish in establishing? That medieval religious fundamentalism permeates Muslim societies much more deeply than any other religious group? That Muslims consider themselves under siege almost to the level of paranoia and are likely to resort to violence for real or perceived threat/insults to their faith? That most Islamic nations curtail freedom of speech in their own countries and want to do the same in others, in the name of religion? Ho hum. Which one of these came as a surprise to anyone? To all the freedom of speech purists here, PZ Myers and Nullifidian have it right this time. Their nuanced take on the issue is not a zero sum game – it is neither anti-free speech nor pro religion. To prove an intellectual point, when the adversary is operating on a purely emotional level, is not only unwise, it is a waste of energy. Islamic fundamentalism (like all others) has to be resisted, attenuated and eventually eliminated. But it will not happen by engaging in juvenile displays of provocation through theological football as Jyllands-Posten was attempting to do. The resistance will have to take place in the realm of universal human rights, rationality and common decency. “My democracy can beat up your prophet” is hardly a strategy that is likely to work. Mr. Lund, don’t waste your breath.
While we are discussing fundamentalism, let us not ignore the context of racism which PZ Myers alludes to. It is perhaps worthwhile for most Americans to recognize the prevalent zeitgeist in Europe. Mr. Lund’s erudite sophistry notwithstanding, Europeans as a whole, are much more racist and xenophobic than the average American. I say this as a brown skinned person (not Muslim, not uneducated) who has lived in both continents. European secularism and pacifism are results of exhaustion from four hundred years of oppressive colonialism (the Bible in one hand and a riding crop or gun in the other) and two great wars which nearly annihiliated the continent. All the calls for assimilation – “you are here – you must be like us” is BS. The non-Europeans are marginalized, ghettoized and the implicit message to them is “stay in your place.” In spite of all overt racism in the US, an immigrant can hope to realize professional and social ambitions in the US – not in Europe. Mr. Lund would argue that the Scandinavian countries were not involved in either colonization or warfare. True. But the mindset of these homogeneous countries is not very different when faced with people who are “different”. In fact, George Bush’s disastrous action in Iraq and the middle east, is at some level, more honest than what the Europeans are up to vis-a-vis their immigrants. Kill a hundred thousand Iraqis to impose your values? Why not? How is that worse than treating minorities within your borders like s–t with the vestigial hauteur of ex-colonists? A much more honest course of action will be to deport all those whom you are not going to assimilate anyway -ever and go back to the idyllic existence of Hans Christian Andersen, milk, cheese, football and Lego. Why the pretense? Only to feel holier than thou – especially, holier than those unsophisticated cowboy Americans? Mr. Lund’s expansive crack about dating one of the last ten Parsis notwithstanding, his “secular” countrymen are much less likely to date a Parsi, a Hindu, a Buddhist and god forbid a Muslim than the average “religious” American. ‘Nuff said.
But think of the cephalopods!
http://www.frangipani.info/gallery/manholes_of_japan/keitai_004
I think you make a valid point. It strikes me that there’s something of a chicken and egg problem here as well: that the violent and unreasoning response to the ridicule not only begets additional ridicule but also contributes in some way to the social isolation that is a part of the poverty and ignorance. There’s a militant hostility to “foreign thought” that locks them down.
As an Arabic linguist in the Army, I’ve spent some time living and working with rank-and-file Muslims, and they are good folk. The kind of violent response we read about in the papers, while it may be infectious, is not a good indicator of what Muslims themselves are like. As individual people, they are decent, likable, and good. The religion just makes them a bit, shall we say, touchy sometimes.
If you’re going to start giving people free passes because they’re human and humans have a hard time thinking rationally or consistently, you might as well shut down this blog, give up your job, and join a monastery to meditate upon the fragility of the human spirit.
Holding people to unnaturally strict standards of behavior and reason is what science is all about. Being honest is hard. Being systematic is hard. Not becoming attached to your own pet theories is hard, and producing alternate hypotheses is hard.
So is tolerating the free expression of ideas that you think are hateful, grossly wrong, and generally unfit to exist.
There is ultimately no difference between ‘attacking’ (by which I mean accurately describing) people who reject most science because it conflicts with their belief that the universe is the product of a benevolent and all-powerful intelligence, and ‘attacking’ people who feel it necessary to execute those who violate a religious prohibition that’s not even from their own religion.
If you’re not here to make a standard for logic, sanity, and rational thought, why the hell are you here?
PZ hits the target that I always try to keep such “debates” focused on when I find myself in them. Muslims are people too, and they ought to be treated a such.
But what I think is most lacking, is an understanding of Arabic and Muslim cultures. It is absolutely true that Americans don’t know geography well (and seem to not care), and this lends to our severely poor understanding of that region of the world.
If we are to successfully help them and their more liberalized youths on the way to democracy, then we need to understand what makes them tick socially. I believe in spreading democracy, though not by tossing smart bombs. After all, how does using violence to obtain the peace that democracy offers make sense? You can’t use fundamentally opposing means to accomplish a positive goal.
In turn, I also believe democracy can be spread in part by economics. And I very much believe democracy can take hold in the middle east, we just need to believe those people are capable of believing in it.
I’m handing out free passes? Where?
Read these posts again. Because by no means am I suggesting that we respect religious idiocy. All I’m opposing is the cartoonish polarization, the blanket assumption that the other guys are bad.
I say the same thing about our American creationists. They’re clowns who ought not to be privileged to teach kids or manage government, but they’re also human beings who should be allowed to live their lives with as much happiness as they can muster, and given all the freedom to believe in whatever private delusions they want.
I really don’t know why this is so hard for so many to comprehend. It’s like that bozo who posted here a while back, saying that my goal was to burn Christians at the stake — you’re making the same error. I can be simultaneously ruthless in my assessment of ideas, while recognizing that people have a right to live their lives as they want.
Seems like there’s a reading comprehension problem among a lot of the folks in your new neighborhood, PZ. I’ve been shaking my head for days.
In spite of all overt racism in the US, an immigrant can hope to realize professional and social ambitions in the US – not in Europe.
False.
Danes of Pakistani descent are better educated than ethnic Danes. They are hugely overrepresented in medicine, for example. Education is free, also at university level, and everybody gets stipends that you can actually live on.
Mr. Lund would argue that the Scandinavian countries were not involved in either colonization or warfare. True.
False.
Where did the US get the US Virgin Islands from? They bought them from Denmark (long after Denmark had abolished slavery — in other words, my country used to be in the slave trade, too). Denmark was also involved in a Northern Crusade in the Baltics. Part of the conquered and christened territory was later sold to German warrior knights and later become known as East Prussia. The main reason why Denmark is so small these days is that an incompetent king involved the country in too many wars — which he lost. Denmark is currently at war, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
his “secular” countrymen are much less likely to date a Parsi, a Hindu, a Buddhist and god forbid a Muslim than the average “religious” American.
Yep, they are by and large secular, I am happy to report. As to dating Muslims, I don’t know. I think the racism and resistance is more from the other side. There aren’t very many of the other religious/ethnic minorities here so it’s hard for me to say. By the way, you forgot Sikhs ;)
‘Nuff said.
Apparently. Nice rant.
It’s not a blanket assumption: the other guys are bad.
There is a difference between acknowledging that people have a right to a wrong, stupid, or even evil idea, and working against that idea. That is why I can be opposed to racism while tolerating the existence of racists.
But the “live and let live” philosophy requires a meta-social contract on the part of everyone in a society, to give people the right to their own beliefs and restrict the actions of others only to the degree that is necessary to protect the freedom and safety of all.
Belief is one thing, but people’s actions follow from their beliefs. I can live in peace with people whose beliefs differ from my own but whose actions are bound by the meta-social contract. Religious fundamentalists almost universally reject that contract.
That’s why we have Orthodox Jewish children who throw stones at people who push crosswalk signals on the Sabbath. That’s why the Vatican has pronounced that freedom of speech doesn’t include the right to make statements about others’ religious beliefs that they will perceive as insulting. That’s why the concept of Jihad, in addition to a personal inward struggle, has also included means the violent extermination of anything that opposes Islam – and by ‘opposing’, I mean that which isn’t Islam.
Muslims are human beings, yes. Human beings are stupid, petty, tyranical, hypocritical monsters who crave repressive and hierarchial societal structures and inevitably wield authority as a club.
Caledonian,
There’s no point fighting religious extremism with rationalist extremism. Stop ranting and use your head. You need to actually BE rational not just promulgate rationalism. It IS rational to respect human rights, it IS rational to try not to offend people, people DO have emotions. We aren’t about to turn into a planet full of Vulcann’s anytime soon, and thats a good thing I think. The emotional capacity to take offense, as well as mob mentality has evolved in us for a reason.
For those of you who think this is about religion, you need to read Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. Take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations You guys should know that religious people don’t actually follow their religious codes, hell half the time their religious codes aren’t even followable, they just use the religious codes as common grounds for defending arguments they wish to push. That’s why you rarely find a holy book with one unambigious message, where’s the fun in that?
It’s also important to realize that it is only because of pure chance that gobs of easily extracted oil happens to exist under the muslim world’s feet. All this free money accounts for the ignorance of that part of the world. Why bother to educate your people when you’ve got a big fat money-tree in the backyard? And without education they have little chance of understanding and getting along with the modern world. There are only two solutions for the west. Limit all contact with the muslim world, or educate them. Bush has clearly set us down the education path, albeit clumsily.
This means we have to put up with these people. We’re going to have to educate them. What do you do to children when they misbehave? You don’t condemn them, call them religious ignoramuses, you know they have potential and you respect that potential. You try to show them a better way.
There is a BIG difference between the two situations you cite, the ID people here in the US on the one hand, and the Islamic people calling for the execution of newspaper publishers. First of all, it’s safe to say there is a good 15 pt IQ gap. Secondly, ID people here in the US mantain their ridiculous beliefs despite living in a vitual wonderland of scientific bounty, liberal education, colorful museum’s, free time for philsophy, etc. The muslim world has very little of these things. They live under oppressive regimes that hoard all the oil money for a few and leave the rest of their people to rot.
I agree with your argument as far as muslims living in western or otherwise developed countries goes. But remember that even many of these people have not had time to assimilate.
Oh, come on. Is this based on fact, or did you just hang out in the wrong crowd while you were in Europe :-)
Not sure about Denmark, but some of the most common types of marriages with foreigners in Finland involve Turkish men & local women and Thai women & local men. Perhaps integration is not complete until pairings “the other way around” are equally likely :-) but it seems that Muslims and Buddhists are not shunned completely in the dating department?
but I suspect, optimistically, that most of the Muslims in Denmark aren’t quite that far gone; are there any constructive ideas to weaken the grip of religious foolishness on immigrant populations?
They certainly aren’t. Only a very small minority is, most of whom couldn’t organize any form of violence except scattered beatings of other young men in and around night clubs if it hadn’t been for the rallying from a few dangerous imams.
The current crisis has caused a realization amongst the sensible ones that they should stand up to the religious leaders and they are organizing even as we speak.
As I wrote previously, we have been extremely tolerant of those Dark Age imams, just like we tolerate a tiny and totally insignificant Nazi party (with their own radio station). That’s because we do take freedom of speech quite seriously. There is a section in the Penal Code against racism and it is in active use. Some of the recently convicted were Danish far-right racists, others were young immigrants from the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization (for being racist against Jews).
(is convicted too strong a word? I hope it doesn’t imply incarceration, because that has not been the case)
There is even a section against blasphemy but it is not in active use and we are considering removing it.
I think there little is planned here in Europe. There are political forces working for integration and for a common immigration politics, I think, both of which affects some islamistic groups.
In Sweden, there has recently started special actions against so called ‘honor murders’ of freethinking and freeacting women that has becoming seen as a new and strange phenomena. Which we of course see as nothing honorable but instead as horrible and dishonorable because they go after mostly helpless women. But I believe those have little to do with religion, they are just new cultural phenomena from mostly islamic countries (I think) that clash especially badly with our old ones.
It seems the cartoons themselves have started a debate that is long overdue. Both because that some groups want preferred treatment, and because they get it then they don’t want it. Poking or not, those (sometimes horrible) cartoons exposed a problem – well done.
Mr. Lund:
Thanks for correcting historical inaccuracies in my “rant” (uncivilized, was it?) – going back to the crusades. I was speaking mostly about 20th century warfare.
Those Pakistani doctors notwithstanding, you still have not answered my question about European racism (not just Danish)and noblesse oblige. About the urgency to fight religious fundamentalism of all stripes – you and I agree, although we may disagree on what the methodology ought to be.
And oh the Sikhs! How could I forget them? Especially when my own husband’s grandmother was one.
“Muslims are human beings, yes. Human beings are stupid, petty, tyranical, hypocritical monsters who crave repressive and hierarchial societal structures and inevitably wield authority as a club.”
Holy crap man, there is a lot more diversity to human nature than that. Sure some humans take that approach as their strategy, but it is just as likely to meet with failure as the honest, benevolent approach. There is no one “WIN” strategy, and there is no singular human nature. The way you use the term “monsters” illustrates this. If everyone was a monster, no one would be a monster. The term only works if monsters are in the minority.
PZ:
“I say the same thing about our American creationists. They’re clowns who ought not to be privileged to teach kids or manage government, but they’re also human beings who should be allowed to live their lives with as much happiness as they can muster, and given all the freedom to believe in whatever private delusions they want.
I really don’t know why this is so hard for so many to comprehend. It’s like that bozo who posted here a while back, saying that my goal was to burn Christians at the stake — you’re making the same error. I can be simultaneously ruthless in my assessment of ideas, while recognizing that people have a right to live their lives as they want.”
I agree–this probably is very easy for people who agree with your views on religion to understand what you are saying.
However, those of us in the camp of the “deluded”, whose faith you dismiss as “a case of casual excess, bad habits, and the easy availability of the empty calories of superstitious nonsense,” and who you claim don’t “advocat(e) healthy intellectual nutrition,” see your comments a little differently.
No, I don’t think you are out to burn Christians at the stake. But your comments haven’t been directed at creationists only. You paint Christianity with a broad brush, and I see little acknowledgment that Christians are a highly diverse group of people who range across the political, economic, cultural, and social spectrum (even though the fundamentalists are sadly the most dominant group, to my great and utter chagrin). But when you insult, trivialize, denigrate, and stereotype, and then turn around and say, “Oh, but it’s OK for you to live your lives as you wish,” it’s hard to see the sincerity in that statement, no matter how much you try to explain it.
This is a prettly lame objection considering that this describes about 99.9% of all of the media printed in the Western world.
Look, this whole furor should have been a *perfect* teaching opportunity. The best response from the West would have been to emphasize that freedom of expression is a foundational principle in our societies and that violence in response to offensive speech is immoral and unacceptable. Our society proposers precisely because we are a society of ideas and laws and not a society based on violence. Instead we get mealy-mouthed semi-apologies from our own State Department that “freedom implies responsibility” or some similar nonsense. The only thing freedom implies is that each of us needs to be tolerant of everyone else’s enjoyment of those same freedoms.
I noticed today that Iran is taking the same official “freedom implies responsibility” line. You know your moral position is weak when the Iranian government is on your side.
I think your wacked out muslim/sanctimonious christian dichotomy is perhaps a bit simplistic. The cartoons came out in September. The riots started when the cartoons were reprinted in Norwegian fundamentalist christian newspapers in late December.
In the interim, the Prime Minister refused to acknowledge that they were offensive and refused, despite the urgings of their own diplomats, to so much as speak to the ambassadors to his country of islamic nations about it.
That there are fringe religious who are funded with a great deal of money by people who want the country distracted from politics to use their angry marginalized followers as a weapon against their political opponents in Islam strikes me as being very little different than, say, the place Pat Robertson or Ralph Reed use in our society.
Wahhabi teachings are about as mainstream as millennialist evangelicalism. They just both have an awful lot of financial and political support from right wing governments who find them useful behind them.
are there any constructive ideas to weaken the grip of religious foolishness on immigrant populations
Yes. One of them was the thing Alon Levy called us racists for. See, the thing is, the immigrants from outside the club of rich countries we get are different from the ones you get.
The immigration laws in Denmark are stupid. Unbelievably stupid.
If you were a well educated person from Ankara who wanted to work in Denmark you would find it very hard to be allowed to do so.
On the other hand, if you are a semi-illiterate peasant in a village in Anatolia, your father can arrange a marriage with your cousin the next time she arrives for her Summer holidays. And then you are in. And then you can bring you sister, etc.
Almost all our non-Western immigrants have arrived through such chain immigration.
That has been stopped now. Finally. The government has been trying for four years to do something about the first problem but it can’t without support from the Danish People’s Party (it is a minority coalition of two parties).
And the “racist” laws have also had the effect that immigrants marry later so more of them actually get an education before they get kids.
So we have stopped digging.
We are also trying to get more immigrants away from welfare and into jobs (welfare is comparatively generous here — and one of the reasons why Anatolian peasants want their sons and daughters to live here). And we are actually succeeding!
Women who’ve never worked before have gotten jobs (through a little arm twisting) — and realize they actually like it! (but then their husbands usually start not to like it ;) .)
We will probably stop granting work permits to imams from the Middle East and Turkey. And perhaps start educating our own.
Immigrants have political representation all the way up to Parliament. They have the right to vote and run for office in local elections even if they aren’t citizens. They’ve had those rights for decades (and we grant more than most countries).
There is a Danish newspaper in English and one in Turkish.
We try to improve their education by making Kindergarten and preschooling compulsory for immigrant kids so they won’t end up not knowing the cultural codes or speaking the language badly. (a recent idea by the current “racist” government.)
We try to improve the schools for everybody, but particularly for underprivileged kids, by making the goals far more explicit and by taking action (a novel concept in the Danish school system) if the kids don’t learn what they are supposed to learn.
We are going to introduce “busing” (without the buses) to make sure there no longer will be schools with 80% immigrant kids, most of them from the same ethnic group. We want the language and the cultural norms in school to be Danish.
Don’t worry, the carrot is being applied too, not just the stick. And the stick is not just being applied to the immigrants.
But, I’m sorry, they will have to learn that Denmark is a secular society with a free press. And that women have rights.
“There’s no point fighting religious extremism with rationalist extremism.”
Oh no, not… extremism! After all, extremes are always wrong – and only Sith deal in absolutes.
Idiot.
“It IS rational to try not to offend people”
It is NOT rational with treat public opinion as if it were God. It is NOT rational to withhold the truth because people might be offended. It is NOT rational to attempt seducing people to the side of rationality with illogic that bypasses their rational faculties.
Windy:
What percentage of those “pairings” are taking place among the working class and how many among middle/ upper middle classes? Contradictory as it may seem, working class folks, though overtly more racist, are often less so at an intellectual level. And by the way, I used to hang out with the university “types”.
Sorry, don’t know how many % in the working class. But I’d suspect not too much difference.
And that’s good. That’s exactly the message that should be told to them, without the implication that because you’re Muslim, you’ll be a second-class citizen.
Thank you, Peter Lund, for all your posts.
Professor, I cannot get your harping on the deprived state of the Danish Muslims. If they don’t like it there, they can always go back to the Islamic paradises that they came from, no?
And, of course, they do not want to become an undeprived minority by adopting Danish values. They wish to drag Danes down to their own level.
This is not a matter that reasonable people can compromise about. If you do not win everything, you lose everything. Islam cannot be titrated with civilization.
One thing I did like to hear you say was what I have said for years: Christianity has been tamed. Not permanently, and we have to remain vigilant to prevent its reverting to its atavistic murderous tendencies. But it has been tamed over the past 400 years.
Islam has not. As the Islam-lovers never fail to remind us, Islam was a sophisticated, powerful social institution when my ancestors were — in the memorable words of Henry Treece — ‘eating ditch frogs.’
To some, this might suggest that Islam is not tameable by secularism.
You ask what might be done in Europe. There, and anywhere else, the only way to start to tame a religion is the bonifacian solution.
Boniface chopped down the sacred grove of the Saxons, and when the Saxon gods did not chop him down, Saxon religion began to crumble. (The situation was rather more complex than I can go into in a blog post, see Peter Brown’s ‘Rise of Western Christendom.’) The bonifacian solution also destroyed Hawaiian religion (as bloody an affair as Islam) when Keopuolani defied the kapu agaisnt free eating.
If you want to tame Islam, first you must destroy the authority and prestige of Allah/Mohammed. Jyllens-Posten took a small step in that direction.
One thing we can be sure of, whether Muslims are humans or not: Their religion has not advanced away from its medieval savagery on its own — or even by rubbing shoulders with modernism for the past 300 years — so it never will. It won’t jump. It will have to be pushed.
http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula1.gif — Read 1
http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula2.gif — Read 2
Sucks that we can’t post images.
But the bandwidth is better, so I guess I’m not complaining…that much.
Anyway, that’s from The End of Faith, by Sam Harris, he’s a pretty good writer and makes a lot of great points about the dangers of unsubstantiated belief. You may want to pick this one up.
Also, you may want to listen to a talk that he gave at The Long Now Foundation, entitled “The View From the End of the World”
http://www.longnow.org/shop/free-downloads/seminars/
http://longnow.chubbo.net/salt-0200512-harris/salt-0200512-harris.mp3
Very engaging speaker as well. Not so great at fielding questions, but a great speaker nonetheless.
This is absurd! Freedom of speech is important; pouring banana oil on the exquisite sensibilities of the bumptious and ignorant is not. Or, to put it more simply, “F**k ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
You can’t pacify the self-righteous; their ability to up the ante is transcendental. And, it is simply racist to argue that we need to kiss the ass of third world fundamentalist prejudice while kicking the ass (metaphorically) of our own fundamentalist self-anointed.
The threat, or actuality, of religious violence needs to be countered by the same methods civilised countries use to control any other form of marching moron, and that does not include either self censorship, or any form of judicial prior restraint.
They wish to drag Danes down to their own level.
Come on, be serious. A few of them are dangerously silly but most are not.
they can always go back to the Islamic paradises that they came from, no?
One of the leading imams, Abu Laban, who was one of the organizers of the tour around the Middle East with “bonus” drawings and misinformation, cannot.
He is persona non grata in Egypt, where he grew up, because of his Islamistic views.
Their religion has not advanced away from its medieval savagery on its own — or even by rubbing shoulders with modernism for the past 300 years — so it never will.
It has gotten quite far already. It will get even farther just through the process of urbanization. Bosnians and big-city Turks are quite sensible. I daresay most Muslims are. Especially when you take Indonesia and Malaysia into account.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/03/news/denmark.php
your readers might want to have a look at this article, an interview with a muslim stand-up comic who lives in denmark.
i’m all for freedom of speech. but you know, it’s awfully easy for all the white, middle-class, american people on this board to shake their head and be like ‘oh those backwards muslims who can’t take the heat’. PZ, you hit it right on the money, it’s about racism and society as much as it is about the cartoon itself.
i lived overseas in several countries in europe, as a foreigner, and it is no picnic over there, trust me. those of you who want to get all self-righteous now should walk a mile in a european immigrant’s shoes first. a comic like that, in that context, is just more insult to injury.
it’s unfortunate that unrelated people in the middle-east are trying to turn this incident to political advantage, and their reaction does nothing to help their case, or the case of those muslims in europe who are trying to find middle ground.
They’ve got this horrible, evil idea of religion stuck in their heads, and the long-term solution is to educate them and imbed more secular ideals in their communities�my objection is that I don’t see that the Danish newspaper was trying to do that.
My reading is that the danish newspaper may have been speaking primarily to its own community, regarding whether self-censorship to avoid muslim offence, was an issue in denmark. The episode started with articles in other newspapers regarding the difficulties in getting a danish children’s book illustrated, because the subject was prophet mohammed and the koran, and the artists didn’t want to risk offending muslims.
One [artist declined], with reference to the murder in Amsterdam of the film director Theo van Gogh, while another [declined, citing the attack on] the lecturer at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in Copenhagen. [In October 2004, a lecturer was assaulted by five assailants who opposed the lecturer’s reading of the Qur’an to non-Muslims during a lecture at the Niebuhr institute at the University of Copenhagen]. The refusal of the first three artists to participate was seen as evidence of self-censorship and led to much debate in Denmark, with other examples for similar reasons soon emerging. The comedian Frank Hvam declared that he did not dare satirise the Qur’an on television, while the translators of an essay collection critical of Islam also wished to remain anonymous due to concerns about violent reaction.
The next move was the newspaper at the centre of the current controversy inviting cartoons about the prophet. Out of 40 cartoonists invited to send in their cartoons, 12 responded with one drawing each. These were printed along with an explanatory text which said,
The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always equally attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is less important in this context. […] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end.
With all this, I have to think that the danish newspaper was reporting on the fact of self-censorship ( for whatever motivation) in modern, secular denmark. I don’t think that self-censorship is a good thing to to happen anywhere, especially when it happens where people beleive that secularism has taken root.
………the long-term solution is to educate them and imbed more secular ideals in their communities.
Maybe secular ideas will embed themselves in muslim countries too. The only way we’ll know when that happens is when cartoons like this appear in arabic newspapers. And are secular ideas really embedded in denmark too ? Maybe cartoons like these need to appear in every secular country too, from time to time. just to show people what secular values mean.
………those Muslims are people. You know, human beings with needs and desires and families and aspirations, etc. We have to live with them, unless you’re calling for their extermination or banishment (and no, we aren’t. I hope.)
Does respecting the muslim religion mean accepting their list of religious prohibitions ?. If being tolerant of diversity means that today I have to accept their prohibition of drawing pictures of the prophet, tomorrow I have to fast with them on ramzan, and lay off the bacon and alcohol. The last three are not forbidden by my the rules of my country or my religion- would I be illiberal if I chose not to follow them ?
PS – all quotes are from the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons#Debate_about_self-censorship
Another thing we are doing: we are trying to close down extremist religious schools. We have a few of those, both of the Christian (using American teaching materials) and the Muslim flavour (using Arab teaching materials).
The trouble is that those schools exploit a law that was originally meant for religious and pedagogical freedom, a law that is much cherished by most of the parties and most of the population :(
To some, this might suggest that Islam is not tameable by secularism.
To others, it might suggest that fundamentalist Islam is being fueled by massive poverty and lack of opportunity for the majority of the people in most Middle Eastern countries, or the lack of political power against the kings, mullahs, and dictators that run those countries. It might suggest that poorly educated Muslims who move to European countries feel the effects of casual racism and react by sticking even more closely to the customs of the old country.
But, please, continue to blame religion as the primary factor. That way, we can recognize you as the racist you are without too much trouble.
Is the website broken? It says my comment has been submitted for moderation… If that’s not an error, I think once free speech is gone, so am I…
Phew…
What the hell was that about?
I think we need to make a multi-million dollar religious film depicting Jesus and Mohammed, in brokeback mount ararat.
Here’s the post that got lost in case it gets swallowed into the luminiferous ether:
http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula1.gif
http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula2.gif
It’s from the book: “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris, he’s a really good writer and also a great speaker. If you want to listen to a talk he gave at the Longnow Foundation entitled “The View from the End of the World” here:
http://longnow.chubbo.net/salt-0200512-harris/salt-0200512-harris.mp3
The longnow foundation is a think tank dedicated to long-term thinking (longer than anyone would consider long-term, like REALLY long term, if humanity lives to be 1 million years old, it’ll be because of people like this)
http://www.longnow.org
I think we need to make a multi-million dollar religious film depicting Jesus and Mohammed, in brokeback mount ararat.
Here’s the post that got lost in case it gets swallowed into the luminiferous ether:
http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula1.gif
http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula2.gif
It’s from the book: “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris, he’s a really good writer and also a great speaker. If you want to listen to a talk he gave at the Longnow Foundation entitled “The View from the End of the World” here:
http://longnow.chubbo.net/salt-0200512-harris/salt-0200512-harris.mp3
The longnow foundation is a think tank dedicated to long-term thinking (longer than anyone would consider long-term, like REALLY long term, if humanity lives to be 1 million years old, it’ll be because of people like this)
http://www.longnow.org
I think it always says the comment is awaiting moderation, whether it is or not.
I’m struggling a bit with the anti-spam measures here. One thing that will happen now and then is that posts with more than 3 links in them do get held up for my approval — I get a little message in my mailbox that I’ve filtered to appear with a hot pink background, so I see it and approve it as soon as I open my mailbox. The only cause for not approving a comment is if it is spam, advertising nostrums for erections or low, low mortgage rates.
Oh, now they’ve set a third embassy on fire, and kidnapped people, and arrested an editor who published the cartoons. Oh, I’m sooooo conflicted, whatever shall I do. . .
Jeez, I’m sorry PZ, but I made some dupe posts on this thread, feel free to remove the dupes if you want.
At what point, though, should we stop tolerating intolerance?
This ‘tolerance of intolerance’ is exactly what is being done. It is a fool’s path that, when the intolerant consider beheading a real option, leads to self extermination. What have we seen to date? The burning of two diplomatic missions? This bodes well for dialog just how?
I’d be curious to know what solutions are being planned in Europe. Maybe someone who thinks a sign that says “Butcher those who mock Islam” is irredeemable and ought to be kicked out of the country, but I suspect, optimistically, that most of the Muslims in Denmark aren’t quite that far gone; are there any constructive ideas to weaken the grip of religious foolishness on immigrant populations? Or is it all going to be a process of clumsily beating them down with simple force? Maybe some of the Danish readers here can tell us what is going to be done (oh, and if the solution is to prohibit the mockery of religion by newspapers, I’m doubly against that: it violates free speech, and it doesn’t address the real source of the conflict at all.)
To be frank, I know less about Denmark and more about France, Britain, and Germany, but if these three countries are any indication, the answer is, “All solutions that are known not to work.” Peter Lund mentions busing, a policy that failed in the US and got black leaders asking for more funding for inner-city schools instead. In France the idea of solving racial tension involves beating the national chest and deporting immigrants, an oh-so-useful policy considering that their descendants are citizens who face the same discrimination. In Germany citizenship is still strictly by ancestry, a situation that reminds me of German citizenship law as passed in 1935.
It is perhaps worthwhile for most Americans to recognize the prevalent zeitgeist in Europe. Mr. Lund’s erudite sophistry notwithstanding, Europeans as a whole, are much more racist and xenophobic than the average American. I say this as a brown skinned person (not Muslim, not uneducated) who has lived in both continents. European secularism and pacifism are results of exhaustion from four hundred years of oppressive colonialism (the Bible in one hand and a riding crop or gun in the other) and two great wars which nearly annihiliated the continent. All the calls for assimilation – “you are here – you must be like us” is BS. The non-Europeans are marginalized, ghettoized and the implicit message to them is “stay in your place.”
I’ve been saying this for three months on the blogosphere; thank you. In addition to what you say, Continental Europe (not so much Britain, I think) has a problem with the idea of cultural diversity: non-European immigrants are mostly welcome if they try to act exactly like Europeans, but the moment they try to practice a different religion or speak another language or even eat another type of food, they’re excluded.
For those of you who think this is about religion, you need to read Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations.
The book is wrong on so many levels. For a start, its predictions about alignment of global blocs have largely been false, especially with respect to Japan and Eastern Europe. Further, his stance that the West and Islam are single units is just plain wrong; in fact both of these regions are divided against themselves, the West between the US and the EU and Islam among many countries. What’s likely to happen in the 21st century is a reemergence of the multi-power system, but with the main actors being economic and not cultural. Krugman’s prediction that the major powers will be the US, the EU, China, and India is far more consistent with current trends than Huntington’s predictions.
To others, it might suggest that fundamentalist Islam is being fueled by massive poverty and lack of opportunity for the majority of the people in most Middle Eastern countries, or the lack of political power against the kings, mullahs, and dictators that run those countries. It might suggest that poorly educated Muslims who move to European countries feel the effects of casual racism and react by sticking even more closely to the customs of the old country.
That by itself is not enough, although it’s certainly necessary. Historical accidents are an important part of this trend: for example, liberalism is far stronger in India than in Islam because British colonialism left India mostly unified, so its liberals could concentrate on gender equality, secularism, democracy, and a bureaucratic public administration, without having to fight local warlords to unite 15-odd countries populated by one nation speaking more or less one language.
Alternatively, Muslim immigrants to Europe are more violent than East Asian ones because Islamic tradition happens to be one of violently changing things you don’t like, whereas East Asian one is of being a doormat and acquiescing to the Emperor. Note that in the one democratic Muslim country, Turkey, there indeed is a civic tradition, so the reaction to the cartoons involved egging the Danish embassy, which is a legitimate form of nonviolent protest, rather than setting it on fire.
I have yet to see anyone demonstrate how the cartoons were telling Muslims that they were ‘second-class citizens’. The cartoons were telling Muslims that their religion is illegitimate and uncivilised. I don’t suppose anyone here is arguing otherwise?
As for the rather lame “they should do it to everyone” line: Wake up and educate yourself a little! They have. They didn’t poke at other religions this time, just as they haven’t poked at Islam on the occasions where they have poked at some other religion. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. What goes around, comes around.
As a matter of fact, JyllandsPosten is just about the only Danish newpaper left that has the spine to ridicule charismatic (that’s pronounced ‘evangelical’) Christian sects. All the others seem to regard the current march of ignorance and superstition as some quaint fashion that should be accepted as a legitimate part of our society.
Viggo H�rup would be spinning in his grave so fast you could power all of Copenhagen with a piece of wire and a magnet, if he knew how Politiken is treating Intelligent Design Creationism, for instance. And that goddamn, spineless Chamberlain Seidenfaden actually had the gall to argue the other day that we should accept religious feelings as legitimate political arguments!
We may have a secular society, but things are definitely taking a turn for the worse these years. And not because people are too ready to blaspheme, either.
“One of the leading imams, Abu Laban, who was one of the organizers of the tour around the Middle East with “bonus” drawings and misinformation, cannot.
He is persona non grata in Egypt, where he grew up, because of his Islamistic views.”
I seem to remember hearing Naser Khader (one of the sanest voices in this whole debacle – I wonder what the hell he’s doing with the Centrists?) saying that not a single one of the fifth column Imams spreading lies in Egypt was actually from Egypt. I might have been wrong, but I don’t think so.
That aside, I understand perfectly why the Egyptians don’t want him. I wouldn’t want that lunatic fascist within a hundred kilometres of my borders if I had any choice in the matter, either (for those unfamiliar with him, think Pat(wa) Robertson)…
Fortunately, though, we don’t deport people just because they are lying fascists. Just as we don’t apologize for insulting people’s stupid religious bigotry.
The only meaningful measure of civilisation is the level of tolerance for blasphemy. I guess the Danish Imams (which is a subset of Danish Muslims, not the other way around) failed the basic litmus test of civilisation.
I seem to remember hearing Naser Khader (one of the sanest voices in this whole debacle – I wonder what the hell he’s doing with the Centrists?) saying that not a single one of the fifth column Imams spreading lies in Egypt was actually from Egypt. I might have been wrong, but I don’t think so.
Abu Laban didn’t go, he stayed here.
And, yes, Naser Khader is fantastic.
How about publishing a list of advertizers and calling for a campaing of disapproving letters and possibly boycotts against them? It isn’t exactly a novel way to express disapproval, and it is effective.
It is really depressing that the first reaction amoung too many Muslims is apparently to demand that the governments “do something” about their uppity citizens.
I’m tempted to compile the advitiser list myself, but given the current reaction, I’d be afraid that too many people would be sending petrol-bombs and not letters.
A number of comments here fall into a common error of the present day right: conflating actions that proclaim moral rights and strategic pursuit of those moral rights.
Brimming with moral indignation over the burning of embassies in reaction to a cartoon, people here want to—what? punish Muslim societies somehow? Scream back as loudly as possible?
I’m morally indignant too; do is PZ Myers, so is everyone else on this blog. But have some strategic sense. If you want a world with tolerance and rights for all, think about how to get there. Christian and Muslim extremists both benefit from keeping this story burning. They have an agenda, and to advance it they need their supporters mobilized around perceived offenses by the other side. If you want liberal societies to reign in the Middle East, then you have a *different* agenda. And it doesn’t involve shouting at Muslim societies that they are inferior or barbaric, because whether you have a moral right to do so or not, that doesn’t help you or liberalism, it just helps extremists in those societies keep their supporters angry and distracted from the low quality of life that authoritarianism and religious fanaticism have delivered.
If I were a fanatical Muslim cleric, I’d probably be willing to pay Westerners to bash Muslim societies as medieval, backwards, intolerant, and inferior. Just like in sports, that kind of locker-room talk isn’t going to cause self-doubt among my rank-and-file fanatics—it’s just going to fire them up.
The entire strategy of radical Islam with respect to the West is provocation—they are too weak to do anything else. Congratulations on falling for it again. For the love of Jeebus, stop taking the bait. Condemn the rioters, protect the cartoonists and their rights, and get on with your lives. Or, if you really care about this, think about ways you could strengthen the hands of moderates and reformers in the Middle East. That would involve a lot more economic aid and diplomacy, and many fewer holier-than-thou rants, even if you really are holier than them.
I’ve seen the cartoons, and they are crude and uninteresting-they are more about perpetuating stereotypes of Muslims as bomb-throwing terrorists than seriously illuminating a problem. They lack artistic or social or even comedic merit, and are only presented as an insult to inflame a poor minority.
PZ, I appreciate the nuance of your position on publication of the cartoons, but what surprises me is that you see the cartoons in the way you describe above. I looked at the cartoons, and here’s what I saw:
1. Mohammed with bomb-turban reminded me exactly of the ever-popular Republican Jesus.
2. Mohammed with dagger and two veiled women reminded me of that cartoon (origin I can’t recall) showing Jesus as a tattooed, gun-toting Rambo.
3. Mohammed in the lineup just seemed to be a joke on Danish public figures.
4. Mohammed on a cloud in heaven was analagous to the countless Christian cartoons depicting Jesus or God or St. Peter up in heaven in a jokey way.
5. A couple of the images were completely innocuous — just the artist’s vision of Mohammed.
6. A couple of the cartoons were actually self-referential, showing the cartoonist drawing a cartoon of Mohammed.
Maybe I’m blind, but I just don’t see racism and bigotry there. Of course Muslims object to the Prophet being depicted and they object to any jokes aimed at their religion, but these cartoons were really not egregious.
It’s true that America has a handful of home-grown religious terrorists, but they are few and far between, and they get tossed in jail and even executed when captured if they don’t cop a plea. Eric Robert Rudolph cheated the hangman, Timothy McVeigh didn’t.
Most of America’s rag heads are of the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell ilk: they’ll talk trash, but we really don’t expect them to go torch an embassy. They just make obnoxious proclaimations about how God is punishing people they don’t like, we call them assholes, and we move on. Business as usual.
The difference between American society and the dictatorships of the middle east, is that we hold liberty to be our ideal, while they elevate obedience as the paramount virtue. Now, obedience can be benign, if the leader is a decent human being. The Ottomans did just fine under Suleyman, for example. The problem with obedience is that if a large group of people obey a shithead like Hitler, Mao, or Bin Laden, the casualties are enormous.
As it happens, the people who stand in the greatest peril from Muslim fundamentalism are the Muslims themselves. Religious nutjobs are always far more vicious to the heretic than to the infidel: just look at the slaughter of the Shi’a and Sufi over the centuries at the hands of the Wahabbis. What the nutjobs don’t understand (or don’t care about) is the grave danger they face, if they ever succeed in fully provoking the west into war against Islam. The Hajj could very well become a fatal endeavor for anyone not wearing a radiation suit.
The west is fully capable of wiping out other cultures. There isn’t a lot of emperor-worship in Japan these days, and it’s been a pretty long time since any enemy of the Aztecs had his heart cut out in the temple at teotihuacan. Unless the Islamic world gets a lid on their nutjobs, they’re in for a tragedy of biblical proportions.
-jcr
Uh, Mnemosyne, Muslims aren’t a race, Islam is an association.
The difference between American society and the dictatorships of the middle east, is that we hold liberty to be our ideal, while they elevate obedience as the paramount virtue.
They elevate obedience as a paramount virtue in East Asia, too. Do you see people from Japan fly planes into chimney-like skycrapers in New York?
The west is fully capable of wiping out other cultures. There isn’t a lot of emperor-worship in Japan these days, and it’s been a pretty long time since any enemy of the Aztecs had his heart cut out in the temple at teotihuacan. Unless the Islamic world gets a lid on their nutjobs, they’re in for a tragedy of biblical proportions.
It takes a total war the other side realizes it started for that to happen. If the US drafts 3 million men and marches on the Middle East, there will be a terror campaign ending in either a Holocaust-like extermination of all Arabs, or an American defeat. The same thing would have happened in Japan if it hadn’t a) realized it had started the war, and b) had a bandwagon political culture that made it side with the victors.
The problem with obedience is that if a large group of people obey a shithead like Hitler, Mao, or Bin Laden, the casualties are enormous.
Hitler and Mao are ideological clones, but very different from Bin Laden. Hitler and Mao were populists who connected to the people and could build an effective cult of personality around themselves. Bin Laden is an upper class elitist leading a ragtag group of upper class elitist; he can excite some people about his cause, but very rarely about himself. Even Saddam, who is far more charismatic than Bin Laden can hope to be, is three leagues below Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
Uh, Mnemosyne, Muslims aren’t a race, Islam is an association.
In Europe, the establishment discriminates against people with brown skin and Arab names, even if they deconvert.
James Gambrell: Please consider the implications of explicitly comparing Muslims to children.
Peter Lund: Few if any nations seem to do large-scale immigration right. As a literally insular and peninsular society, has Denmark ever had to deal with incorporating a significant number of truly exotic outsiders before? (And – pls consider the implications of any statements which bring Harry Eagar to applaud your ideology!)
Fwiw: US hyperchristians are strutting their stuff:
Here’s something I’ve been wondering about….
If a newspaper in Germany started publishing cartoons of Jews as hooknosed old men hoarding money, poisoning wells and leering at pretty young Gentile girls, and this paper did so after the region it was published in had experienced a large influx of Jewish immigrants, would those who support the Dutch newspaper with *no* caveats attached to that support do the same thing for this hypothetical German newspaper?
Actually its not all that hard to imagine Japanese terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers. Certainly Shoko Asahara could have convinced his Aum Shinrikyo dupes to do so, and given Asahara’s apocolyptic beliefs he might have sent them against American targets. The Japanese Red Army could probably have produced suicide agents if they had managed to recruit more members. (FYI Yu Kikumura of the Red Army is currently in jail in the US after his 1988 arrest and conviction for planning an attack on a military recruiting office in Manhattan.)
Alon,
East Asia has a rather tragic record with obedience, too. Some 77 million dead under Mao, and some tens of millions killed by the Japanese miltarist expansion, to name two. So, I would describe obedience as intrinsically dangerous.
As for the difference between Bin Laden and Mao (for example), it’s only window dressing. They both promulgate an ideal of sacrificing the individual, for some “higher purpose”, whether it’s the religion of the koran or the little red book. There will always be these kinds of assholes around, and the scale of the damage they do is determined by how much misery there is around them to exploit. Bin Laden’s a piker, but that’s not for a lack of evil motivation on his part.
-jcr
Jillian,
In the case you propose, one would be justified in perhaps calling or writing to the editors and/or cartoonists, expressing your disapproval, and reviling them in polite company. The appropriate response to hateful speech is rebuttal, NOT arson.
A couple of days ago, the Joint Chiefs demonstrated a perfectly appropriate response to an exceptionally snotty editorial cartoon in the Post: they wrote a letter to the editor, and essentially called Tolles an asshole. They didn’t threaten him, demand his dismissal, or burn down the Post’s printing plant.
-jcr
Jillian, one more thing:
The Arab News (an official newspaper of Saudi Arabia, mind you) makes a habit of running cartoons depicting Jews in precisely the manner you describe.
-jcr
I agree with you, John.
What I find upsetting is two things: first, the idea that the newspapers that carried these cartoons didn’t do anything wrong (they are within their rights to carry inflamatory cartoons, but I think my analogy to the anti-Semitic cartoon holds, and I also think we would hold any press that printed an anti-Semitic cartoon in the greatest contempt), and second, the perception that there is no moderate, temperate Muslim objection to these cartoons.
Hate the fanatics all you want. Goodness knows I do (although I also try to keep in mind the material circumstances that created them – not as an excuse, but as an aid to keep from breeding more of the excrement in the first place). But just try to also keep in mind at the same time that this is not a black and white issue, and that criticism of the presses that ran the cartoons does not necessarily equate to equal support of all those who protest the cartoons (not saying you do; just trying to explain my point of view).
The thing that disturbs me about this post, PZ, is your suggestion that “the long-term solution is to educate them and imbed more secular ideals in their communities.” It just sounds so great-white-hunter, y’know? (I realize that wasn’t your intent, but it came across that way a little.) I think secular and moderate ideas need to come from within any given society, not from without (where they’ll be rejected as surely as the Iraqis have rejected the US idea of “liberation”), and that can’t happen as long as theocracies are supported in words and deeds and money by other theocracies (and would-be theocracies).
The problem actually IS the muslim faith.
It is one of the only world religions that has not been tamed by secularity, also, the q’ran is just as violent and horrible a book as the bible and Torah, and none of them should be believed without evidence. Not in the age of nuclear weapons. Our ability to kill each other has reached a degree that we can no longer have these irresponsible beliefs and expect to survive our religious differences. I ask you, are these the passages of a moderate “Religion of peace”?
4:56 Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise.
4:74 Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.
4:76 Those who believe do battle for the cause of Allah; and those who disbelieve do battle for the cause of idols. So fight the minions of the devil. Lo! the devil’s strategy is ever weak
4:89 They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them,
If a newspaper in Germany started publishing cartoons of Jews as hooknosed old men hoarding money, poisoning wells and leering at pretty young Gentile girls, and this paper did so after the region it was published in had experienced a large influx of Jewish immigrants, would those who support the Dutch newspaper with *no* caveats attached to that support do the same thing for this hypothetical German newspaper?
If you mean “support the paper’s free speech rights,” then yes.
East Asia has a rather tragic record with obedience, too. Some 77 million dead under Mao, and some tens of millions killed by the Japanese miltarist expansion, to name two. So, I would describe obedience as intrinsically dangerous.
First, it’s 38 million, not 77, and even so some people claim that before the Great Leap Forward, people overestimated China’s population, so people that seemed to have died never existed. Second, the types of obedience you’re describing here are not culture-specific: you can find them in every major civilization, including the West. Terrorism in itself is not a byproduct of obedience, but of several cultural and environmental factors.
As for the difference between Bin Laden and Mao (for example), it’s only window dressing. They both promulgate an ideal of sacrificing the individual, for some “higher purpose”, whether it’s the religion of the koran or the little red book.
I’m talking practice, not theory. In theory, Bin Laden and Mao are fanatics, as are about 80-90% of the world’s people, potentially. In practice, Mao was a dangerous fanatic who killed tens of millions, whereas Bin Laden plays with guns and thinks what he does will ever promote his cause. Worry about Islam when the Middle East produces a charismatic, populist-minded fundamentalist who can create a cult of personality around himself. Till then, sleep well at night knowing that Al Qaida is a low-tech version of the CIA.
I think secular and moderate ideas need to come from within any given society, not from without (where they’ll be rejected as surely as the Iraqis have rejected the US idea of “liberation”), and that can’t happen as long as theocracies are supported in words and deeds and money by other theocracies (and would-be theocracies).
If the local movement is seen as independent, then outside support will only help. Think about it this way: no country in the world has failed to have a color revolution just because the Open Society Institute backed it morally and financially.
I think my analogy to the anti-Semitic cartoon holds, and I also think we would hold any press that printed an anti-Semitic cartoon in the greatest contempt
Jillian, have you seen the cartoons? I don’t think your analogy to hypothetical anti-Semitic cartoons is apt at all. I refer you to my post above, though to save time here’s the list again:
1. Mohammed with bomb-turban reminded me exactly of the ever-popular Republican Jesus.
2. Mohammed with dagger and two veiled women reminded me of that cartoon (origin I can’t recall) showing Jesus as a tattooed, gun-toting Rambo.
3. Mohammed in the lineup just seemed to be a joke on Danish public figures.
4. Mohammed on a cloud in heaven was analagous to the countless Christian cartoons depicting Jesus or God or St. Peter up in heaven in a jokey way.
5. A couple of the images were completely innocuous — just the artist’s vision of Mohammed.
6. A couple of the cartoons were actually self-referential, showing the cartoonist drawing a cartoon of Mohammed.
I note particularly that the most incendiary cartoons seem to be the first two, and those are also the two that have the clearest contemporary parallels in modern Western editorializing.
Alon Levy, admitting this is a tangential question, what do you mean that busing in the U.S. was a failure? Ignore it if it’s too off topic, and I’m not looking to argue over it; just wondering how you would clarify that . . .
Elayne Riggs:
You berate PZ for sounding like a “great white hunter” and still find time to bash US policies. Got to get some bashing in y’know. I would really like to hear how you would solve the world’s problems. Of course it won’t involve wars, we have to accept diversity, we can’t even print cartoons. I once heard that a liberal is someone that fears being envied. The US is so successful that someone is bound to envy us, so you guys have to show you don’t even like the US. You can’t even bring yourselves to say someone else is doing something wrong. You have to equate it to a perceived US fault where none exists before you will tiptoe around the controversy.
Your mention of Iraq reminds me of an analogy I have Let’s say that I think that PZ and Richard Dawkins really hate each other. They don’t even know it. So I make up some letters forging PZ’s name calling Dawkins a religious freak. And others with Dawkins name saying PZ is a creationist. And soon they hate each other. You’d agree that I was right? You see the Iraqis want to live together peacefully but some people think they hate each other and blow up one side to provoke a civil war. And you liberals think that’s A-OK because you think the terrorist are right. You say nothing of the methods. I think my analogy fits right in. You’re wrong; the Iraqis won’t reject the US idea of liberation. Can’t you see, it’s just like my analogy? The terrorist have to resort to lies (or in this case blowing people up) to “prove” their point.
Honestly, I thought that your post was a really good, fair, balanced analysis. I liked it so much that I pointed it out to my wife, and she linked to it from her LiveJournal. I had seen the cartoons myself, and I certainly didn’t think that they were of a particularly high caliber. MOreover, they seemed designed with the intent to offend.
Freedom of Speech? Freedom of the Press? Sure, the cartoonist and the newspapers have these rights. But then again, so do Nazis and holocaust deniers — at least in the US. Pointing out that it is wrong to publish those cartoons is not the same thing as censorship. Insisting that the newspapers showed poor judgement in publishing those cartoons is not censorship. If the papers decided not to publish those cartoons, this would not be censorship.
Censorship is an act of government whereby they legally prohibit you from publishing your material. When the government does not legally prohibit you from publishing your material, it is always possible to go a different publisher who will exercise their own judgement, or simply publish the material yourself, assuming you have the resources. But then when others judge you on the basis of what you have published — or even choose to boycott you, that is their right.
As I had expressed my first impression to my wife, “If someone deliberately goes about stirring up hornet’s nests, one should not blame the hornets for the results.” Similarly, if some fellow who is white gets mugged by someone who is black, does it really make any sense to dress-up in a KKK outfit and march through Harlem?
We are dealing with a delicate situation at this point. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of the Middle East should realize that the Arab world has some rather good reasons for for resenting the West (and undoubtedly many poor reasons as well). Likewise, Osama Bin Laden has been trying to start a religious war between the West and the Islamic world. In many parts of the Islamic world, he has been admired, and viewed as a hero who is standing up for Muslims against the Western powers, who are still largely viewed as imperialistic. Only more recently have Muslims begun to see Bin Laden and the Al Qaida for what they are. But this has no doubt been especially difficult, especially with the Iraq war, continued US presence in Iraq, and Abu Graib.
I have wondered why the newspaper in Norway published the cartoons in the first place. I have also been somewhat mystified at other newspapers throughout Europe following suit. My only hypothesis is that some form of fatigue is setting in — fear of the Al Qaida, a reaction to the bombing in the US and London, and more recently (and perhaps closer to home) the riots in France and elsewhere throughout Europe.
Many people in the West, it seems, are having difficulty realizing that not all Muslims or Arabs are the same. There is this desire to show that they are not intimidated, and this has been expressed in a move which was designed to offend the entire Arab world, then in the support given to this offense.
Extremism on one side is encouraging extremism on the other, and moderates on both sides are being driven towards the extremes — just as the worst among the extremists intend. To the extent that we give such extremism and view all Muslims the same way, so that we may somehow justify to ourselves shaming and humiliating them, we facilitate a cycle of fear and hatred in which only the extremists win.
If anyone doubts that this is exactly what is now taking place, see:
Imams showed pedophile Mohamed
The imams are deliberately seeking to inflame hatred among Muslims against the West, and in the effort to do so, have sought to exaggerate the original offense. Is a war between civilizations really what nearly everyone on “both sides” now desire? Given the fact that the West is generally better educated, shouldn’t we have the good sense to step back from the brink?
I think the first and foremost problem here is that the Europeans despise brown people about as much as the segregationists of the American South did. Oh sure, they’re quick to put their pointy noses up in the air and snidely accuse the Muslims of not wanting to integrate into European societies, but really, what opportunity do Muslims get? They’re segregated into ghettos (legally, BTW — no Euro equivalent of the U.S. Fair Housing Act), largely educated with other Muslims, and never granted an opportunity to become a citizen, even if born in that European nation and lived there all their lives.
At least the United States grants citizenship to people actually born here, meaning that even if we treat the first generation of brown people like cr*p, the second generation gets a chance at a normal life. That is not true in most European nations. And the Europeans are now reaping the rewards for their racism.
– Badtux the “Pot calling kettle black” Penguin
I think the first and foremost problem here is that the Europeans despise brown people about as much as the segregationists of the American South did.
If that’s the case, then I owe those segregationists an apology for thinking so ill about them.
and never granted an opportunity to become a citizen, even if born in that European nation and lived there all their lives.
You obviously don’t know what you are talking about. Sorry.
Peter Lund wrote:
Would you honestly regard all Muslims as the “bad guys” simply becaue they are Muslim? Do you actually find it that difficult to conceive of moderate Muslims? Muslims exist along a spectrum. The extremists who engage in terrorism or the burning of embassies are but a small minority. Many are more moderate than others, and the good majority would prefer peace over war. There are many Palestinians, for example, who sought peace with Israel, just as there were a great many Israelis who sought peace with the Palestinians. Turkey is predominantly moderate. Jordan is largely moderate. And to varying degrees, moderates exist throughout the Muslim world. However, when certain individuals in the West deliberately go out of their way to offend all Muslims, they are necessarily offending a great many of the moderates as well, driving many of them away so that they end up supporting the more extreme elements, driving away the support which exists for those moderates who are left — and as a result, encouraging the very extremism which we presumably abhor.
Peter Lund wrote:
No I didn’t. I am not Caledonian.
But I might as well answer anyway: no, I don’t regard all Muslims as the “bad guys” simply because they are Muslim. I regard them as misguided and deluded simply because they are religious — I don’t distinguish between the Muslim faith and faiths there.
I do regard a few (very loud!) Muslims in Denmark as bad guys. Some of them decided to conduct a bit of foreign policy of their own which has caused us a lot of trouble.
The whole affair would have stayed a local Danish matter as part of a local Danish debate (and fight against Medievalism) if it hadn’t been for them. No one here wanted to offend all Muslims, ok? (apart from a few deluded people, perhaps, but you always get those)
Christopher Hitchens on the cartoons –>
Cartoon Debate: The case for mocking religion.
This analysis over at dKos is worth checking out. In particular it suggests why this controversy is so hot now even though the cartoons appeared last September.
Speaking of Saudi influence on the Muslim world, I blame them for making Muslims withdraw from unbelieving society even in lands where Muslims have lived among the unbelievers for centuries.
This following story is just a tiny example. In Kerala, on the southwest coast of the Indian peninsula, now Muslims are withdrawing from the traditional arts they used to participate in. In this story, the mother was an artiste, the daughter however should not be!
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060213&fname=Rubiya&sid=1
Sorry for the mistake.
Yes that was Caledonian. As for the rest of your response to my mistaken criticism, I think there is a good deal of basic agreement on all points. I would also criticize many of those on “our side,” but I believe I have already said as much.
There was an error of fact – “It’s also important to realize that it is only because of pure chance that gobs of easily extracted oil happens to exist under the muslim world’s feet”
The Muslim world encompasses the Indian subcontinent where in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh some 140 million + 140 million + 130 million Muslims live, an extremely substantial number; and there are no gobs of easily extracted oil there.
A couple of days ago, the Joint Chiefs demonstrated a perfectly appropriate response to an exceptionally snotty editorial cartoon in the Post: they wrote a letter to the editor, and essentially called Tolles an asshole. They didn’t threaten him, demand his dismissal, or burn down the Post’s printing plant.
Just want to point out that there is a substantial suspicion that the Pentagon has targetted Al Jazeera.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32023
Badtux: In Denmark, some ethnic minorities actually prefer to live with people of the same descent. Policies have been suggested to somehow restrict people’s ability to move and live wherever they wish, but I honestly find this much more appalling than the existence of city areas with a high percentage of whatever minority. So any segregation into ghettos that is happening actively is being pursued by the ghetto inhabitants themselves, not by the majority or authorities. In fact, the areas of Copenhagen with a high percentage of minorities are at the same time the most ‘hip’ to live in for the young, rich, and beautiful.
People born here automatically become Danish citizens.
That said, there is a much different attitude towards immigration here than in the US. In part because it’s a very new phenomenon, less than 40 years. In part because of the Mother-knows-best kind of state Denmark is. And in part because some Muslims have behaved in ways that are unacceptable and seem dictated by culture and/or religion.
Insulting as these cartoons are to Muslims, comparing them to Nazi anti-semitics is wrong. The key reason for printing these cartoons is that certain Muslims on a routine basis threaten artists or other people who speak their mind. And once in a while said people are actually killed. The cartoons do not caricature physical characteristics of Muslims, nor their religious practice. They caricature the violent actions of certain Muslims. And since numerous threats of terror have been issued with explicit reference to the insult against islam and the prophet Muhammad, I find it extremely difficult not to realize the relevance of e.g. the bomb-in-the-turban drawing.
So any segregation into ghettos that is happening actively is being pursued by the ghetto inhabitants themselves, not by the majority or authorities.
It also has a lot to do with the price of housing and with who is paying for it.
You know, I can’t stomach most of the posts on this issue, so I’m sorry if this has been said before, but:
Just because one side of an argument is wrong, this does not make the other side correct.
I’d think this would be obvious to rationalist types. Let’s use an analogy:
While I’m walking along one day, a guy comes up and punches me in the face because he doesn’t like the way I look. The next day, four of my friends surround the guy and, after kicking him around a bit, shoot him.
This strikes me as pretty much an exact parallel.
Now, are you really telling me that to say “You shouldn’t punch people in the face because of their looks” implies support of what my friends did? Or that you’re wishy-washy if you point this out?
It is not a problem, at least for me, that you (or PZ) might choose to point out that punching people in the face because you don’t like their looks is wrong, it’s that you (or at least PZ) would choose to focus so much on the wrong doing of the puncher while simultaneously calling for understanding the POV of the gang that kills him in retaliation.
And of course your analogy is flawed because in this case we have on the one hand people putting ink on paper and on the other we have people rioting, burning, and threatening to kill potentially millions of people. Your analogy had actual violence being perpetrated on both sides. In reality it is only one side behaving violently and we are being asked to have understanding, not so much for the cartoonists, newspapers, or people suffering in their stead, but for the people rioting and threatening mass murder.
To me it is inconceivable that anyone would be spending any time ruminating over how “mean and petty” the newspapers might be for printing cartoons while buildings are burning and mass murder is being called for.
People have a right to be offended, they can boycott, they can picket, they can write letters to the editor, but violence and the threat of violence are unacceptable and there should be no talk about understanding or cultural sensitivity until the violence and threats are stopped. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, we should refuse to even discuss the issue until the other side puts down the gun.
Yes, exactly. I do call for understanding the point of view of the gang. Do I take it from this that you are calling for deeper ignorance and incomprehension?
You are confusing looking for “understanding” with “making excuses for.” I condemn the actions of the Muslim rioters. That doesn’t mean I’m done, I can stop thinking, and I can just scapegoat some stupid cartoons and be done with it all. I’d like to know why they erupted this way, and I suspect there’s more to it than just some disrespectful cartoons.
Alon Levy, admitting this is a tangential question, what do you mean that busing in the U.S. was a failure? Ignore it if it’s too off topic, and I’m not looking to argue over it; just wondering how you would clarify that . . .
Busing black inner-city children to white suburban schools created the same problems vouchers will create: it caused people to stop looking for ways to fund inner-city schools better, only provided a limited number of people with the opportunity to go to good schools, and tarred blacks as inferior (since there are about 12 white suburbanites in the US who’d agree to send their children to inner-city, black-majority schools).
Federico Contreras: The problem actually IS the muslim faith.
Well, maybe not. If they ever get beyond the concept that the Koran was not written by a human, but rather god itself, then there might be hope. Until they get rid of this crap of direct, divine authorship, however, you are correct: the religion is, on the basis of its founding text, a real problem.
Once it is seen as metaphorical, however, I think things will be much better. Look to the Jewish and Christian traditions. Where there is a direct authorship claim, you find fanaticism – Christian Reconstructionists, for instance. (Funny, though, how it is so, so selective in its application. I doubt Ahmanson would ever kill one of his kids for talking back.) However where these tacts are taken with more salt than divinity, they are ignored, or heavily interpreted, and the kinder, more humane aspects of the tome is emphasized.
Another point of view, from the UK Spectator, but found here (the Feb 6th entry) http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/
These are also worth looking at:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48269
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/asia-pacific/4563452.stm
and the column on the left titled “Dhimmi Watch” of the below
http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/#
One thing I don’t think I’ve seen explained in this discussion is precisely what it is about the Danish newspaper’s actions that is objectionable. In this post, PZ refers to “a majority poking a minority with a sharp stick,” echoing similar comments from his initial post. Jillian offered for our consideration a hypothetical in which “a newspaper in Germany started publishing cartoons of Jews as hooknosed old men hoarding money, poisoning wells and leering at pretty young Gentile girls.” Christopher presented an analogy wherein “a guy comes up and punches me in the face because he doesn’t like the way I look.”
What I’ve seen Violet Socks ask for, and no one really provide, is an explanation of exactly what action in the Danish case is the analog to the “poke”/anti-Semitic cartoon/”punch.” Which of the twelve cartoons pokes a minority with a stick–and (more importantly) why so? Which cartoon demonizes Muslims a la the “hooknosed Jew”? Which one is comparable to punching someone in the face? And why?
Just as Violet Socks did, I profess that I may well be ignorant of the local issues involved–but I just don’t understand what it is about the actual cartoons, the actual newspaper actions here that deserve moral censure. All but one or two of the twelve cartoons do imply obvious dismissal of the “Thou Shalt Not Render Muhammad” taboo; is that sufficient grounds (perhaps in light of the prevailing socioeconomic/political/etc. circumstances) for considering it a moral wrong to publish them?
Putting that rule aside, I think, disposes of all but two or three of the cartoons–i.e., all but the “bomb turban” drawing, the “Stop, we’re out of virgins” bit and the “Prophet” poem. Those three all contain some obvious antipathy, though in each case I think it’s difficult to parse whether the displeasure is directed at Muhammad himself, at Islam writ large or at a subset of ideas within Islam. In any of these cases, though, I echo Violet Socks’ question: precisely what is the moral transgression involved in drawing and/or publishing those three cartoons?
With the aforementioned caveat of my not being well versed in the history of European-Muslim relations, I guess just don’t see legitimate case to be made for Muslim offense here. I can see the obvious moral transgression in assault (stick poke/face punch) or in racist caricature (“hooknosed Jew”), but I don’t see it in these cartoons.
The following two highlight the person who may be responsible for the current uproar.
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/02/fabricated_cart.html
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/02/more_lies_from_.html
The allegation is that Abu Laban, termed as one the leading imams in Denmark, added three really inflammatory and fake cartoons and took them on a tour of the Middle East. Meanwhile he speaks, two-faced.
If this is true, where is here the majority poking a stick at the minority?
All those who have been singing the praises of the east Asian immigrants to Europe who assimilate more easily (obedient foreigners), here is something to ponder. Go back in history a bit – not much, just fifty years. For hundreds of years, Europeans in Asia and Africa proudly behaved as Europeans in “their” lands. European ways were rammed down the throats of the “natives” in their “own” homes. This was done by force (sword, guns and whips) and fiat.
I have heard Germans praising German emigrants (in present time) to South America for proudly preserving “pure” German Kultur in Argentina, Brazil and other Latin American countries and not diluting their heritage by giving in to “native” ways. In fact I have met South American Germans sniffing that they don’t like to go back to Germany because it looks so foreign – “das Vaterland” has been overrun by savages! Come again! Isn’t that what the Muslims are trying to do in Europe for which they are being termed backward, recalcitrant and hostile? They are behaving like Europeans – by tenaciously clinging to their own ways, amidst a foreign culture? They just don’t have the power of the colonizer. What used to be sauce for the goose is now sauce for the gander.. etc.
If this is true, where is here the majority poking a stick at the minority?
It is true — he didn’t personally go but most of the delegation were from Islamisk Trossamfund, who organize about 1-3 % of the Danish Muslims, if you count all the children too.
They did not just add extra (unpublished) drawings but also spread other misinformation about Denmark and about the case.
One of the Danish newspapers got hold of the photocopied material they had handed out to newspapers down there. We know the written material but it is harder to prove exactly what oral misinformation they spread. It is funny, though, how similar the errors were in the Arab media…
And yes, Abu Laban speaks with two tongues.
Another of the imams was on al-Jazeera a couple of days ago saying that the Danes would hold an autodafé of the Quran Saturday and how the Muslims were oh so persecuted. Of course there wasn’t an autodafé — a few loony nazi-types did want to burn the Quran on the City Square of Copenhagen, that’s true. But they do not by any stretch of the imagination represent “Danes” as such. In the end, there was a demonstration (a march) in the small town of Hillerød instead with 30 nazi-types and over a hundred “Autonome” (anarchical left violent types who are Against something — it is unclear what exactly but they are certainly Against it!). Police had to arrest about 160 people: 30-40 of them second-generation immigrants, the rest were “autonome”.
So now we have a rumour going around that Danes burn the Quran in the street, which is of course very offensive, initiated by a person these people believe by default.
How do we stop that now?
PS: PZ, could you gently prod the Seed people to fix the i18n problems, please?
I linked above to one theory of why there has been a recent intensification of this controversy: that it is being pushed by the Saudis to distract from the recent incident that resulted in the deaths of a few hundred Hajj pilgrims (numerous deaths during the Hajj has been an ongoing problem for the Saudis for years â they keep promising to fix it though…). A countervailing opinion is provided by Juan Cole:
An interesting dissent in the comments to Cole’s post states:
It shouldn’t need to be pointed out, but apparently it does, that those who want to see these kinds of incidents as an expression of some kind of monolithic version of Islam, aren’t looking very closely at differences among Muslims, at the complexity of societies in Middle Eastern countries, at the opposition between many a Middle Eastern regime and its country’s populace, or at the historical legacies shaping all these aspects of Middle Eastern politics.
In another post today, Cole links to an account in the Lebanese press that indicates some of the on-the-ground complexities of the protest that resulted in the torching of the Danish embassy in Beirut. The clerics involved in organizing the rally called on the crowd to protest peacefully. They also attempted to stop vandalism of Christian churches â acts which were far more an expression of internal Lebanese sectarian tensions than anything to do with the Danish cartoons.
For all you connoisseurs of religious logic, I note this slogan from the Lebanese protest: “Yes to freedom of speech but not to ridiculing our Prophet!”
The Lebanese newspaper site I linked above, at least when I pulled it up, also had a banner at the top reading: “Support free press in Lebanon“. You can’t make this stuff up…
Yes of course I am all for ignorance and incomprehension, the more ignorance and incomprehension the better. Who isn’t for that? [Do I have to label that sarcasm?]
Clearly by understanding I am not talking about gaining an intellectual handle of what socioeconomic factors might feed into the creation of a “riot and threaten death” demographic. I am talking about what you seem to be doing and that is speaking as if there might be good reasons for these peoples behavior. They are a “poor and oppressed underclass” who has been “marginalized” and who is being “kicked when they’re down.”
Jeez, how can we blame them for rioting?
It’s like listening to a psychologist testify at the trial of a child rapist/killer, about the baby-brain-bruises inflicted on the defendant by his parent’s constant verbal abuse. Yes I am sorry for what he went through, it was wrong for his parents to do that, but now we need to (at least) throw the scumbag in jail for the rest of his life.
Unless the rioters buildings are being burnt and their lives threatened by the Dutch or French or whoever, it doesn’t matter what the reasons are. Any other “reasons” you want to try and come up with are nothing more than rationalizations used to justify barbarism.
And yet you keep going on about how “mean and petty” the newspapers are and talking about how downtrodden and oppressed the rioters are. How else should this be interpreted except as at least some small amount of sympathy for the “marginalized”? You do condemn the rioters, and I have absolutely no doubt of your sincerity in that, but you don’t seem to be able to make a comment condemning the rioters without balancing it with a condemnation of the newspapers.
Putting ink on paper, no matter how offensive it’s content might be to some peoples beliefs, are not in same moral universe as causing death and destruction and when you continually speak of them in the same breath (so to speak) the implication is that they might be.
Do we need to have a study done to figure this out? Sure there is more to it; the rioters come from a culture that by and large does not believe in free speech or religious freedom.
I’m sure that at least some of blame for this can be put on the West if we look hard enough.
You did it again.
I say it over and over: I’m not making excuses for the rioting Muslims. I don’t think there is anything even close to parity between the actions of the rioters and the cartoonists.
And you turn it around and argue that I’m suggesting we can’t blame them.
I don’t get it. Haven’t you finished pounding the stuffing out of that straw man yet?
Rieux writes: What I’ve seen Violet Socks ask for, and no one really provide, is an explanation of exactly what action in the Danish case is the analog to the “poke”/anti-Semitic cartoon/”punch.” Which of the twelve cartoons pokes a minority with a stick–and (more importantly) why so?
Did you (and/or Violet) see what I wrote in the previous thread, in response to the original article (“Pox-ridden Houses”)?
My contention is that the bomb-headed Mohammed is pretty clearly a direct insult to the central figure of Islam, of a sort that seems to say “Islam is a Bad Religion based on Bad Ideas from the head of a Bad Man.” And I say that as an atheist, not a touchy Muslim who’s freaked out just to see an image of Mohammed.
In the U.S., we never see cartoons in newspapers that criticize Jesus in that way; I don’t know the situation in Europe.
Note that I’m not just talking about cartoons critical of some Christians, but of Jesus himself, in a way that implies a criticism of Christianity in general.
For example, I’ve seen two sorts of Rambo Jesus cartoons, neither of them in newspapers. One is a liberal cartoon, intended to criticize Rambo Christians; I doubt most people reading it think Jesus was actually supposed to be a Rambo type. (In other words, the cartoon is critical of people foolish enough to take the God of Love and turn him into Rambo.) That’s a sort of cartoon a liberal Christian might draw, with no intent to criticize Jesus or Christianity as whole; the intent may be to protect Jesus and (liberal) Christianity by criticizing specifically right-wing Christianity.
The other sort of Rambo Jesus I’ve seen is from right-wing Christians intent on contradicting the image of Jesus as some kind of nice-guy pussy. In other words, they’re saying that Jesus is a hard-ass, and a vengeful God, but not in a bad way. It’s praise, from profoundly fucked up people.
In neither case is there an intent to clearly criticize Jesus himself, or by implication anyone stupid or mean enough to be a follower of Jesus.
My impression of the bomb-headed Mohammed cartoon is quite different. It’s playing to type, not against type. It seems pretty clearly intended to say that yes, the negative stereotype of Islam is justified: Islam is a terrorist religion rooted in the terroristic ideas of a terrorist.
I happen to agree with that sentiment. (But then I’m an atheist who feels the same way about the Christian Bible; Jesus lends himself to fundamentalist insanity, too, with liberal Christians glossing over the truly bad stuff in the Bible. In my view, being a liberal Christian is a bit like being a reform Nazi; you may actually be nice and moral, but you’re a bit nuts to still worship that idol or work within that system anyway. The bad that Muslims or Christians do can’t be separated from their reverence for scripture; the latter is used to justify the former.)
So despite my agreeing with the cartoon, I do see that it would be much more offensive to Muslims than any cartoon I’ve ever seen of Jesus in a major U.S. newspaper, or even in the “alternative” press—we never see Jesus himself presented as a Bad Person, whose Bad Ideas account for the actions of his Bad Followers.
Peter says that such very negative images of Jesus do get published in Danish newspapers; my guess that even if that’s true, they’re pretty rare, but I have no way to judge. He also says he doesn’t think they get published in that newspaper, which is problematic. If Jyllens-Posten wanted to send a clear message about their right to criticize Mohammed, and their obligation to resist pressure to self-censor, it’d be good if they showed it was part of a general pattern of goring sacred cows all around.
Of course, in general we don’t expect any particular newspaper in a free country to actually do such things. A free press doesn’t mean that every individual newspaper airs all sides of all issues at all times. So if a particular newspaper responds to particular things at a particular time, and that’s taken out of context, it looks worse than it is. Foreign observers may not see that it’s balanced out by the same newspaper at different times, or to some extent by other newspapers’ opposing editorial slant. (But that may not be true, but that’s hard to tell, too—its impossible to judge bias from one data point.)
Like PZ, I see the provocation here—clearly criticizing the central figure of a religion is a smack in the face most religious people aren’t used to, with or without a rule about whether you can even make an image of that figure. It’s clearly blasphemy in a way that criticizing some Muslims (e.g., terrorist factions) or is not. I personally think that blasphemy is a victimless crime, but I can tell the difference.
As an atheist living in the USA, that’s significant to me. Let me quote Wendy Kaminer here:
“America’s pluralistic ideal does not protect atheism; public support for different belief systems is matched by intolerance of disbelief. According to surveys published in the early 1980s, before today’s pre-millennial religious revivalism, nearly 70 percent of all Americans agreed that the freedom to worship “applies to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme their beliefs are”; but only 26 percent agreed that the freedom of atheists to make fun of God and religion “should be legally protected no matter who might be offended.” Seventy-one percent held that atheists “who preach against God and religion” should not be permitted to use civic auditoriums. Intolerance for atheism was stronger even than intolerance of homosexuality.”
(See http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/kaminer.htm for the full article.)
In other words, a quarter of Americans think public atheism should be more or less illegal, and a majority think that the government should not be neutral toward atheism—atheists at best don’t deserve all the breaks religious people do.
A significant fraction of Americans take blasphemy very seriously, if it’s directed toward their favorite religious figure, whether that be “God” or Jesus. Of those, many don’t see their double standard, but many do and think it’s justified because their religion is the Right religion, and the other religions are Wrong.
I’m pretty sure that many of the same people who say that extreme religous views should be tolerated are not talking about direct attacks on Jesus; they’re tolerant of people preaching that Islam is true, but not of preaching that Jesus was not god, or a bad man. There’s a line you cross when you go from preaching a contradictory idea to explicitly teaching that the other idea is false; there’s another line you cross when you personally attack a revered figure. They’d notice the lines being crossed if the target was Jesus, but area much less likely to notice in the case of Mohammed.
(This is even true of atheists over here—several of my atheist friends didn’t notice the asymmetry until I pointed it out, and hadn’t thought about how we never see direct criticism of Jesus himself in our “free press.” If even atheists over here don’t notice the double standard, I’m guessing Christians in Denmark are likely to miss it, too. It’s terribly hard for a religious majority to be objective and evenhanded about these things, and much easier for the minority to notice their sacred ox being gored.)
Some might find this (not directly related to the cartoons, but certainly a narration of the conditions in Europe, well, London) to provide some food for thought:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_when_islam.html
Yes I see you saying those things but I also see you saying other things that could imply something else.
Do you really not see how comments like “They have cause to be furious!” juxtaposed with “I don’t have any sympathy for a newspaper carrying out an exercise in pointless provocation” could be interpreted as sympathy for the rioters on some level? No way at all?
How your comments about the “poor and oppressed underclass” who has been “marginalized” and who is being “kicked when they’re down” juxtaposed with comments about the newspapers being “mean and petty” who published cartoons that “â¦represent a ruling establishment intentionally taunting them and basically flipping them off” who acted with “inflammatory stupidity” could be interpreted as I have been suggesting? Really? No way at all?
OK I guess I’m just stupid.
The only way is by completely ignoring everything else I said.
Whoops. In light of this quote from Wendy Kaminer…
only 26 percent agreed that the freedom of atheists to make fun of God and religion “should be legally protected no matter who might be offended.”
…I shouldn’t have said that a quarter of Americans think that public atheism should be illegal. What I should have said is that when it comes down to outright blasphemy, only a quarter of Americans think it shouldn’t be illegal.
I suspect that if it came down to Muslims ridiculing Jesus, rather than atheists ridiculing God, the statistics would be similar. Being a Muslim is one thing, but overtly attacking Jesus is a very different thing. Similarly, for Muslims, being a Christian is one thing, but attacking Mohammed himself is quite another.
Presumably the statistics for Danish popular opinion would be quite different, but it is hard for me to believe that the same phenomenon is not at work in a significant way, (Since many Danes are Christians of some sort.) Outright blasphemy is a problem for the majority of liberal religious people, not just the right-wing fundamentalists who are so common in the US.
Yes, Professor, you are treating those Muslims differently than I’ve ever seen you treat Christians. I cannot recall that you ever asked us to consider that Christian creationists are poor and marginalized, so we could better understand why they are so resentful; although it would not be so hard to make a case that the mass of the holy rollers really are poor and marginalized.
Not Pat Robertson, whose father was a U.S. senator, but many of the acolytes in the 700 Club.
I am not suggesting that you let up on the Christians. Just put the hammer down on the Muslims to the same degree.
Paul W., I think the distinctions you are drawing between caricatures of Jesus and Mohammed are purely a matter of your perceptions. They’re not intrinsic to the cartoons.
Look at a cartoon of Jesus gleefully riding a bomb with the caption, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” Or a portrait of him with a rifle, no caption. Then look at the cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. How can you tell that the Jesus cartoon is making fun of Jesus’s modern-day followers, but the Mohammed cartoon isn’t making fun of modern-day Muslims? Where’s the secret decoder ring for that?
My reaction to the Mohammed-with-bomb-turban cartoon is that it is obviously a jab at modern extremists who subvert Islam for their own violent ends. Obviously — to me. They didn’t have bombs in 632 A.D. and Mohammed wasn’t a suicide bomber. That cartoon no more makes me think that Islam is a terrorist religion than the other makes me think that Christianity is a bomb-throwing religion.
Violet: Paul W., I think the distinctions you are drawing between caricatures of Jesus and Mohammed are purely a matter of your perceptions. They’re not intrinsic to the cartoons.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Editorial cartooning is largely the art of playing with around stereotyped conceptions. (Not necessarily bad stereotypes, just things that are easy to recognize as standing for categories of other things.) Cartoons are incomprehensible without lots of immediately-available background assumptions and automatically-jumped-to interpretations. The trick is to evoke the intended ones, and pretty much force the “right” interpretation of the cartoon.
Every editorial cartoonist knows this; it’s one thing that makes it hard to say anything in an editorial cartoon, with a single frame and not much text at all to explain a subtle idea.
A cartoonist must make a good guess as to how audiences will interpret the cartoon, based on common stereotypes.
And there is an objective difference between playing to a steretype and playing against a stereotype.
Look at a cartoon of Jesus gleefully riding a bomb with the caption, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” Or a portrait of him with a rifle, no caption. Then look at the cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. How can you tell that the Jesus cartoon is making fun of Jesus’s modern-day followers, but the Mohammed cartoon isn’t making fun of modern-day Muslims? Where’s the secret decoder ring for that?
It’s in the culture—what the prevailing stereotypes are, and which stereotypes people recognize as the prevailing stereotypes, whether they personally believe them or not.
In Western Christian and post-Christian culture, Jesus is immediately recognized as “representing” goodness and especially forgiveness, even by people who don’t buy it, like me and my atheist friends. He’s Mr. Turn The Other Cheek, the way Santa Claus is Mr. Brings You Presents.
When I hear the phrase “Who Would Jesus Bomb?,” I can only get the joke because I know it’s understood that Jesus wouldn’t bomb anybody, and so Christians who are prone to bombing people are hypocrites.
Whether I think that characterization of the historical Jesus or the Biblical Jesus is accurate or not—and I don’t—I at least get the joke, precisely because I know what I’m “supposed to” think about Jesus, in our cultural context.
A similar understanding of Mohammed is not available to me—or, I’m pretty sure, to most Westerners. I don’t recognize that most Westerners would see the same irony—I don’t know that I’m “supposed to” think that the idea of Mohammed bombing somebody is absurd. I’m pretty sure I’m not strongly “supposed to” think that, and interpret the cartoon that way. So I have to guess that the cartoonist didn’t mean for me to jump to that conclusion.
My reaction to the Mohammed-with-bomb-turban cartoon is that it is obviously a jab at modern extremists who subvert Islam for their own violent ends. Obviously — to me. They didn’t have bombs in 632 A.D. and Mohammed wasn’t a suicide bomber. That cartoon no more makes me think that Islam is a terrorist religion than the other makes me think that Christianity is a bomb-throwing religion.
Maybe I’m totally wrong and a dancing fool, but I think you just didn’t fully get the joke. Yes, it is critical of modern Islamic terrorists, but it’s presumably not an accident that it’s Mohammed himself in the cartoon.
If you see Jesus himself in a cartoon, rather than some Christian preacher, or a random schmuck with a cross around her neck, that’s generally significant. In the case of “Who Would Jesus Bomb?,” its to heighten the irony—Jesus himself bombing somebody is so obviously ironic that it makes the hypocrisy of Christians bombing people clearer. (A cartoon of a random Christian bombing somebody wouldn’t make the hypocrisy as clear; it could be interpreted as just saying that some Christians are the type who would bomb people, without clearly relating that to Jesus or the theology of forgiveness that he represents. It wouldn’t point up the irony of people who aim to be “Christ-like” doing something Christ wouldn’t do, so it wouldn’t be as funny.)
But back to Mohammed. As far as I know, westerners don’t generally think of Mohammed as “Christ-like,” i.e., a figure of forgiveness who shuns violence and retribution. If anything, they think the opposite, or at least recognize it as a common stereotype, whether it’s fair or not; Mohammed is a hard-ass. They can’t be expected to see it as ironic, so when they see Mohammed himself associated with bombs, the ironic interpretation is unlikely, and the “straight” interpretation is obvious—Mohammed is a “bomber” type of guy, even if he didn’t literally have modern bombs. The use of Mohammed himself in conjunction with modern bombs precisely connects the ancient religious figure to the modern bombing behavior.
(That’s exactly what makes it a good cartoon in the sense of efficiently conveying a message. It’s insulting because it’s so good at sending that message.)
If that was just an accident, we’re talking about a seriously incompetent cartoonist who doesn’t know how to pick the right exemplar for a category. That’s cartooning 101 stuff; you never pick the leader of a group as an exemplar of the group, if you don’t want to say something about the leader and/or the whole group. (And if you want to say something about the leader, but not the whole group, or vice versa, you have to put something in the cartoon to disambiguate it, e.g., A couple of Republicans rolling their eyes and wincing when George Bush says something stupid, or trying to drag him away from the podium…)
That interpretation seems intuitively clear to me, and to everyone I’ve discussed the cartoon with, but maybe we’re weird, or not representative of Danes’ understanding of stereotypes about Mohammed, or something.
I can’t prove it without doing empirical studies I’m in no position to do, but I think there’s an objective fact there, about the available cultural stereotypes and how people can be expected to get the jokes. Even if I’m right about that, it could be an honest mistake on the part of the cartoonist, who didn’t properly understand the prevailing stereotypes and made the wrong joke by accident. In that case, I’d say the cartoonist simply messed up and accidentally made a joke that was easier to misunderstand than to properly understand. But not because there isn’t an objective fact about what the cartoon can be expected to mean—just that the artist, subjectively, didn’t grasp it, and sorta “misspoke.”
(I’m not saying that a Danish cartoonist is responsible for all possible misreadings of a cartoon in foreign cultures, where the stereotypes are different. My analysis is based on the assumption that I get the joke the same way that Danes could generally be expected to, i.e., that the connection between Mohammed and bombing is not ironic in the same way as “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” Within that Western context, the insult is there, unless Danes in general know something think something about Mohammed that I don’t know about.
Paul, thanks for the response, and I’m sorry I didn’t see your comment on the earlier thread.
I think it’s very interesting how similar the philosophical places you and I are coming from are. I, too, am an atheist who has been a fan of Wendy Kaminer and her “Last Taboo” essay (Paul linked to it above) for a long time. It seems to me, though, that Kaminer’s piece is one of the best accounts of why publishing the Muhammad cartoons ought not be considered unethical. She writes:
One of Kaminer’s main points, I think, is that it was illegitimate for the Times editors to cut out criticism of the silliness of “talk[ing] to Jesus.” Yes, Kaminer’s irreverence would have offended people, obviously–but she doesn’t seem to grant moral standing to that offense. I see her contending (and I certainly believe) that the offense some Christians would have taken from her article is insufficient to make that article ethically wrong.
The broader point, I guess, is that offense is cheap. You, Kaminer, PZ and I are all atheists, and clearly there are millions if not billions of folks in the world who regard such (non)belief, in and of itself, as incredibly offensive. We understand that, and as a result I think we four wouldn’t be terribly surprised if True Believers of various stripes found the forthright atheism in Kaminer’s articles, PZ’s posts or your or my comments to be offensive per se. But surely that doesn’t put us in the wrong, does it? Does the simple fact that our existence as “out” atheists offends some people mean that it’s ethically wrong for us to be “out”? (Or to be atheists?)
I just don’t see the relevant distinction between that and the cartoon case. Heck yes, I can understand why the “bomb turban” cartoon would offend Muslims. (Apropos of your exchange with Violet, I will stick with my contention that it’s unclear whether the target of the cartoon is Muhammad personally, Islam–the religion, not the people–generally or some Islamic doctrines specifically.) But the question seems to me to be whether that offense is something that deserves to be introduced into the determination of whether the cartoonist and newspaper were behaving properly. As I tried to demonstrate above, there are some kinds of offense (such as “How dare you deny God?!?”) that, I think we can agree, should be dismissed outright.
You mention Americans’ offense at criticism of Jesus, and you (rightly) cite “The Last Taboo” as a good account of it. Again–heck yes, it exists, and it’s not all that hard to understand why. But surely that offense is no better justified than various folks’ unhappiness with your and my atheism. I strongly agree that reverence for Jesus has a severe chilling effect on open critical inquiry into the guy–but that state of affairs is bad, isn’t it? Surely it doesn’t justify spreading the chill over all other Big Religious Figures that people can get up in arms about. (For my money, I’d love to see the “Jesus with a rifle” cartoon printed with the caption taken from Luke 19:27–“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” Irony, my eye.)
Again, I just don’t see the parallel in this case to the “poke,” the “punch,” the racist caricature. What I think is being offered in comparison is Muslims’ offense that their sacred cow is being gored–but if we accept that as a legitimate claim of injury, I sincerely fear for the future of free expression where religious doubt is concerned.
If Paul W is uncertain about Danish cartooning implications, imagine the gap in understanding same in the Middle East. Back in the good old days of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US tried to communicate its demands via a series of comic books, and found that Iraqis didn’t even recognize the concept of speech being represented by words in a balloon with a pointed tail aligned with a character’s mouth…
That’s a thoughtful analysis, Paul, unusually so on this subject.
However, we are dealing with a Muslim society that names its children Jihad and prays for them to grow up to become suicide bombers, so I think we’re safe in expecting Muslims to understand the context of the cartoon just the same way I do.
Here is a new report that will shed some illumination on European “secular even handedness”. The question still remains whose sacred ox or cow is being gored and by whom?
Excerpt:
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.
The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.
In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.
Zieler received an email back from the paper’s Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: “I don’t think Jyllands-Posten’s readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them.”
The illustrator said: “I see the cartoons as an innocent joke, of the type that my Christian grandfather would enjoy.”
“I showed them to a few pastors and they thought they were funny.”
But the Jyllands-Posten editor in question, Mr Kaiser, said that the case was “ridiculous to bring forward now. It has nothing to do with the Muhammad cartoons.
“In the Muhammad drawings case, we asked the illustrators to do it. I did not ask for these cartoons. That’s the difference,” he said.
“The illustrator thought his cartoons were funny. I did not think so. It would offend some readers, not much but some.”
Can you give us a link, Ruchira? I see the words “new report” in blue, but clicking them doesn’t activate any link.
Here it is – I thought the blue meant “link”. Let me know if you can read the story. Enjoy.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1703500,00.html
The majority/minority view of this can be a trap. You wrote in the previous post that “a poor and oppressed underclass”. Well, that’s a very sweeping generalisation. Muslims where? in the Middle East and Pakistan where the protests took place? Or in Denmark? London?
But let’s assume it’s 100% correct that Muslims all over Europe are a poor oppressed underclass exactly like in say Ramallah.
Problem 1: what about that part of that underclass that is not fanatically stuck on that horrible, evil idea of religion? just because the rioting mobs are loudest, doesn’t mean that’s all there is. See for instance Naser Khader mentioned here: http://www.signandsight.com/features/588.html
Problem 2: I just saw a tv report on measures taken to counter football hooligans, particularly from Eastern Europe, ready to get into action at the next World Cup in Germany. Now, Eastern Europe or not, I don’t assume, I *know* for certain that the people who end up causing violence in football stadiums in Europe are not rich, and not privileged. Can we make the same argument that they’re a poor and oppressed underclass, so we should perhaps be a little sensitive to their anger when, say, the fans of the opposite team taunt them mercilessly with chants?
I know I’m making a stupid comparison, it’s not meant to be accurate, but you know, the whole western-liberal perspective can get hopelessly inadequate for these situations, not to mention patronising. I’m a lefty, but I don’t come from the rich, privileged, white uberclasses of the west. So I have no reason to find any excuses or understanding for people who are exactly like me, came from exactly the same environment, had to go through exactly the same shit, yet behave like a savage mobs. And I’m not talking just about the hooligans.
I agree with PZ’s analysis here. Censorship is wrong, but self-censorship is not only good, it’s necessary to survival. If I didn’t have a highly-developed sense of when to express my thoughts and when to keep them to myself, I would have been fired from every job I’ve ever had and would have gotten divorced a long time ago.
I’m not unique in this respect – almost everyone else has the same instincts.
And that’s what societies are faced with to some degree – we’ve got to find ways to work together and to live together even when we disagree about fundamentals. It’s harder in the societal context than in the personal one, because when we start dealing with large groups of people we start to categorize and abstract and we are shielded from personal fallout from failure to self-censor. I would not tell a co-worker that he’s an asshole because I’d have to look him in the eye when I say it, and then I’d have to see him every day after that. But its much easier to launch flames over the internet, or to say nasty things about groups of people when they are an abstraction and none of them are immediately at hand when I say it.
Sure, freedom of speech needs to be defended. And violence can never be justified as a response to mere thoughts or images. But still the Danish newspaper – if it wanted to be seen as a responsible institution within its society – clearly should have applied some rational self-censorship in this case. Responsible people and institutions avoid offending when it is unnecessary. Was it necessary in this case? On the one hand, the cartoons were likely to offend. Okay, but the analysis doesn’t end there. The next questions – is the point the cartoons make worth the offense and disruption? Do they bring light as well as heat? – must be asked. Clearly, some of the cartoons — the Mohammed with the turban/bomb and the other with the drawn knife – were more incindiary than insightful. The trite point made was not worth the trouble. In fact, two of the twelve cartoonists recognized in their cartoons that the paper was attempting to do nothing more than stir up controversy by commissioning these pieces. Controversy for an important principle is worthwhile and to be embraced. An essay looking honestly at the Koranic roots of violence? I can see little reason such an article should ever be self-censored. But controversy for the sake of controversy – essentially cartoons with all the insightful content of the Family Circle — what real good does that do? Why bother?
Here it is – I thought the blue meant “link”. Let me know if you can read the story. Enjoy.
Thank you. If you read UTI, expect a short post about it soon.
An interesting news-item related to cartoon protests:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4688624.stm
NickM, mere survival through self-censorship is a very low expectation when it comes to media and politics, not the convenience of keeping a job. The issue is a lot bigger than those stupid cartoons. They were only a pretext.
See, there was a debate on self-censorship even about this:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=13661&name=Was+it+right+to+publish+the+letter%3F
And this is a woman and politician who is surviving without censoring herself, but only thanks to all round police protection:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,399263,00.html
That is the context in which the debate on self-censorship is happening. To pretend it’s just about the cartoons is extremely disingenous.
Tina – My remarks were about the cartoons, which were puerile and uninformative and not worth the controversy. This situation is much different than the Van Gogh/Dutch expat politician case. They have (or, sadly, had) every right to express themselves, and they certainly contributed much light as well as heat to an important debate. The Dutch newspaper in question had the duty to print all relevant information about Van Gogh’s murder, without fear or favor to anyone. The only case in which self-censorship is adviseable – and this is not to say that government should be drawing these lines – is when what is being said generates a lot of heat and no light. Discussion or cartooning about the dismal treatment of women in Islamic countries? Go for it and don’t let anyone stop you. A cartoon showing Muhammed wearing exploding headgear? Might want to rethink that one.
Because I think the “job” or “marriage” analogy is a better one than you give credit for (BTW – you must be a European if you think keeping a job is a “convenience” :) In the end, we’ve got to make this human project work. And we can, and should have the right to, make each other mad. But we must weigh whether its worthwhile to make each other mad over stupid things. A fight over how we squeeze the toothpaste tube is generally something I will seek to avoid – it’s not worth it if my larger goal is a happy relationship at home. A fight for real principle — like mutual respect — is worth it. It’s a matter of determining whether what you’re saying is important enough to anger another over. Those cartoons – although the cartoonists had every right to draw them, the newspaper to publish them — were not worth it.
NickM: see, I do understand and for the most part agree with you there. But you’re missing the point. The content of the cartoons is not the one and only factor here (besides, as to the Mohammed with exploding headgear: are we sure it’s the cartoonists who turned Mohammed into a terrorist? or isnt’ it perhaps those who commit atrocities in his name?), and let’s not forget the Danish imam made up three additional and very, very offensive cartoons, never published in the Danish press, and showed them to the Arab leaders and imams, claiming they were among the ones printed there.
The point is: this was a pretext. The mobs are carrying slogans and chanting about death to the west, more 7/7, new Holocausts, and burning down any European embassy they can find. They were whipped up by religious and political leaders who exploited the cartoons for far bigger reasons. Here we are, after the victory of Hamas, with Islamists taking more and more power in Iraq, Iran with its nukes and Jew-hater supremo president, after hundreds of pilgrims dead in the Mecca stampede, Egypt having internal problems with radicals; many of the countries involved in the protests, and the govenrments who recalled the ambassadors or cut economic contracts with Denmark (hey, thanks America for “liberating” Iraq!) couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity for a little political diversion and a show of might in the Defense of Islamic Values. As long as the radical mobs are busy protesting some other country, they can’t threaten to bring down their own governments. Real politik and all.
The crime of the Danish cartoonist is in handing them this exceptional opportunity. I’m sure they regret at least that.
But check that interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (just so everyone follows without having to click: the Somali-born Dutch MP that made that Submission movie with Theo Van Gogh, and a critic of Islam as an aposthate). What was her crime? Not some silly provocation or inappropriate cartoons; it was exactly what you say: uncompromising, honest discussion about the dismal treatment of women in Islamic countries (and not only, seen as there are cases of honor killings and forced marriages in Europe too).
And what did she get? A death threat! this in Holland, not in Somalia.
So yes of course the content and style here is different — the cartoons were cheap satirical shots, not detailed political discussion or a novel by a famous writer.
But the result? THE SAME.
In fact, worse, because now it’s not just one person who received a death threat.
So, clearly, the problem is well beyond the nature of the cartoons by now. So it’s pointless to argue if they should have been published or not. The problem existed before, and would have continued to exist even if those cartoons had not been published. We’re just forced to focus on it now.
>> (BTW – you must be a European if you think keeping a job is a “convenience” :)
Heh, of course I am :)
But what I meant was not that a job is a ‘convenience’ that can be replaced, quite the opposite: that sometimes you need to adapt to a workplace that may not be the best, or even hold back your convictions, and censor yourself, out of convenience, rather than coherence to your ideals, because you need that job.
I don’t think the same standard of ‘real politik’ and mere survival should be applied to basic principles like freedom of expression — which again is not really over some insensitive cartoons, but over much bigger issues like the ones that “traitor” Ayaan Hirsi Ali is talking about.
I just want to add one thing, after reading some comments from Americans on how bad it is for immigrants in Europe and how fantabulous the US is instead, hallelujah.
May I just humbly suggest that, at this moment in history, the US and its citizens are not exactly in a position to lecture Europe on how to be nice to Muslims and Arab countries?
Hope you don’t need to ask why.
Tina – I think understand what you’re saying, and I guess we agree mostly. Something about your reference to the Ayaan Ali case and the cartoonist case reminds me of an old joke.
A man goes to his doctor for a checkup. The doctor examines him, looking more and more worried as he taps his chest, takes his blood pressure, looks at his tongue. Finally, the doctor announces, “I’m sorry, but you’ve got an incurable disease and you have 6 months to live.”
Shocked, the man doesn’t believe the bad news. He says, “Doc, I want a second opinion!”
So the doctor replies “You’re ugly, too.”
I’ve always loved that one . . . .
How does that relate? The doctor’s first opinion – what Ayaan Ali had to say about the treatment of women in Islamic societies – is necessary and useful, if painful, information. It must be said, whether the patient wants to hear it or not.
The “second opinion” – the cartoons – not necessary, not useful – it’s a good insulting punch line, but not something the patient needs to hear or which reflects well on the credibility of the doctor.
In fact, if we in the West want the useful information (Ayaan Ali) to come across more clearly, maybe we should improve our efforts to appear objective by not calling the “patient” ugly, too.
Tina – I agree with your last thought fully. Americans aren’t in the moral position to criticize much of anyone, anymore.
Tina:
I am one of those Americans who criticized the plight of immigrants in Europe. I happen to be a brown skinned person who has lived in both continents. Please see my original comment on this thread (second from the top).
There is something more insidious about European racism than the American version -( I can’t believe I am making this fine distinction ) it is of a colder, suffused with post colonial noblesse oblige, wrinkled nose variety. While due to its better social services, Europe may afford better “physical” care to its immigrants (and never let them forget about it), the US is a far more “emotionally” hospitable place for foreigners. (Britain may be a bit different from Continental Europe).
And why can Americans not criticize European racism? You are making the classic mistake of painting all Americans with the broad brush of Bush – Cheney. Also, presenting the fallacious argument of not being able to criticize your housekeeping just because of our own slovenly habits. There is a large percentage of Americans who opposed Bush’s idiocy in the middle east from the very beginning and the number is growing.
Some may find this interesting, even if dry – analysis of a blasphemy law
http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00001344&channel=university%20ave
Well, I’ve never been a brown-skinned person anywhere, but for the last 4 1/2 years just about all the Arabs & Muslims that I’ve dealt with in the US have been extremely nervous and unwilling to speak out publicly, except (sometimes) in the blandest way.
Considering that the Great American Racism Machine is vigorously turning its well-honed skills upon them, from freelance loudmouths to the new Department of Homeland Security, this reaction is quite realistic. (E.g., the leading exception to my generalization above is Prof. Sami Al-Arian – google his name for a story of relentless, unjustified, and continuing persecution.)
:)
Here PZ Myers is talking about oppression of Muslims and the need not to poke sticks at them or the sanctity of their symbols, but you have all internalized and use as a derisive term the “sacred cow”. I’ll just say that Muslims have no greater claim to being oppressed than Hindus; in fact less of it, because prior to the European colonialists, who were bad enough, Hindus were subject of regular extermination missions by you-know-who.
Anyway, if Hindus wanted to be victims, then the tales of the slave markets of Samarkand and wholesale death dealt to them would rival the woe of the African and the Jew. But thankfully, Hindus for the most part have little interest in victimhood. I say this as a Hindu.
But if “sacred cow” is OK, “Muhammad with a bomb in his turban” is also OK; and I applaud all those who realize that. Hindus look no different from South Asian Muslims – they have the same color of skin and hair and the same accents; are not subject to any less racism; face more derision for being “polytheistic” and generally incomprehensible to people with a Christian background – Muslims at least are fellow monotheists. There is a faction of Hindus who believe that Muslims have it right, get violent with those who offend you, people walk all over Hindus because they react limply to insult – and I’m sorry to say the leftist liberals here who keep invoking racism will simply encourage this faction (that is, if that set ever do read your arguments).
All you’re arguing for is – respect people who hold a knife to your throat. But do you respect people who don’t hold a knife to your throat? Where is your vaunted enlightenment? It requires a modicum of courage to maintain, it seems to me.
Mahatma Gandhi (born 1869) wrote in his autobiography that in his childhood he developed a dislike of Christianity, Why?
See, milquetoast – why did not the people of the town riot? Or those of any number of other towns. Of course, now the modern Hindu has learned to be aggressive. The practical wisdom of it is evident – wise people here are arguing on this thread, don’t annoy the Muslims, don’t give them an excuse to go on a rampage; that is the mistake of the Danish newspaper, giving them a cause.
Perhaps “the meek shall inherit the earth” was once preached by Christ, but truly once believed and practiced by the Hindus. Now it will be inherited by those most willing to kill – the threat of violence works, witness so many posts here.
Mr. Butler:
Everything you said about the current American racism against Muslims, Arabs and even non-Muslim south Asians (they all look alike!)being true, what I have said about Europe is a bit different – not necessarily anything to do with 9/11 or the war on terrorism. It is a bit ridiculous when one has to explain the different shades of racism. Please also understand that my nit-picking was a result of some assertions made here that Europe’s treatment of its immigrants has been more or less color blind. I am not making an either/ or case here. Racism in Europe does not preclude the same blight here.
Ask the Jews, Asians and even immigrants from Africa in the US and Europe and you will know what I mean. You also have to have an appreciation of European colonialism in Asia and Africa to get a true feel of European attitude vis-a-vis non Europeans. I guess in the final analysis, you HAVE to be brown skinned or a non-Christian (even nominally) to fully appreciate what I am saying.
I guess in the final analysis, you HAVE to be brown skinned or a non-Christian (even nominally) to fully appreciate what I am saying.
I do not believe that I can fully appreciate what you are saying, Ruchira, because as a white American living in (then-West) Germany, when I would protest the ubiquitous and casual racism against foreigners, I would be told “we don’t mean you“. It was crystal-clear that they considered me one of the “good” foreigners, so I am under no illusion that my experience was anything like yours.
Still, to the extent that I witnessed it, I would say your description is, if anything, understated. The newspaper ads for apartment rentals that baldly stated “No Turks”; the casually-bandied-about racist terms which I will not repeat here, the “Auslaender Raus! (Foreigners Get Out!)” flyers left in mailboxes by the political party named Kieler Liste fuer Auslaenderbegrenzung (Kiel List for the Limitation of Foreigners), the blithe assumption that but of course I must share their views on dark-skinned foreigners–the public racism in which people felt themselves free to indulge was in form very reminiscent of the pre-Civil Rights American South, yet, as you observe, somehow different in practice. Up until recently, people here seemed to at least feel a little compunction about publicly airing views such as that; I was constantly shocked at what people there felt no shame about saying in public.
The difference between the way I was treated and my Iranian (first) husband was treated there by the very same people, even though they knew we were married, just emphasized how deep it runs. (In light of how he was treated there, I am very proud of the unholy scene he raised at the border crossing in response to his and an Iraqi woman’s mistreatment by the guards–it was most un-Germanly indecorous. I just wish I had it on video.)
Like you said, I cannot fully appreciate your experience, but I have witnessed many examples of what you are describing.
Thanks Raven, for buttressing my point. Racism in Europe has to be personally experienced to be fully understood. I have heard the same things from Asians, Africans, Middle Easterns, Israelis and even American Jews. Things are so decorous on the surface there – that it takes a while to sink in. I too lived in Germany and Kiel of all places! Is that where you were? I am not going to belabor the point here further because the main issue was free speech and religious fundamentalism.
Please go to my blog at: http://accidentalblogger.typepad.com/accidental_blogger/2006/02/why_i_am_more_c.html
I reposted my original comment here and there is some discussion that ensued which you might find interesting.
In fact, if we in the West want the useful information (Ayaan Ali) to come across more clearly, maybe we should improve our efforts to appear objective by not calling the “patient” ugly, too.
NickM: again, sorry, you missed the point. You must ignore the position Ayaan Ali and people like her are in and have been *long* before the cartoon affair.
She is under police protection; she is accused by religious Muslims of being a traitor; and she is also ignored by most non-Muslims in Europe because she committed the awful crime of associating herself with a man, Theo Van Gogh, who expressed his views in a rather crude and blunt manner. Van Gogh=racist. Fortyun=racist. All their voters: racists. Ergo: sure it was sad they were murdered, BUT, they were racists, so, they asked for it. This is the majority opinion in Europe, especially among the liberals and intellectuals and centrist politicians who would rather be beheaded than soil themselves by association with groups that are branded racists.
Oh, I didn’t really mean that “Americans aren’t in the moral position to criticize much of anyone, anymore” – just that I find the usual US/Europe contests totally pointless (on both sides, mind you; the usual crap about who is superior and who is inferior, as if they could even be compared.. one is a single country, the other an economic union of 25!); and that I simply find it ironic that, with so many Americans that have no objections to bombing people in the Middle East and approving of torture against terror suspects, the State Department, the very same people who fooled everyone with the WMD pretext to get into a war that only made the terrorism and fundamentalism situation FAR, FAR worse than before, those same liars are now giving the whole world lectures on how to avoid being offensive.
It’s just too rich. But, keeping in mind that, I never meant single Americans cannot state their opinion. Of course. That’d be stupid.
Ruchira: why are you assuming that I am white and a Christian?
Also, did I deny that there is racism in Europe?
My comment was only about how the US/Europe muscle-flexing contests completely pointless, and how there’s a very rich irony in the US government (State Dept in this case) lecturing Europe about respect for Muslim countries. After they bombed and killed tens of thousands of them and left two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, in complete chaos, contributing further to the resurgence of Islamism, to which the US had already been contributing by pandering to the will of the Arab regimes for both financial reasons and cold war strategies. We all know the score there.
I do *not* care about what goes on in the US and what kind of racism there is over there and how it differs from Europe: the US is not Europe. What is happening is not an issue for the US, it is an issue for Europe. Fortyuin and Van Gogh didn’t get murdered in Kansas, Ayaan Ali is not in police protection in Denver, and no one marched through NY, only eight months after the attacks, with signs praising and inciting more terrorism. How would *that* have gone down with Americans? Would the NY police have made zero arrests?
If anything, Europe is too soft with the radicals, and that is one reason racism against Muslims in general ends up being built up.
Let me explain. Being soft on the radicals is one approach that has its tactical reasons, but people see and hear and read of imams preaching terror and being left alone by police, despite anti-terror laws, and that is one of the reasons that resentment builds up, until it does indeed turn into racism and “we don’t want no immigrants here” of the anti-immigrant right wing groups. (As Fortuyin made very clear, it usually means: we don’t want no Muslims. They’re not that interested in protesting the immigration of Filipinos or Hindu Indians). Another thing that also contributes to that resentment that dangerously turns to racism: welfare. See what Peter Lund mentioned. And not just that, not just welfare benefits to the unemployed or specific handouts for immigrants, but all the things everyone else enjoys, free hospital care, schools, etc, except, when you’ve just arrived, you haven’t been paying taxes long enough to contribute to what youre’ benefiting from (and you parents haven’t paid taxes all their lives that contributed to what you’re enjoying now). So the issue of limits to immigration in a country with a generous social policy is always thorny. More so when a group within some of those immigrants appear to refuse any sort of integration. Then, that resentment doubles up because it’s coupled with the resentment about how they’re benefiting from the society they’re living in, but without giving anything back, and even turning against it. I remember one Daily Mail (in the UK) headline after the July bombings in London: when two involved in the plot were captured, they had a headline saying something like “they were living on benefits! and this is how they thank us!”. Now, the Daily Mail is right wing, populist, crude, unsophisticated and reactionary. But they’re one of the most widely read tabloids in the UK, and do you see what they were pointing at there? Like it or not, it is something many people think about when faced with examples of Muslims who refuse integration (ie. not just the extremists and terror preaching imams and their followers, but ordinary trivial examples like men demanding ‘their’ women be visited only by women doctors, or demanding to keep koranic schools even where they break the law because they are against the national curriculum, etc. I could make you dozens of specific examples of this stuff across different countries in Europe. It never gets much press outside national borders. Sometimes, it’s only talked about in the local news of that city.).
These examples are a minority, many people know that, but they are also very visible signs of problems, that are *unique* to Islamic communities with strict religious practices, not to other categories of immigrants. And you speak only of the racism within non-Muslim Europeans: how about the Muslim youths, male youths, cos obviously it’s always young males with too much excess energy, attacked and vandalized Jewish cemeteries and painted swastikas on monuments in France? How about gay Muslims who even in Europe are not free to out themselves to their own families? What about the girls growing up in heavily patriarchal families where honor killings are still accepted? How about the dozens, hundreds of imams scattered across Europe who are following in the footsteps of Abu Hamza and the police won’t do anything about them for fear of reprisals and maybe to keep them as intelligence sources, even as, all the while, they’re still brainwashing young impressionable men? Peter Lund says the Danish imam who brought the cartoon issue to the Middle East has been expelled from Egypt for being a fundamentalist! Imagine that. And he finds refuge in racist, nasty, anti-Muslim Europe. The irony.
It’s easy to just focus on the non-Muslim European racists. But they didn’t *create* those problems! Those problems are there and need to be addressed, *also* to defuse racist reactions, as well as for reasons of principle.
Well sorry I went on too much, but I hope you get my drift now.
My main point is, I will take Europe as term of comparison for European problems, thanks. Europe has 25 countries, there’s a lot of differences there, but there’s also something in common, whereas the US, despite its internal differences, is one single country, single language, single laws, and a *completely* different history of immigration, as well as a different history of racism towards both its own population and immigrants. So, monolithic EU vs. US comparisons are impossible and useless, unless the only point is to show who’s coolest, but I lost interest in that in high school.
The newspaper ads for apartment rentals that baldly stated “No Turks”
All right, I take your word for it.
But where I live, in Italy, immigrants are always top of the list for council housing, there’s free state-sponsored courses for learning the language, employers are given extra benefits for taking immigrant workers (at least when it’s done legally, and paying taxes…), and there is an enormous tolerance also for the presence of illegal immigrants (in fact, there’s been two big ‘amnesties’ in the past few years, where everyone who was here illegally just had to queue a few hours outside some council offices and they got their permanent visa. No other requirements. and they even complained about the queue.)
None of this negates the presence of racists, but it has to be kept in mind. And try and re-read what Peter Lund wrote about what the Danish government has been doing about immigrants.
And, the point, once again, is that religious fundamentalism within Islam — which is the topic here, right? — has not been *created* by the BNP or Le Pen or Haider and co. and their voter.
The racism is also constantly being opposed by the rest of the democratic forces. Unless you want to imply to the majority of Europe is racist. (And, aside from the irony in getting lectures lesson by Americans on this, too, after what happened last year in NO… But nevermind.)
Can we say the same about fundamentalism within Islamic communities? No. It’s left unbridled and unchecked, free to expand, thanks to its power of intimidation. Which is now on display in its full force all over the globe.
All you’re arguing for is – respect people who hold a knife to your throat. But do you respect people who don’t hold a knife to your throat? Where is your vaunted enlightenment? It requires a modicum of courage to maintain, it seems to me.
I just wanted to thank Arun for his whole post, for saying exactly what I think about this whole cartoon issue, and putting it much better than I could.
Tina:
Please note:
I did not assume anything about you – the color of your skin, your religious affiliation or the lack of it. In my comment addressed to you, I only describe myself as a brown skinned person. The second comment was directed to Mr. Butler, who had explicitly declared that HE was not brown skinned. So let’s not put words in anybody’s mouth.
As long as the world is defined by political borders, every country has the right to determine what type of societal norms ought to exist within those borders. Most countries try to do it, totalitarian nations do it better than democracies.
Having accepted everything you say about the socially and culturally recalcitrant Muslims (unlike the more “obedient” Hindus and Buddhists from south and east Asia), my question to Europeans is why let them in? And why not throw them out? After all, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis allow only foreign laborers without ever affording them any rights of citizenship. There is something unacceptable and terribly churlish about allowing people in and then continually kvetch about their unsuitability as residents of the hallowed grounds.
What you conveniently left out in your comments is why most European nations initially opened up their countries to immigrants. For some (Britain, France,Portugal), it was a salve to their conscience for years of exploitative and sometime brutal colonialism. For others (Germany), an infusion of cheap labor after the devastation of WWII. It continued for the second reason in much of EU, as a prosperous and aging Europe kept seeing a precipitous fall in its birthrate. And these immigrants were producing babies at a faster rate than the locals. Those babies born in Europe, but shunned as outsiders nonetheless, have higher expectations than their compliant parents. And they are acting up, asserting their civil rights as Europeans and cultural rights as Muslims, becoming in many instances, more Muslim than their unassilmilated parents. So they are now a problem. It is a bit like bringing a well trained dog home for Christmas and the dog giving birth to an unruly litter with whom you don’t know what to do. You don’t like the puppies but at some level, they are your responsibility. What a mess!
I am sure that many immigrants are abusing social programs just like I am sure many non-immigrants are. It is just more annoying when the “foreigners” do it – seems a bit more parasitical. We have the same attitude towards welfare here. To hear some Americans speak, welfare is received only by African Americans and undocumented Latino immigrants. I guess racism knows no borders. But Europeans tend to deny the existence of it more vehemently and more piously than do Americans.
The last (anonymous) comment addressed to Tina is from me. I hit the “post” button before filling out the identity info.
Ruchira Paul –
I hope we agree more than we disagree.
Fwiw, I have been a white-skinned person living in areas where whites are in the minority and regarded with hostility by the general population and the police, so I have had a small taste of racism from the underside. It ain’t much fun, is it?
Not having been in Europe for decades, I can’t comment with any serious perspective on the racial politics there (except to note with regret that it seems the lands where people like James Baldwin & Nina Simone could say they’d found a real home have apparently declined).
If indeed early 21st-century Europe is less emotionally hospitable to foreigners – and specifically Arabs – than the contemporary US, it must be a chilly place indeed. :-P
In many ways it seems the torch of progressivism has passed to Latin America now – let’s hope they do better with it than the northerners have…
Mr. Butler:
I have a feeling that we do – agree, that is.
Like you, I decry racism and blind prejudice from all sides – all races, ethnicities and religions. No exceptions. And also like you, I have seen racist behavior emanate from all communities – white, black and brown. And all religious groups too.
My comments that you read here do not constitute the entirety of what I feel about these foolish (and in my opinion, valueless) cartoons. I can see that there is plenty of blame to go around. And at no time have I not recognized the culpability of the Islamic fundamentalists for their violent and rather mindless overreaction to something that could have been protested equally forcefully but non-violently.
My posts here are a reaction to the effort on the part of some readers to paint a very one sided picture of what has happened. There was an attempt, in my view, to whitewash the mischief that European racism and arrogance may have played here, by pointing the finger at the Muslims alone. If you have the time and the inclination, please read the following article in Salon.com. It is a Danish professor’s version of what the real motivation was behind the publication of the cartoons.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/02/08/denmark/
I am old enough to remember the cold war. I often find myself feeling nostalgic for the seventies when the dividing lines in the world were defined by political ideologies and not the “unholy” wars of religions.
Actually, our immigrants would be a net positive contribution if they had the same level of employment as the rest of the population. The immigrants from the US, AU, NZ, the rest of the EU, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway (and South Africa, perhaps) already do. I think the Chinese and Vietnamese do, too.
As for why we let so many in? Certainly for cheap labour — that stopped being interesting 30 years ago when we had the first oil crises and unemployment rose dramatically. No, it had more to do with humanism and interior politics — at least here in Denmark.
Damn. I meant certainly *NOT* for cheap labour.
No, the real mechanism behind most of the immigration to Denmark was chain immigration: one person gets in and then pulls in some family members. Then they pull in some more family members. It is called “familiesammenføring” (family unification). Ironically, many of those “families” were people who had just been brought into an arranged marriage by their parents.
Just finished reading Ruchira Paul’s Salon link. Jytte Klausen was also interviewed in the (very good!) radio program Orientering a couple of days ago:
http://www.dr.dk/P1/orientering/indslag/2006/02/06/184103.htm
It seems to me like she has a political disagreement with the current Danish government and with the newspaper (I’m judging also from the radio interview).
She has got at least one thing clearly wrong in the Salon article: imam Fatih Alev does NOT work for integration, quite the contrary, although he is not one of the really extreme guys.
Hey, æøå works :)
København, Sjælland, Færøerne, Grønland!
Here’s the unpronounceable phrase we always taunt foreigners with: rødgrød med fløde ;)
Mr. Lund:
Translation please – I know a smattering of German but no Danish.
Perhaps, you and I have been talking at cross purposes. I have been speaking on a much more personal (unwritten) level about the immigrant experience in Europe, whereas you have focused on the broader, socio/political angle of immigration regarding government policies etc.
In case I have left an erroneous impression, let me make one thing clear. I am emphatically and unapologetically un-religious myself. I have no use for any organized religion and theological debate. My point here is only that it is fruitless to conduct geopolitics based on religious hegemony – either through silly cartoons masquerading as a proud banner for freedom of expression or a war fought on the mistaken notion of “our” values versus “theirs”. Terrorism (yes, it is about terrorism in the end) must be treated as a matter of global crime with no religious or cultural value attached to it, even if the terrorists would like us to make it into a clash of civilizations.
there is now a Muslim counter movement on this issue, http://www.sorrynorwaydenmark.com, as reported by aftenposten.no.
It’s a dessert – a bit like hot strawberry jam (rødgrød) with (med) cream (fløde).
and today, Oliphant goes over the line.
hurrah.
the question seems to me to be whether that offense is something that deserves to be introduced into the determination of whether the cartoonist and newspaper were behaving properly. As I tried to demonstrate above, there are some kinds of offense (such as “How dare you deny God?!?”) that, I think we can agree, should be dismissed outright.
Yes, we agree on that. I also agree that criticism of Islam is, in itself, a good thing.
I liked the cartoon and want to see more criticism of religion roughly like that.
But I don’t think it’s going to have a positive net effect, because the controversy isn’t mostly about the right to criticize religion.
Unfortunately, if there’s a double standard in which religions we Westerners treat that way—and I believe there is—it is simply not going to go over well. To a Muslim, it seems to me, that cartoon is more likely to come across as “They criticize Islam in ways they’d never criticize Christianity or Judaism,” and I think there’s substantial truth to that.
I would love to be able to say to Muslims that’s just the way we treat religion in a free society, and we’re not just picking on your religion—so get used to it and let’s discuss why some of us might say such things.
But I can’t say that, because I don’t think most Western newspapers would publish a cartoon so broadly critical of Christianity (as I explained before) or Judaism—which is understandably hot button for many Muslims.
Let me elaborate on that. Suppose the Jews had a single leader/founder/exemplar figure that was widely adored and used as a symbol of their whole religion—say, Isaac, the progenitor of the Jews. Suppose they made a big deal about Isaac and often wore little Isaac-thingies around their necks.
And suppose a major U.S. newspaper published a cartoon of this beloved figure driving a bulldozer over a mosque, leading a horde of Jews.
That cartoon could be interpreted as simply a criticism of certain actions and policies by certain Jews. But it also could easily be interpreted as a criticism of Isaac, and the state of Israel, and anybody stupid enough to admire and “follow” him—i.e., Jews). Many people would interpret it very strongly as a broad-brush criticism of “the Jews.”
I think that any cartoonist or editor publishing such a cartoon in a U.S. newspaper would be committing career suicide. Many Jews—even moderate ones—would be offended, and up in arms. Many Christians would take their side—you can’t say such nasty things about “the Jews.”
I don’t think that cartoon being ambiguous wouldn’t be a sufficient defense, in popular opinion, if there’s such an easy interpretation it being generally anti-Jewish. The cartoonist and editor would likely be sacked, and it would teach editors the lesson that “you can’t pick on the Jews like that,” even if there is a legitimate difference of opinion about what the cartoon actually meant. (In much the same way that you can’t use a swastika as a decoration, just because it has an ancient history that has nothing to do with Naziism, and is neat-looking. It’s too obvious what it can mean.)
It’s my impression that in some Western European countries, you might even go to jail for such a cartoon, because it could be interpreted as anti-Jewish hate speech, which is specially prohibited. (Or at least, get sued and have to fight it in court.)
I would be surprised but not really shocked if the whole thing blew up and some far-right Ultra-Orthodox people rioted over such things, in Israel, or even some in New York city. And if they did, the reaction by Americans at large would be different than it is to reports of Muslim rioting. Most Americans would chalk it up to a minority of religious loonies—while being quite sympathetic to protests by moderate, non-violent Jews who were very offended by the cartoon, too. They wouldn’t say “see, Judaism is a violently oppressive religion,” the way many people are saying “see, Islam is a terrorist religion” now.
For too many Americans, Jews are “like us” and Muslims are not, so we can more easily overlook the actions of a minority of extremist Jews, the way we overlook the actions of a minority of extremist Christians.
To many Muslims who perceive a Western bias against Islam relative to Judaism, that’s extremely unfair, and it’s important. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that the West is too nice to Israel and the Jews, and/or too mean to Islam and Muslims. They feel that they need protection from hate speech more than the Jews do, because popular sentiment in most of the West is more anti-Muslim than anti-Jewish, especially when it comes to important conflicts between Muslims and Jews—and how the West weighs in, in foreign policy. After all, there is a war on.
(We haven’t invaded any Jewish countries lately, and American support for Israel gets substantial domestic support from crazy Christians who very much favor Israel and the Jews over arabs and Muslims, for religious reasons. That’s just scary, even for sane people who happen to mostly side with Israel for non-religious reasons.)
It should be unsurprising if Muslims take such cartoons as evidence of anti-Muslim bias that underlies policy decisions—treatment of immigrants and foreign countries—and as “adding insult to injury.” The political context matters hugely; they feel persecuted in the same important, substantive ways that Jews do. Bias in treatment of symbols matters because it seems indicative and symptomatic of substantive injustice, as well as being part of a cycle that perpetuates it.
I agree with PZ that this isn’t just about free speech vs. religious tolerance. I wish it was, but it’s the usual kind of mess where that’s intertwined with politics and oppression.
Consider, for example, Confederate flags in the American South. Black people generally loathe them, because they can just represent pride in the good things about Southern history, but they can and often do represent racism. Many racists really do use confederate flags to signal that they are proud racists; other people display racial insensitivity by not caring about that common interpretation. It’s a very loaded symbol, because it’s about attitudes toward oppression, not because of religion. (Both sides are overwhelmingly Christian, and it’s not mostly a theological battle.)
I find it understandable that my girlfriend, who is black, has a serious aversion to Confederate flags, in rather the way a lot of Jews really don’t like swastikas. I wouldn’t display my Southern pride in that way, if I had any. I understand and agree with her aversion to Confederate flags, so I have to be sympathetic to Muslims about these cartoons, even though I happen to loathe their religion, and have zero respect for their prophet, and find their concerns about “blasphemy” per se ludicrous.
I strongly agree that reverence for Jesus has a severe chilling effect on open critical inquiry into the guy–but that state of affairs is bad, isn’t it? Surely it doesn’t justify spreading the chill over all other Big Religious Figures that people can get up in arms about. (For my money, I’d love to see the “Jesus with a rifle” cartoon printed with the caption taken from Luke 19:27–“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” Irony, my eye.)
I agree it’s a terrible state of affairs, and I’d love to see the cartoon you describe. If we published such cartoons, I’d feel very differently about anti-Islam cartoons. We would at least have a defensible stance when addressing Muslim accusations of bias—“No, we’re not particularly out to get you, and this is not indicative of anything about bias that affects foreign policy or treatment of Muslim immigrants, and you have to learn to take your lumps the way the rest of us do.”
Instead, we come across as hypocrites who use freedom of the Press as an excuse to exhibit our anti-Muslim bias, the way some Southerners use freedom of speech to justify proudly racist behavior. Oops.
So I’m really torn about this. On the one hand, I want to jump up and vigorously defend the bomb-turban cartoon, and even a fairly strong anti-Islam interpretation of it.
I, personally, can do that—“Yeah! Great cartoon!”—but my simply culture can’t, because my culture is religiously biased and insensitive. That sucks hugely.
BTW, another commentator objected to the casual use of the term “sacred cow,” which can be interpreted as similarly contemptuous and biased against Hinduism and Hindus. I may have introduced that term here, and I certainly used it several times. I only used that term because I expected that it would be evident that I am an equal-opportunity offender of religions. I do criticise Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism in similar ways, and I try to make it clear why—I obviously do sympathize, in my “hand-wringing liberal” way, with minorities who are victims of bias. I’m willing to be offensive about Hinduism because I do recognize that Hinduism has the same fundamentalism problem that Christianity and Islam do—and because I think that’s similarly due to an underlying problem with the religion itself, not just certain practitioners.
The bottom line is that I largely agree with you, and want very much to defend the right to freely criticize religions; I just don’t think it’s going to work out well if we can’t honestly explain that we are not biased in how we go about it. Our culture doesn’t have its own house in order and its ducks in a row, even if some individuals like you and me do.
That’s one reason that I, myself, am an “out” atheist; I want it to be true that our culture doesn’t have blinders about its own “sacred cows,” and I work toward that.
And really, I don’t know if my bottom line on the bomb-turban cartoon is “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” I’m strongly “for it” in some ways, like you, and strongly against it in others, so it’s pretty much a frustrating wash. I have to take a strongly mixed stand. The reasons for that mixed reaction are the only useful, non-obvious things I have to say.
Ruchira Paul –
Yes, it seems we are in general harmony.
According to the article whose link you provided:
If the newspaper involved here really is allied with the Prime Minister’s party, that probably explains why this option – which would go a long way towards soothing the present crisis – is not being exercised.
Imagine that the government announced an Article 140 prosecution: much of the wind would go out of the Islamohysterics’ sails, the Jyllands-Posten crew could beat their chests as proud defenders of freedom, the whole business could be dragged out in the courts as long as necessary, and in the end the newspaper might pay a fine or the law be amended. Muslims could turn their attention back to the real problems of Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, etc.
Am I projecting too much of the US political scene if I wonder whether protecting PM Fogh Rasmussen’s cronies is more important than enforcing Danish law?
All the BS behind the current uproar is evident, when we see that an Egyptian newspaper published these cartoons on Oct 17, 2005.
http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/boycott-egypt.html#links
newspaper involved here really is allied with the Prime Minister’s party
It isn’t. They sometimes agree and sometimes they don’t. His coalition regularly gets more support from the newspaper BT but there’s no cronyism going on there, either.
Am I projecting too much of the US political scene if I wonder whether protecting PM Fogh Rasmussen’s cronies is more important than enforcing Danish law?
Yes.
Imagine that the government announced an Article 140 prosecution
The government can’t do that. Montesquieu and all that.
The article is no longer in active use. The last time there was a conviction from that article was in 1938 against some Nazis. There were attempts to use it later but they all failed.
Even if it were in active use it is doubtful that it would apply to this case.
We have another, newer, article (266b) that protects against racism (and other kinds of discrimination). It is in active use and racists are regularly convicted according to it; sometimes they are ethnic Danes and sometimes they are immigrants or descendants (Hizb ut-Tahrir).
Bullhockey, Paul. Anne Althouse at the Washington Post bothered to look it up, and several big papers, including the oh-so-sanctimonius Boston Globe, published pictures of ‘Piss Christ’ when that was a scandal.
But the Globe wouldn’t publish even an inoffensive (in the sense that it was not intended to denigrate Islam or Muslims) cartoon of Mohammed.
There’s nothing else to call that but appeasement. And cowardice. And prejudice.