Worthy of a read

Not much to say today. My thoughts of late have been mostly focused on the insanity going on on account of the drawings of Muhammad that originally appeared in a Danish newspaper but have since been re-printed elsewhere. Apparently two people died in Afghanistan during anti-Denmark and Europe protests today and in the last two days the embassies of Denmark in Damascus and Beirut, as well as the Norwegian embassy in Damascus, have been burned in protest. All this over 12 cartoons. It boggles the mind. I don't agree with Noam Chomsky about much, but he did once say quite truthfully (to paraphrase) that you don't believe in freedom of speech if you don't tolerate things that you personally despise. What is it about the Muslim world today that can go to such extremes over so little is a question to wonder. Perhaps more thoughts later, but in the meantime here's a couple of exerpts and links to the entireties concerning this issue. First from one of my favourite writers, Mark Steyn.

Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam. The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Jyllands-Posten wasn't being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of "self-censorship" -- i.e., a climate in which there's no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it's better not to.

That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

No doubt he's similarly impressed by the "sensitivity" of Anne Owers, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds that it shows the cross of St. George, which was used by the Crusaders and thus is offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he's impressed by the "sensitivity" of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word "Allah" in Arabic script. I don't know which sura in the Koran says don't forget, folks, it's not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be "sensitive."

And doubtless the British foreign secretary also appreciates the "sensitivity" of the owner of France-Soir, who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the "sensitivity" of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy ''Shouf Shouf Habibi!'' on the grounds that "I don't want a knife in my chest" -- which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose ''right to dissent'' all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they're just being "sensitive,'' too.

And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the "sensitivity" of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard. And maybe he even admires the "sensitivity" of the increasing numbers of Dutch people who dislike the pervasive fear and tension in certain parts of the Netherlands and so have emigrated to Canada and New Zealand.

Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a "diverse" "tolerant" society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.

Read it all at http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn05.html


Next is a much deserved "fisking" of this literary forms anti-patron saint; Robert Fisk's own recent column about this controversy. No surprise he thinks it's all the West's fault. Scott Burgess at The Daily Ablution disagrees and with him I couldn't agree more.


"So let's start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam."

An interesting hypothesis - one which, having stated, Mr. Fisk proceeds to immediately
disprove:

"For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote about the sea's 'long, withdrawing roar'. That's why we talk about 'the West versus Islam' rather than 'Christians versus Islam'- because there aren't an awful lot of Christians left in Europe."

So let me get this straight. "This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam" - the reason being that Europeans are secular and Muslims are not. "That's why we talk about 'the West versus Islam' rather than 'Christians versus Islam'". He's really not doing his point any favours here, is he?

In the next paragraph, Mr. Fisk sinks his dentures into the meaty flesh of Western hypocrisy. We, not the innocent Muslim faithful, are the wrongdoers in all of this:

"Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I happen to remember how, more than a decade ago, a film called The Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris, someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young man. I also happen to remember a US university which invited me to give a lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled 'September 11, 2001: ask who did it but, for God's sake, don't ask why'. When I arrived, I found that the university had deleted the phrase 'for God's sake' becuase 'we didn't want to offend certain sensibilities'. Ah-ha, so we have 'sensibilities' too.
"In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularlists when it comes to free speech - or cheap cartoons - we can worry about adherents to our own precious religion just as much."

Verily, the mind boggles. Is Mr. Fisk really equating the best examples of excessive Christian sensitivity that he can come up with - the action of a single nutcase over a decade ago, and the inconsequential censorship of a university jobsworth three years ago - with the threats, violence and worldwide "Days of Anger" we've been seeing over the last few days?
"We can worry ... just as much" about Christians? On a day when the streets are full of fanatics chanting "UK you must pray ... 7/7 on its way"? It's rare for words to fail me, but this is such a time.

[Continued]...


"For many Muslims, the 'Islamic' reaction to the affair is an embarrassment. There is good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some elements of reform introduced into their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue, no-one would have minded."

Once again, the obtuseness is simply breathtaking. Mr. Fisk is seriously stating that "no-one would have minded" if the cartoons had advanced the cause of reform-minded Muslims. It is, however, quite obvious that many Muslims would have minded - specifically, those who do not want to see reform debated or pushed forward. Those individuals would still have done all in their power to stir up fundamentalist anger, just as they're doing now. And guess what? They're the dangerous ones.

Continuing:

"This is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntingdon garbage about a 'clash of civilisations'. Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that's what happens when you topple dictators). In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of 'Palestine'. There's a message here, isn't there?"

Why yes, there is. The message is that the Muslim world is turning increasingly to theocracy, with all of its strictures on speech and action, medieval punishments and the like. Meanwhile, as Mr. Fisk himself points out, free Europe has become increasingly secular (except for the burgeoning Muslim communities in its midst). As all but the willfully blind can now see, this is precisely the clash that Mr. Fisk denies so stubbornly, and so ineffectually.
And why is the Ummah turning to theocracy to the extent that it is? Come on, you know the answer to that - as always, it's our fault:

"[The message is] That American policies - 'regime change' in the Middle East - are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes we imposed on them."

Remind me - which "corrupt regime" did we impose on Iraq? On Palestine? Have we "imposed" Mubarak, or the Iranian government just prior to this new clerical one?


The whole thing can be found at http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2006/02/fisk_in_a_barre.html