This morning the paper that started the cartoon controversy, Jyllands Posten, has printed an anti-Islamist Manifesto. Presented here without commentary. Don’t shoot the messenger.
MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism
Læs mainfestet som Salman Rushdie og 11 andre europæiske intellektuelle har skrevet, hvori de advarer mod islamisk totalitarisme.After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
12 signatures
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq
Comments?
More info on the signatories below the fold.
Presentations:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, from somilian origin, is member of Dutch parliement, member of the liberal party VVD. Writter of the film Submission which caused the assasination of Theo Van Gogh by an islamist in november 2004, she lives under police protection.Chahla Chafiq
Chahla Chafiq, writer from iranian origin, exiled in France is a novelist and an essayist. She’s the author of “Le nouvel homme islamiste , la prison politique en Iran ” (2002). She also wrote novels such as “Chemins et brouillard” (2005).Caroline Fourest
Essayist, editor in chief of Prochoix (a review who defend liberties against dogmatic and integrist ideologies), author of several reference books on « laicité » and fanatism : Tirs Croisés : la laïcité à l’épreuve des intégrismes juif, chrétien et musulman (with Fiammetta Venner), Frère Tariq : discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan, et la Tentation obscurantiste (Grasset, 2005). She receieved the National prize of laicité in 2005.Bernard-Henri Lévy
French philosoph, born in Algeria, engaged against all the XXth century « ism » (Fascism, antisemitism, totalitarism, terrorism), he is the author of La Barbarie à visage humain, L’Idéologie française, La Pureté dangereuse, and more recently American Vertigo.Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji is a Fellow at Yale University and the internationally best-selling author of “The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith” (en francais: “Musulmane Mais Libre”). She speaks out for free expression based on the Koran itself. Née en Ouganda, elle a fui ce pays avec sa famille musulmane d’origine indienne à l’âge de quatre ans et vit maintenant au Canada, où ses émissions et ses livres connaissent un énorme succès.Mehdi Mozaffari
Mehdi Mozaffari, professor from iranian origin and exiled in Denmark, is the author of several articles and books on islam and islamism such as : Authority in Islam: From Muhammad to Khomeini, Fatwa: Violence and Discourtesy and Glaobalization and Civilizations.Maryam Namazie
Writer, TV International English producer; Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran’s International Relations; and 2005 winner of the National Secular Society’s Secularist of the Year award.Taslima Nasreen
Taslima Nasreen is born in Bangladesh. Doctor, her positions defending women and minorities brought her in trouble with a comittee of integrist called « Destroy Taslima » and to be persecuted as « apostate »Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is the author of nine novels, including Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and, most recently, Shalimar the Clown. He has received many literary awards, including the Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Germany’s Author of the Year Award, the European Union’s Aristeion Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Mantova, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He is a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T., and the president of PEN American Center. His books have been translated into over 40 languages.Philippe Val
Director of publication of Charlie Hebdo (Leftwing french newspaper who have republished the cartoons on the prophet Muhammad by solidarity with the danish citizens targeted by islamists).Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq , author notably of Why I am Not a Muslim ; Leaving Islam : Apostates Speak Out ; and The Origins of the Koran , is at present Research Fellow at a New York Institute conducting philological and historical research into the Origins of Islam and its Holy Book.Antoine Sfeir :
Born in Lebanon, christian, Antoine Sfeir choosed french nationality to live in an universalist and « laïc » (real secular) country. He is the director of Les cahiers de l’Orient and has published several reference books on islamism such as Les réseaux d’Allah (2001) et Liberté, égalité, Islam : la République face au communautarisme (2005).
Yikes. This would be a good time for me to excuse myself for the rest of the day.
I hear you, LOL! I feel some very important work in the “real world” calling me [riffling through papers furiously; reaching for the phone].
You know, without making any judgment on the content, why is it so hard to understand that tone of delivery matters? Even a hillbilly hollow Tennesseean can tell you that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Why throw gasoline on the fire? Was there no other way to make this point? I just don’t get it.
And that’s all I’m going to say [he said, backing away nervously]…
Why throw gasoline onto the fire?
Well, it’s because you have to look at their point, and their platform which thinks you catch more flies with shit than you will with honey.
“Muzzy Dread” is the new fear in town. The new boogieman, the new kicking toy, madball, or what have you.
All of those people have their reasons to dislike Islamic extremism, and can speak out until the cows come home. for you see, Europe is a nice place to live until your habits cause concern for the existing status quo. In France the issue was second class citizenship and lack of economic opportunity, not evangelical spreading of Islam! We have to remember that.
So, in Denmark, the status quo is threatened by Muslims who don’t like tasteless “psychological warfare” cartoons, and this right wing paper, turned to apostates and critics for support.
I’m not impressed by this move from this Danish paper.
It feels “Fox News-like”
This Debate At California University Turned Violent
Cartoon Display Protested
Muslim students and supporters assail a UCI forum displaying Muhammad cartoons.
By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Timews
March 1, 2006
Praying, shouting and waving signs, about 200 Muslims and their supporters converged on the UC Irvine campus Tuesday evening to protest a forum on Islamic extremism that included the unveiling of cartoons lampooning Muhammad.
The caricatures, first printed in European newspapers, incited riots worldwide that led to dozens of deaths last month.
Organizers of the UCI forum, which drew about 250 people to an auditorium at the student union, said the event was aimed at having an open discussion about the cartoons and the furor they’d caused.
The drawings were displayed alongside anti-Semitic and anti-Western cartoons that organizers said were published in Muslim nations.
Protesters denounced the event, which was co-sponsored by a student Republican group, saying it would incite “Islamophobia” and offend local followers of Islam. The religion forbids any depictions of Muhammad.
Protesters gathered well before the 7 p.m. forum behind security barricades. They placed mats on the ground and held prayers. Later, they waved placards and shouted to those waiting to enter the auditorium.
“Hey, Republicans! Stop the hate. All you do is instigate!” the crowd shouted.
“Yes to Freedom of Speech, No to Hate Speech,” a sign read.
This Debate At California University Turned Violent
Where was the violence?
I read the linked article and even saw the list of speakers…lol…but I didn’t see the violence. Where did I miss it?
City News Service, Feb. 27, 2006
Increased security at unveiling of Danish cartoons
UCI MENTIONED: Security will be increased at UC Irvine tomorrow when students plan to “unveil” Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked wide-spread violence in the Middle East and Europe, an official said. A confrontation will be avoided “if our students have anything to do with it,” UC Irvine Dean of Students Sally Peterson said. “But who knows who might show up,” Peterson said.
Peterson said her concerns are protecting students’ safety and security as well as their free speech rights. She declined to reveal the specifics of the increased security. Representatives of College Republicans, who are co-sponsoring the event, and Muslim Student Union, which said showing the cartoons would cause fear of Muslims, met today and the exchange “didn’t change anyone’s mind,” Peterson said.
Found report on Google headlines 1 1/2 hours ago… now can’t find it…. hmmm…. stay tuned for all the news that’s fit to scrub….
So, it appears that UCI is supporting the College Republicans plan to display these cartoons, knowing they will likely incite many negative feelings that have already been demonstrated. The first thing that caught my attention was that CAIR boycotted the event which was initiated by former student leader Osman. Many of the same groups sponsoring the event have recently made terrible accusations against Muslims.
How many Ted Hayes supporters do we have here at the pond?
you catch more flies with shit than you will with honey
Oooooh! I like that comeback. You get a 4 right there.
“Fox-news like” – I think you’re on to something.
write another novel. He is blessed with a gift for word writing, and I hope he will return to devoting his time to sharing that gift.
I hate to disagree with you DTF 🙂 but Rushdie’s ability to write great novels has sadly been declining for a while.
Midnight’s Children, Satanic Verses, Shame, Haroun, The Moor’s Last Sigh, etc are all great novels–some of the best works I have ever read.
And yes I was passionate in defending Satanic Verses–its an absolutely brilliant novel–which deserved to be read outside the binary opposition that framed its reception. You are either with us or against us, i.e. self-righteous smug defenders of free speech and the great Western Civilization on one hand and the canny political mullahs who saw this as an excuse to get the people riled up on the topic of insult to religious sensibilities.
But Rushdie’s later works–The Ground Under her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, are all pretty awful. There is literally not much there to recommend them, other than few, very few smart word-plays which don’t compensate for the lack of substance in the novels themselves.
So, at this point, what is the poor writer to do? Well, Fouad Ajami has shown a great way–both Rushdie and, I would venture to suggest, Irshad Manji are salivating at the thought of being the perfect native informants–the ones people can point out to as alibis anytime they feel a twinge of uneasiness at the way the great western culture making machine is relentlessly attacking some of the world’s poorest and most dispossessed people. How this cultural attack helps the great Western war-making machine, and its torture and rendition regimen, is obvious to the meanest intelligence.
You have just summarized very nicely that working on his novel-writing is something to which he should have been devoting more attention for some time. 😉
“Native informant” is a very useful term. I am going to start over-using it immediately. Thank you!
I would be more impressed if this was addressed to ALL the various theocratic fascists pushing for power in the world today (the increasingly reactionary Vatican and the American Dominionist movement are every bit, if not more, dangerous than the Islamist movement).
My first thought: “bushism” is missing from this list.
But seriously, why are these people drinking the fucking koolaid!
I certainly hope PEN America has not officially endorsed this, but…sheesh. I ain’t even gonna check.
“Islamism” is merely the tool.
W/out the depredations of centuries of racially-based economic imperialism, Islamism as we see it manifested in organizations like the Taliban would be about as common…and as globally dangerous…as some snake handling sect in the Ozark mountains.
Is the rising tide of anti-American…and by extension, largely anti-European…sentiment in the southern hemisphere of the Americas “Islamicist”?
No.
Of course not.
It is ECONOMIC.
Despair breeds action.
The action takes the form of whatever cultural system is in place. Sometimes it appears as primarily racially or nationalistically based, sometimes as a “religious” movement, sometimes as an economic or government FORM base…Nazism, Communism…but always and forever, it stems from hunger, despair and fear.
If the west would only stop bogarting the joint the whole thing would go away.
But…NOOOOooooooo…..
We are too fat, too rich and too comfortable in our gluttony , our greed.
And we are going to be taken down if we do not wise up.
SOON.
Will the ones who take us down be “better”?
Probably not.
Just leaner.
Hungrier.
And with perfectly good reason…angrier.
So it goes, unless we…ALL of us, the left first because it is the most intelligent (God save us)…
WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!
AG
Neo-cons and other conservative intellectuals place a lot of emphasis on prestige. Bernard Lewis and Francis Fukuyama are in this camp. Basically, they place much more emphasis on the manly qualities of desiring to acquire, conquer, provide, be given respect and have self-respect, etc.
In their view, it is not despair but resentment that drives the movement.
I think they are not entirely wrong, but your points are an enormous factor as well.
If we look at the profile of the suicide bomber they are not normally from the lower strata of society either educationally or economically.
Of course, despair can take many forms. In some sense these two explanations are complimentary.
True.
What the “suffering-is-noble” left tends to forget is that there are people who do actually want to revive the Califate.
There probably aren’t a lot of them, but it’s always more complicated than you think.
You’re saying this to me, Arthur, or just another rage against the machine? 😉
Either way, I forgive you.
But if you think this one needs waking up: check the posting/publication history, going back to ca. 1980.
I suppose there’s a sadistic sort of comfort in the notion that the nightmare is probably just about at an end–too bad we won’t be walking out the door of the house in Kansas to find that we’ve landed in Munchkinland.
Twould indeed be a happier ending.
Starkravinglunaticradical writes:
“You’re saying this to me, Arthur, or just another rage against the machine? 😉 Either way, I forgive you.””
#1-I hit the wrong button. It was supposed to be a comment on the original post.
#2-I don’t know if you fit the bill or not. Do you? Are you one of the ones that thinks that “Islamists” are the enemy? The primary enemy? Because they are not. Those who have not so that we can have, so that we can drive SUVs and eat McFat burgers are the “enemy”. And in truth…it is we who were THEIR enemy first.
#3-Why is it that every time I write something that is simply the plain-spoken truth somebody says something like “rage against the machine”? There is no overblown rhetoric in what I wrote, here. Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts (As Sgt. Friday…as Gestapo as they came in the ’50s…was wont to say on “Dragnet”.) And all of the winky-wonky smiley faces in the WORLD do not change the negative import of the words “…just another rage against the machine”. As if what I wrote can and should be discarded as the whining of yet another impotent left wing fool.
#4-With all due respect…your forgiveness is neither desired nor accepted.
Nor is it rejected.
Frankly, Starklet…I don’t give a damn.
It really doesn’t matter much to me one way or another whether you “forgive” me. I will keep right on saying what I am saying and doing what I am doing no matter how you or anyone else “feels” about it.
This is not personal…it’s just business.
Survival business.
Because if we do not figure this business out…and soon…we will not survive.
It’s as simple as that.
Feelings get hurt?
It’ll hurt a WHOLE lot less than the collapse of this society as we know it.
Let me tell you, Starkers…there have been a couple of MANY commented diaries here over the last week or two that have turned my stomach. People getting fainting spells over minor disagreeements, others saying “Why can’t we all just get along”; lots and LOTS of handwringing.
Love?
Love is telling the truth.
From the heart.
And the truth…the hard truth here at the frogpond…appears to me to be that most of the little froggies here believe in truth and love so much that they have forgotten how to fight back. Have forgotten how to look with wide-open eyes. Instead, eyes wide closed they grab every passing fictional so-called left wing lily pad with their little webbed feet and hang on for dear life, hoping a nice breeze will come up and all the troublesome frog eaters will go ‘way so’s they can come out to play and bask in the sun again.
And as far as a “sadistic sort of comfort”…I take NO comfort in what is happening, and would MUCH rather be writing music and practicing than trying to dislodge a few left wing frogs from their precious preconceptions. There is no “sadism” in what I am saying. That is not the motive, and that is not my general modus operandi in life, either.
Mostly, when I see people sleeping I just tiptoe on by, because that old saw about letting sleeping dogs lie is equally true for pigs AND frogs.
And for sheeple too.
But this ongoing sleep…sleep that is manifested in a thousand ways on the left, from referring to Gorgeous George as “President” to thinking that small K kerry had a clue right through to believing that the Democratic Party and the so-called liberal media are somehow going to “save” us or that this is simply a little problem between the west and “Islamicists”…this sleep threatens the very culture that your ancestors and mine lived and died to create, and I will be DAMNED if I will tippy-toe around anymore “in respect of others’ feelings”.
Sorry…take it or leave it.
I’ve got descendants of my own to think about.
Later…
AG
P.S. Now THAT’S a rant. I refer you back to my original post, which was not. Just in case you did not know the difference.
I agree. Such manefestos need to be all inclusive and fundimentalist extremism off all kinds are equally threatening.
As for his comments on cultural reletavism, I feel that work against Muslim fundimentalism needs to come from within that society or else it just feeds the backlash against foreign arrogance and percieved forced westernization. I support people’s right to cultural respect and self determinaization but I agree that all of us need to fight against the most repressive, xenophobic, and nationalist elements of our own cultures. In doing so, we will set an example and win the trust and respect of others.
Everything they claim they don’t want–violence, hatred, totalitarianism, etc.–may be stimulated by this manifesto. It’s already apparent in our own right-wing blogs where it is revving them back up to full bray.
Ignorant question here. This maifesto keeps using the word “Islamist.” Is there a distinction between Islamic and Islamist?
Only ignorant people who do not ask the questions 🙂
Yes, there is a difference. Islamic means anything related to Islam or in popular usage anything related to things done by Muslims, such as Islamic architecture, an Islamic economy, etc.
Islamist actually means someone who studies Islam and related topics such as Islamic architecture 🙂
However it has recently become in the west one of those “flexible” terms like “terror,” where its meaning is in the mind of the speaker, Islamist as used in this document and the pronouncements of Lou Dobbs, Daniel Pipes and ilk, can refer to anything from wacko mullahs to Muslims who oppose or resist US policies. It is unlikely that they are even aware of the actual meaning of the word.
I hope that was brief enough.
That’s a lovely bit of distortion.
In it’s least offensive sense, it refers to movements within the Islamic world that seek to establish states based on sharia. The archetypal modern Islamist group in this sense would be the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt, and its most important proponent would be Sayyed Qutb.
I say “least offensive” because the implication is that Islamism is not integral to Islam. It is probably also the least honest sense, insofar as the notion of a genuinely secular, free, and egalitarian state is as incompatible with Islam as it is with Christianity. The people using “Islamism” in that sense are trying to be courteous at the expense of being truthful.
When Lou Dobbs and his fellow travellers use the term, it just translates out to “dirty Ay-rabs” and is meant to be offensive. “Islamism” in the Lou Dobbs sense is such a vague term that all that can be said with certainty is that it is a noun with a negative connotation. I rather doubt Dobbs has read any Qutb.
and much more clearly than I did. In its “modern” usage, it is whatever the speaker intends it to be, not unlike the term “Islamic state,” which can in reality refer to anything from a country where Islam is the state religion to an actual Caliphate.
Since there is at this time, no nation whose population is majority Muslim that is not either occupied by, maintained as a client state of, or somewhere in between, covertly or overtly, there is sadly no nation to which we can point, either to praise or criticize, that can be called an “Islamic state” and thus evolve the modern usage of “Islamist” into something with a more definite meaning.
While a free, democratic, egalitarian, etc state is not incompatible with the teachings of the Koran, there is no question that it is incompatible with US business interests, which is why the US itself is not such a state, let alone its hosts of clients and killing fields.
Given the current situation, the term “Islamist” itself is probably best left as a subjective term, of definition fluid, used with certainty only by the speaker, who knows exactly what it means to him, which is all that is necessary in a time of crusade.
You’d have to stretch it pretty far to call Indonesia a client state.
the decreasing effectiveness of the traditional client state model. Recent decades have seen it become slipperier, and larger. US does not know exactly what to do with Indonesia at this point besides deploy gaggles of semi-covert gunmen and operatives here and there to “help” put down independence movements and throw a lot of money behind Megawati Sukarnoputri to keep people like Amien Rais from upsetting the applecart, and the gaggles, too much.
It is a bit large and unwieldy to actually invade and occupy it, some in Washington have doubts that this can be done successfully in Iran, and you yourself have pointed out that Iraq, much smaller and softened up by 12 years of sanctions, has not been the “cakewalk” that was promised.
Add to that the spiraling costs of maintaining the client state cluster in the oil region, and you can see that pencils are scrabbling busily in the back lairs of the Pentagon, rolling out the robot soldiers, trying to see if they can exploit traditional sectarian rivalries into something that can be relied on to a greater extent than the highly touted Rent-An-Afghan program, nuking large swaths of earth could present challenges to US companies who would be charged with actually extracting the oil, there are legal questions regarding sending ones employees into a fallout zone can be simply signed out of problemhood with a waiver, not to mention the reluctance of personnel to do so, so far the best they have been able to come up with is to “pull back” their gunmen to a client state base and focus on aerial bombardment, which plan you will see unfold in the coming weeks.
But that does not help them one bit with Indonesia, so back to the lairs for some more brainstorming.
If no state can be considered Islamic unless it is free of outside interference, then no state can really be considered anything at all, because short of migration into outer space, all states are subject to outside interference, even powerful ones like the United States and China. This is less an argument than a means of short-circuiting debate.
The assertion that Islam is compatible with a free, democratic, egalitarian secular state, which is often repeated but never explained or supported, needs some serious backing up if it is to be taken seriously. Especially considering that Christianity and Judaism aren’t compatible with a free society either; it largely through the violation of Christian religious law that we have a free society.
Then we can see what governments are chosen by the people of the erstwhile client states, etc, and blame and praise accordingly.
The idea that US has some sort of obligation to rule the world because if they don’t China will is not the best pro-imperialist argument available, but most people understand that here in the waning days, it’s about all you’ve got. Just keep saying it loud and hope nobody will notice just how much money the US owes China, because that only clouds the issue and USA is Number 1!
Not to mention the fact that given those two as the only alternatives, China is looking better and better to a lot of folks.
On the positive side, it would take China a while to really get that cranked up, during which time the US could concentrate on its own domestic ticking time bomb, and thus increase the chances that your grandchildren will be born at all, and be born into a nation whose foreign policy is not the greatest threat to its national security. Hey, a little time out from being the new Mongol hordes, and you might even manage to cobble together some health care.
Once again, DF, if you insist on setting up straw men instead of responding to any point I have actually made, why don’t you just cut out the middleman and post a diary so we can be spared this sad and awkward simulation of dialogue.
I sincerely sympathize with your situation. You have a lot of company. Americans almost to a man. I understand it is not easy, that emotionally, it may be the most harrowing experience of your life. In fact, I can confidently guarantee that it is, no matter where along the road you are when the correction occurs.
And I agree, from the cultural context of many Americans, especially the affluent, there are no easy answers.
But I can assure you, it will be far better for you and your descendants to ride bicycles and let China have the oil, if that is the only accessible way to present it to you.
I was reading Arundhati Roy this evening — an interview called “Terror and the Maddened King.” She says, “. . . when you live in the United States, with the roar of the free market, the roar of this huge military power, the roar of being at the heart of empire, it’s hard to hear the whispering of the rest of the world. And I think many U.S. citizens want to. I don’t think that all of them necessarily are co-conspirators in this concept of empire.”
Ugh. I think patriotism has a lot to answer for.
Of course, I think the roar is pretty loud over here in the 51st State as well.
I don’t think the world realizes what it got when her mother decided to reproduce.
It got what it needed. Or part of it, anyway 🙂
A beloved friend gave me a copy of Power Politics after we’d both been involved in a fairly vicious fight (actually, the fight was how we became friends).
So when I read it I get to think about two courageous and ferociously intelligent women.
Puerto Rico?
I was thinking of the song by The The
yes.
Roughly speaking, Islamic denotes that someone or someone is a Muslim.
Islamist denotes a Muslim that would like to live in a country with an Islamic government rather than, say a fascist dictatorship or a monarchy, or certainly a Western style democracy.
Some Islamists are crazy and some just see it as the best alternative to the crappy government they have now.
Thank you, both. I wondered if the term only referred to extremists.
I do agree with the point of the document that there is a war between theocrats and and deomcrats and that it will have serious consequences. Kind of a reverse Age of Enlightment.
I also agree with the comment upthread that extreme fundamentalism is not limited to Islam. As a feminist, I am well aware of the damage the theocrats from the Christian and Judaic traditions can cause.
The furore over recent Danish cartoons depicting Muhammed is deeply troubling
for many people of good will who passionately support freedom of expression,
who are appalled by terrorism, and who are sickened by the conflating of Islamic
terrorists with Muslims generally. Thus, the publication of these cartoons has
raised important questions about the limits that may be placed on freedom of
expression.
The charter of International PEN–a leading human rights association of writers
and other strong supporters of free speech–contains two clauses that are worth
consideration in this situation. One calls upon PEN members to foster “good
understanding and mutual respect among nations ….to do their utmost to dispel
race, class and national hatreds, and to champion the ideal of one humanity
living in peace in the world.” The other speaks to PEN’s support for “unhampered
transmission of thought” and for a free press; it goes on say that “since freedom
implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a
free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts
for political and personal ends.”
Most of us in Canada will arrive at our own positions on the Danish cartoons
without having seen them, since newspapers here (apart from Le Devoir, which
printed one cartoon) have chosen not to publish the cartoons. One cartoon
depicts Muhammed wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a lit fuse; another
shows Muhammed warning suicide bombers that paradise has run out of virgins.
Defenders of the cartoons have argued that they satirically depict only that
version of Islam constructed by terrorists to justify their actions. But this is an
argument whose subtleties are easily missed, particularly in our present
incendiary context.
That the cartoons would be profoundly offensive should have been understood,
as the depiction of Muhammed in any form is regarded as blasphemy by most
Muslims, and these are notably inflammatory depictions. Reasonable persons
may disagree on whether a line was crossed in the Danish newspaper’s
publication of the original cartoons, or in their republication in several other
countries; on how heavily the likely consequences should have been weighed;
and on whether “voluntary restraint” in this case would have represented
capitulation or simple respect for others.
the last sentence hits it for me. Reasonable people can disagree.
Religious humiliation is a torture technique used by US interrogators…. seems to me another test might be if you wouldn’t do it to a prisoner, don’t do it to free people. Of all the torture techniques used by and authorized by US brass (including Gonzales) it was religious humiliation that broke men faster than any other means.
Depiciting the Prophet with a bomb for a turban is as incindiary an act as putting the Qu’ran in the toilet.
However, February 19 Sunday New York Times magazine ran a full page illustration of Zarqawi whose face, headgear and beard were entirely made out of line drawings of weapons and missles. Entirely within the realms of free speech and appropriate… because this is a depiction of a (real?) power player in this horrific situation.
I am not buying the Dutch paper’s line about free speech…. and I hope Flemming Rose takes a good long vacation….
I keep wondering who do these crazy kids think they are? The hinge on which the world swings? I can admire their courage, because this really could get them killed, while at the same time having the opinion that for smart people they sure are dumb. I wonder how many Danes woke up this morning thinking, “oh shit.” In Danish, of course.
rumi, where are you? We need to talk about psy-ops again! We can play a game of Spot the Provocateurs. (Not snark.)
There was probably a long and lively debate about whether to do this, or a new Zawahiri tape.
And because they had always wanted to meet Salman Rushdie, well, this won. And I guess Salman wanted to meet them too. He does love him some celebrities, and this just might get him a guest spot on Lou Dobbs AND a “with us for the full hour” on Larry King.
Uh huh. All of us should shut the hell up because that will make the religious extremists go away. Just like every other kind of extremist will go away if you just keep quiet and avoid publicly criticizing them or disagreeing with them.
We should all tread very carefully to avoid stirring up extremism. Right.
… if you cannot fix all of it, is it better to criticise some of it or none of it?
To generalise wildly, the “respect” crowd seem to think “none.”
on which I’m torn. The treatment of women in parts of the Muslim world is horrific – “honor killings” are heinous crimes. On the other hand, I don’t believe you can have a world-policeman telling other societies how to act – George W., with his “God bless America”, surely wouldn’t qualify.
I do know, however, how I stand on freedom of speech. I can mock someone else’s god as he can mock mine. Without regard to good taste or hurt feelings. If one is only allowed free speech that’s in good taste, there must be an arbiter to make that judgement. The First Amendment to the Constitution is a terrific sentence and provides for no arbiter:
If Muslim societies want to restrict freedom of speech within their borders, that’s probably none of my business. But issuing death warrants on folks in other lands for their speech is unacceptable.
Indeed.
I don’t know about North America, but here in Europe I don’t think any country has laws that allow as wide a range of expression as I’d like.
My right to swing my fist around ends at only where it makes contact with your chin. (And not your “moral” or “emotional” or “religious” chin either.)
(OK, that wasn’t a great metafor.)
I have no problem telling people that they can’t oppress other people. That would include Islamic societies that suppress the right to free speech and freedom of religion. It includes societies — including our own — where women are second-class citizens.
And it most definitely is my business because I am a member of the human race. It is the business of all human beings when another human being is oppressed. It does not matter in the least whether that oppression is rooted in economics, political ideology, or religious belief. When a man has a boot on his throat, the reason why it is there is the least of his concerns; why should I bother with the supposed justification of his oppression. It’s oppression, period.
When Islamic authorities shut down a newspaper, or force a woman to wear a veil, or suppress a competing religion, or murder an “apostate”, the fact that those oppressors are Islamic is utterly irrelevant. They are oppressors. The same is true of the Religious Right in America, the homophobic and misogynistic Christian churches of southern Africa, and dozens of others.
Culture is not a free pass for oppression. Religion is not a free pass for oppression. Tradition is not a free pass for oppression. It is appalling, and more than a little frightening, that so many on the left have adopted such an unreasoning fetishism for religion and culture that it undermines their support for what used to be indispensible core values like freedom and equality. What’s next, mandatory respect for the religious and cultural tradition of white supremacy among Europeans and North Americans?
It is one thing to observe that most Muslims are not terrorists. That is a true statement, and a good thing to bear in mind when dealing with Muslims, most of whom are no better or worse than anyone else and who deserve a the basic modicum of respect that goes with civil society. But it is quite another thing to deny the equally true fact that most terrorists are Muslims. We cannot ignore radical Islamism and pretend it does not exist. The Islamic world has some fundamental problems that need to be resolved, and it is simply not true that all of those problems are the result of western oppression. The misogyny of the Islamic world is home-grown. The cruel and inhuman punishments meted out under Sharia law are home-grown. The Islamic contempt for freedom of religion, which extends to punishing “apostasy” with death, is home-grown. The fundamental refusal to establish a secular, free society independent of religion is home-grown.
We can talk all we want about respect for tradition, but it is undeniably the case that you cannot simultaneously have a free society and a society ruled by Islamic law any more than you can have a free society that is ruled by Christian or Jewish law. And wherever a society is not free, people are suffering under the boot of an oppressor. To wash one’s hands of that, to walk away and say that the oppression of one’s fellow human beings is “not my business” because it is time-honored religious oppression is, at a minimum, appallingly callous.
I am an apostate. I can be an apostate, and be so openly, because secular liberals struggled for centuries to beat the Christian church into submission to the will of a free, democratic, and secular state. I treasure that freedom more than anything else. I will not wash my hands of the apostates and dissenters of foreign lands simply because their oppressors wear turbans instead of miters.
cultural belief that anyone who resists are opposes US policies is by definition, a terrorist.
However, the victims of those policies will have another view regarding what constitutes “terrorism,” and therefore a different perspective on the cultural identity of “most terrorists.”
Would you like a little fire, straw man?
People who fly airplanes into buildings, strap bombs to their chests and detonate themselves in crowds of civilians, hijack planes and ships full of civilians, or who lob homemade rockets into residential neighborhoods are terrorists regardless of their cause. And most of those guys are Muslims. Some, at least in the US, are Christian anti-abortionists, white supremacists, and anti-tax nuts.
The folks shooting at US occupation troops in Iraq and detonating IEDs when military vehicles pass by are resistance fighters. There are also resistance fighters in many other conflicts around the globe, many of whom are not Muslim, and some of whom resist the US, while others resist other oppressors.
The difference consists of the targets and the intended effect. Terrorists target civilians with the goal of sowing terror and attracting attention to their cause. Resistance fighters are essentially soldiers attacking other soldiers with the goal of neutralizing the enemy and/or breaking his will to fight.
If I believed that opposing US policies made someone a terrorist, then I and practically everyone on the US left would be terrorists. The proper label in this case is “voter”, or maybe “activist”. We try to persuade people through reasoned argument, not by perforating teenagers at the mall with ball bearings and nails.
While others bomb the shit out of people from the comfort of the WH, a foxhole in WY or a ranch in TX?
Trust me, the NSA really is only conducting surveillance campaigns against those US “voters” and “activists” with real ties to terrorist groups. Really .
in a most difficult position. Many Americans struggle with this dilemma daily, as your warlords have decreed that you are with them, or with the terrorists, which has indeed given terrorism a popularity and status, even nobility, it had not heretofore enjoyed.
But according to the Washington orthodoxy you recite, all that is necessary to remove a suicide bomber from your terror list is for him, should he survive, to simply say that his intended target was not the little old lady and her grandson, but the CIA operative at the next table, and go on to inform listeners that he uses the most sophisticated suicide bomb technology available, that it has an excellent record of accuracy, and that while he regrets any possible loss of innocent life, blah blah.
And I acknowledge that few outside the US consider kidnapping people and carting them off to torture camps to come under the heading of “reasoned argument.”
It sounds as if you are in that sort of awkward stage, doing some gentle questioning maybe of some of the more colorgul “reasoned argument” techniques, like kidnapping peoples’ wives and children for “interrogation” when the husband is suspected of opposing US policies like kidnapping peoples’ wives and children for “interrogation” or simply invading and occupying his country.
But being a reasonable man, you may from time to time question how grateful you would be should, Iran, for example, decide to have the goodness to liberate you from Mr. Danger, and as Iranian gunmen hauled your son off to a “facility,” you might at least momentarily consider this a less reasoned argument than you would prefer, and if you noticed your neighbor helping to drag him, well you might be coming very close to some insurgent ideation, including not considering the Iranians to be a legitimate auhtority against which one could insurge. So that would, I guess, make you a terrorist in that situation too, although you might take exception to hear yourself referred to on Iranian TV as a dead-ender Bush loyalist.
You might even chafe a bit at being made into a client state of Iran. Or Syria, or whichever country the Pentagon has decreed will be the East Asia of the Month.
I am not without sympathy for your plight, I even wrote a blogrant about it. It is somewhere on there, about Americans’ difficult choice or something.
DF, consistently attributing to me agreement with Bush policies that I have spent the last five years opposing is just flat-out dishonest, and I’m not going to dignify it with a response.
There’s a word for when you start imagining enemies where there are only friends and bystanders. It’s “paranoia”. Your anger has crippled your ability to discern between friend and foe.
be a bit hard for some Americans to swallow. Some may have felt a twinge or two of anger themselves, at some of the Your Tax Dollars at Work stories that have made their way to the western corporate press.
And Americans, like everybody else, are individuals. They don’t all react the same way, even that sector who may be not 100% board with every US policy. Some cling to what they think they can cling to, this must be the only thing like this, they say, the rest is good and pure and whole and holy. Others may be less confident of that. Yet others say, no, it is all rotten, but if only my preferred politician is elected, all will be well. Let us all send him money. Still others stand as on a narrow cliff, on the brink of something, they do not know. Either way they jump, it is a long fall. On one side, they see serpents and crocodiles, the other side they cannot see, they have no idea if they will land on soft grass after a short fall, or on sharp rocks after a long one. The clouds are too thick, they just cannot see. Yet the side they can see, the serpents and crocodile side, has flooded, and it is rising. If they do not jump into it, it will meet them anyway. The only other choice is the unknown.
Contrary to rumor, and frankly, my own wishes, I do not have magical powers, and cannot tell you where along this spectrum you fall, or if you fall along it at all. I can speculate that you have begun a journey that is not entirely pleasant, and that one of the things that you will have already learned is that I cannot convince you of anything.
Cartoon Brouhaha Has Link To Tampa
—–
“What they need to remember is that online jihadis are offline jihadis,” Weisburd said in an e-mail. “There is a direct connection between cyber terrorism and other forms of terrorism.”
The episode serves as a microcosm of the challenge faced by those working against global terrorism, Weisburd said.
“The victim is in Denmark. The perpetrators are in Europe and the Middle East. The Web sites are in the U.S.A. and France. To fight this, multiple agencies from multiple countries all need to cooperate and work together and share information.”
——
How do we know what is legitimate and what is a scam?
Assume it’s all a scam until proven otherwise.
If the Bush Administration hadn’t wacked the hornet nest a second time to take control of second largest supply of oil in Iraq, and if he hadn’t been re-elected using Islamic terrorism as a boogeyman; Booman today would instead be discussing the Cultural Wars here in the USA and fundamentalist Christians imposing their religious beliefs on other Americans. Islam would still be one of those distant strange religions. Lets also get anti-semitic and mention fundamentalist Jews populating the West Bank with armed settlements; purposefully humiliating Palestinians and other Arabs.
Finally lets get spectacularly Politically Incorrect and indicate that mankind’s enemies are all of the fundamentalist monotheist religions that are seeking to impose their right-wing religious beliefs on secular enlighten societies.
I don’t think mankind’s worst enemies are fundamentalist monotheist religions, etc. etc. Imo, the worst ones are the economic manipulators behind the scenes. We’re the dog, and the f.m.r. etc. are just the tail by which they’re swinging us.
Any time religious adherents want to infuse transcendental spiritual aims into the immanent, concrete world they will create an “ism” whether it is Islamism, Christianism, etc. Of course this use of “ism” doesn’t work with Bhuddism or Hinduism since that would make it Bhuddaismism and Hinduismism. But these religions are not of the same type as those that were born in the middle eastern desert.
It’s interesting to me that the middle eastern based religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam have such a propenstity to lunatics appropriating the symbols of their religion and using them to kill people in the name of God.
It is impossible to have a Transcendent God that just so happens to be on my side when it comes to killing infidels and heretics. More pain has been inflicted on this earth to our fellow human beings by assholes claiming to be the instrument of their god’s will.
A made for television movie about Jesus (and it was actually good) began with a modern looking, sophisticated Satan showing Jesus all the death and destruction that would be perpetrated in his name after his death on the cross. And Satan asks, (to paraphrase), don’t be a putz….look what they are going to do with your sacrifice. So what’s the point.
Interesting temptation for the Lamb of God. And telling the truth about religion.
A cartoon showing the Prophet with a bomb in his turban isn’t trying to make a statement about the Prophet, but about the asshole that put the bomb in his turban.
International PEN statement on the publication of cartoons offensive to Muslims
Author(s): Sara Whyatt – WiPC Programme Director
Date: 6th February, 2006
International PEN is deeply alarmed by the escalation of tensions within the Western Media and Muslim communities arising from the publication of cartoons in Denmark and other European countries depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
The images are considered by some Muslim communities to be deeply offensive and this has led to outcry and tensions between the countries concerned and many Muslim states. These tensions have extended to threats against newspapers, the sacking of the editor of an influential French newspaper, diplomatic boycotts and even the destruction of embassies.
International PEN upholds that its members “should at all times use what influence they have in favour of good understanding and mutual respect between nations; they pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel race, class and national hatreds.”
PEN “stands for unhampered transmission of thought” and calls on its world-wide membership to “to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world”. Since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members also oppose “such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends”.
International PEN calls on all sides of the dispute to refrain from taking any action that might inflame tensions further. PEN’s International President, Jiøí Gruša states that people’s religious feelings should never be used by others as an instrument of nationalism. He adds “The right to question all beliefs is a cherished tradition that requires mutual respect. Satire can often be provocative and the defence of the right to such freedom of expression does not imply any sympathy with the views held by the authors.”
International PEN urges that the outcry resulting from these publications give cause for reflection and the opening of a space for debate on these critical issues where representatives from all sides of the argument can express their views without fear of censorship, imprisonment or even threat to life.
“It means … it’s a great-idea-but-possibly-not-and-I’m-not-being-indecisive!”
<sarcasm> PEN is being very clear, here, aren’t they? </sarcasm>
As a PEN member, I have been rather confused by the various emails and mailings we’ve been receiving.
At this point, however, I actually feel like it’s also best to STFU on the matter, and for this reason have not even weighed in on any of the requests for comment we have received from PEN. (In light of this manifesto, I will, however, be taking a careful look at the names on the ballot for board membership that’s sitting downstairs on the counter waiting to be mailed off).
It does not look to me like this Manifesto is endorsed by PEN, but rather that Salman Rushdie (Pres. of PEN America) has signed on to this in his capacity as a private individual.
Through the looking glass yet again.
now available in blue.
that have stayed with me that we might all do well to consider, from David Wearing:
& from Harsha Walia:
Returning to Wearing again:
The fatwa against Rushdie is horrific. It’s not impossible to stand with him, & against totalitarian politics, here & abroad, without getting played by the bigots, haters, & culture clashers that are currently dominating the western media & blogs.
<u>Islam-ism</u> is not Islam. It’s about a small group of people turning of a religion into a political ideology. Far beyond any teachings in Islam about how a society should operate.
If you want to respond to this, the appropriate response is a statement about Christianism, as exemplified by Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, and fellow travelers.
Opposing Islamism is not disrespecting Islam any more than opposing Christianism is disrespecting Christians.
Salman Rushdie and colleagues are exactly on point with this statement. We need a corresponding statement that takes on Christianism, including it’s inner child Dominionism.
Huh? Is this supposed to respond in any way to what I just posted about a self-examination of our own theory & praxis?
I reject the false dichotomies being offered. I refuse to join in the clash of cultures model. I find it much more useful to examine free speech issues in our own cutrure & society. I’m disgusted by the hypocrisy that promotes the ‘free speech rights’ of the Danish cartoons while remaining silent as the British jail man who has even renounced the writings for which he is being imprisoned.
While you may not wish to take up the challenge to consider the ideas offered in these quotes, please do not presume to tell me what “the appropriate response is.” Because I oppose that form of authoritarian thinking as much as that of the mullahs or Mr Robertson.
We ignore the larger context of these debates at our peril.
In what way does a critique from within a tradition constitute a “clash of cultures”?
And, ah yes, “theory and praxis”, good old theory and praxis.
I will presume to tell you what the appropriate response is as you have in your diary presumed to tell me that we must reexamine our theory and praxis (in other words, what the appropriate response is).
Again, I have to fall down on the Jyllandspostens right to print this letter. Is it wise probably not, but the fact that prominent intellectuals like Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen and the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali issues a statement like this when they all have been victims of intolerance from Islamic extremists and been the target of death threats proves a point. That there are forces out their willing to use what ever it takes, even resorting to the bombing of innocent people, to force their opinions on people of different beliefs, be it religiously or politically.
Even so, I do not find it wise to once more focus on Islamic extremism, which is by many perceived as an “Islamic threat”, so soon after the cartoon incident for the very simple reason that this could add to the fire of hatred that already exist amongst right wing extremists and only exacerbate the general tension that the cartoons issue created. The fight against intolerance, be it religious or political extremism, is important, but there is a time and a place.