Cowering
More. It keeps getting worse and worse and worse, as more people drop to the ground and display their pale soft bellies beseechingly, all the while crooning melodic horseshit about their profound respect for free speech as long as no one ever actually uses it for anything.
The Guardian.
The Guardian believes uncompromisingly in freedom of expression, but not in any duty to gratuitously offend…To directly associate the founder of one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions with terrorist violence – the unmistakable meaning of the most explicit of these cartoons – is wrong, even if the intention was satirical rather than blasphemous.
Freedom of expression, huh huh huh, but don’t go gratuitously offending now. Don’t offend unless somebody gives you a lot of money for it, and it’s absolutely safe to do so, and no one will be offended except one very small dull ineffectual person that no one pays any attention to. And what’s this crap about ‘one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions’? What’s so great about it? What’s so great about any of them? Why are we expected to grovel before them and defer to them and refrain from saying anything disrespectful or accusing about any of their ‘founders’?
In this country concerns about Islamophobia have been accompanied by increased sensitivity to the feelings of Muslims…The extraordinary unanimity of the British press in refraining from publishing the drawings – in contrast to the Nordic countries, Germany, Spain and France – speaks volumes. John Stuart Mill is a better guide to this issue than Voltaire.
‘Increased sensitivity’ resulting in increased social pressure to shut up shut up shut up – to refrain from ever under any circumstances saying anything skeptical or critical about Islam. Increased sensitivity is not always an unmixed blessing.
To be fair, the leader gets better after that, but that’s a remarkably bad beginning, I think.
For refreshment, turn to Ibn Warraq – who also cites Mill, but with an implication contrary to the Guardian’s.
The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, “Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being ‘pushed to an extreme’; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.” The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom — freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives? A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend…Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest.
Matthew Parris in the Times also refreshes.
I’m afraid we really do have to decide whether the demand is reasonable. I do not think it is. I am not a Muslim. Nor am I a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu. Now it’s very easy to murmur “I am not a Muslim/Christian/Jew/Hindu” as though not being something was terribly inoffensive – a sin, at worst, of omission; a way of avoiding an argument – the suggestion, perhaps, that “your” religion may be “true for you” but, as for me, I’ll sit this one out. But let us not duck what that “I do not believe” really means. It means I do not believe that there is one God, Allah, or that Muhammad is His Prophet. It means I do not believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, or that no man cometh to the Father except by Him…In my opinion these views are profoundly mistaken, and those who subscribe to them are under a serious misapprehension on a most important matter. Not only are their views not true for me: they are not true for them. They are not true for anyone. They are wrong.
Just so. And since they are wrong, we should not be expected to obey them or defer to them. And yet it is only these wrong views that we are expected to defer to and be ‘sensitive’ about. Robust views that have some contact with the real world are expected to take care of themselves; it’s the mistaken ones that race around screaming for respect.
Cutting through the babble of well-meaning souls who like to speak of the “community” of belief among “people of faith”, this must also be what the Muslim is saying to the Christian, Jew or Hindu; or what the Christian must be saying to the Jew, Hindu or Muslim. These faiths make demands and assert truths that are not compatible with the demands and truths of other faiths. To assert one must be to deny the others…People of faith and people of none cannot escape attaching themselves to claims that are inherently offensive – and at the deepest level – to other people. But offence implicitly offered, and offence actually taken, are two different matters.
And if we embark on this course of threats and arson, firings and imprisonment, beatings and killings, every time anyone is offended by anything – why, it will be hardly any time at all before there is nothing left of this particular species but six and a half billion rotting corpses. So let’s not do that.
‘John Stuart Mill is a better guide to this issue than Voltaire.’
I wonder how long it will be till we are again allowed to read, watch, or perform Voltaire’s Mahomet.
The whole debate is very much about Voltaire, isn’t it?
“And what’s this crap about ‘one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions’? What’s so great about it?”
OB, come on. This is simply to distinguish them from the three minor monotheistic religions of Luxemborg. There the followers of the magnificent fromage (The Cheese Whizists) peacefully coexist with the tiedye-ist (those who believe that Jerry Garcia is God)and only occasionally make fun of the one guy who worships a god whose human name is Pokey the Pony, although his hidden name will be sent to you for a mere fifty dollars (Church of Pokey the Pony, His Eminence Gumby, Luxemburg Station, Luxemburg. Please enclose self addressed stamped envelope)
By the way, the Guardian is firmly against making fun of the minor monotheistic religions, too. No funny pictures of Pokey the Pony, please!
Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won…
Hear hear. What we really need are more Mohammed cartoons… and funnier ones.
(Leaves to clean inkbrushes.)
I’m getting so tired of the mealy-mouthed comments to the extent of: “Yes, Free Speech is really really important, and that is why we must set reasonable limits to it, we must not abuse it, we really must not offend anyone…” Bah.
I am impressed by the Danish PM’s stance in all this, so far.
While I’m sure the papers had every right to publish those pictures, and the violent response in some quarters is a threat to free speech, I don’t think the paper should have published them originally because they seem to have been motivated not only by a desire to stand up for freedom of speech, but also a wish to wind up Muslims for reasons that are a bit darker. The papers that reprinted them I thimk were also misguided but they do seem to have been standing up for freedom of speech.
‘”The freedom of thought and expression, confirmed in the Declaration of Human Rights, can not include the right to offend religious feelings of the faithful. That principle obviously applies to any religion,” the Vatican said.’
http://in.today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-02-04T225206Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-235272-1.xml
Yup, obvious when you think about it. Although I am puzzled about how one can adhere to one religion without offending adherents of another, since believing your religion to be true requires believing theirs to be false, their divine creator not divine, their sacred text not sacred, their holy prophets not holy and their observances either quaint folk lore or god-offending deviance.
This mad affair has produced some interesting results. Almost for the first time the usually supine MCB and MPUK have gone beyond ‘we condemn violence butlook how aggrieved we are’ to actually sounding pissed off and urging the government to arrest extremist demonstrators. Editors in muslim countries have published the cartoons and rebuked the insanity that sees them as a worse crime than butchery. They were both sacked, but that surely emphasises that senior muslim journalists felt so strongly that they were willing to take career-ending, life-threatening decisions.
A trawl through various websites shows many moslem commenters whose anger at the cartoons is far less than their anger at the clowns who have made the same point a thousand times more vividly than the original, ham-fisted scrawls. Besides, placards praising the 7th of July bombings are unlikely to resonate well with ordinary-joe muslims when they – and their children – use the same transport system.
The whole furore was clearly orchestrated as a routine exercise in finding a religious slight and using it a political bludgeon. Optimistically I would like to think that the extremists have finally so alienated moderate muslims that the debate can move on to a constructive level.
Pessimistically, there are murmurings from previously cool-headed people that the BNP may be scum, but on this point …
The last thing we need is some slick, baggage free far right group (such as we see in Europe)to run with this feeling and make a real impact on mainstream politics.
Yeah, that Vatican thing – I meant to point that out yesterday. Well, I did, in News, but I meant to point it out some more. Theocrats on the rampage.
Ibn Warraq nailed it so beautifully in just a part of one sentence: “…the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.”
I went to the link posted by Tingey with all the Mohammed images and there’s one in there, in the section at the end devoted to reactions to the controversy, that is similar in message. A Muslim painting a ferociously demonic caricature of a Jew looks at the innocent little Danish Mohammed figure and says “Do you have any idea how offensive that is?”
One of the recent articles also pointed out that unlike the Danish situation, in which the government can’t simply dictate to the press what to do, most of the papers in Islamic-ruled countries that print antisemitic cartoons are under rigid state control.
Why can’t people understand that we need to respect a person’s right to their beliefs – but we do NOT have to respect their beliefs – get it??? I totally respect my parents’ right to believe their religion (my dad’s a minister), but I have NO RESPECT for their RELIGION whatsoever. When non-believers make jokes about religion, the believers should allow it to be water off a duck’s back. It’s only when THEIR OWN KIND take jabs at their religion, that religious people should become concerned. Freedom of speech includes making fun of anyone’s religion (that’s not your own) because that hurts NO ONE. Trampling on someone’s RIGHT TO THEIR BELIEF is what must be protected – not the belief itself. GET IT??? THANKS
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1703394,00.html, quoting “the exiled radical cleric, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad”:
“However, in Islam, God said, and the messenger Muhammad said, whoever insults a prophet, he must be punished and executed. This man should be put on trial and if it is proven to be executed.”
So:
1) Muhammed says he is a prophet
2) Muhammed says whoever insults a prophet must be killed
ergo: Muhammed says anyone who insults him must be killed (even 1400 years after his death).
Question: can anyone play this game? Can I demand that anyone who insults me be killed, preferably in some gruesome slow painful way?
Of course anyone can play this game. But your demand is only honoured if you have sufficient followers to carry it out. This is what is so absurd right now. Western politicians pretending their reservations about insulting Islam are a matter of principle, whereas they wouldn’t care if brute force hadn’t manifested itself.
Realpolitik, anyone?
“Why can’t people understand that we need to respect a person’s right to their beliefs – but we do NOT have to respect their beliefs”
Well, mostly, people probably do understand it, but they want to change it. It’s parallel to that loathsome mantra favoured by Joe Lieberman and other Congressional godbotherers: the US protects freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. All that’s on the menu is the right to choose among religions; choosing no religion is not an option. So, I suppose, you can have Catholic biology in your public school science class, or you can have Baptist biology, or you can have Muslim biology; but you can’t have biology. Not that Lieberman says that, as far as I know, but his position would imply it.
“Western politicians pretending their reservations about insulting Islam are a matter of principle, whereas they wouldn’t care if brute force hadn’t manifested itself.”
Well exactly. Where was all this outrage about offending beliefs last month?