Friday Friday
Watch out for Fridays. Maybe stay home on Fridays, with the doors locked and barred and sheets of iron over the windows. At least, if you live somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan, do that.
Thousands of demonstrators angered over the burning of a Koran in Florida mobbed offices of the United Nations in northern Afghanistan on Friday, overrunning the compound and killing at least seven foreign staff workers, according to Afghan officials…The incident began when thousands of protesters poured out of the Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif after Friday prayers and attacked the nearby headquarters of the United Nations.
Correlation is not causation, but when thousands of angry men rush out of a mosque after Friday prayers and attack a nearby UN headquarters, causation seems a pretty safe bet.
The crowd, which he estimated at 20,000, overwhelmed police forces and the United Nations security guards, and the weapons they used in the attack may have been those they seized from the United Nations guards.
Funny kind of “prayers,” too, if the correlation is indeed causation. Funny kind of “prayers” that can prompt twenty thousand men (yes men – they don’t let women join in) to go on a violent rampage and kill some random innocent people.
Mr. Ahmadzai, the police spokesman, said the demonstrators were angry about the burning of the Koran at the church of Pastor Terry Jones on Mar. 20.
Except it’s not actually “the” Koran that was burnt. Jones didn’t cause the Koran to disappear from the face of the earth. It was one copy out of many millions. It was a calculated insult, and that is all. It was not a felony, much less a capital crime, and a mob in Afghanistan is not an appropriate substitute for a Florida cop in any case.
Shut up your doors on Fridays.
This is a completely mad affair, but the one thing about it that is a dead certainty is that it was going to happen somewhere in response to some insult or other. This is precisely the way that Islam has spread, though sheer terror. Read the histories. Offended Muslims were always up in arms somewhere, causing havoc, killing their infidel neighbours, or carrying out raids into infidel lands. This is a constant of the history of Islam. I do not think it is going to change. Islam is, above all religions, the most dangerous and poisonous, unfit for civilised human beings. I’m with Howard Jacobson on this one. I do not think I would be particularly sanguine about the Arab Spring. We may even find Gadafi preferable to what is yet to come — but that, of course, is just my optimistic nature coming to the fore.
Hmmm
I wonder how this story would have been reported if the guards had opened fire on the crowd and been able to disperse it.
Religion of peace, indeed.
BTW, Eric. I agree completely with your assessment.
Trading one set of despots for another set of despots is what is going on right now.
The Egyptian military has already stated that elections won’t happen for a year — at least. And even if they are scheduled, then what? Where’s the constitution?
I have predicted that the crisis in Libya will end when Ghaddafi is assassinated and replaced by some other military ruler. A constitutional republic that adheres to a western-style human rights platform is about as likely as the pope admitting that he deliberately protected priest pedophiles.
I want to be outraged by this, and to a small degree I am, but honestly it just makes me tired and sad. I wish I could believe these things were isolated incidents and not representative of all of Islam. Are there muslim countries where things like this do not happen? I realize Afghanistan is a war torn, deeply impoverished nation but other islamic countries, even rich ones seem to have just as many atrocities, all in the name of a badly written fiction.
My main hope is that things are actually not as bad as they seem and only seem so because my only sources of information highlight all the bad things.
Sam Harris has a short piece about this: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/do-we-have-the-right-to-burn-the-koran/
He quotes an earlier comment he made:
Combustible is a good word for this situation. I think of reverence and irreverence as a powder keg and a spark, respectively. It seems as though most people are only concerned about the latter. They take it for granted that the wrong word or image (or treatment of a copy of a particular book) would ignite the powder. It’s perfectly natural to expect such an explosion. It seems attention is only paid to the spark and not the easily combustible explosive character of Islam.But how come Jewish or Buddhist kegs don’t blow up so easily? How have their religions been made inert? Can we say that? Can we say that some religions are just more explosive and dangerous? Is that racist of us? I think we need to start affirming our belief that it’s not OK, it’s not normal, it’s not reasonable and it’s not tolerable to act this way in “defense” of your religion. It’s not healthy. This much “respect,” this hyper-reverence is just not safe.
It seems attention is only paid to the spark and not the easily combustible explosive character of Islam.
In the history of modern Singapore, there were two race/religion based riots in the post WW2 period. Both were set off after Friday prayers. Not a coincidence. It is a historical thing. Take a look at present day incidents in Malaysia and Indonesia- feelings are inflamed at the friday prayers and quite a few mosques seem the natural incubators of rage and violence. This is why authorities in muslim countries strictly control and monitor the friday sermons where it is possible.
But how come Jewish or Buddhist kegs don’t blow up so easily? How have their religions been made inert?
Buddhist and hindu places of worship are inert to the extent that ritual (the more mindless the better) has always been more important than the bloody frickin ‘word of god’ that is just a mumble in the background. Judaism has been constrained by its minority status in hostile lands over the last two millenia.
An Islam that is ritualised (the saint-worhip and sufi dancing variety) and depoliticised will help.
I think I agree. We don’t have problems so much from those whose association with religion is mostly cultural (as seems true of many, many Jews). For the sake of world peace, let’s make religion less meaningful!
mirax, I know – “after Friday prayers” has become an all-too-familiar phrase in recent years. I wasn’t being altogether facetious about being careful that day.
Well, let’s keep in mind here that from a symbolic perspective, one religious leader burning the holy book of another religion is a lot more than a calculated insult; given the history of religionists and their holy knick-knacks, it’s tantamount to a declaration of war.
The phenomenon of book burnings is much the same as that of burning a person in effigy, except that in this case it’s burning an entire ideology in effigy. This isn’t meant as apologism for the violence and killing done by the Afghans who were manipulated by their religious leaders—but I do think that Pastor Jones is at least as culpable as they are for the deaths of those UN workers. He acted to provoke this very response and the Islamist religious leaders gladly stirred up a riot for him.
And frankly, I suspect most of America’s right-wing militiamen just wish they had the guts to sack a UN office. There’s not that much difference between an Islamist and a Christian Identity nutjob, except for the tradition of secular government that (just barely) holds the latter in check.
Let’s not start throwing hyper in front of words that work fine on their own. It’s enough to point out just how overtly biased our reporting seems to be in favor of the reactionaries.
@dzd
No one forced anyone to do anything. Burning a book is burning a book. Yes it means a lot to person x but person x at no point has the right to hospitalize person y who did the book burning (much less someone entirely uninvolved). You can’t issue out guilt like that. Unless this pastor was giving these people the location of who to kill, how to do it ect, I don’t see him as having caused this.
Aw come on, dzd – how can Jones be at least as culpable for the murders of random people by frothing rageboys? Yes it was a stupid irresponsible stunt, but no that doesn’t make him even close to as culpable, let alone more culpable.
@dzd
“Pastor Jones is at least as culpable as they are for the deaths of those UN workers.”
That is an outrageous statement.
Do these people have no free will? Do they have no ethics? Were they not taught that murder isn’t nice?
“He acted to provoke this very response”
This very response? Wow.
How did he make sure that it was UN workers in Afghanistan and not Danish embassy workers in Riyadh?
@Ophelia
“Yes it was a stupid irresponsible stunt, but no that doesn’t make him even close to as culpable, let alone more culpable.”
But does it make him, in any meaningful way culpable AT ALL?
And if so, hadn’t we better stop talking about religion?
In the UK recently we have had a number of incidents which relate to this.
Firstly we have had 2 or 3 occasions where people have been arrested for burning the Koran, one was a 15 year old school girl.
Then we have had cetain individuals with views hostile to Islam refused entry to the country to talk. One was Pastor Terry Jones. The other IIRC was Gert Wilders who was going to speak at the House of Lords.
These visits were refused on the basis that they would upset Muslims and that violence may ensue. We are being held to ransom by religious thugs.
Felix, well, given the fact that he is a fire-and-brimstone Christian, yes, I think he is somewhat culpable. I think he, unlike the Danish Motoonists (and Lars Vilks and Theo Van Gogh and Salman Rushdie and Denise Spellberg and Molly Norris and for that matter JS and me), really did want to trigger some violence.
According to the Telegraph, the term ‘executed’ is used, and for two UN workers a ‘beheading’. Apparently, Hamid Karzai wants Terry Jones to face charges for burning the Koran.
All I could think about when reading this, was what are the limits of appeasement, and what does it take for people to realise that appeasement is no longer the solution, and it is time to say to the Islamic world ‘enough’.
Yup. In the UK, in the rest of Europe, in the US. It’s all over the place.
The Swedish photographer who did the wonderful, “offensive” cover for the Swedish translation of Does God Hate Women? (Elisabeth Wallin) had a museum cancel an exhibit of hers because it was “offensive.” The museum then changed its tiny mind but Wallin said yeah right no thanks.
Maybe he did. But his actions were not significantly different from the publishers of the cartoon, indeed those who re-plublished the cartoons after the first violence.
While he probably wanted to provoke some Muslims to make jerks of themselves (not hard to do, apparently), assigning guilt to those actions is a real threat to free speech.
So the person with the gun, or the knife, can shift guilt to an man he’s never seen thousands of miles away?
If somebody shoots the Pope, or a Bishop, and they turn out to be a reader of your blog, will you accept your share of the blame?
You say Jones “really did want to trigger some violence” but isn’t it more likely that he didn’t consider it, or didn’t think it would happen, or simply doesn’t believe that he should curtail his free speech rights on the off chance that some zealot might go crazy?
Great big grown up people know that it is wrong to riot in the streets and kill people. Does Islam not impose any personal responsibility for personal acts of evil? Oh sorry I forgot Islam, the religion of peace, mandates this kind of behaviour.
As for Jones, I can’t find out whether he burned an arabic koran or a translation. It makes a big difference because muslims don’t consider a translation to be a koran. The koran is only in arabic since the words of the prophet must not be changed. Translation changes those words. I know – it’s a point worthy of a catholic theologian but if Jones burned a translation there is no foul and therefore not even an excuse for this barbaric behaviour.
Felix – no – see #14.
Yes, it may be more likely that Jones did what you suggest, but the reality is another matter. However unlikely it is, he’s a kind of Christian jihadist.
I said I think he’s somewhat culpable; I meant morally culpable, not legally. Yes that’s a grey area; no I don’t accept that that makes me culpable too, or the Motoonists or Wallin or Van Gogh etc etc.
From what I’ve seen of Jones, I’m not even certain he considered potential consequences on this scale.
He always struck me as the kind of mind you’d find in a kid who’ll happily smash someone else’s toy because it’s not his so what does he care – and then cry like a fucking baby when someone chucks his own plaything into a puddle.
Ophelia,
hypothetically, if I were to burn the Koran, not because I “really … want to trigger some violence”, but because I wish to raise my voice against appeasement of religious thugs & blackmailers, would I then be culpable if a Mullah decided to whip up a riot and hundreds of men allowed themselves to put aside their consciences and ethical judgement whilst murdering random foreigners?
Felix, no. I think you’d be ill-advised, and I would urge you to do something more literal instead, but no.
Would say more, but have to dash off. Hasta mañana.
For David @ #5: a Kurdish friend recently told me that the Leader of the ‘Change’ party in the Kurdish region of Iraq – Nawshirwan Mustafa – said something along the lines of ‘if Islam is causing problems in our society, let us put it on the back of a camel and send it back to the Arabs’. And while not everyone was happy about this, he is still the the party leader, and the party took over 50% of the vote in Sulemaniya province in the last elections. I hope that cheers you up a bit!
Dear Galloise Blonde, that is a really unsettling avatar!
Listen not to the nay-sayer. It is ten kinds of sweet.
The avatar or the anecdote?
The anecdote certainly offers a glimmer of hope that not everybody in the region is filled with religiously inspired blood lust.
(He types, determinedly not looking at the screen)
What the fuck. Seriously. What the fuck? “This isn’t meant as apologism” my ass. It’s worse than apologetics, far worse.
Don’t even bother typing “Koran” into Twitter – tweet after tweets decrying the Pastor, with nary a word for the murderers. The Pastor is an ass absolutely, but they murdered people. Not the same.
As I said, it’s time to say enough. In a civilised society, people have to accept some basic laws like murder is a crime, stealing is wrong. Islam isn’t playing that game, and doesn’t have any moral justification to cry about actions against a book. It’s time to stop with the appeasement and start with actions. Otherwise our own supposed civilised societies are beginning to look ridiculous.
Was Pastor Jones irresponsible? Sure, he’s a religious crank, but was what he did irresponsible? If no one does such things out of fear of precisely what happened, won’t this simply go on and on, that we will be held to ransom every time someone wants to say something that might offend Muslims somewhere? This is serious business, and it has implications worldwide. If we don’t say that Jones has every right to burn something — whatever its similarities to what Nazis did — then how do we say that someone has a right to publish something or to say something that might offend Muslims.
It seems to me that we need to defend Jones even as we say that he is a silly religious crank. Whether it’s consecrated crackers thrown in the garbage, or Bibles ripped to shreds, or Qu’rans burned, or Muhammad pictured makes no difference. People need to learn to take the abuse, and live and argue, not terrorise, their way to respect. So long as Islam resorts to violence for offences agaisnt religion, it is simply an unsafe institution, in much the same way that Roman Catholicism is unsafe for women. Catholics are offended, too, when things sacred to them are despoiled in some way, but, so far, PZ is still alive, and Roman Catholics in Poland didn’t kill the nearest US consul when he trashed the communion wafer.
If Islam is going to be a fit partner in a civilised society, it must get beyond this pathological way of responding of offence, or it must be isolated. And don’t forget, while we’re talking about this, that Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities are constantly under threat in Muslim majority areas of the world. As for me, I’m glad Pastor Jones burnt the damn book. Now we need to respond to it with a demand that Islam clean up its house.
Agreed Eric, we have to defend freedom of expression, political protest and freedom of speech, so long as it is not directly contradicting the rights of others when doing so. What I find appalling are those who rush to the defence of the hypersensitive who can only respond to non-violent actions of freedom by going on an immoral and monstrous rampaged, stirred up by their corrupt and evil leaders. I see this as no different to weakminded appeasement, an appeasement has gone too far deep within our weak and irrationally poisoned societies, so as to make a mockery of our so-called secular values.
We need to defend Jones just as the ACLU needed to defend the KKK…. freedom of speech means nothing if it’s selectively applied.tyfds. Jones, at least, is partly right despite himself: the Koran is an evil book (not that the Bible is any better).
Ah well you see I don’t agree that the ACLU did need to defend the KKK in that instance – I don’t think it needed to defend the KKK’s right to march in Skokie.
I found this debate between Hitchens and Shashi Tharoor on the freedom of speech to be illuminating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAZbiXqjqI4&feature=related
Tharoor brings up the same flawed example of shouting fire that Matt Seaton, the clueless editor of the Al-guardian does in this morally repugnant poll.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/poll/2011/apr/01/christianity-islam?commentpage=1#start-of-comments
It is remarkable how many people fail to think through the implications of blaming the nutcase pastor for the murders. If he is culpable, then so are Rushdie, the Danish cartoonists, the teacher who named a toy Mohammed, the dutch filmmaker who was murdered…
Tharoor tells a frightening story, smugly and blasely unaware of how much he is an enabler of violence and thuggery. An Indian magazine some years ago apparently printed a story entitled ” Mohammed the Idiot” . It was a shortstory of a less than bright boy named Mo(the most common name for muslim boys). A mob descended on thrashed everything and everyone in sight. But wait for this, Tharoor is proud, really proud that civil, liberal society in India was unanimous in condemning the magazine, its hapless editor (who never worked in media again). He felt it right that the magazine grovelled for forgiveness and that communal calm was restored.
Violence and bullying pay huge dividends in a society full of seatons and tharoors. The other faithheads will be emboldened and encouraged to put their demands forward as forcefully as the muslim rageboys. We are all screwed.
@Mirax
That story just made my knuckles white. Wow. Fuck that guy. Jesus is this how precious people’s beliefs have become? They’re now more valuable then human lives!
Ophelia,
The Al-guardian is now filming sharia courts in the UK. Allowed two, two days of unprecedented access, you see and now hoping to show how all our fears are actually misplaced (even though the morons running the court are not quite PR friendly, even by the guardian’s lofty standards)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/afua-hirsch-law-blog/2011/mar/09/sharia-courts-transparency
Enjoy!
Oh goddddddddddddd that Comment is Free poll – that is so so so fucking stupid. A false choice – either the pastor is to blame for the murders or it’s a matter of free speech. No mention of the actual murderers!
is this how precious people’s beliefs have become? They’re now more valuable then human lives!
No, human life has always been cheap in relation to the ambitions of religions. We are a a very small vanguard of people who see that and fight against it.
If Jones is to be blamed for a murder now, most of us here are to be blamed for attempted murder, or at least for the kind of reckless endangerment that may result in a charge of manslaughter. The difference lies mostly in how many eyes were pointed at him and at us, and the number of those who were “successfully” killed.
Tharoor is a politician through and through, someone who was once Kofi Annan’s righthand man and in the running himself for UN Sec-General. His way of thinking reflects the status quo – that’s how governments, newspaper editors, university publishers etc think and react. They always make excuses for the thugs.
45% so far think it’s blasphemy. I’m starting to lose my will to live.
I may have overstepped, but I don’t see a significant difference between Jones’ actions and the actions of the Islamic leaders who (presumably) incited the rioting and murders in Afghanistan. Nobody involved in this escapes blame—not Jones, not the Islamists, and not the rioters themselves—although I wonder how many of them are now feeling shame and anger at how they were used. Jones threw a match on somebody else’s pile of dry kindling, which was placed next to a leaking barrel of gasoline. And now that I’ve wrung that metaphor to death I’ll drop it.
Personally I’m not so much of a free speech absolutist that I think we (atheists, secularists, anyone) should be planning or even approving of book burnings, which in their historical context are ugly, ugly actions. Book burnings, especially book burnings done by Christians, symbolize a person or a group’s desire to destroy free speech and eliminate members of the out-group. I agree that we can’t outlaw it, but we don’t have to like it, or find it acceptable behavior.
@DZD
“Book burnings … symbolize a person or a group’s desire to destroy free speech”
But that’s the irony – in this situation the freedom to burn the book IS the freedom we are fighting for because (in the UK) it has been revoked and furthermore it is symbolic of the slippery slope down which we are already sliding in giving up our hard won rights in the name of preventing offence.
Quite, which is why I said I don’t. Nevertheless Jones did not in fact kill anyone. (On the other hand, whether or not he incited anyone to kill…that’s another question. He’s not the equivalent of the guys smashing the UN compound, but is he the equivalent of the mullahs who programmed them? Yes, pretty much. It’s religious fanatics who are the real issue, as Terry Glavin just noted at Facebook.)
“but is he the equivalent of the mullahs who programmed them?”
Precisely not! Because the mullahs themselves were the ones who decided for their own reasons to take this opportunity to incite a mob.
The mullahs chose to do it, they could have chosen otherwise.
The individuals in the mob could have chosen to do otherwise. I don’t doubt that there were some (or more) in the mosque who chose to go straight home.
The individuals come from a society which could have chosen to do otherwise, just as their cousins have recently done in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, etc.
The individuals had parents, teachers, grand parents who could have caused them to be other than they are.
Blaming Jones is to say to the beheaders in Afghanistan, “You are right, the provocation was too much. We can sympathise with your need to cut the heads of strangers”
In what way is Jones as culpable as the mullahs? They had as ‘leaders’ in this area held significantly more control over how the people in this region behave and view the outside world. Furthermore as leaders they have certain responsibilities to prevent shit like this.
Is Pastor Whoever a jerk? Entirely irrelevent as this is the responbility of the Afghanis.
Well we don’t know what the mullahs said.
I didn’t say Jones was as culpable; I said “equivalent.” That’s probably too much in any case, but he’s not a million miles away, either. He and the mullahs both knew what they were stirring up, and they wanted to stir it up, for reasons that are basically the same (and the opposite of our reasons).
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to diminish the role of the mob or the mullahs by giving some of it to Jones. The mob and the mullahs suck.
Well, we seem to be fairly evenly divided at the moment.
With me in not holding Jones responsible: Eric and Sam (http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/do-we-have-the-right-to-burn-the-koran/)
Opposing, Ophelia and Joseph Hoffman.
I wager that CH would be on my side. But who knows, maybe Russell or ACG may weigh in with Ophelia.
No, I’m not holding Jones responsible. I really hate the coverage that pretends it’s Jones’s doing rather than the mob’s and the clerics’.
But I’m saying he’s more akin to them than he is to us. He’s a guy who uses his pretend pipleline to the deity to stir up murderous trouble.
You don’t? Did Jones tell ANYONE to attack ANYONE? The mullahs did. Was Jones a leader in that community? No But the mullahs are. If anything, Jones was closer to the publishers of the Motoons (though his motivation was a bit different). To blame him is essentially a variant of the accommodationist position: don’t piss of the religious.I’m not going to buy that bullshit.
I am sick to death of the complete and total misapplication of the ‘fire in a theater’ quote.
First, the use of that cite was from one of the WORST SCOTUS decisions in modern times in which the SC ruled that it was PERFECTLY OK to imprison people for distributing tracts critical of the draft and of the US involvement in WWI.
Secondly, this is NOT the type of situation specifically addressed by the phrase. The phrase referred to a very narrow type of speech that would lead even otherwise rational people to take action that could be harmful or deadly… telling them to flee a fire when there was no fire, and there was no way they would know that is a very narrow case, and that is the point of the phrase. Telling people that the theater is a fire-trap is NOT a clear and present danger, telling people outside in the street is NOT a clear an present danger. The key point is the very narrow set of circumstances where even a rational person would be caused to do a harmful thing.
NOTHING OF THE KIND has occurred here. There was no panic situation, There was NOTHING in this situation where a rational person, even a devout Muslim would be forced to act without thinking.
There are only TWO GROUPS responsible here: the crowd and the mullahs. NOT Terry Jones, NOT the Motoons, NOT US foreign policy.
Ophelia,
for a moment I thought I was misrepresenting you, but you did say “I think he is somewhat culpable” which to my crude, binary mind is difficult to square with “I’m not holding Jones responsible”.
You also said “but is he the equivalent of the mullahs who programmed them?”
Which I took to mean that he was culpable, but maybe you meant that he is a crude religious manipulator (with 60 followers) which I would grant but use to highlight the fact that it is not his 60 followers who are murdering people.
It goes without saying that you think that the “mob and the mullahs suck”,
and for my part I think Jones is a vile creature just like Phelps. But lets not forget that Phelps recently won his Supreme Court case over the right to protest.
As you said legal and moral issues have different measures, and morally when you say “I’m not trying to diminish the role of the mob or the mullahs by giving some of it to Jones” (as you are by assigning culpability) I have to disagree and restate my position in in most forceful form:
“Blaming Jones is to say to the beheaders in Afghanistan, “You are right, the provocation was too much. We can sympathise with your need to cut the heads of strangers””
BTW, although I enjoy this I am not simply arguing for fun. This issue is, for me personally, the most important as it brings together personal freedom, current political issues, atheism, ethics and maybe the future of western Europe (hyperbole). I’ll stop now if there’s nothing new to be said but I’d be glad to be persuaded that my position is wrong.
What a remarkable split in opinion. Even among gnus? I’m with Sam and Eric, and I think there is consistency in such a position. I also think Terry Jones is an irresponsible idiot in the same offensive category as Fred Phelps. Not a person to be taken seriously, and certainly not a person to be taken so seriously that people must be beheaded. But that does not mean he is wrong to make what is effectively a political protest. It is a ridiculous protest, in the sense that Jones takes himself very seriously when he is putting a book on trial. It never enters into his tiny brain that the Bible is the next book on the list to go on trial, if we are to be consistent.
But he’s not a criminal for being a narrow-minded irresponsible idiot and bigot, otherwise, we’d have to put a majority on trial for being so. And if we are to keep our cherished freedoms, then we must, reluctantly support his right to protest, to speak freely and to criticise, because that’s what makes us liberals, and if we’re putting people in prison for protesting and being offensive, then we’ve really lost the plot completely.
Why are we blasting pastor douchenozzle for burning a Koran? It was no more irresponsible an act then printing the prophet’s face from what I understand of how Islam works. Why are we focusing on him when the real issues (security in Afghanistan, the responsibilty of president to his people, the widespread anti-west and anti-secular sentiment in the mid east) have nothing to do with him?
*Reads.* *Runs away.*
(In all seriousness, I’d need to think more about this. I definitely don’t think that what Jones did should be against the law, or that he should be held legally liable for the consequences, but I do tend to feel, with Ophelia, that some moral taint attaches to his action. Surely we don’t think he stood revealed as a, you know, morally virtuous person in all the circumstances?)
I also think that some of the comments above are confusing what we regard as morally virtuous with what we think should be legal (or even a political right). The law can’t make fine distinctions, at least not these kinds of fine distinctions. Lots of things should be legal even though we look at them askance or make us think of the agent concerned as showing a lack of moral virtue. A functional society needs people to be constantly making fine, often very contestable or tentative, judgments of moral virtue – and it also needs the criminal law to provide restraints backed by force in clear-cut cases of things that we definitely don’t want to be done. We need both but we shouldn’t confuse them.
Russell Blackford,
Human rights, are supposed to transcend laws. Although I understand they have no basis other than a kind of universal social and practical contract. They’re like constitutional protections that are fundamentally more important than democracy, or the lawmakers voted in by a majority. And so we don’t pick and choose who has a right to protest and who doesn’t, everyone has them, but we have to take into account whether such people are violating the rights of others.
And so those basic human rights are a right to protest, a right to freedom of speech and criticism. So long as the rights of others are not being violated. And that’s not really about morality, but about rationality.
But morality transcends both laws and social contracts. Sometimes, bad people need to be stopped. And so it all comes down to our moral judgement. My sympathy is neither with Terry Jones nor with angry Muslims. But I recognise the difference between burning a book and beheading an innocent person. And if we want to protect our own freedoms to offend others, whether that offensiveness is justified or not, we must support freedom of Terry Jones to burn a book.
Egbert, are you agreeing with me or disagreeing? I think you’re agreeing, but I’m a bit confused.
Russell Blackford,
Perhaps there is no real difference of opinion, as Felix suggested, between any of us. Only a matter of nuance. Which would be of relief to me.
What is the calculus of blame/guilt/responsibility?If we say that there is 100% guilt available to be shared around then the result is what I am objecting to – By assigning any culpability to Jones we are lessening the guilt of the murderers.Alternatively we could say that guilt is unbounded and that having assigned ‘full’ responsibility to the murderers we can continue to assign additional culpability to his parents, his friends, the society in which he grew up, the media for reporting Jones’ actions, Hamed Kharzai for highlighting those actions etc. Spreading the blame in this manner seems at a gut level to be lessening the guilt of the perpetrator.In certain situations we object strongly to this model, e.g. when a judge attaches blame to a rape victim for dressing provocatively,whereas in others we approve to some extent, e.g. when a child raised by yobs behaves badly we have some measure of sympathy for the child.
Now I have a problem (that is – I start to undermine my previous position), because I do want to assign additional blame to the mullahs who incited the riot without going so far as attaching a material amount of blame to Jones. Furthermore, I don’t feel that I can go as far as Eric is saying that I am glad he burnt the damn book.
last sentence should be ” I don’t feel that I can go as far as Eric in saying that I am glad he burnt the damn book.”.
But the only reason I can’t go that far is because we know now, after the event that people died.
If the result had been that 10 million Muslims demonstrated in cities across the world then I would have said that it was an important lesson in freedom/rights and furthermore that I welcome/encourage the peaceful expression of Muslim ‘upset’ and that the fact that nobody had died was a very hopeful sign.
Karzai is playing a dirty and dangerous game. The latest development is that Hamid Karzai wants the U.S. Congress to not only condemn the burning of the Koran, but to prevent it happening again.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/afghan-leader-calls-on-us-congress-to-condemn-koran-burning
This would essentially be the makings of a blasphemy law, if Congress were to actually fall for this. Which would itself be unconstitutional, as well as extremely foolish. However, since Koran burnings should not be stopped, and can’t be stopped, I can only see a vicious circle leading to the inevitable conflict that neverending appeasements attempt to prevent.
Can you show any objective moral distinction between this and the printing (and reprinting) of the motoons other than the fact that most of us supported the motoons and most of us dislike what Jones stands for?
When you step back, there is no functional difference.
I don’t have any problem in allocating moral blame to more than one party in a chain of causation. Blame isn’t a finite bucket.
But it would still be a bad precedent to assign a share of legal blame to Jones. We usually assume that the chain of causation is broken for legal purposes by the deliberate acts of responsible human beings later in the chain. We don’t treat the latter like, for example, wild animals (if I throw you into lions’ den and you are killed by the lions, legal responsibility will be with me). If nothing else, that principle gives us the freedom to act without being in constant fear of legal accountability for the remote consequences of actions that are not inherently unlawful.
Jay, why do you say that? The situations appear to me to be totally different. I can’t even begin to think why you think they are morally the same.
For the analogy with kindling and a match that was wrung “to death” earlier, I think it should be noted that the owner of the kindling caught the match and decided to light the kindling. Unless you’d consider the rioters exempt from responsibility in the same sense that kindling can’t be scolded.
I may be in the minority in thinking that burning books is perfectly acceptable. I was always of the unusual mind that the bad thing about breaking into people’s homes, confiscating what they hold dear, and eradicating all similar items from the face of the Earth was not, per se, the destruction of the binding straw or of the hard covers.
[…] treated the Qu’ran and Muslims with respect. Over at Butterflies and Wheels the question is being discussed in some detail. Does some moral taint attach to what Pastor Jones did? Here’s something that Ophelia said: […]
Further interesting commentary:
http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2011/04/pastor-jones-and-blame-game.html
Can anybody tolerate ambiguity around here?!
Russell can, but Felix, Egbert, can you? I nowhere said I thought Jones was legally culpable, and I’m not going to, but that doesn’t commit me to thinking he’s an ally.
Felix, you cited your “crude, binary mind,” I assume in jest, but really – is it in jest?
I think he is somewhat culpable; that is indeed different from holding him responsible, unless you simply reduce the matter to two crude answers, yes or no. I’m not a prosecutor so I don’t have to limit my view to yes or no.
We don’t need a moral distinction other than that. That is the relevant difference. Don’t be fooled into thinking one has to be “consistent” about one particular aspect of this (which would make us inconsistent about other aspects).
The fact that I support the Motoons and loathe what Jones stands for is not some trivial irrelevant matter of taste; it’s of the essence. What Jones stands for is closer to what the mullahs stand for than it is to what the Motoons stand for. Jones is no friend of mine. Jones is not a liberal or a secularist or a feminist; the Motoons are consistent with all those (whether or not the toonists are all those, which I don’t know).
Whilst ‘many true words are spoken in jest’ the most straight forward answer to your question would be No Yes I’m working on it!
(warning: html for strikethrough may not work in the above)
The OED defines Culpable: Guilty, criminal; deserving punishment or condemnation
But if you meant deserving condemnation I wish you had used a different word because in this instance each position is covered by culpable.
I don’t think anybody (in the blogosphere) but Hoffman is suggesting that he is legally responsible
Quick points as I don’t feel like arguing:
1. The primary culprits are the members of the mob and the mullahs who stirred them up. I think everyone here agrees with that.
2. Pastor Jones still deserves a huge serve of moral opprobrium for his role. This does not mean he should face any legal penalties. His right to be offensive should be defended.
3. The idea that Jones was not aware of what he was doing is laughable. He was talked out of this action by the personal intervention of the US President just last year, so he knew damn well there could be serious fallout.
4. Jones could not know his actions would cause this specific outcome, but he did set out to inflame Muslim anger for no other purpose than to prove that Muslims get angry. Well, he wasn’t proving anything we didn’t already know. This is, by the way, what sets Jones’s actions apart from Rushdie or the Motoons cartoonists — Jones’s primary purpose was inflammatory. A pure consequentialist would claim that his motives don’t matter, but few of us are pure consequentialists.
5. Mullahs are quite capable of manufacturing their own offense. The Motoon affair is a great example — even in the Muslim world nobody was too upset about the cartoons until a group of mullahs created a fake offence by taking a poorly photocopied photograph of a stand-up comic wearing a pig nose, adding it to the list of cartoons, and lying that it was an actor playing Mohammed as a pig.
Felix – ok, maybe “culpable” was the wrong word then – although the “somewhat” would seem to indicate that I didn’t mean the “should be punished” version. There isn’t really any one word for what I mean…
My basic point is that the Motoonists, Lars Vilks, Elisabeth Wallin, Theo Van Gogh, Molly Norris, Salman Rushdie, et hoc genus omne are in one category and Jones is in another. There is some overlap but also some very serious and important difference.
Ophelia,
I don’t see Pastor Terry Jones as an ally either. I don’t know why defending his right to protest or speak is the same as defending his character, they’re not the same thing at all. I loathe the man as much as I loathe Fred Phelps.
Again: it depends on whether we’re talking about his legal right or his moral right.
I think in terms of morality, then yes there is ambiguity, personal judgement and matters of opinion come into play. I can liken it to the building of the Mosque near Ground Zero. That was in incredibly bad taste, and morally questionable, because it appears as an injustice at some level to the people who died and their relatives. But no one was questioning the ability to freely build Mosques elsewhere. What is different in this case is that there is less justification to be angry over a burning of the Koran, and no justification whatsoever to then assume it is okay to outlaw the burning of the Koran or to arrest Terry Jones.
My basic point is that the Motoonists, Lars Vilks, Elisabeth Wallin, Theo Van Gogh, Molly Norris, Salman Rushdie, et hoc genus omne are in one category and Jones is in another. There is some overlap but also some very serious and important difference.
I understand your point and I emotionally, instintively agree because we are allies but something niggles away at me. Everyone on that list had more laudable motives than the deranged pastor but it was of absolutely no difference to those who chose offence (and by these I dont mean only muslims but also all those who exist to safeguard religious privilege) . All had their characters vilified, their lifes threatened, their work maligned, their motives examined and found deeply suspect.All were accused of having an unholy, even racist agenda. The only reason TJ stands out is that he is a trouble maker of a much lower standard and an avowed loony faithhead. This distinction may be a crucial one to us but how does it matter to anyone else? There is ample evidence that it matters not at all to the faithful who take offence. We take care to distance ourselves from TJ’s brand of competitive blasphemy but we are all blasphemers anyway. The distinctions we make are superfluous to outsiders. We need to make them but ultimately they dont matter and are a sop to our sense of moral superiority.
I’d have cheered if Muslims had chosen to burn the bible in a tit for tat – that’s would have been right on so many levels. Here on Se Asia, the Malaysian government, already involved in the usage of ‘allah’ by christians furore, has held back and desecrated (or so the christians claim) thousands of imported malay -language bibles by stamping “Meant for Christians only” on each bible. Some more faithhead turf protection. There was a standoff with the Christians refusing to accept and distribute these bibles. FYI. If TJ had made a ‘principled’ koran burning in support of his fellow christians, would it have been better? Would Hamid karzai or the UN fella seen the difference?
Btw, there is further complexity to the UN killings. According to the BBC the unarmed protestors were first fired upon by the UN guards and several protestors were killed before the UN killings took place by the enraged protestors. It might have been a peaceful protest that turned tragic. This needs to be said, so the afghans dont get all the bad press.
mirax (@ 82) – oh I know – I’m not hoping to placate the enraged by saying TJ is somewhat morally wrong. More like the other way around: I’m hoping not to give any aid and comfort to that idea.
And it’s not the burning itself, it’s the burning in full knowledge of the likely outcome.
I think we have to risk even possible outcomes like that for the sake of genuine criticism of various kinds. I’m not convinced we have to risk it for the sake of a dumbass stunt.
On the other hand it pisses me off that Obama says burning a holy book is blah blah blah, even though I know he sort of had to, so I’m getting tempted to give up on “nuance” here.
Thanks for # 83. I wonder if that’s right. Mind you…20,000 rage boys could look pretty scary in Afghanistan…
I’d like to cross post this from Hoffmans blog…
Claudia asked:
“What if the Mullahs had not chosen Terry Jones’ act as fodder for their political moves, what if they had chosen, for example, the knighting of Salman Rushdie? Would you hold the Queen responsible for the ensuing protests”
I replied:
I think what people would say is that clearly both of these actions (burning, knighting) are legal and yet both may cause anger or worse.
You therefore should consider whether you have a good reason for what you are about to do.
Does the Queen have a good reason for knighting Rushide? Yes. He is a great author and a symbol of resistance to religious fascists.
Does Jones have a good reason for burning the Koran? I think we can agree that he does not. Its a publicity stunt. (If we imagine for a second that he had burnt ‘Little House on the Prairie’ then we can see that, absent angry muslims, it is a morally neutral action.)
Therefore the moral calculus (benefit zero, risk non-zero) suggests that he should not do it and if he proceeds he is acting immorally.
This formulation generalises to the fact that you can do plenty of things that annoy muslims (in this instance) as long as there are good enough reasons. May I suggest banning religious schools?
However, I have not been completely converted to the other side, I still have a major problem, at a gut level, with anyone who says that Jones is to _blame_. The chain of causation is very long and complicated and it ends with a man and a knife.
(How’s that for ambiguity? :-) )
Much better! :- )
And for that matter so do I. In fact I have a gut problem either way. He knew it could trigger violence, that’s even probably what he wanted; he’s untroubled about it now; on the other hand: it’s a mass-produced book; there are millions left; an insult by X just is not a reason to murder A through K who had nothing to do with the insult to X.
Whether he is a secularist or not, whether we agree with his positions or not is not the issue.
The motoons were published SPECIFICALLY to tweak the obsession with images of the prophet. They were REPUBLISHED to do THE EXACT SAME THING after violence resulted the first time.
Jones also intended to insult Muslims.
Sure he did it form his (ignorant) world view, and the motoon publishers did it more (probably) from ours, but in the end BOTH GROUPS SPECIFICALLY DID IT TO OFFEND MUSLIMS AND BOTH GROUPS DID IT DESPITE THREATS OF VIOLENCE.
If we are to claim that Jones was irresponsible because violence would likely occur, how would you argue that the motoons were not published with the same responsibility???
[…] what!? First of all, as Ophelia Benson points out, the pastor didn’t burn the Koran, he burned a Koran: his own private copy of a […]
I disagree that the cartoons were deliberately republished to offend. I think they were responding to the idea of censorship. I think back then, people understood the difference between freedom of speech and appeasing barbarians, but apparently that’s all become so clouded.
Of course, Terry Jones’ motivations are entirely different, he’s not interested in exercising freedom of speech, but he’s interested in raising awareness and perhaps darker ideas. But again, his rights must be protected, and the moral confusion of people like Hoffman and Obama and show that although the action is nuanced, it’s still justified by his right to protest. And we either support his freedom to protest or we have lost our own freedom to protest.
I’m with Egbert. If the Motoons had been published for the purpose of offending Muslims, then I would put them in the same category as Jones: protected speech but worthy of condemnation. But the Motoons were not designed to offend Muslims. They were intended to assert the right to freedom of speech and to needle the protect-religion-at-all-costs crowd. The original cartoons did *not* cause much offence, by the way…not until the mullahs responsible for whipping up the hysteria lied by adding the pig snout photo.
[…] the riots and killing in Afghanistan. The Internet is buzzing with news and discussion, and, when David, a commenter at “Butterflies and Wheels,” said “it just makes me tired and sad,” he helped […]
Russell Blackford @69
So where do you logically stop the chain of causation? How much do you tip out of your infinite bucket?
If Jones is apportioned some of the moral blame, then surely his own parents, teachers and pastors must also acquire some of that blame for not bringing him up in a manner that would have taught him the folly of his actions. If they can be accounted as morally responsible, then their own parents must receive some moral blame. Their grand-parents are surely responsible for not teaching them in such a way as to properly educate Jones in the future…
Take the chain of causation to it’s logical conclusion and it’s all the fault of the very first woman, who listened to a talking snake, in a magic garden 6000 years ago.
Oh look, Original Sin.
This is a distinction without a difference. ‘We’ did it for ‘valid’ reasons (expressing contempt for their obsession with depictions of Mohammed ‘–defending free speech’), but he did it for ‘wrong’ reasons (expressing contempt for what he sees as a violent book and belief system). You can’t hold the fact that you agree with some reasons and not others as the defining test of who is responsible.
As for the claim that the motoons were not designed to offend Muslims: hogwash. The subject was specifically chosen because it is forbidden by Muslim tradition. And really, Mohammed with a bomb in his hat? You think that was not meant to offend? And yes the motoons were reprinted after violence resulted the first time.
I cannot believe this nearsightedness. He did the same thing we did. We disagree with his reasons, but we are no more or less responsible.
We know what offends Muslims: It’s cartoons, it’s throwing away business cards, it’s glasses of water and of course the burning of the koran. There is simply no limit to what is offensive.
None of this matters. What matters is how a person responds to being offended. Do they write a petition? Do they protest in the street? Do they write to their MP, or do they go on a murderous rampage, beheading people? All such responses fall upon the head of the person offended. Unless of course they’re insane, and if they’re insane, then perhaps so too is Terry Jones, and therefore he also has no responsibility for his actions.
No, it’s not the issue, but it is an issue. It’s part of the broader issue. This was exactly my point. We’re not required to boil the whole thing down to yes or no, up or down, such that the differences between a Vilks and a Jones become irrelevant. The differences between a Vilks and a Jones are not irrelevant! Therefore I’m not interested in erasing them.
I (at least) disagree with his reasons and with the thing he did. You may notice I have never posted a video of myself burning a Koran on YouTube. I’ve never made such a video; I’ve never torched a Koran. Perhaps that’s because I’m not illiterate – I read many books, not just one; I don’t think one copy of a modern edition of a widely-available book is in any sense sacred; if I want to dispute an idea or a set of ideas I do that rather than making symbolic content-free gestures.
So: he did not do the same thing “we” did.
This is a poor example. The alleged ground zero mosque controversy was largely ginned up by American right-wing extremists and their voices in the media–to begin with, the proposed building was neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero. (Never mind that there actually was a mosque in the old WTC.) Not to mention that the backers of the project have actively tried to distance themselves from extremists –I haven’t seen any intent to provoke in their actions. It’s a damn near secular project, honestly.
Why, GraemeL? It’s not as if we put blame on people for everything they do that turns out to have a bad consequence.
E.g., his parents had sex and so brought him into the world. But, other things being equal, there is nothing blameworthy about having sex. We don’t put blame on people, even morally, for innocent actions that turn out to have some kind of remote and unforeseeable bad consequence.
Now, you can worry that some kind of blame falls on his parents, not for having sex but for bringing him up to have certain attitudes and beliefs. Well, why not? It looks to me that they are to some extent to blame insofar as they did this. Still, the outcome was pretty much unforeseeable. Surely that’s something we’d take into account.
By contrast, there’s something very blameworthy about deliberately trying to stir up violent emotions and bring about carnage and. destruction. The outcome was not just foreseeable but actually sought.
All that said, the doctrine that the chain of causation will be deemed broken for legal purposes by the supervening choices of autonomous agents works pretty well. It’s not a legal doctrine that I’d give up lightly.