In the State of Denmark
Hitchens murmurs a gentle reproach or two.
The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark…is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability!…And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary – that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let’s be sure we haven’t hurt the vandals’ feelings.
Let’s be sure we surrender as abjectly as possible.
Denmark will host a conference next month to promote religious dialogue following the uproar over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons, the Foreign Ministry announced Thursday. The government will also give “a significant financial contribution” to a UN program aimed at overcoming prejudice between Islam and the West, and support an Islamic festival in Copenhagen, Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said in a statement.
Will that be enough? Can we go home now? No?
He said the government was planning a range of initiatives to promote “respectful dialogue,” partly drawing on advice given by Muslim countries. “In Denmark there is a genuine respect for the religious feelings of other people and we acknowledge that many Muslims felt gravely insulted by these controversial drawings,” the foreign minister said.
And so we will grovel and grovel and grovel just as hard and long as necessary until somebody finally tells us we’ve groveled enough. We’ve taken the phone off the hook – we may be on the floor for some time.
Back to ‘No groveling, thanks’ Hitchens.
Could things become any more sordid and cynical? By all means. In a mindless attempt at a tu quoque, various Islamist groups and regimes have dug deep into their sense of wit and irony and proposed a trade-off. You make fun of “our” prophet and we will deny “your” Holocaust…As it happens, I am one of the few people to have publicly defended David Irving’s right to publish, and I think it outrageous that he is in prison in Austria for expressing his opinions. But my attachment to free speech is at least absolute and consistent. Those who incite murder and arson, or who silkily justify it, are incapable of rising above the childish glee that culminates in the assertion that two wrongs make a right.
And then he zeroes in on the real problem.
Within a short while—this is a warning—the shady term “Islamophobia” is going to be smuggled through our customs. Anyone accused of it will be politely but firmly instructed to shut up, and to forfeit the constitutional right to criticize religion. By definition, anyone accused in this way will also be implicitly guilty. Thus the “soft” censorship will triumph, not from any merit in its argument, but from its association with the “hard” censorship that we have seen being imposed over the past weeks.
Or, I would say, that along with its association with the well-meaning but dead wrong idea that it’s ‘progressive’ and lefty and kind to defend religious zealots against their critics, provided the religious zealots in question are Muslim.
You may have noticed the recurrence of the term “One point two billion Muslims.” A few years ago, I became used to the charge that in defending Salman Rushdie, say, I had “offended a billion Muslims.” Evidently, the number has gone up since I first heard this ridiculous complaint. But observe the implied threat. There is not just safety in numbers, but danger in numbers. How many Danes or Jews or freethinkers are there? You can see what the “spokesmen” are insinuating by this tactic of mass psychology and mobbishness.
Yup! Remember the pope? He said the same thing. Insult, belief, billion, people. So what, you authoritarian overdressed fraud?
I feel terrible that I have taken so long to get around to this, but I wonder if anyone might feel like joining me in gathering outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, in a quiet and composed manner, to affirm some elementary friendship. Those who like the idea might contact me at christopher.hitchens@yahoo.com, and those who live in other cities with Danish consulates might wish to initiate a stand for decency on their own account.
If any readers are in Washington tomorrow and amble along to the Danish embassy at 3200 Whitehaven Street (off Massachusetts Avenue) between noon and 1 p.m., let us know how it goes. And give my regards to Mr Hitchens.
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight:
No saying horses are gay – Homophobia
No criticising Islam – Islamophobia
No criticising the Israeli government – Anti-Semitism
No criticising the US government – Anti-Americanism
No criticising third-world dictatorships – Racism
and
No claiming men & women may have differences – Sexism
Anything else I should bear in mind before I speak?
I’m obviously getting soft in my old age… a Hitchens talking sense…
Ian, you have obviously been listening to the moral maze or reading the Daily Mail. You should know better.
Mr. Gibson. People criticize Israel all the time. Have you ever read the Israeli press? It’s full of criticism.
No, Gibson, it’s in itself a canard to suggest that one is limited in criticizing an Israeli government because of anti-Semitism. What utter rubbish.
It’s also a matter of style, of how one discusses the issue and whether one prefaces one’s remarks with an intro such as “Now I don’t want to be accused of anti-Semitism BUT…”
RDC, are you denying that some people are hesitant about criticising Israel because they worry they’ll be called anti-semitic?
PM: Even a cursory reading of say, the Guardian or any one of thousands of websites will suggest that even if there are such people, there are many many more who have no such worries. RDC is right – “As soon as you criticize Israel they call you anti-Semitic” has in itself become the latest sly slogan of the anti-Semite. Israelis have no problem arguing/ discussing sincere criticisms of their government or country – in fact, it’s the national pastime. But, PM, do you deny that there’s a distinct whiff of something more than disagreement in the kind of criticisms that compare Israelis to Nazis, for example?
Oh, shit, just saw this:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=27912&name=Suspended+prison+for+German+who+insulted+Koran
It’s absolutely a stupid provocation, but one passage is quite disturbing:
“Judge Carsten Krumm told the 61-year-old retired businessman that the penalty was increased to one year because of the worldwide political controversy in the past month over cartoons that Muslims regard as offensive because they depict the Prophet Mohammed.”
If one can accept at all the principle that the punishment for an anti-Muslim provocation can be increased because Muslims are rioting, where does that trend end? If they riot enough, could the same crime get you beheaded?
This is really revolting – you have been warned.
What does NOT offend muslims – ugh
http://isaacschrodinger.typepad.com/isaacschrodinger/2006/02/the_crowd_gathe_1.html
Jeezis. I saw that link at NSS and didn’t click on it (because it was on a blog, and I mostly don’t link to blogs) – but that makes a point I’ve been wanting to make for days – and a lot more graphically than I can make it. But too bloody right.
Horrible as it is, more people should see it and understand what is wrong with Western self-condemnation. Is there a way to make things like that go viral?
This was on A&L Daily, so many of you will have seen it, but (sorry if you’ve already linked and I didn’t notice):
http://www.sydneyline.com/Adversary%20Culture.htm
“RDC is right – “As soon as you criticize Israel they call you anti-Semitic” has in itself become the latest sly slogan of the anti-Semite.”
So can I say that saying “it’s in itself a canard to suggest that one is limited in criticizing an Israeli government because of anti-Semitism” is the latest sly slogan of those that use the charge of anti-semitism to suppress criticism of Israel? Thought not.
“But, PM, do you deny that there’s a distinct whiff of something more than disagreement in the kind of criticisms that compare Israelis to Nazis, for example?”
I think for some there is a whiff of anti-semitism, for others a rather desperate attempt at moral equivalence, and for yet more a poorly chosen comparison.
Yeah, lots of people should see that. Linking, is the only way I know to make it go viral. But of course a lot of people won’t link to it, because of Islamophobia, don’t you know.
I saw the Windschuttle thing, but I don’t like him much. He leaves out necessary qualifications – like so –
For instance, although Western feminists once found the overt misogyny of many tribal cultures distasteful, in recent years they have come to respect practices they once condemned…Feminists once denounced the surgical removal of the clitoris of Muslim women as female genital mutilation. Lately, the procedure has been redefined as genital “cutting”
Hello? I’m a feminist, and that doesn’t describe me. He’s sloppy that way.