Manufactured outrage
About Jytte Klausen’s book and the cartoons and other images of Mohammed that have been removed on the advice of various people who gave that advice.
Director of Yale Press John Donatich made the decision after consulting with a “couple dozen” diplomats, intelligence and academic experts. “I didn’t feel this was a censorship issue,” Donatich told AFP. “It had become a security issue,” he said, adding he was concerned for the safety of Yale Press employees.
Well, like it or not, it decidedly is a censorship issue, even if the motivation for the censorship is concern for security. The two can’t be separated when things are being removed from books because of real or perceived threats of violence. That is some heavy-duty censorship.
I listened to the BBC’s World Have Your Say on the subject on Monday, and Jytte Klausen there said that the people who gave their advice were all security experts or diplomats and they always advise against taking any risks. Apparently the advice Yale University Press got was distorted by the kind of people they decided to ask.
Klausen disputes the grounds for cutting out the cartoons. “Security experts were asked to provide advice without having the manuscript, without having the context in which these illustrations were going to be reprinted,” she said. “I think it’s very serious to suppress illustrations when not a single Muslim has protested the book and there were some Muslim reviewers.”
Exactly. This was what seemed to be about to happen with Does God Hate Women? – worries about projected Muslim reactions when not a single Muslim had protested the book – anticipatory silencing. Fortunately our publishers are stalwart and sensible, and the book went ahead, and no protests materialized – unless we count a laughable little Facebook group, which we don’t, any more than we count a Facebook group about Pluto.
Mona Eltahawy knows what’s what.
The controversy that many might recall as “Danish newspaper publishes cartoons of the prophet; Muslim world goes berserk” was actually much more complex. What occurred across many Muslim-majority countries in 2006 was a clear exercise in manufacturing outrage.
And now we’re stuck with it. What a horrible joke.
This is a very serious case. It is a censorship issue, whatever the security concerns are. And if Islam can do something like this – and it’s done it – then it can do much much more. This is just a start. They won’t stop now. And the next time the odds will be even worse. Muslims have to get used to be treated freely by the press, by publishing houses, etc. If this does not happen, and we continue to self-censor, we won’t have any free speech rights worth speaking about. Every dictatorship begins with threats, and ends with truncheons.
I still can’t decide what is worse: publishing without the cartoons the issue centers upon, or if Yale Press had decided not to publish at all. The neutered book that is being produced will at least get some points across, but I can’t help but wonder if they had refused, would another publisher have taken it on and done the right thing?
This is an ugly ugly situation.
Publishing without the cartoons is a disaster, surely. If they’re going funk it they might as well funk it all the way so that everyone can see what they’re doing. They don’t get to play hero by twiddling their thumbs. It is an ugly ugly situation, and if a university press doesn’t see which particular garden path they’re being led down, they should stop and smell the flowers. They’re not roses.
Klausen: “I think it’s very serious to suppress illustrations when not a single Muslim has protested the book and there were some Muslim reviewers.”
Well, agreed. But even if every Muslim in the world was out there protesting there would be as strong a liberal case as ever for publishing. Arguably stronger.
A totalitarian caliphate is what the most radical (Islamist) Muslims want, and against them the silence of liberal Islam (?) is deafening. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
They’ve been given the inch.
They’ve taken several miles.
Often when we are strongly critical/mocking of, say, Roman Catholicism, we are told, “You wouldn’t dare talk that way about Islam.” And there’s some truth in this. No one wants to be the next Theo van Gogh.
But the logic of it is that any sect or cult can shut us up, or at least mute our criticism, by responding with violence. In this situation, we’ve got to show whatever courage we reasonably can. If a major academic publisher shows such cowardice in response to merely speculative dangers from hypothetical fanatical Muslims, it teaches everyone else to get their way by being fanatical. Shame on Yale University Press.
It’s so annoying especially because regardless of it (the perceived Islamist threat) being a presumed danger, it generates real, actual responses which can be just as unthinking.
Some idiots ‘decide’ that there is a potential for complaints, or worse, on behalf of some Muslims, books get censored for no good reason, and then right-wing types will point out another instance of pandering to Muslims stopping free speech, when the blame ought to lie on those who imagine threats before there even are any.
Free speech is further stifled, book publishers and authors get unwanted attention from Islamists who would manufacture angry reactions if they are made aware of the potential for it, and Daily Mail readers again get to blame anyone without white skin for bringing on the further decline of Christian civilisation: nobody wins, and all because of unwarranted ‘advice’.
Dave J L is wrong. There can be no higher purpose in life than to drive fanatics into fits of insensate rage.
The more we try to understand these people the worse the result. Do we really want to live in a world who’s mores are defined by the likes of the “Wee Frees” or the “Plymouth Betheren”?
Some idiots ‘decide’ that there is a potential for complaints, or worse, on behalf of some Muslims
Exactly–ON BEHALF of, that’s the truly ridiculous part, and why Eric is wrong to say “Islam” is doing this. People have done a lot of horrible things in the name of Islam, but this censorship isn’t being done by Muslims. So far as I can tell, there hasn’t been threats of violence. There’s just a bunch of Westerners assuming that Muslims will react with threats of violence. So basically, even if Muslims wanted not to respond that way, it doesn’t matter, because Westerners will imagine the threats where they don’t exist.
Jenavir: “So basically, even if Muslims wanted not to respond that way, it doesn’t matter, because Westerners will imagine the threats where they don’t exist.”
My understanding is that only a minority of Muslims have been prepared to engage in a public rampage over the publication of the cartoons. But even fewer (approximately 0) have been prepared to break with Islamic solidarity on the matter and to say that the fact that they are contrary to some perceived rule of Islam should not be a bar to their publication in countries where the law allows it.
Of course, the next step has been taken politically, namely the recent Muslim attempts to get universal sanctions on ‘defamation of religion’ via the UN, so that no law anywhere will allow it. Given the political pressure Muslims can apply one way or another to Western governments, this sort of thing is the greatest threat going to Enlightenment values.
The threat exists because militant Muslims have got form on this issue.
@Ian, Jenavir
I agree that there are numerous pitfalls in oversimplifications. It is über-obvious that neither islam nor muslims should be seen as something monotithic.
But I think this also applies to fairly common references to a “silent muslim majority” (with a particular perceived benign political and religious preferences…..Or the somewhat weaker claim: LACK of a particular religious or religio-politic attitude).
I tend to agree with Ian that “Muslim are what muslim do”.
In such a context there are numerous rather depressing manifestations.
The spontanuous response to 9/11 , 7/7 and a number of other issues comes to mind.
There are also other instances where the response obviously has been staged to some extent, but yet I find it difficult to ascribe ALL response to “thought control”.
…Rushdie, Motoons, Holocaust-revisionism ,and the most recent : the nausiating ovations for the released Lockerbie-convicted Libyan.
Let me point to another “tool” to dechiffer “muslim mind-sets” (probably with better explanatory power than carefully crafted gallups):
Watch the comments given from muslims on BOTH muslim and secular web-pages on a varity of conflict issues.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
@Eric
Agree, but I think it could be elaborated even further.
………………..Beginquote
….
Certainly, there has been no clear statement from the ulama saying that they do not support acts of murder and mayhem against individual publishers of books deemed by some Muslims to be blasphemous. And until there is such a statement, the use of the general words ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ to talk about Islamist terrorism or threats of it, are, I think, justified.
…………………..Endquote
Indeed, And I do in fact think tae appropriate (muslim) reactions to such threats should be more than just words(for the occation).
I have seen a number of incidents where the denounciations in hindsight have turned out to be little more than lip-service.
I would think that IF moderate islam indeed is THE dominating attitude, muslim terrorists should have less ability than currently seen to plot against persons/group (or the western societies as such) from within.
We should even see “righteous” muslims actively acting against radical proselyzing, and actively aiding police in preventing violence.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
I’m sorry, Jenavir. I’m trying to express myself as clearly as I can (although I mistakenly used the singular ‘ulama’ instead of the plural ‘ulema’ to refer to the collective of Muslim scholars).
I do not want to say, and I did not, that there is not a diversity of opinion amongst Muslims. I suppose the same thing could be said about Catholics too, who find some of the Pope’s utterances bizarre and objectionable. But I wouldn’t vote for a Roman Catholic for Parliament or for the Provincial Legislative assembly either, because I believe that the Pope is arrogating too much authority over politicans who happen to be Catholic, and without a clear statement from the Roman Catholic Church that it will leave Roman Catholic politicians alone, I won’t vote for them, no matter how much diversity there may be amongst Roman Catholics. For me it’s just that simple.
The penalty for blasphemy in Islam is death. The cartoons, The Jewel of Medina, Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and doubtless other things as well, have been considered blasphemous by some Muslims. The Ayatollah Khomenei sentenced Rushdie to death, and he had to be in hiding for years. Ayan Hirsi Ali has also been threatened. Theo van Gogh was killed. The Danish cartoonists have been threatened with death. A regime of self-censorship has been the result, the latest being the decision of Princeton University Press not to print the cartoons in a book about them.
At the same time that this is going on the OIC has presented the UN with a Islamic Bill of rights, and has objected, every time, when, on human rights grounds, complaints of human rights violations have been made because of the application of Shariah law to people whose human rights were thereby abrogated. It was so-called Muslim scholars from Denmark who in the first instance, fomented the protests and the violence over the cartoons. It’s a lawyer from Jeddah who is suing Danish newspapers who printed the cartoons again in support of the cartoonist whose life has been threatened. The question of freedom of speech in Canada, the US, Europe, etc, has its answer in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, etc., where all the strings are being pulled, just as the problem with the Roman Catholic Church is directly connected to the Vatican.
Individual Roman Catholic can say what they like, but so long as their church has the structure that it does, the answers must come from Rome, and so far the only answers coming from Rome are cruel and inhuman – despicable, in my view. The same is coming from the collective wisdom of Islam. And this is a direct threat to our freedoms, and so the only way to talk about this is to talk about Islam.
The more individual Muslims speak up, the more this can be seen as a problem with the leadership, but until individual Muslims can make some change to that leadership and its opinions, the longer we’re going to have to wait to find some way of dealing with Islam in democratic contexts, where freedom of speech is not only valued, but essential to the existence of democracy. Not a few people are not unreasonably concerned with the long term prospects of democracy where an increasingly harsh voice comes from some Muslim elements from within. It may be a small sub-class in Britain, for example, but with its backing in the large Muslim world, and especially from the official parts of that world, it is becoming an increasingly dangerous sub-class, in my view, in precisely the same way that Roman Catholicism is starting to be a dangerous problem for democracy in many parts of the world.
I can’t speak much to the point about the murder of Frau Sherbini, and the way it was turned into an anti-Muslim thing. I just don’t know how much Islamophobia there is around. I don’t consider myself an Islamophobe, but I am concerned that Islam may be in the process of abridging the kinds of freedoms that I have taken for granted all my life. In one sense, it doesn’t matter a bit what individuals think or believe, so long as they keep those beliefs and thoughts private, or express them only in words and images in public space. But when people’s rights and freedoms are threatened by what some people believe in private and express in violence or inappropriate political manouverings in public we are all threatened, and we need to do something about it.
I looked at some of the links you provide, and certainly some of the views expressed there are helpful. But there was one thing that did concern me. There are irrelegious people around, and they are going to speak offensively to religion, because, to them, much religion is offensive. I find it so. Now, it is possible, by responding, to set things straight, or at least to seek to do so. But they’ll never be straight. Not everyone is going to be convinced in the end. That’s the nature of this kind of dialogue. It’s endless. And so there will always be occasions to take offence.
Take me, for example: no one’s ever going to convince me about Aisha. She was a 9 year old girl married off to a 53 year old man, and all the romantic or religious twaddle in the world is not going to change my view that this was a vile, non-consensual thing, and should not have been done. The fact that it was done, and is still defended in the tradition, puts more girls at risk. The fact that saying that might be considered blasphemous is very troubling, and somewhere we are going to have to find a resolution to these differences and how we are to deal with them.
But, to end where you began. I’m not demanding formal denunciations from large disorganised groups of people. What I’m hoping will happen is that eventually people will see that human rights are for everyone, and Islam and the Roman Catholic Church (to name but two offenders) are just wrong about this. Those who can speak officially for these religions must come to see this, and say it. But until we reach that point, we’re going to have a bumpy ride, because this is going to get worse before it gets better.
@Jenavir
I shall not claim that sensible voices arewithout the usual but’s and if’s. All too often, I only see fingers pointing to “the other”.
And it is not because they are shy After all, these people have no problem finding time to present extensive dyslogies against “the west”
Cassanders
In Codwe trust
Jenavir – I think some of this is muddled.
“Eric is wrong to say “Islam” is doing this. People have done a lot of horrible things in the name of Islam, but this censorship isn’t being done by Muslims. So far as I can tell, there hasn’t been threats of violence. There’s just a bunch of Westerners assuming that Muslims will react with threats of violence. So basically, even if Muslims wanted not to respond that way, it doesn’t matter, because Westerners will imagine the threats where they don’t exist.”
Saying ‘Islam’ is doing something is not the same thing as saying ‘Muslims’ are doing it. And what does ‘Westerners’ mean? Some of the Muslims who have threatened violence at various times have been ‘Westerners’ – born and raised there. ‘Westerner’ isn’t the opposite of ‘Muslim’ and vice versa. And then – even though I agree with you that it’s absurdly unfair to blame ‘Muslims’ for predicted outrage (and I said so more than once in connection with the predicted outrage about DGHW), I also feel it necessary to point out that it’s not as if there is no reason at all for people to think there will be outrage. It’s absurdly unfair to blame all or most Muslims for that, but it’s also absurd to pretend it has absolutely nothing to do with Islam and what some Muslims think must be done to protect it and enforce universal respect for it.
The Saudi money hypothesis is also worth taking into consideration when discussing YUP’s decision, I think.
Oh dear god…if any of that is true…
It is quite speculative so far. And there’s a basic credibility-tester at the middle of it, which is that Yale as a whole doesn’t really seem to benefit from a Saudi donation that funds an Islamic studies program or similar, so the motivation doesn’t seem strong enough to overcome the obvious – er – qualms about corruption. If there were just a huge donation to Yale as a whole, that would be one thing, but a donation with a predetermined purpose…hmm…it doesn’t seem all that alluring. Except obviously the US (and everyone) needs a lot more people who speak Arabic, people who know more about Islam and majority-Muslim countries etc etc. But does it need all that at the hands of Saudis?
Well, who knows, maybe university administrators think so. Jeezis.
Thanks for pointing that out, Dave.
I entirely agree that voices of condemnation of the extremists are not being heard, or do not exist.
It gives the unfortunate impression that the fanatics enjoy a high level of support. I hope this is not so.
If other voices are not heard, the whole thing could become self-fulfilling, as people will start to accept what they hear.
There is a very useful word to describe the cartoons affair, or indeed the Obama schoolkid speech business in the other thread: “contriversy”.
In other words, contrived controversy.
There are not many Google hits for the word, but a few.