Nasim Zehra, Arab News
 There is no battle to be fought with those who indulged in the ugly act of deliberately insulting my Prophet (PTUI peace be upon him). I am numbed with outrage over this uncivilized act they have committed.
| Really, Nasim? I'm outraged over the rioting, the burning of the embassies, and a half dozen people dead, probably with more on the way. So I guess we're even, in a way. |
I would simply say to them yours are no civilized ways.
| Howling mobs in the streets and the arrogant attempt to impose your way of life on the rest of the world is, of course... |
Whatever your claims to the contrary, they actually betray a people with a reactionary mindset.
| A pity we can't be forward-looking, like those nice Soddies. |
Those who become possessed by anger when confronted with difficult and challenging situations.
| That's not a complete sentence, is it? |
Anger halts our ability to probe and to reflect. Instead, depending on our location in life, if we are advantageously placed, we self-righteously give ourselves the license to pronounce verdict and take action to right a wrong.
| Ahhhh... Perhaps I was mistaken in the author's intent. It sounds like he/she/it realizes that taking umbrage at the drop of a hat and self-righteously attacking those who displease us in the least is a bad thing... |
As many European publications have done.
| Sigh. I guess I was wrong. He/she/it really is a muttwit. |
This is their crass response to the growing post-9/11 anti-Islamic sentiment. And for people in the business of opinion making to indulge in such reactive acts is extremely dangerous.
| Obviously it's a dangerous thing to do, since the enemy is not only vicious, but mentally unhinged... |
It is highly irresponsible. These are people who must play the role of promoting greater understanding - pulling people away from extremist thought and action. Not join the vanguard of anger-prompted extremism. Policy-makers and opinion-making community in the West have opted to conduct the discourse on terrorism using a terminology that has unwittingly but dangerously indicted the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world.
He's talking about the 1.2 billion Moose limbs who're rioting even as we speak blog... |
Terms like Muslim terrorists, Islamic terrorists and Islamic terrorism have led to the demonization of the Muslims and of Islam.
| Gosh. You don't think terms like "the Great Satan" and slogans like "Death to Infidels" mighta helped? You don't think lopping off people's heads had something to do with it? You don't think that a continous series of explosions, from Manhattan to Bali to Moscow to Madrid to London might have had something to do with it? You don't think that shooting school kiddies in Beslan contributed? |
Whatever the European papers may claim they are upholding by ridiculing the Holy Prophet, they would have not contemplated doing so in a pre-9/11 environment.
Sure they would have, had the occasion arisen. It's the concept of a free press. If we make an exception in the case of the turban and automatic weapons crowd then we have to make exceptions for everyone. No more anti-Americanism. No more anti-Semitism. No more making fun of the French. Everything will be required to be plain vanilla. In such a world silence would be better than stunted, stilted speech.
We've already started down that road by not being allowed by our innalekshul betters to make fun of blacks, homosexuals, (American) Indians, and a host of other protected groups, no matter how villainous the actions of some of their leading lights may be. We have to make due with occasional jokes about Samoans and Esquimeaux and Lapplanders and Veps. And we're not allowed to bitch and moan when some mental jackoff dunks a cross in a beaker of piss or splatters a picture of the Madonna with elephant dung, piously claiming that doing so "makes us think" — the unstated assumption being that they habitually do and we habitually don't.
I'm hoping that the wild-eyed, spittle spewing mobs, whipped up by their holy men and driven by their ignorance and hatred of individual liberty may have drawn our attention to the line in the sand. I'm hoping that we'll state "this far and no further," and maybe even back away from that line and regain the raucous free speech that was common in the day of Finley Peter Dunn. And that means we're free to make fun of your prophet, just as you'll go on exercising your freedom to call for despoiling the Jews and enslaving their women, which I can consider one hell of a lot more egregious than a goddamn Mandy and Rastus joke. The only difference will be that we have the freedom to say pretty much what we please, and you have the freedom to do what the hell you're told. |
Social tensions may have existed in pre-9/11 Europe but in post-9/11 the tensions have vastly augmented. Muslims make for easy targets. So does their faith.
| Seems like it's been the Muslims who've been picking their easy targets, all along Islam's bloody border, slaughtering innocents and combatants alike, calling for blood and spoils and demanding their caliphate and our demise. They don't even content themselves with just slaughtering infidels. If no one else is available they'll kill each other — the Arabs despoiling the blacks in Sudan, the Sunnis and Shiites bumping each other off in Iraq and Pakland... |
This is how a section of the Europeans have opted to express their resentment against the terrorist attacks, as is evident from the contents of the cartoons.
| I guess it all boils down to a matter of self-expression, doesn't it? The Europeans express their contempt for the turbans in their midst by drawing a half dozen cartoons, and the turbans express their contempt for the Europeans by mobilizing shrieking mobs intent on death and destruction. |
This is a season of acute polarization.
| Polarization assumes equal poles. We're not at that point yet. Give it time. More time than I'd like, I'm afraid, but it will come eventually. Keep it up, and someday we'll see howling mobs of Europeans and Americans, hunting down the turbans and stringing them up from the lamp posts. That will probably come after one of your psychoceramic leaders manages to nuke a major Western population center. Don't say you weren't warned, turban boy. |
For example if the on-line responses of the public are any guide, this act of insulting the Prophet has unfortunately received widespread public support in many European countries.
| Take the hint: the unwashed masses don't really like you. It's the effete elites who're determined to impose your presence on them. |
The thrust mostly is that there is no reason to compromise on our value of freedom of expression, that if Muslims can't deal with this they must leave, that Muslims are hypocrites because they show no tolerance toward minorities but expect to be shown tolerance.
| Bingo. You got it. You can't comprehend it, but you know it's there. It's just foreign to your mindset. |
In some cases individuals have argued that such cartoons should often be printed to get the Muslims to ultimately be more accepting of freedom of expression!
| If we have freedom of expression, then such things can be printed any time anybody damned well pleases. If they can't, we don't have freedom of expression and the intolerant bastards like you have won. You'll then be in the process of imposing your 7th century values on us. |
They say this is what we do to our own.
| And it is. I've already mentioned two instances of blasphemy. I could come up with a dozen more with five minute's thought, and probably a hundred more with a quick google. |
Sadly so, we would say. But please do not drag our revered ones in your messy notion of the freedom of speech.
| What gives you the right to tell us what to say or not say? I hate to point this out, but in the West you're no better than we are. You have no special rights. Your status is that of a citizen, assuming you've become naturalized, a visitor if you haven't. |
You have evolved into a culture which licenses unlimited permissiveness.
| We had a fellow here in the States about 70 years ago named Huey Long. Now, old Huey was as crooked as they come, and certainly nothing to hold up to our children as an example of good behavior. But Huey kind of boiled down the whole concept of individual liberty to a single line: Every man a king. You've got princes and potentates, mullahs and ayatollahs and muftis and qazis and God knows what else, all determined to tell you what to do and how to conduct every fine point of your life, from when to pray to how to take a leak. You've got a fatwah for everything you can possibly think of. We don't. Our government governs us, it doesn't rule us. Many of us feel uncomfortable, even rebellious, when it imposes too much. You don't like it? Don't do it. But keep in mind that you're the one with your face ground into the dirt by 6000 years of rule by holy men. |
In spite of our own mistakes, our many shortcomings, our morally and intellectually anemic leadership, there are some touchstones of our civilization. It includes the respect of religion and our faith in God Almighty.
| What a nice juxtaposition of cause and effect. When Europe was priest-ridden and caught in the seemingly unbreakable bonds of superstition there wasn't much difference between it and the Muslim world. 9-11-1683 was a close run battle, because the Grand Turk ruled a society that was different but approximately as advanced as European society. A mere hundred years later the Turks were busy strangling each other with bowstrings while the Europeans were ruling vast empires. Why? Because by 1683 the Europeans were just finishing up their Reformation. Among the Muslims the word "innovation" was dirty, something to be avoided. How's it feel, being stuck in the never changing world of the Middle Ages? |
Deliberately defiling the Prophet is a highly irresponsible act.
| Swaming into the streets howling and ranting and making faces and scaring the children is also a highly irresponsible act. Burning down embassies is an even more irresponsible act. And demonizing your neighbors is even more irresponsible. |
It is bound to have negative social and political fall-out. It exacerbates the existing social tensions among the locals and the Muslim population.
| Somehow in the course of all this, the locals are expected to exercise iron self control, while the Muslim population... Well, we've already discussed that and I'm running out of adjective to describe your propensity for street violence. |
Within the Muslims it is bound to create more alienation and resentment toward the Westerners who, have chosen to be completely indifferent toward the faith and feelings of the Muslims across the world.
| It's because we don't care. You can't seem to grasp that. We don't care about your religion. Not one whit. We barely care about our own. |
It is the arrogance of these Westerners they will resent.
| And to whom they display their own misplaced arrogance. |
Like millions of Westerners who have opted to not view terrorists as a fringe phenomenon within the Muslims and instead referred to terrorism as Islamic terrorism, many Muslims too will wrongly implicate the Westerners across the board for this blasphemous act against the Prophet.
| With just about as much accuracy. But he's the rub: both view are accurate. The "moderate Muslims" love their jihadis. They're figures of romance to the stay-at-homes, tugging Uncle Sam's beard and strutting their Islamic stuff. And Westerners across the board don't really give a fart about your religion except insofar as it's connected with explosives. Quit blowing things up and I guarantee we'll lose all interest in Islam and its practitioners. You can go back to strangling each other with bowstrings and we'll go back to trying to figure who killed Jon Benet and trying to catch the next glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple. |
At the popular level we require a rollback of the school that promotes the dangerous talk of clash of civilizations.
| Require in one hand — make it the right — and crap in the other. You're not in charge. |
For now the cartoon incident will merely serve to reinforce the worst of what many Muslims may believe of a growing intolerant Europe.
| You're mistaking disinterest and disdain for intolerance. Go ahead and marry your first cousins — something you wouldn't let your camels or sheep do — and cut your women's noses off when they step out of line. Keep them in sacks and use them for breeding stock. Bow down toward Mecca five times a day and diddle little boys at night. But don't do it around us. Do it in your own Islamic paradises. |
The framing and the discussion of the issue of terrorism has created a permissive environment which is responsible for this caricaturing of the Prophet; of hurting the feelings and ridiculing the faith of a huge section of the entire human race.
| That's the same segment of the human race that periodically declares jihad on the rest of us for one reason or another... |
They paid no heed to the protests. Instead they resented and condemned the nature of the protests.
| Yeah. We're not real good at dealing with people who periodically become unhinged. |
True the protests should have been calmer.
| Quite the generous admission. |
Frenzied outrage was unnecessary and as were threats to kill.
| They were unnecessary, but so also were they entirely predictable. |
But nothing justified the reprinting of those insulting cartoons across many European countries including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland.
| As much for a sheep as for a lamb, I'd say. It's my opinion at this point that every newspaper in the civilized world should print them. Why? Because we can. You'll bitch and moan and the mobs will spill into the streets again. Why? Because you're nuts. You've taken a stricture against idolatry and turned it into a reverse idolotry: rather than setting up graven images, you're determined to enforce their non-production by using the threat of death. |
The leadership in most of these countries has not been willing to contest the wisdom of publishing cartoons that are highly disrespectful to another people's faith. In fact the degree if insensitivity of the Danish prime minister can be gauged from the fact that when after the September publication the Muslims in Denmark sent repeated requests to meet with the prime minister, he repeatedly ignored their request. Essentially conveying "I really don't give a damn".
| Still missing, or refusing to acknowledge, that free press thing, aren't you? The word is "free." It means you don't control it. Neither does the prime minister of Denmark. Neither does the Pope. Neither does the Queen of England. Here in the U.S.A., we're every man a king. The Euros have caught on to the idea, though they don't do it quite as well, but you can consider every man a grand duke or a baron or a marquis or something like that. They've caught on to the idea of freedom, too, an idea the Muslim world dismisses out of hand because it can't comprehend it. |
Subsequently the Muslim leaders repeatedly went to the Middle East and other Muslim countries and showed them what the Danish papers had done.
| And even a little more than what they'd done... |
Subsequently the reaction acquired these proportions.
| That was when the princes and potentates and holy men of the Middle East decided it was time to throw their weight around, especially since Denmark isn't a big-league country like France or Germany and they could be expected to fold pretty quick... |
In Denmark the anti-Muslim sentiment has been growing at a rapid pace for the past ten years.
| That's a sign they don't like you. You're not very good guests... |
The Fogh Rasmussen government has actively sought to dispel and block Muslim residents from Denmark. The cartoon is just the tip of the iceberg.
| And the current round of rioting is rather past the camel's nose. I think we're up to the cervical vertebrae now... |
However that the notion of freedom of expression cannot be translated into unlimited freedom to abuse another's faith is basic common sense.
| Only in the Islamic world. In the Western world everybody takes a turn in the barrel... |
But also the way many Europeans have selectively applied the principle of freedom of expression is intriguing. When the ancient Buddhas in Afghanistan were criminally destroyed by the Taleban, the Europeans screamed murder the loudest. We all did too in the Muslim world.
| Really? I don't recall. Which Muslim states cut diplomatic relations with them? Which Muslim states cut off aid and withdrew all their NGOs? Which prominent Muslim figures stood up foursquare and denounced them as ignorant barbarians? I've forgotten. |
What was that protest for? So destruction of history is blasphemous but the attempted destruction of a people's faith and deeply treasured symbols is not?
| The Buddhas were made of stone and they were irreplaceable. Your religion is apparently made of Jello, so precarious and delicate that a dozen cartoons, most not even very good, is enough to rock it to its very foundations. |
This is the perversity of post-modernism which seeks the right to destroy and deconstruct selectively and give that right a sacred status. Also if the freedom of expression is so sacred how many European papers have dared to support what the Iranian president said about questioning the reality of the Holocaust?
| I can't think of a major paper that ignored the story. That was when Mahmoud revealed himself to the world, so to speak, when he flung off his not very well seated mask and hollered "I'm a nut, and I'm a vicious nut!" How could they ignore the story? Nobody could pass it up. But of course you're wondering how many supported it. That'd be... ummm... lemme see here... none. Europe was the scene of the crime. The evidence is still there. Even after 60 years Europe hasn't forgotten, though some parts of it have been trying to. So nobody supported him because he's full of it. |
Clearly the principle of freedom has to be practiced within some rationale and egalitarian framework. It cannot be an elitist concept that a special color or creed will have more right to exercise. Why does this right not respect another's right to choose what is sacred to them, since that what is sacred is not at the cost of undermining another's interests.
| We all have things that are sacred to us. They're not necessarily the same things that are sacred to somebody else. If that's not the case, then we ignore them. |
Islam abhors suicide bombings and terrorism. Increasingly Muslim leaders are condemning this openly.
| We've heard all the pious denials. Over the weekend a couple dozen krazed killers busted out of the calaboose through a 150 yard tunnel dug from a mosque. Which do you think we're going to believe? The pious denials or the tunnel dug from the mosque? We'll start to believe the denunciations when that mosque is leveled and its holy men shot or hung. Not before. |
Are the Europeans so generous in applying their concept of freedom of expression at the cost of causing great pain and injury to Muslim world?
| No skin off my fore, no more than it's any off yours when your Grand Mufti asks God to kill us all. |
Is it because their bohemianism has a method to it?
| Is it because of the vitriol of the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca? Or is it because of the explosions, the never-ending explosions and murders and kidnappings, the plots and conspiracies, the overt hatred of the Islamist faithful for their European and American neighbors? |
The method is to attack and disrespect those who are generally viewed as the politically, scientifically and economically the downtrodden of the human race - the weak and the lambasted, the violated and the angry, the reactive and seething?
| Always, always without fail, seething. Day in and day out, year after year, ever since 1492... |
These are not the ways of a civilized people.
| No. Sadly they're not. Civilized people don't seethe. They don't spew spittle and ooze vitriol. They don't wave automatic weapons and send their sons rushing off to jihad. You're right there. |
These are ways toward pushing for a grand and mad conflict of civilizations. Will the European media see wisdom is stepping back and reviewing their dangerous notion of freedom of expression?
| Good Gawd, I hope not. If they do, that means you've won. If you've won, the world faces another dark age. |
For now the limited apologies that have come were perhaps prompted by the widespread anger and protests emanating from the Muslim world. But wisdom and true civilized behavior demands that we internalize the limits of our own freedoms where it begins to undermine the freedom of another.
- Nasim Zehra is adjunct professor at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. |