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| Terror Networks | ||
| Why Are They So Easily Offended? | ||
| 2012-09-16 | ||
| In yesterday's WaPo, but today, it is the #1 most popular article. There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Not that Andalusia was exactly 'tolerant' by today's standards, but the Franks and various Germans were pretty crude. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored -- poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day. Like now many angels could dance on the head of a goat. If Islam's rise was spectacular, its fall was swift and unsparing. This is the world that the great historian Bernard Lewis explored in his 2002 book "What Went Wrong?" What *I* got out of that book was they Muslims have yet to separate church from state, like we did in 1776. The various Christian kingdoms of that time also managed to get their acts together. The surviving kingdoms in northern Spain and Portugal began to offer more effective resistance, and Andalusia went from being a single large emirate to being a collection of smaller states that warred and vied with each other. The blessing of God, seen at work in the ascent of the Muslims, now appeared to desert them. The ruling caliphate, with its base in Baghdad, was torn asunder by a Mongol invasion in the 13th century. Andalusia only paid lip service to the Caliph; from early on in the 7th century it was effectively independent. Soldiers of fortune from the Turkic Steppes sacked cities and left a legacy of military seizures of power that is still the bane of the Arabs. Little remained of their philosophy and literature, and after the Ottoman Turks overran Arab countries to their south in the 16th century, the Arabs seemed to exit history; they were now subjects of others. Obviously, the cause of this great decline was not being Islamic enough! Even as Arabs insist that their defects were inflicted on them by outsiders, ...such as the Ottomans... they know their weaknesses. Younger Arabs today can be brittle and proud about their culture, yet deeply ashamed of what they see around them. They know that more than 300 million Arabs have fallen to economic stagnation and cultural decline. They know that the standing of Arab states along the measures that matter -- political freedom, status of women, economic growth -- is low. In the privacy of their own language, in daily chatter on the street, on blogs and in the media, and in works of art and fiction, they probe endlessly what befell them. I just 'splained it to ya. In the past half-century, Arabs, as well as Muslims in non-Arab lands, have felt the threat of an encircling civilization they can neither master nor reject. Migrants have left the burning grounds of Karachi, Cairo and Casablanca but have taken the fire of their faith with them. "Dish cities" have sprouted in the Muslim diasporas of Western Europe and North America. You can live in Stockholm and be sustained by a diet of al-Jazeera television. One wonders if the European migrants to 19th and early 20th century America would have assimilated so easily if Eurovision had been available on cable back then...
If by 'unease' you mean a defensiveness about the existential threat confronting them over their belief in a religion that no longer offered an adequate explanation of heaven and the world. The floodgates had opened. The clashes that followed defined the new terms of encounters between a politicized version of Islam -- awakened to both power and vulnerability -- and the West's culture of protecting and nurturing free speech. In 2004, a Moroccan Dutchman murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh on a busy Amsterdam street after van Gogh and a Somali-born politician made a short film about the abuse of women in Islamic culture. That happens when believers become 'uneasy': it's quicker and easier to lash out at the world around you then to confront one's own beliefs within. Shortly afterward, trouble came to Denmark when a newspaper there published a dozen cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad; in one he wears a bomb-shaped turban, and another shows him as an assassin. How does anyone know that was Mo being depicted? I thought no one knows what he looks like! The newspaper's culture editor had thought the exercise would merely draw attention to the restrictions on cultural freedom in Europe -- but perhaps that was naive. After all, Muslim activists are on the lookout for such material. And Arab governments are eager to defend Islam. Easier to distract the rubes in their own populations from the failures of the ruling elite that way. The Egyptian ambassador to Denmark encouraged a radical preacher of Palestinian birth living in Denmark and a young Lebanese agitator to fan the flames of the controversy. But it was Syria that made the most of this opportunity. The regime asked the highest clerics to preach against the Danish government. The Danish embassies in Damascus and Beirut were sacked; there was a call to boycott Danish products. Denmark had been on the outer margins of Europe's Muslim diaspora. Now its peace and relative seclusion were punctured. But that's how I found out how good Havarti cheese is. It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled. It is inside those fortresses, the gullible believe, that rulers are made and unmade. Some truth to that, as it turns out, as America has been fairly good (not perfect) in figuring out who the strong horses were in each Middle East country and supporting them. That gave us short-term security and access at the expense of the long-term, the latter now having caught up to us. Yet these same diplomatic outposts dispense coveted visas and a way out to the possibilities of the Western world. The young men who turned up at the U.S. Embassies this week came out of this deadly mix of attraction to American power and resentment of it. The temptations of the West have alienated a younger generation from its elders. Men and women insist that they revere the faith as they seek to break out of its restrictions. Freedom of speech, granting license and protection to the irreverent, is cherished, protected and canonical in the Western tradition. Now Muslims who quarrel with offensive art are using their newfound freedoms to lash out against it. They're conflicted, man; ya know? Hard to keep them down on the farm once they've seen gay Detroit... These cultural contradictions do not lend themselves to the touch of outsiders. Bush believed that America's proximity to Arab dictatorships had begotten us the jihadists' enmity. Just like his successor, when you think about it. His military campaign in Iraq became an attempt to reform that country and beyond. But Arabs rejected his interventionism and dismissed his "freedom agenda" as a cover for an unpopular war and for domination. Bush's idea in Iraq and Afghanistan was radical indeed, since he didn't immediately latch onto the next strongest horse. But the Middle East, as it turns out, was not ready for democracy. That's perhaps the only thing the western Left got right. We might have done better if Bush had modeled his approach on that of our relationship with South Korea from 1953 on: first support a strongman, then support a more reasonable strongman, then kick him out and push for democracy. Only problem is that said approach takes 50 years. President Obama has taken a different approach. He was sure that his biography -- the years he spent in Indonesia and his sympathy for the aspirations of Muslim lands -- would help repair relations between America and the Islamic world. But he's been caught in the middle, conciliating the rulers while making grand promises to ordinary people. Champ may have wanted to champion democracy in the Arab world, but he didn't understand that world near as well as he thought he did. The result is that he appears to be the weak horse, and no one in the Middle East will follow that.
Obama continues to vote "Present". He's the weak horse. Cultural freedom is never absolute, of course, and the Western tradition itself, from the Athenians to the present, struggles mightily with the line between freedom and order. In the Muslim world, that struggle is more fierce and lasting, and it will show itself in far more than burnt flags and overrun embassies. So we should use our money to save the Christians and Jews and let the old and the new order burn itself out. There might be merit in inducing the Egyptian Copts to move en masse to the Sinai, and then using our military to secure the Sinai for them. They'd have a land of their own, freedom from being murdered by the Muslims, and Israel would have a (semi) friendly state to their west. Repeat on a good part of the West Bank, and support a Maronite state in Lebanon. | ||
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #21 I read something before the Iraq conflict that suggested the US take up a strategy opposing Arab imperialism as a way to divide Islam from the Wahhabi radicals. Good idea and easier to articulate than "war on terror but not Islam" as the Bush administration attempted. The only problem was the oil sits under Saudi Arabia. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2012-09-16 20:26 |
| #20 If you like to sum up the cognitive dissonance in Islam, consider this: If you question the hadiths, you are branded as an infidel. One hadith says that good old Mo married Aisha when she was 6 and slept with her when she was 9. If you DON'T question this hadith and point out what this actually means (the word starts with a "P"), you are "insulting" Islam and the prophet. Islamic thinking in a nutshell |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2012-09-16 20:07 |
| #19 Punt, Besoeker |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2012-09-16 17:09 |
| #18 Islam is non-reciprocal. It cannot generate any wealth. It may therefore actually feel some Malthusian population reduction effects. Whereas countries with high (verified)trust and markets, and low rent seeking will do well regardless of demographics (if they control the border and immigration for quality). |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2012-09-16 17:00 |
| #17 ..till a derivative of a 'bird' flu runs rampant in a part of the world where polio immunizations and the like are treated as a threat rather than as a preventative. Throw in alienating so deeply the cultures and civilizations upon which the cure would be possible, rescue won't be forthcoming. Given the immunity to western drugs [and the scapegoating of profits along with nationalization of the health sector depressing efforts to pro-actively invest in alternatives] that such viruses are attaining, it may only be a matter of when rather than if. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2012-09-16 16:35 |
| #16 If you read Bernard Lewis essay, the 1990 "The Roots of Muslim Rage", you get a feel for the background to the postulate that Huntington called "The Clash Of Civilization". How is the score in this clash? According to the great Mark Styne and the late unlamented Gaddafi, demographics is the most potent weapon Muslims have. Expect to see a lot of Europe fall to them by the simple expedience of out-breeding the local population. Demographics will also help core Muslim countries such as Pakistan due to the "green revolution" introduced by Burlaugh |
| Posted by: tipper 2012-09-16 16:30 |
| #15 Ya' beat me to it, Frank. I say bring on the extra-coarse sandpaper! |
| Posted by: Barbara 2012-09-16 16:18 |
| #14 They are so used to slagging off other religions so much that they are not used to hearing any criticism back about their own PERFECT religion ie they are brainwashed! |
| Posted by: Fester Clunter7205 2012-09-16 15:56 |
| #13 "conqueerora" ---> "bumm conquerors". From the Greek root g(r)om |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-09-16 15:04 |
| #12 "conquerora" ---> "conquerors" |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2012-09-16 15:00 |
| #11 Because they're opportunistic conquerora, and opportunity beckons. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2012-09-16 14:59 |
| #10 I just noticed the original article, yesterday, was about the Muslim world, while today's article is about the Arab world. Maybe the WaPo thinks that'll be less offensive? |
| Posted by: Bobby 2012-09-16 14:13 |
| #9 Another dreadful religious reality still very much alive in the 21st century is Izinyoka worship. (Xhosa/isiZulu word for snake). |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-09-16 14:11 |
| #8 The fall of the "great" Muslim civilizations was brought about by the fact that they ran out of dhimmi's and their legacy. It's like one of the trust fund babies that blows through the inheritance in a generation or two and can do nothing but whine about how every one is against him and his. That's the Arabs/Muslims. One piece of bad luck or setback like the Mongols and the whole thing turns to dust. Let's face it the Mongols were more or less converted over time so that excuse was gone by the 17th century. All the dhimmis and conquests were gone so the Muzzies had eaten their seed corn and were left in their natural state. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2012-09-16 14:01 |
| #7 Christianity went through a painful reformation after it was co-opted by the powers that be. Also, the west went through the renaissance after the hard times of the plague years. The Church did not have the answers to the plague, so they let reason and science have a go at the problem. An uneasy truce so to speak. Islam has not had its reformation. They are still stuck in second gear, and like Commodore Frank sez, they are skinless people in a sandpaper world. When they keep trying to apply the same unsuccessful model to problems and fail, they get a little irritated.........and go apesh*t from time to time. Well, they better get a-reforming, 'cause Wrechard's Three Conjectures may be just around the corner if they go too far. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2012-09-16 13:51 |
| #6 Cause their religion is a death cult that requires them to resign from being human. And that is why they ARE inferior, they make themselves that way |
| Posted by: Silentbrick - Schlumberger Squishy Mud Division 2012-09-16 13:07 |
| #5 They are taught not to question their faith by their Imans,Mullahs or they go to hell |
| Posted by: Fester Clunter7205 2012-09-16 12:53 |
| #4 skinless people in a sandpaper world |
| Posted by: Frank G 2012-09-16 11:31 |
| #3 ...because it works. Simple as that. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2012-09-16 11:24 |
| #2 I don't give a flip why they are perpetually p!ssed off. If it becomes my problem, I will respond appropriately. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2012-09-16 11:20 |
| #1 Why Are They So Easily Offended? Because they want to be. |
| Posted by: Flish Schwarzeneggar6381 2012-09-16 11:18 |