We cannot be silent spectators to Western hate-mongers firing up militant Muslims in the East. There’s too much at stake.
Being provocative is an artistic right won over centuries. Yet this freedom is not a license to trigger a clash of civilizations. You cannot falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theatre, in the famous 1919 formulation of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Such limits are best attained not by governments banning offensive material but rather through self-restraint. Yet such restraint is often missing in Western discourse on Muslims and Islam.
What would our reaction have been had the Danish cartoons been anti-Semitic, rather than anti-Islamic? Would we have defended with the cartoonists’ right to be as offensive as they had been?The real question, the one Harpoon does not and would never pose, is this: Would Jews have rioted and torched embassies due to some anti-Semitic Danish 'toons? To answer that question with a question: Do they riot when hateful 'toons (ones which are far worse that the Danish Motoons, in fact) are printed virtually every day in the Muslim world?
Returning to the tirade:
The American film that has caused the latest round of mayhem, from the Middle East to the Far East, is equally odious. It calls Islam a cancer and the Prophet Muhammad a fraud, a child molester and a philanderer.
America does not censor but it does censure hate. Yet such societal opprobrium is missing against anti-Islamism. The absence of such civilian remedy is part of the problem.
Maintaining such double standards erodes our credibility in taking on those Muslims who overreact to anti-Islamic insults.It's all in our hands, you see. If we merely hold our tongues, stifle, shut our mouths, put a sock in it (i.e. obliterate the very freedom that makes the West the West and safeguards all other freedoms, i.e. act like good little dhimmis), the Islamic world will knock it off with the torchings, killings and general craziness. Hillary Clinton, says, Harpoon, is the infidels' go-to gal for proper comportment:
Hillary Clinton had the right formulation: “The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there’s never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”In explaining the frenzy (in brief: it has nothing to do with jihad/sharia and everything to do with our animus toward Islam), he quotes her once again:
The bigots who poke Muslims in the eye have an agenda beyond peddling hate. As Clinton said, they “have a deeply cynical purpose — to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.” The greater the rage, the better served is their purpose: Demonizing Muslims and Islam to rationalize occupying and dominating parts of the Muslim world — militarily, politically and economically — and to sabotage any Western effort at rapprochement with the Muslim world, a policy goal of Barack Obama.A policy goal of Barack Obama, eh? And it seemed to be working out so well! Too bad we eye-poking, hate-peddling infidels had to go and sabotage it! ;)
Scaramouchee is of course right in rebutting Mr. Siddiqui's point by indicating that modern Jews do _not_ riot in response to slights against their religion (nor, of course, do modern Christians).
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps the lesson we are all being taught when Islam--in its most extreme manifestations--is continually getting its way vis-à-vis the West is that mass violence (or the credible threat thereof) _works_ in imposing one's views on the general society: as Kate McMillan likes to remind us every day with the sub-header of her blog page, "Not showing up to riot is a failed conservative policy."