Moron Abroad

Egypt's Grand Mufti Gets It Right

2006-02-21T12:29:00.000+01:00

For once I'm apparently in agreement with the Grand Mufti of Egypt. In a Politiken interview I don't see translated anywhere, he tries to explain exactly what Denmark has done wrong and what it needs to do to restore its relations with the part of the world that's currently praying for its destruction. (Aside to Grand Mufti: Danes don't generally pray for anyone's destruction, and don't consider that kind of behavior a reasonable response to a personal affront, so we've got a communication gap there, as well.)

The Grand Mufti says (toward the end of the interview):

»Jeg tror, at fire ting er nødvendige i Europa. For det første skal undervisningsmateriale, der chikanerer islam, fjernes. For det andet skal de love, der diskriminerer islam, væk. Der er enkelte love, der er meget diskriminerende. Tørklædeforbuddet for eksempel. For det tredje skal islam kunne anerkendes som religion i de lande, hvor der bor muslimer. Og for det fjerde skal muslimer have lige rettigheder og muligheder. Når det er sagt, har de også et ansvar for at integrere sig i deres samfund. Men det skal ske uden krav om, at de skal opgive deres identitet«

To paraphrase quickly, rather than translate (quick lunches, remember): he thinks four things are necessary in Europe: educational materials that harass Islam have to be removed. Laws that discriminate against Islam need to be got rid of. Islam must be recognized as a religion in every country Muslims inhabit. And Muslims must have equal rights and opportunities.

I completely agree with all four points. I guess my problem is that I think all four of these conditions have already been met--the odious French headscarf law the only exception that jumps immediately to mind. (Yes, it's odious. There are girls all over Brooklyn and Queens doing very well at school in their headscarves.)

Also, there's a lot of translation being done better and faster than I can do it over here.... oops, that was supposed to be a link. I can't make it work for the moment. I'll edit it later today.

Lost Time

2006-02-19T15:17:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged in about a week. It isn't that I've lost interest in what's going on. It's not even just that I've been too busy. (I have been, but I can find time when I need to.) It's that every time I see something in the news that I feel compelled to blog about it, I start a post, am unable to finish it in the time I've got, and then when I finally do have time to finish it there's something else in the news that I'm even more anxious to write about.

Off the top of my head, I can remember wanting to write about the Swedisih government's shutting down of a private party's website because it hosted pictures of the cartoon; the Finnish prime minister's apology to the Muslim world for the cartoons having been hosted on a private site in Finland; the reaction of various Danish Muslims to the Prime Minister's meeting with only one particular group of Muslims; the momentary political shift in Denmark away from the Social Democrats and toward neither Venstre or the Conservatives but the Danish Folk Party; the ongoing lack of concern about Silvio Berlusconi's self-description as "the Jesus Christ of politics," especially when compared to the furor over another government minister's having been forced to resign for having worn a tee-shirt with one of the cartoons upon it; and, lastly, the dismally unfolding reality that while most western individuals on the left and right really do seem to "get it," our media and governments have put up their white flags.

Maybe that's because they're the media and governments and are so used to triangulating their statements, or trying to maintain the illusion that they're doing so, they've lost all common sense.

Because the common sense I'm hearing from pretty much everyone I talk to or correspond with, of every political persuasion, is this: whatever you think of the cartoons or the paper, the paper had the right to publish them. And the government has no authority to take any action against the newspapers for having done so. And Danish businesses and the Danish people certainly don't bear any collective responsibility for the behavior of a single newspaper. And Muslims around the world have every right to be offended, to express their offense, even to conduct peaceful though wrong-headed boycotts.

It's also common sense that when you start burning effigies, issuing death threats, inciting riots, attacking innocents, and burning down or attacking diplomatic installations, you've left the realm of the "peaceful protest."

Anyway, instead of trying to get caught up and make up for lost time, I'm just going to post this great link to Flemming Rose's own account of "Why I Published Those Cartoons." It's in English.

I'll try now to resume posting on my regular erratic schedule.

Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T12:15:00.000+01:00

Peter has sent me a new translated article to post, on the full chronology and activities of the Travelling Imams, and there's an interesting story in MetroXpress today about the harm this crisis has done to the average Dane's perceptions of Islam, but I have no time for any of that now.

Lunch is short, and it's Valentine's Day, so here's the old History of Valentine's Day from the almanac archives.

Brace Yourself

2006-02-13T17:01:00.000+01:00

Yes, strap yourselves in for another bumpy ride on Religion's wild ride: Italian PM Silvio Berluscnoi has apparently called himself " the Jesus Christ of politics."

Presumably there'll be demonstrations of outrage Christians on the streets of Rome within the next couple of days. A delegation of leading Jesuits will no doubt embark upon a tour of the "Christian World" to inform their co-religionists of Berlusconi's offensive remark.

Then it'll just be a matter of months before there are violent demonstrations in the capitals of all the Christian nations of the world. Italian ambassadors will be sent packing; foreign ambassadors in Rome will be called home for consultations. There'll be calls for an EU prosecution of the Italian head of state; the Organization of Christian Nations will demand satisfaction. Italian embassies in several Christian countries will be attacked and even, in some cases, burned to the ground.

Newspapers around the world will refuse to print the text of the remarks, for fear of offending Christians. A handful of newspapers in non-Christian countries will publish the text in solidarity with Mr. Berlusconi; in most cases the editors will be fired and the newspapers sued. But western media will trip all over themselves reporting on the offensive nature of the remark, and every major leader of the world will explain that although an Italian head of state does have the right of free speech, free speech has limits and comparing oneself to our lord and savior Jesus Christ clearly crosses that line. The New York Times will publish an editorial describing Berlusconi's contempt for the Christian condition, but will refuse to reprint the text of his remarks for fear of offending people further.

The EU will consider a ban on all metaphors involving the name of Jesus Christ. Wolf Blitzer will interview Silvio Berlusconi on CNN and ask him if he's prepared to apologize to the Christian world for taking the Lord's name in vain. Bersusconi will explain it was only a joke, told among friends. Blitzer will then press a secret button under his desk and release the College of Cardinals, who will subsequently devour Berlusconi on live television in a rabid fit of wanton cannibalism.

And I am Marie of Romania.

Iranian Police Participated in Attack on Danish Embassy

2006-02-13T12:18:00.000+01:00

I just get a short lunch break, so I don't have time to translate, but this new story from Teheran is disturbing but unsurprising: apparently the local police enabled the attacks on the Danish embassy last week, and even drank tea with the perpetrators afterwards.

Don't Iranian police, unlike Danish newspapers, work for the government? Or have the Iranian police been privatized? Because I think Denmark is due a very serious, very sincere apology from the Iranian government.

Isn't it?

(I won't hold my breath...)

Vandals in Esbjerg

2006-02-12T21:01:00.000+01:00

According to this story, more than two dozen Muslim graves were vandalized in a Muslim churchyard in Jylland last night.

That kind of thing is disgusting. I'll defend Denmark's free press with all I've got, but I will never, ever excuse something so ugly, hateful, crude, and disgraceful.

It's so damn frustrating to see the ugly extremes on both sides of this issue, when it's perfectly clear that the vast majority of Danes bear no ill will toward Muslim immigrants, and the vast majority of Muslim immigrants bear no ill will toward Danes. It's so important to prevent the extremists on both sides from framing the issue as an apocalyptic clash of incompatible civilizations. I regret that I myself can get caught up in some of the doomsday talk now and then. But secular western civilization is absolutely compatible with Islam. The millions of happy and productive Muslim immigrants who are perfectly at home in the western world are a testament to that fact. It's the uncivilized elements of both sides that are setting off all the sparks.

But I've read enough history to realize it was ever thus.

Anyway, I hope the perpetrators are caught and that the law comes down on them with full force.

* * *

On an entirely different subject, EuroCNN broadcasts "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" every Sunday evening. Anders Fogh Rasmussen was one of the featured guests tonight. I thought he held his ground firmly but diplomatically. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive Wolf Blitzer for asking the Prime Minister (at this late date!) if he intended to offer a government apology for the offensive cartoons. (I paraphrase from memory; eventually the transcript ought to turn up here.)

Fogh explained for the seven-hundred-thousandth time that under Danish law, the Danish government has no authority over or responsibility for the views expressed in privately-owned newspapers.

It was the right answer, I'm sure, but I would have found deep (if momentary) satisfaction if Fogh had replied: "That is an interesting question, Vulf. Since you apparently don't understand the concept of a free press, may I assume your own government told you to ask it?"

Per Nyholm: "We Are Being Pissed Upon"

2006-02-12T16:35:00.000+01:00

I was fortunate enough to receive the following translation of a Friday Jyllands-Posten column in my inbox this afternoon. The original may be found here. Thanks very much to its translator, who identifies himself to me only as "Peter." (I have made no modifications to the translation as it was sent to me; the bracketed editorial notes are his own.)

(Maybe American liberals will start climbing back aboard the (mostly vacant) free press bandwagon now that Danes feel a little betrayed by George W. Bush again.)

The translation follows.

* * *

We are being pissed upon
by Per Nyholm

Jyllands-Posten

February 10, 2006

I think it was the long departed H.C. Hansen, one of last century's great Danish statesmen who once - while the communists were demonstrating in front of Christiansborg [Ed: the seat of parliament] - threw his gaze across the palace square and remarked: "I will not be pissed upon."

Then he did what was necessary.

I feel that currently my beloved country is being pissed upon rather too much. Denmark has not been neglecting its duties on the international stage. We have supported poor people with acts and advice, we have worked for peace, we have sent soldiers, policemen and experts to all the far flung corners of the world. We have democracy, a state of law and a welfare state. Not all is perfect, but we harbor no malice to our fellow man.

And yet Denmark is being pissed upon. The spokesman of the US State Department is pissing on Denmark, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs is pissing on Denmark, the President of Afghanistan is pissing on Denmark, the Goverment of Iraq is pissing on Denmark, other Moslem regimes are pissing on Denmark. In Gaza, where Danes for years have provided humanitarian relief, crazed Imams encourage people to cut off the hands and heads of the cartoonists who made the caricatures of Mohammed for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Excuse my choice of words, but all this pissing is pissing me off.

What's happening? I am not so much referring to the threats against Danish citizens and Danish commerce. Nor are the burnt down Embassies what occupies my mind. I am thinking of a word that keeps popping up whenever the Mohammed cartoons are mentioned.

That word is BUT. A sneaky word. It's used to deny or relativize what one has just said.

How many times lately have we not heard people of power, The Formers of Opinion and other people say that of course we have freedom of speech, BUT.

They have said it, all of them, from Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General to our own Bendt Bendtsen [ed: Danish Politician]. Once we had to be sensitive of the easily hurt feeling of the Nazis, then came the communists, now it is the Islamists. The reason I say 'Islamists' is that I don't for a moment believe all the world's Moslems are pissing on us. I think we are dealing with thugs, fools and misled people. Those are the ones we have to deal with, and then the chickenshit politicians.

The cartoons are no longer something the Jyllands-Posten can control. They have already been manipuleted and misrepresented to the point that few know what's going on and fewer know how to stop it. This affair is artifically keept buoyant in a sea of lies, suppressions of the truth, misconceptions, lunacy and hypocrisy, for which this newspaper bears no blame. The only thing the
Jyllands-Posten did was that it with a pin-prick made a boil of nastiness explode. It would have happened sooner or later. That it happened more than four months following the publication of the cartoons, raises a question of its own. Are we dealing with random events or with a staged clash of civilizations? One might hope for the former yet expect the latter.

That's why I say: Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech. There is no but.

Initially I was doubtful of the timeliness of publishing the cartoons. Later events have convinced me that it was both just and useful. That they are consistent with Danish law and Danish custom seem to me less important than this: that we now know that remote, primitive countries deem themselves justified in telling us what we can do. Unfortunately we also have to recognize
that governments close to us agree with them in the name of expedience.

The just is in the offensive this newspaper has launched in the name of Freedom of Speech, the useful in our newly acquired knowledge. Welcome to a brave, new world, where even our Prime Minister - in spite of his laudable firmness - must gaze out upon a scorched political landscape. It's true, as is custom, his friend in Washington, George Bush, condemns the torching of our embassies, but his Department of State allude to us being the guilty ones in this case. The suggestion that Danish troops might benefit the democratization is buried under the charred remains of our diplomatic representations in Beirut and Damascus.

Perhaps it's time we started mopping up this mess. Perhaps Editor-in-Chief Carsten Juste ought to remove his apology which has gone stale sitting so long on the front page of our internet edition and which does not seem to interest madmen. Perhaps our government ought to announce to Mona Omar Attia, the strange Ambassador of Egypt, that she is persona non grata.

Perhaps it ought to be announced to the ambassadors that have been called home to fictive consultations in the Middle East that they may spare themselves the cost of the return ticket.

To the degree it is possible, The Lying Imams ought probably to be expelled. And then we ought to make an effort for the Moslems who in a difficult situation have proven themselves to be true Citizens.

We, for our part, have no wish to be a burden for the arab governments. We will happily withdraw our soldiers, policemen and diplomats. If they think our money smells, we will stop our aid. Our trade must make do as well as it can. We promise to not bear a grudge and, in time, we will be glad to return, but we are through with the hypocrisy. We have better things to do than being pissed upon at our own expense.

Turn down our activity in the Middle East. This world holds other opportunities.

Naser Khader: "I Feel Insulted"

2006-02-12T14:46:00.000+01:00

As promised in a previous post, I've translated Naser Khader's commentary "I Feel Insulted ." (The essay first appeared in Berlingske Tidende on January 31, when the issue was only just beginning to receive international attention.)

I've done my best to translate in a way that sustains the emotional tone of the essay and avoids awkward literal translations of Danish idioms and expressions. While this means my translation may not be 100% reliable on a literal level, it does mean you won't be scratching your head wondering what the hell writing "column up and column down," for example, could possibly mean.

His essay follows.

* * *

I Feel Insulted

by Naser Khader

January 31, 2006

The case of the Jyllands-Posten prophet drawings has now reached hitherto unseen heights. Saudi Arabia and a couple of other Muslim countries now feel insulted and offended, and consumers in those nations are therefore starting a boycott of Danish goods. The line of the insulted gets longer and longer, and this author hereby adds himself to the queue: I feel insulted in my democratic consciousness. And I demand an apology. Now!

The Danish debate about Jyllands-Posten's Muhammed drawings has drawn out many voices. We've heard from the press itself, from the Prime Minister, from the opposition, from Muslim organizations, and from Muslim individuals.

Some consider the drawings an unacceptable insult to all Muslims, others don't. The same can be said with regard to the Islamic world: some feel insulted, others don't. My impressions from different Arabic media is that the most pervasive opinion – maybe surprising for some – can be summed up like this: We cannot as Muslims dictate that non-Muslims obey the dictated prohibition of picturing the prophet. The uprising over Jyllands-Posten is in other words not a grassroots movement in the Islamic world, and that's certainly also reflected in the tally of countries that have complained and threatened boycotts to this point. That's approximately a handful of the world's roughly 55 Muslim countries, and among these the loudest and most pointed protests are coming from Saudi Arabia.

Given this background, it's noteworthy that in Denmark one hears critiques of the drawings based on the premise that they're insulting to Muslims. The spokesman for Grundfos, Niels Due Jensen, forthrightly urges Jyllands-Posten to give the world's Muslims an apology. This paints all Muslims with one brush, a tendency which Jyllands-Posten's critics are otherwise usually right to condemn. Some charge that the insult targeted a weak group. To that I say that just because one is a Muslim doesn't require one to be weak.

As a Muslim and a democrat I therefore wish to stress: I (and many others) don't feel insulted by the drawings. On the contrary, I feel strongly insulted that where there was once a tradition for religious satire in the Middle East, it's now become primarily a western privilege to treat religion satirically. And insulted that freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and artistic freedom are for the most part reserved to the western world. Why don't we in Denmark fight for the Muslim artists' right to the same privileges as their western colleagues?

I feel insulted that we in Denmark hear demands for an apology to fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia instead of demands for democratic liberties for everyone, including Muslims.

Why don't we condemn Saudi Arabia's outrageous absence of democracy? Why do religious insults outweigh democratic insults?

You can write yourself senseless on the topic of how wise it was for Jyllands-Posten to put out the drawings. You can do the same on the topic of whether they were or weren't an expression of anything more than tasteless provocation. Or whether the government could have handled it differently. But it is indeed nothing but wonderful that the foreign minister is now "working diplomatically to calm the troubled waters." Dialog, yes. Apology, never. What should he apologize for? That we don't interfere in the freedom of the press and artistic freedom? Whom should he apologize to? Saudi Arabia?

If anyone ought to say they're sorry, it's Saudi Arabia. Apologize for its glaring disrespect of human rights, for its disrespect of religious freedom and for its systematic war on equality. For denying women their voting rights, for denying them a passport without a man's permission, for only counting their witness as half a man's, and for forbidding them something as banal as driving a car. For the poor underpaid Filippino Christian guest workers imprisoned just for possession of a personal Bible. Apologize for Sharia punishments. For hand amputations for thievery and the lash for consumption of alcohol. For stoning to death for infidelity and homosexuality, yes, I could go on.

Saudi Arabia should be ashamed, and an apology for having insulted the country with satirical drawings is simply a bow to fundamentalism.

My message to Saudi Arabia and the other Muslim countries who have joined the boycott therefore goes like this: You insult my democratic consciousness. Apologize.

The Man

2006-02-11T23:17:00.000+01:00

I've mentioned Naser Khader a couple of times in the last few posts. I haven't linked to him yet.

I apologize for the oversight. Here he is.

If you can read Danish and haven't already read this, please read his essay "I Feel Insulted."

If you can't read Danish... damn. It's a lot to translate, but I'll do my best in the days ahead. As far as I'm concerned, in this little sliver of this little lightning-flash of a moment in history, I think he is doing the most important work in the world.

(And yeah, I'm aware of the fact that his politics are generally to the left of mine, but unlike the American left these days I'm capable of putting my ideological reflexes aside in emergency situations. Oh... and I'm capable of recognizing emergency situations.)

I Wish the Times, It Was A-Changin'...

2006-02-11T13:28:00.000+01:00

The New York Times publishes an article entitled "A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery" with the following opening paragraph:

They're callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.

Readers of the Times will have to take the writer's word for it since they've never seen the images themselves. But you have admire the audacity of the way this whole episode is being framed here. "Cooked up," "provocation," "exploiting," "cheap points." And that's just the first sentence! (But aren't we supposed to have to pay for Times opinion pieces now?)

But let's fast-forward to where the author really drops the ball, in comparing the current international fiasco to a little tempest-in-a-teapot I myself lived through in New York:

An obvious precedent, now comically tame by comparison, is the "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, a promotional bonanza for the British collector and wheeler-dealer Charles Saatchi, who owned the art in the show. The exhibition incited protests by the Catholic League. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani played the stern dad to a bunch of publicity-savvy artists whose work included a collage of the Virgin Mary with cutouts from pornographic magazines and shellacked clumps of elephant dung.

Previously unmoved to action by Catholic League protests against a play at City Center involving a gay lead character fashioned after Jesus, the mayor, contemplating a Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton, decided he was personally offended by the art, although he had never actually seen it, and threatened to cut off public financing for the museum.

"You don't have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion," he said, foreshadowing a bit the Danish debacle about freedom of religious expression, notwithstanding that the artist of the Virgin Mary, Chris Ofili, happened to be Roman Catholic.

The New York art world was shocked only because it had expected the show to pass without fuss, since the art was already old news to insiders. But then museums nationwide had to hold their collective nose to defend Brooklyn over the issue of free expression, and by the end the whole affair had turned into farce, obscuring even the quality of what were, in fact, a few not-so-bad works of art.

That's an obvious precedent? It's obvious in that it involves a religious symbol being desecrated, but beyond that I'm lost.

What Giuliani said is absolutely right, and does not foreshadow the current debate at all. No one has a right to a government subsidy for anything. A government is acting entirely within its rights if it decides that, based on a violation of what are considered community standards, a given exhibit ought not to receive the support of federal money.

But I don't even want to get into all that. What's interesting isn't that this particular writer thinks there are parallels between a mayor threatening to withhold a subsidy and a violent global movement calling for the destruction of a sovereign nation. What's interesting is that the times actually dared to show the offending art!

Here's the image:

You know what I think personally? I think publishing this image was a callous and feeble attempt, cooked up as a provocation by a liberal newspaper exploiting the general Catholic weariness at seeing their holiest symbols desecrated (by artists who don't have the courage to stand up to Muslim sensibilities on the same topic) to score cheap points about.... well, whatever. I don't see how it does much of anything other than put the lie to their editorial from the other day (see post below). Are you telling me the image in that photo isn't just as "easy to describe" as the images from Jyllands-Posten?

This is the kind of stupid hypocrisy that makes me sick. As America's leading newspaper, the Times ought to be very firmly leading the charge on the right side of this debate.

Instead they're playing whack-a-mole against America's Catholics.

What's the message? "Muslims worldwide have a right not to be offended by what we print in an American newspaper. American Catholics do not."

I guess the only way to get them to change their mind would be to put them through what Jyllands-Posten is experiencing: last night I saw on the news that the police count of bomb-, death-, and other threats against them had passed the century mark. Yes. And their cartoonists are in hiding for fear of their lives. Yes. And every day, all day, on every Danish media outlet, we are told more stories of which Islamic groups are vowing to kill which Danes (and which are simply declaring open season on the whole country). Danes are being ordered home from Muslim nations. An amnesty has been passed allowing Danes with family members in Muslim countries to bring them into Denmark without the usual bureaucratic hassles for the next 14 days. And so on.

And what Americans probably don't even know is that, within Denmark, the whole issue is being dealt with beautifully. Extremist groups (Abu Laban & co.) have been cut out of "the dialog" with the government, and MP Naser Khader is leading moderate Muslims into a new organization, for which funding is already flowing from every part of Denmark. (He's also saying Denmark has nothing to apologize for, but he himself is demanding an apology from Saudi Arabia.) These moderates are organizing trips to the Middle East to go and explain to their fellow religionists how a free press works in a free country. They've expressed their offense at the images, but have also expressed their understanding that this is simply how things work when you've got a free press. They're moving on. Yes.

The problem is not Denmark. The problem is the militant extremists around the world running absolutely riot over an issue I'd wager most of them don't even understand. Embassies burn, people die, journalists go into hiding, newspaper offices must be evacuated...

...and the Times sees a good opportunity to put that provocative Danish newspaper and those rascally American Catholics in their place!

* Sigh... *

On the Lighter Side of Murderous Rage

2006-02-10T19:51:00.000+01:00

It's Friday night here in Denmark and there's so much wrong with this idiot world that I have nothing to say.

So I'm falling back on my default, which is two parts denial, two parts skepticism, and a liter of whiskey. (Stirred, not shaken, for that necessary touch of iconoclasm.)

But...

While surfing Yahoo News photos of the Happy Shiny People of the world calling for the death of my friends and family, I came across one that gave me unexpected pleasure.

Here's the caption:

Protesters chant slogans as they set fire to a Danish flag during a demonstration after Friday prayers at Beyazit Mosque in Istanbul February 10, 2006. Around two thousand Muslim protesters chanted slogans and burnt flags of Denmark, France and Israel in protest against the cartoons printed by Danish and European media. REUTERS/Ahmet Ada

Here's the photo:

Notice anything funny about this picture?

It's the Swiss flag. Seriously. Look, I know a thing or two about the Danish flag. It looks like this:

And the Swiss flag looks like... well, like that flaming thing up there.

So congratulations, you idiots: you're too stupid even to hate correctly.

* * *

If you click a few photos back from the Swiss-hating Turks over on Yahoo News, by the way, you can probably cash in on that $25 million reward...

Wobbly White House

2006-02-09T12:30:00.000+01:00

There's so much I've wanted to write about since the last post, but I haven't had time. (I haven't had time to go through email, either, so sorry if you're one of the people I owe a response to.)

I saw a clip on EuroCNN last night of George W. Bush and Jordan's King Abdullah chatting it up at a White House press conference yesterday. Bush managed to get a few platitudes about violence not being the answer and respect being important, then King Abdullah got his turn. I don't have time to look for a transcript, but it was something like this: "Any criticism of the prophet or negative portrayal of Islam must be condemned."

Hear that? I mean, do you really hear that? And Bush puts the whole weight and gravitas of the White House behind it?

I've been sputtering ever since. I've been unable to organize my thoughts into a single lucid exposition, though (more for want of time than want of ability), so I'm grateful to see Christopher Hitchens has done it for me... in Slate. (Which also features a "counterpoint" essay by an American offended by the Danish cartoons.)

* * *

On a personal note, Molli Malou said "Please, Daddy," for the first time yesterday, so I've just given up any remaining shreds of sovereignty I had.

The Gray Lady Weighs In

2006-02-07T21:29:00.000+01:00

I'm more than disappointed by today's New York Times editorial. I present it in its entirety, and will interrupt only where I really, really need to. (Pretty much everywhere.)

Those Danish Cartoons

Cartoons making fun of the Prophet Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper last September are suddenly one of the hottest issues in international politics.

There were twelve cartoons and not all of them "made fun of" Muhammad. Muhammed is only considered a prophet to Muslims. Will the Times begin referring to other religious figures as "the Savior Jesus Christ," or "his illustrious holiness David Koresh," and so on?

The issue has been hot long enough to make "suddenly" suspect, but I don't want to wast time on quibbles.

Muslims in Europe and across the Middle East have been holding protests with growing levels of violence and now loss of life.

At this point I think it'd be fair to say "Muslims around the world," unless you can find a way to fit Indonesia, New Zealand, and Afghanistan into "Europe" or "the Middle East," but that's another quibble.

The easy points to make about the continuing crisis are that (a) people are bound to be offended if their religion is publicly mocked, and (b) the proper response is not to go on a rampage and burn down buildings.

I don't know if these are such easy points to make. People may indeed be "bound to be offended if their religion is publicly mocked," but there's a world of variation, and plenty of ambiguity, in at least three of those terms: religion, publicly, and mocked.

Religon. Islam is of course a religion, and Muhammed is its holy prophet. But the context of this sentence suggests that the twelve cartoons were all directed at Muhammed or Islam. Most were not. The majority were directed at the hijacking of Islam by violent extremists. One could make the case that even the most notorious of the cartoons was doing this. (And, it bears repeating, several of the cartoons were mocking the very exercise of which they were a part.) If the readers of the Times could be entrusted with the adult responsibility of viewing the pictures and judging for themselves, of course, these fine points would be irrelevant. But because they apparently cannot be, they must be made. The Times is generalizing over-broadly with its implication that all of "Those Danish Cartoons" were anti-Islamic or anti-Mohammed.

Publicly. There's no doubt a newspaper is a public forum. Jyllands-Posten has a circulation of 157,000 on weekdays and about 215,000 on Sundays. It's a Danish newspaper, printed in Denmark for a Danish audience. Denmark is a Lutheran country full of lovely men and women who scarcely ever step into its lovely Lutheran churches any more. The idea that any kind of satiric criticism of an "outside" religion is somehow unacceptable in a paper owned, written, and read by such people strikes me as disingenuous: the kind of point the Times would never make in any other circumstance . How could Denmark participate in multicultural dialog, for example, if criticism of other belief systems were not allowed? Should Danish newspapers only be allowed to print favorable cartoons and editorials about all the religions of the world?

Mocked. I'd like to go through all twelve cartoons and describe what the hypothetical "reasonable person" would conclude each one was "mocking." (I'll go in the order in which they're presented here, but be sure not to click that link if you're going to be offended by what you see!)

(1) I don't see anything at all being mocked, unless people think maybe his ass is too big. But it is blasphemy. (2) I actually like this drawing because it's very simple: the question is, is that a halo over his head, or are they horns? (Advantage halo, since horns are rarely portrayed as being a luminous gold in color.) I'm not sure anything is being "mocked," but we've got more blasphemy. (3) Muhammed's face is crafted out of the Islamic star and crescent (in Islamic green). Nothing being mocked, but blashphemy again. (4) This one gets a lot of press. I don't think Muhammed is being "mocked" here, but he's not being portrayed in a flattering light: he's armed, bearded, turbaned, and flanked by startled-looking women in full veils. His eyes are boxed out to prevent his identity from being revealed, which I suppose is the artist's way of trying to get around the blasphemy thing. (5) Suicide bombers are being mocked. Period. (I heard Abu Laban explain the other night that "Muslims are not idiots, this idea that they expect 72 virgins in heaven is nonsense." Then I saw an interview with a Palestinian who said he was happy to have his sons be martyred because life would be better for them in heaven -- they would have 72 virgins waiting for them. (6) Jyllands-Posten itself is the target of this mockery. The only Muhammed is a student from Valby Skole, wearing a shirt that says "The Future." (7) There's no blasphemy here, either, since we've only got a drawing of a guy drawing Muhammed. But he's scared and nervous and working very furtively; if anything is being "mocked," it's the terrible fate awaiting anyone who dare draw Muhammed. But is that mockery or realism? (8) Blasphemy, since Muhammed's there in the line-up (with a halo), but the mockery is clearly directed toward Danish politics and editor Flemming Rose himself. (9) The images aren't blasphemous, but the poem certainly criticizes Muhammed. (10) Is this supposed to be Muhammed, or just some Muslim king/tyrant/president-for-life? I don't know. I don't think one can know. What's being mocked is apparently the reactive rage of some defenders of the Islamic faith -- it's as though the artist is suggesting they're a little too quick to rush for blood. (11) Presumably that's Muhammed in the bomb-turban with a lit fuse. Blasphemy, yes. Mockery? The suggestion, as I interpret it, is that Islam, as embodied by its holy prophet, is a bomb on the brink of blowing up in all our faces. Offensive to Muslims, I'm sure. But is it really unreasonable as an editorial cartoon? (12) Another drawing of a drawing, and this makes it absolutely crystal clear that the object of mockery is editor Flemming Rose himself.

As for the proper response not being to go on a rampage and burn down buildings, no argument here.

If Muslim organizations want to stage peaceful marches or organize boycotts of Danish goods, they're certainly within their rights.

Within their rights, yes. Within the bounds of logic, no. Assume for a moment that Jyllands-Posten really is a terrible rag written by horrible people. It's still not Denmark. By demonstrating against Denmark, and boycotting all Danish goods, demonstrators are only demonstrating their ignorance of the separation of press and state.

The pictures, one of which showed the prophet with a bomb on top of his head in place of a turban, violate a common belief among Muslims that any depiction of Muhammad is sacrilege.

It is not a common belief among non-Muslims that any depiction of Muhammad is anything but a depiction of Muhammad. This is an obnoxious point that needs to be overcome. Religions do not have the right to enforce their taboos on non-believers. I am astonished that the Times is actually giving this argument credibility. Are they really prepared to begin tailoring their own editorial pages to conform to all of the sacred rules of all the religions of all the world? Or is Islam special--and if so, why?

Also, it has to be repeated: not all the pictures violate that common belief anyway.

The paper that first published them did so as an experiment to see whether political satirists were capable of being as harsh to Islam as they are to other organized religions.

False. It was an experiment to see if Danish artists were self-censoring out of fear of extremist reprisals.

If that sounds juvenile, Americans still recognize it as within the speech protected by our First Amendment.

If that sounds juvenile, it's because the Times deliberately, and contrafactually, made it sound juvenile.

The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them.

Because it's easier to tell you what to think about them than let you decide for yourself?

That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.

Can we walk about the power of the word "usually"? Has ever an adverb been required to carry such weight? And let me pose a question: given the events we've seen in reaction to these cartoons, do you really think these cartoons were merely "a gratuitous assault" on Islam? Can we not acknowledge that there may in fact be something to the idea that there's a frightening violent streak at play in Islam?

As for the ease of describing the images: I haven't seen anyone do it successfully yet, including myself. And the inaccurate generalizations the Times makes about the cartoons in this very editorial suggest a compelling need for people to see them in print.

The cartoons were largely unnoticed outside Denmark until a group of Muslim leaders there made a point of circulating them, along with drawings far more offensive than the relatively mild stuff actually printed by the paper, Jyllands-Posten.

Suddenly the twelve cartoons are "relatively mild," but the Times doesn't explain that the bogus cartoons portrayed Muhammad as a pedophile and practitioner of bestiality, and were touted around with fiery speeches about the Danish government's plans to outlaw the Koran and oppress its Muslim population, among other things. The Times doesn't explain that these bogus pictures and rumors are still the leading incitement travelling the Muslim world today. By publishing the real pictures the Times and other papers could help Americans realize how disproportionate the reaction is. And perhaps a paper as respected abroad as the Times could make a difference by showing some agitated Muslims that the most offensive images described to them never really appeared in any Danish paper.

It's far from the first time that an almost-forgotten incident has been dredged up to score points with the public during politically sensitive times.

This is some kind of inside dig at someone, right? Is this about the Ems telegram that started the Franco-Prussian war? Or what?

The governments of the countries in which the demonstrations are occurring are responsible for keeping them nonviolent. Lebanese officials have rightly apologized to Denmark for failing to control a protest that ended with the torching of the Danish Consulate in Beirut. That's in stark contrast with what happened in Syria, a nation where there is no such thing as a spontaneous demonstration, yet where large crowds managed to assemble and set fire to the Danish and Norwegian Embassies.

True.

So what's the take-away from this editorial? You shouldn't make fun of people's religions; those Danish cartoons made fun of people's religions; Muslims were within their rights to demonstrate against and economically punish the whole nation of Denmark of one of its newspapers' actions; protests shouldn't get violent; Syria is bad.

Not a single word about the freedom of the press. Not a single word about freedom of expression. About skeptical inquiry. About all the things the Times would be shrieking about at the top of their lungs if the newspaper in question weren't some little Danish thing, but rather some big New York thing.

Shame on them.

What Hysteria Does...

2006-02-07T18:38:00.000+01:00

...is make people stupid. I am a person. Therefore, hysteria makes me stupid.

I apologize.

The "Brownshirts in Frederiksberg" incident appears to have been more a case of Sausage Vendor Fantasy than Brownshirt Nightmare. Or, to put it bluntly, the guy made the whole thing up.

The police find no evidence to support his story and are considering pressing charges for filing a false report.

I can't beat myself up too badly for trusting Berlingske Tidende on that story, but I'm ashamed of having passed along an untruth at a sensitive time like this. I'll make an appropriate adjustment to the relevant post later this evening, when I have time to log into the editor.

Faces of Islam

2006-02-06T20:09:00.000+01:00

Moments ago -- at about 2015 CET -- EuroCNN was running an interview with a Muslim cartoonist who was deeply critical of the notorious Muhammed-tegninger. At one point CNN showed a picture of one of the cartoons but blurred it, as they always do, to preserve the delicate sensibilities of the easily-offended.

A few moments later they showed one of their cartoonist-guest's cartoons: it was one he had drawn to protest Abu-Ghraib. It looked like a crude pen-and-ink drawing of Christ on the Cross, but in a black hood and loincloth like that of the iconic image of Abu Ghraib. Although the anchor did inform her viewers that "they might be offended" before showing this image, it was not blurred, and it remained on the screen for some time.

Does a double standard that brash not give the producers whiplash? Why are these "offensive" images treated differently?

(For what it's worth, the cartoonist insisted his image was "different" because the Christian nations of Europe had been using Christianity to enslave people around the world for 500 years.)

* * *

That's not what this post was supposed to be about.

An anonymous friend has shared some photos with me. I'm not sharing all of them, but here are two.

The first shows some demonstrators at Rådhuspdlads over the weekend. You can tell they're interested in dialogue because some of them have hidden their faces and their signs are all easily understandable to the average Dane.

The second is more disturbing.

Do you know who that man with the bruises, cuts, and gashed forehead is? Unfortunately I don't, either. But I did read the article about what happened to him at some point this weekend and can't seem to find it. I'll tell you what I remember, which my anonymous friend (who was a witness) did not contradict.

This man, a Muslim, was attending the demonstration and taking photographs. Three "second generation immigrants" then suddenly rushed him, smashed up his camera and cell-phone, then administered the beating that produced the lovely results you see above.

Why would "second generation immigrants" (andengenerationsinvandrer, Danish code for Arab, Turkish, and South Asian Muslims whose parents brought or conceived them here) attack a fellow Muslim?

Apparently last year this man caused a stir in the Danish Muslim community by coming out fairly hard against the ongoing tradition of forced marriages within Islamic culture.

Probably that doesn't even matter. Look at his face: that's the work of people our press and leaders seem to think can be appeased by apologies or positive dialogue.

In the very epicenter of Copenhagen, three Muslim thugs beat a fellow Muslim and destroyed his property because he'd openly criticized the institution of forced marriage.

To quote Sinclair Lewis, "You want to reform people like that when dynamite is so cheap?"

* * *

Thankfully Denmark's good Muslims have the courage of their convictions. They really are fighting to take their religion back from the evil bastards who've hijacked it. Further evidence is here: the Muslim residents of Gellerupparken in Århus will be conducting a torchlight procession tomorrow "under the motto 'For Denmark.' We will thereby send a message that when it comes to Denmark, we all have a common interest in urging reflection."

(Probably my translation of "at mane til besindighed" isn't exactly right, but from what I gather the intended sense is, "to urge restraint/reflection/calm.")

(I said "further" evidence because I thought I'd already cited this article about Naser Khader's announcement Saturday that he was forming a new union for Danish Muslims who "don't feel represented by the imams." That's a tremendous stride forward for Danish Muslims -- and a valuable stride away from Abu Laban.)

The Awakening West

2006-02-06T19:44:00.000+01:00

The world appears to have awakened! Strong statements of support for Denmark from the US, UK, France, and NATO's General Secretary.

They're a little late, but who knows: if they came in with their support earlier, the embassies might not have burned -- but if the embassies hadn't burned, they might still not have come in.

Next step: acknowledgment by western leaders that western governments don't owe anyone, anywhere, ever, an apology for something published in a privately-owned newspaper. (I haven't read the full statements of support issued by all these leaders yet, so it's possible their statements include words to that effect.)

Here's a terrific distillation of the issue from a Time Magazine essay by Andrew Sullivan:

Muslim leaders say the cartoons are not just offensive. They're blasphemy--the mother of all offenses. That's because Islam forbids any visual depiction of the Prophet, even benign ones. Should non-Muslims respect this taboo? I see no reason why. You can respect a religion without honoring its taboos. I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite. As a Catholic, I don't expect atheists to genuflect before an altar. If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one. Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.

But Sullivan, like a lot of other critics, misses an even larger point about the current case (and a point I haven't been hammering at myself because it seems so obvious as to hardly require stating, which shows just how naive I am): whether or not Jyllands-Posten is guilty of blasphemy the eyes of the Imams, or offensiveness in the eyes of the eggshell-walking appeasers, the anger directed at Denmark makes absolutely no logical sense whatever.

A free press means the press is not beholden to the government. Anders Fogh Rasmussen made this point very clearly at the outset of this crisis several months ago. Western liberals, including many Danish Social Democrats, have been unfair to Fogh in suggesting he could have helped the situation by having met with the aggrieved ambassadors back in September or October. He didn't need to. He told them publicly all that they needed to know: namely, that the Danish government has no responsibility for nor authority over the content of private Danish newspapers.

2000 Words

2006-02-05T20:05:00.000+01:00

"Suffer the little children?"

And to prevent myself from being accused of hyperbole:

(Both images taken from this interesting Telegraph article .)

Negotiating with Terrorists

2006-02-05T18:27:00.000+01:00

Western leaders seem to be scrambling over one another to describe how offensive the twelve cartoons are, even when they're trying to defend besieged Denmark.

I find this cowardly and disingenuous.

First of all, it would be difficult to construe at least two of the cartoons as "offensive" unless one were a rabid secularist who despises any favorable mentions or depictions of Islam at all.

Secondly, at least half of the cartoons can only be construed as "offensive" if one is willing to posit that the sectarian position that any depiction of Muhammed whatsoever is blasphemous, and that blasphemy is in itself offensive -- even when someone outside the religion in question is committing the act so judged.

Thirdly, anyone paying close attention to events this weekend cannot be seriously offended by political cartoons suggesting that there is a dangerous violent streak in Islam, that the violent streak in Islam is highly visible, and that moderates within the religion are unable to control the extremists. That is to say, the small minority of cartoons that associate the religion of Islam with violence are not entirely off the mark.

Lastly, whether or not they're offensive is not the point. Many editorial cartoons are offensive. So are many editorial texts. In fact, it's probably not unreasonable to say that any expression of political opinion is bound to be found somewhere on the scale from "annoying" to "infuriating" by persons who do not subscribe to that particular point of view.

The point is that the western press is supposed to be free to offend. It's stated pretty baldly in the first amendment to the American constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Obviously there are ethical and moral obligations to consider, but these typically vary from community to community. The things one reads in "alternative" big city weeklies, for example, would be unlikely to find a home in small-town, rural American newspapers.

So there's no question but that every newspaper in America has the legal right to publish the cartoons; the question is one of ethics and morals. The typical argument against publishing them is nicely summed up here:

The Los Angeles Times sent this statement to [Editor & Publisher] this afternoon: "Our newsroom and op-ed page editors, independently of each other, determined that the caricatures could be deemed offensive to some readers and the there were effective ways to cover the controversy without running the images themselves."

Let's break that down.

Our newsroom and op-ed page editors, independently of each other, determined that the caricatures could be deemed offensive to some readers....

Unlike the editorials and cartoons appearing every day in the L.A. Times, which never give offense to anyone?

and the there were effective ways to cover the controversy without running the images themselves.

As an American in Denmark who has seen the original images and is witnessing the unending barrage of horrors that have followed them, it is my opinion that there are not. For one thing, the pictures are the story. The Arab-Muslim extremists running riot throughout the Middle East have told a consistent story: it is rage over these images coupled with Denmark's refusal to issue a government apology for the private acts of a private newspaper that have driven them to burn embassies, attack Danish nationals, burn flags, burn effigies, and, most recently in Lebanon, attack random Christians. Americans who have not seen the images will have no choice but to judge their "offensiveness" by the scope of what they've provoked. That's not accurate or effective coverage: the story is how disproportionate that relationship is.

It is possible many Americans will see the images and determine that the violent reaction is justified. It is also possible that many Americans will see the images and conclude that the Middle East is in the thrall of overreactive ideologues willing to loot, burn, and assault (and let us hope nothing worse) when presented with ideas they disagree with.

In my own opinion as an agnostic (currently on the verge of hardcore atheism), the reputation of Islam has suffered much more prodigiously from the behavior of its extremist adherents this week than it has from the pens of Danish cartoonists. I saw that very question put to the leader of the Islamisk Trossamfund (Islamic Faith Society) in Denmark on television yesterday: wasn't it possible that images of hostages being held on television with knives to their throats, in the name of religion, was more damaging to Islam than a political cartoon? "No," Mr. Laban declared, "absolutely not." End of issue.

Furthermore, as I've already mentioned, the failure of the "liberal" west to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and declare that no editorial cartoon in any newspaper in any context is justification for the kind of violence we've been witnessing is partly responsible for the conflagration now upon us. By acknowledging the hitherto unprecedented "sanctity" of a sectarian Islamic law and publicly avowing a desire to honor the sensibilities of those espousing that law (many of whom were cotemporaneously issuing death threats against the artists), most of the western and almost all of the American press has given succor to the enraged jihadists. But I talked about that yesterday.

At this point it's probably too late to make a difference one way or another. Things will either calm down because the extremists will recognize their victory and decline to overplay their hand; or they will escalate further because the extremists have smelled the sweet scent of capitulation wafting toward them.

But what precedent has this apologism set? How will the L.A. Times justify any editorial cartoon supporting abortion, for example, or criticizing the Catholic church, Israel, or Aztec human sacrifice? (Presumably they have never done so in the past.) How big a religion must one be to earn their restraint? How violent? Has their gentle treatment not been akin to negotiating with terrorists, in that it only encourages future episodes by rewarding appalling behavior?

The founders of America and all that it represents, the authors of our western liberties, understood that nothing, not even religion, especially not religion, should be legally protected from criticism in the press. This foundational belief suggests they understood that criticism of everything had a vital role to play in the ongoing dialogue of democracy. If our press is going to begin declaring taboos, they had better be prepared to address the long line of aggrieved religionists and issue-evangelists that are going to be expecting the same kind of kid-glove treatment.

And if our statesmen and -women are going to begin apologizing for "offensive" material in their domestic newspapers to tyrannies and dictatorships abroad, without demanding similar apologies for the hateful screeds so regularly appearing in those nations' presses, we are not merely ignoring our liberties: we are handing them away.

If you must declare the cartoons offensive, be specific: describe which particular cartoons are offensive, and to whom, and in what particular way. (And take care to describe any cartoons which are not offensive, if you find that in fact not all of them are.)

If you must preface your support for a free press with apologetic talk of respecting religion, at least be honest enough to admit what you're saying: that although Christianity and Judaism have learned to withstand the rigors of a free press, and that Christians and Jews of all denominations find plenty to be offended by in almost every major western media outlet at least once in a while, you're conceding that Muslims are not yet mature enough in their conviction to allow their religion exposure to public criticism.

I think this episode has given the theocratic enemies of liberty enormous encouragement. I hope we can all live with the consequences.

Unfit to Print

2006-02-05T13:25:00.000+01:00

The front page of the New York Times online at 7:12 am, Sunday, February 5:

Not one mention of this story. Not one.

I just cannot believe America's myopia right now.

Brownshirts in Frederiksberg

2006-02-05T12:54:00.000+01:00

UPDATE: This story is not true. Frederiksberg police revealed on Tuesday that they have no evidence to corroborate the sausage vendor's story, and are considering pressing charges on him for filing a false report.

In case you think I'm overplaying things, here's a new story to warm your heart:

Pølsemand overfaldet med baseballbat

En pølsemand på Frederiksberg blev fredag overfaldet af to unge mænd og slået adskillige gang med et baseballbat, fordi han solgte "urent kød."

- Danskersvin. Du sælger urent kød.

Sådan faldt ordene angiveligt, da en pølsemand på Frederiksberg fredag eftermiddag blev overfaldet med et baseballbat af to unge mænd med udenlandsk baggrund. Forinden havde de to mænd bedt om to brød, men da pølsemanden rakte brøddene over disken, greb den ene fat i hans hænder, mens den anden hamrede løs på pølsemandens hænder med battet og slog hans fingre til blods.

Efterfølgende tog pølsemanden på skadestuen, og lørdag henvendte han sig til politiet på Frederiksberg for at indgive anmeldelse. Vagthavende hos Frederiksberg Politi betegner overfaldet som grov vold, og er nu på jagt efter de to unge mænd, som ifølge pølsemanden har tyrkisk baggrund og er mellem 18 og 20 år.

In English:

Sausage Vendor Assaulted with Baseball Bat

A sausage vendor in Frederiksberg was assaulted on Friday by two young men and struck repeatedly with a baseball bad because he sold "unclean meat."

"Danish pig. You sell unclean meat."

Thus reportedly came the words when a sausage vendor in Frederiksberg was assaulted Friday afternoon with a baseball bat by two young men of foreign background. The two men had asked for two buns, but when the sausage vendor passed the bread over the counter one of them grabbed hold of his hands while the other hammered on the sausage vendor's hands with the bat and beat his fingers to bloodiness.

Afterwards the sausage vendor was taken to the emergency room, and Saturday he reported to Frederiksberg Police Station to file his complaint. The officers on duty at the Frederiksberg PD portray the assault as rough violence [felony assault, if I'm not mistaken] and are now seeking the two young men, who according to police are of Turkiush background and are between 18 and 20 years old.

Is it safe to assume they're wearing brown shirts?

I live in Frederiksberg, so there's no real way for this story to get any closer to home.

Disgusting. And a little frightening. But all part of the rich dialog of civilizations, I suppose.

Archduke Ferdinand is Dead... We Can Make That Play in the Mid-Term Elections!

2006-02-05T12:20:00.000+01:00

Now the Danish embassy in Beirut is under siege. Beg pardon -- it's on fire.

I went cruising around some of the leading left-wing American blogs and am saddened by what I've seen. On Daily Kos, there seems to be a dim understanding of what's going on, and that it's bad, but it's being viewed through the prism of such virulent hatred of all things Bush/Republican/conservative/Christian that the best solution they can come up with is... to mock American Christians.

Let's co-opt them, we must not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES let it become, us [the west] vs them [Arab Muslims]. Let's raise and attract the ire of the [American] religious nuts with irreverent and whatever description fits our expressive and creative art in cartoon and caricatures. I'm sick and tired of these opportunistic and hypocritical bastards, we are going to confront them sooner or later. Why not now?

That's right. Everything going on right now, and the "opportunistic and hypocrtical bastards" to worry about are... America's Christians? But in terms of this "becoming us vs them," hasn't that already been decided by them?

And on the Democratic Underground, the first post I saw tells the story:

When I see the administration ramping up war rhetoric again, while there's simultaneously embassies on fire in Damascus (wow, what a wild co-inky-dink) I'm of the suspicion that our present administration, who have made their bones playing on fear, might have had something to do with it.

From the right, Andrew Stuttaford seems to be following the events on NRO's Corner, but there's not a whole lot of discussion on the topic. (There, is though, a link to this "film" -- which gets things mostly right but neglects to show all twelve cartoons -- ignoring the self-deprecating and JP-mocking cartoons entirely -- and doesn't mention the Islamic Trossamfund's tour of misinformation, in which they traveled the Middle East whipping up hysteria.)

My disappointment in America is only deepening. Get over yourselves, dammit. The religious right has to realize this has nothing to do with "respect" for religious beliefs, and the far left needs to realize this has nothing to do with America's Christian right.

This is our second embassy burned in twelve hours, and you assholes are fiddling Denmark away, marginalizing the issue and trying to use it to whack each other rhetorically.

That's the kind of behavior I used to expect from Germany and France, but even they see the warning signs on this one.

On the other hand, Europe, it might be time to ask yourself if you're partly to blame: can you think of any reasons why America might be reluctant to involve itself in "European" affairs?

Something powerful and decisive needs to be done soon. Someone needs to turn on the red light.

(For what it's worth, the Danish embassy in Syria wasn't burned to the ground... some rooms are actually still standing. I'm not sure about the offices in Beirut: I think they're still on fire right now. And in case you're interested, the ADL has a whole repository of Arab journalism demonstrating categorically that the notion of "religious tolerance" isn't supposed to be reciprocal.)

Denmark is Burning

2006-02-04T22:13:00.000+01:00

Denmark isn't actually burning. Not literally. Not yet. Nor is its embassy in Syria, come to think of it: there's nothing left to burn. It's just cold ash in Damascus.

I have heard some people in the media tonight, "How could it come to this?"

I will tell you.

It has come to this because from the very start there have been people in western governments and in the western media without the moral courage to stand up for their own values. There have been influential people who put the appeasement of the Arab street above defense of the very institutions that allow western society to function. And in doing so, they gave that vaunted Arab street a very clear signal. Green light, it said. Go!

Each soothing proclamation by a western leader, each hand-wringing editorial in a major western paper, has poured the fuel of encouragement onto the bonfire of hatred, leading inevitably to the kind of violence we're seeing today.

You have paved the way for this, you apologists. Your good intentions have consigned tiny Denmark to the wrath of the barbarian horde.

We would not be here, today, had the west drawn itself together from the outset and said, simply and in chorus, "A free press is an indispensable part of western society. It can sometimes wound, but its absence would be fatal. You have every right to be offended and express your dissatisfaction, but neither Denmark nor Jyllands-Posten owes anyone an apology."

Even the Bush and Blair administrations have behaved shamefully, with Jack Straw and a spokesman for George W. Bush both speaking out only in the last 36 hours -- and only to condemn the cartoons as offensive, and to reassure the Arabs and Muslims of the world that of course they respect their beliefs, before ultimately and somewhat parenthetically conceding that, well, yeah, after all, they did support the freedom of the press and all that, yadda yadda yadda.

Hopefully the continuing escalation of this issue will begin to give some westerners second-thoughts about their wobbliness. But it's a shame that Denmark's economy should have to sink, its embassies burn, and its streets be stained with the blood of a nascent intra-Muslim civil war, before the rest of the west has the sense to realize political correctness in the face of a savage and implacable enemy is surrender to barbarism.

What is wrong with the west? This is the civilization that created me, that nurtured me on ideas about civil liberty that began with Plato and Aristotle and ran through Locke and Voltaire all the way up to Calvin & Hobbes. The civilization in which everyone of every political persuasion always told me they might disagree with what I said, but they'd defend to their death my right to say it.

Now that entire civilization seems to be saying, "Sucker!"

I am so proud of Denmark right now... and so ashamed of almost every other country in the free world.

Jeg er en dansker!

More "Chilling Effect"

2006-02-04T17:08:00.000+01:00

What's more offensive, after all... a cartoon, or this:

(Link to article in previous post.)

Piling On

2006-02-04T16:51:00.000+01:00

And now the Danish embassy in Syria has been burned down.

What do Arab journalists think about that?

Are Danes allowed to be offended and insulted yet?

Remember, Oh Men of the West, there is no connection between Islam and violence of any kind!

The Other Side of the Story?

2006-02-04T08:49:00.000+01:00

Leave it to Slate to take the intellectual approach and ask, "What do Arab journalists think about this? "

Guess what they think?

The first journalist quoted, Muhammad al-Hamadi of the UAE, admits unhappily that there is "reason" for these cartoons. "Any harm to the Prophet or Islam is a result of Muslims who have come to reflect the worst image of Islam and certain Arabs who have not conveyed faithfully the life and biography of the Prophet."

And it's all down hill from there. Al-Hamadi comes right back with the unsurprising "on the other hand," arguing:

If Denmark has tried to teach Arabs and Muslims a lesson in respect for the country's constitution and its laws, I believe it did not succeed in choosing the right issue. The justification that one must respect the constitution that guarantees freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to denigrate others, was not appropriate—this is the trap that Denmark fell into.

Here's the nub of the whole problem: Denmark didn't fall into any trap. Denmark wasn't trying to teach anyone anything. This whole issue begins and ends with Jyllands-Posten, and it's the Arab world's inability (or refusal) to grasp (or acknowledge) this that's so maddening.

Sati Nur al-Din of Lebanon has little sympathy for the cartoons, but does observe:

The Arabs and Muslims who are moving today against Denmark, its products, and embassies, are not exploiting the caricature issue for any political goal, as Khomeini did. Rather, they are sending what is by any standard the wrong message, choosing a foolish pretext for what is really a caricature of a battle.

So there's one acknowledgment that Muslims have to their own detriment allowed their extremists to become the face of their religion, and another that this is a foolish issue on which to mobilize... and both points are made in the context of larger criticisms either of Denmark or free speech itself.

Has Slate given this issue any other coverage? I don't honestly know. But it strikes me as typically leftist-alternative-academic (in America) to examine any issue by beginning with the "non-western" side of the story... and ending there as well.

How would the editors of Slate react, I wonder, if their ability to "publish" what they want, when they want, were challenged by any one, anywhere, under any pretext? Does the sanctity of Muslim "dignity" (strangely enough, a sanctity not insisted upon by a growing number of increasingly vocal, moderate Danish Muslims) really entitle them to a deference that Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Scientologists don't warrant?

Would they take seriously the comments of an American journalist who insisted that "Christian dignity" made the publication of any provocative editorial cartoons "denigrating" Christianity an abuse of the first amendment?

Why do American and European leftists condescend so to the Arab Muslim world? Why are Arab Muslims held to such a low standard of intellectual honesty?

Part of it is obviously the American leftist-alternative-academic obsession with the "narrative" of "the other." To its credit, I think, American culture is a culture of the underdog. Look at our films, from On the Waterfront to Cool Hand Luke to the Bad News Bears. Our music. Our sports enthusiasms. America loves an underdog. It's programmed into our psyche to appreciate the challenges faced and heroics required to succeed in the face of overwhelming adversity.

If I can overgeneralize for a minute, I think American conservatives tend to turn this into an obsession with the ultimate minority: the individual (an obsession, alas, I probably share). And American liberals tend to turn it into an obsession with minority groups.

There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the other side's point of view. And that's all Slate appears to be doing here: I don't detect any editorial slant within the article: the only slant is in its lack of a complement exploring the "free press" side of the argument. To appease the liberal establishment's obsession with "other" narratives, how about one of these:

What are Danish Muslims saying about the issue?

What are liberal Danish journalists saying about the issue?

What are the "European" journalists we find so authoritative on other issues (Iraq, gay marriage, Christian extremism, oil dependence, the environment, etc.) saying about this one?

What do the cartoonists who've been targeted with multiple death threats have to say about the Muslim journalists who've been fanning the flames of this "debate" with misinformation?

I think the answers to most of these questions would surprise a lot of American liberals.

I still hold out hope that the American left can recognize this issue for what it really is, but I'm also afraid that they've become so reflexively pro-Arab Muslim that they've lost the capacity to assess individual cases on the merits.

Look, I'm a Bush-voting conservative who supports gay marriage and abortion rights, wants to decriminalize marijuana, favors a degree of gun control, and wants to vomit at the notion of "creationism" being "taught" in our nation's public schools. Surely there are some Kerry-voting liberals out there who can find common cause with me, and many Danish liberals, on this?

And yet, without the facts that's going to be impossible. So it really has to begin with the American media. And the sad truth is, if the story is first given the prominence it deserves by, say, the Wall Street Journal, the left will only retreat further into the "narrative of the other."