Quick Takes on the Mohammed Cartoons
Jason Kuznicki on Feb 2nd 2006 10:45 pm |
Here are my off-the-cuff reactions to those pesky Mohammed cartoons. Presented for the bewilderment of Chris Bertram.
1. Drawing cartoons of Mohammed: Okay.
2. Disliking cartoons of Mohammed: Also okay.
3. Peacefully protesting cartoons of Mohammed: Yet again okay.
4. Violently protesting cartoons of Mohammed: Most certainly not okay.
5. Threatening violence against Danes because a Dane drew cartoons of Mohammed: Betrays a tribalist mentality at odds with the modern world. Morally wrong. Not okay.
6. Asking the artists or editors to apologize for cartoons of Mohammed: Perfectly okay.
7. Asking the Danish government to apologize for cartoons of Mohammed: Ludicrous. Not the government’s affair.
8. Apologizing for cartoons of Mohammed (if you’re an editor): Spineless, may send the wrong message given the context of recent world events, but okay. After all, I can’t really stop you.
9. Apologizing for cartoons of Mohammed (if you’re a government official): Worse than spineless, certainly sends the wrong message. Not okay, and if I were Danish I would certainly try to stop you (see #3, above).
10. Firing the guy who printed cartoons of Mohammed: Spineless, deeply regrettable, certainly sends the wrong message, but okay. Remind me to change my subscription.
11. Boycotting Denmark over cartoons of Mohammed: Useless, deeply regrettable, probably sends no message whatsoever. But okay.
12. Buying extra Danish goods because of cartoons of Mohammed: Probably useless, but I do like Danzka vodka. Remind me to stock up the next time I go out.
13. Drawing cartoons of Danes who draw cartoons of Mohammed: Poetic justice. Pity we’re not likely to see it.
14. Passing laws that forbid racial or religious hatred: Well-meaning, but deeply misguided. Not okay. Let us answer error with truth, not with repression.
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I don’t think the firing of the French editor was a case of spinelessness. The owner was described as French-Egyptian. It’s like he was personally offended and fired the guy because he didn’t want his own property used to offend his own beliefs, not to placate other Muslims.
Of course, owner influence on media is problematic for other reasons, but that’s a separate discussion.
OTOH, I heard that he is a Christian French-Egyptian.
The west in general do not fully understand the unity that Islam religion had created among its followers, although many world incidents had proven this unity and how deep it is, but the gab between Muslems and Non Muslims still as it is if not bigger. 9/11 had widened this gab of course, but the effect of the American and Western medias had blocked many of the positive aspects of Islam and Muslims, meanwhile it blocked non muslims from the truth understanding of Islam.
People or editors of the Danish paper (Jyllands-Posten) do not understand how the word freedom is treated and controlled. Freedom is not insulting other people, religion, and or the prophets. We Muslims are forbidded from insulting any prophits (over 1300). We believe they are the messengers of Allah , the creator of the universe and mankined, for different people and different religions.
Prophet Mohammed is the last Messenger from Allah, and for those who don’t belive in him, that is fine, but do not insult his followers or believers if you believe in freedom and democracy! The danish paper ignored the reactions of over one bilion muslims, as a result of their narrow understandings and concepts of free speach! The violence they have created will continue and the bouycut also as results of freedom. The paper is just a tool of many tools that people behind the screen, everywhere, who don not look for the benefits of their nations adjacent to their own benifits.
For any reader of this article, I would suggest they read a book written about Mohammed called “Raheeg Makhtoom” by an Indian Muslim, and then kindly tell me their reactions and understanding. It is available in English, and we are trying to reprint it in Deauch as well.
I would be of any help as much as I can regarding this matter. Thanks.
Abdul (above) nails the “moderate” Muslim position: it isn’t merely that depicting Mohammid is wrong, it’s insulting Him and the Ummah – the collective body of all Believers as well.
“We Muslims are forbidded from insulting any prophits….Prophet Mohammed is the last Messenger from Allah, and for those who don’t belive in him, that is fine, but do not insult his followers or believers if you believe in freedom and democracy!”
This is the voice of Honor hurt and insulted (and parodied mercilessly here in words http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3565 and in images in The Netherlands http://retecool.com/comments.php?id=13539_0_1_0_C), and the verbal protest – unlike the more radical violent protesters – seeking its restoration NOW. There are no personal or individual boundaries for the respect demanded; it is Universal and Collective hurt which the West does not grasp. Why? Becuse their’s is the “superior culture” with the one True Religion.
The truth is we are in conflict with a deeply shame driven culture, much as WWII brought the US in conflict with Imperial Japan, we fail to see their fundamental differences. Just as then, the Islamic and especially Arab speaking middle East exhibits suicide bombing (relabled “sacred explosions” in “martyrdom operations” in the service of Jihadism), and killing of innocents (especially family but also kidnap victims) to restore Honor and rectify shame.
Psychiatrist Pat Santy outlines the cultural psychodynamics involved in the cartoon crisis, including the rationalization, denial, avoidance, and radical impression management that utterly defies our notions of their obvious hypocrisy, irresponsibility, incivility and violence – transgressions that define the West’s individualized guilt conscious norms. The good Doctor avers that further civilizational collision is inevitable (I’m thinking of Iran’s president Ahmadinejad first off) in her blog-post “SHAME, GUILT, THE MUSLIM PSYCHE, AND THE DANISH CARTOONS:”
“The conundrum facing the West in dealing with Islam is that if Islam backs down from its demands, the resulting humiliation only increases the entire [Islamic] culture’s sense of shame (which has been high for some centuries now) and brings it closer to the reality of a ticking time bomb that can blow up the rest of the world.
“And sadly; the reverse situation–if the West, out of guilt and a sense of justice and fair play, backs down and permits Islam to restore its honor over the Danish cartoon issue at the expense of the West’s cultural values; Islam will perceive such appeasement as the ultimate weakness and will be encouraged in thinking that it is the superior culture that will conquer and dominate the world. Hence even that scenario offers no relief for the world from the ticking time bomb that is Islam.
“In other words, there appears to be no way to avoid a final confrontation.”
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/02/shame-guilt-muslim-psyche-and-danish.html (For more on cultural shame and Arab culture, see “The Closed Circle” by David Pryce-Jones, and “The Arab Mind” by Raphael Patai.)
WHICH is why Bush’s bold war for Iraq’s democratization is so bold, ambitious, and necessary, given the region’s exploding youth demographics, exteme poverty and oil wealth, and the increasing literacy which makes young frustrated men vulnerable to Jihadism’s reactionary-utopian appeal (see “Understanding Jihad” by David Cook, 2005 and “Islamic Imperialism: A History” by Efraim Karsh, April 2006).
Dr. Santy also sees the practical importance of empirical politics in the Islamic world (see http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1139215388.shtml). “It is my hypothesis that as the freedom increases in a ’shame culture’ it will have a greater liklihood of evolving into a [motre emotionally mature and peaceful] ‘guilt’ culture. [Complimentarilly, i]t has been noted in several studies that a shame culture works best within a collectivist [like Iranian or Syrian] society, although it can exist in pockets even within a predominant guilt culture.”
Which leads me to the pragmatic Truth about American foreign policy debates: the eventual outcome of the above realities, combined with the uncertain length of our inevitable conflict which neocon Norman Podhoritz calls “World War IV,” means that something similar on the Left to the Nixon-Carter doctrine of Detente with the Soviet Union must evolve – if the Left ever gets tired of losing national elections – to compliment Bush’s Reagan-like policy of “preventive war” against Jihadist terrorism. It might be non- or anti-militaristic and replace Bush Doctine with economic aid but must embrace the defense of nascently free nations like Afghanistan and Iraq. The trouble is that our democracy does not enjoy or easily enbrace short-to-medium term pessimism of this option – despite the fact that the goal of nurturing cultural change Bush embraces requires it.
“The paper is just a tool of many tools that people behind the screen, everywhere, who don not look for the benefits of their nations adjacent to their own benifits.”
Unfortunately, this type of paranoia is rampant in the Muslim world; especially in its heart. When a great people subscribing to a previously triumphant and conquering religion find themselves outpaced by barbarians, and when in recent decades those same peoples have found themselves literally providing the fuel for the world economy yet not sharing in its prosperity, a dangerous sense of exploitation and contempt hover over the remaining sense of basic superiority. The plight of the Muslims can therefore only be explained by wild conspiracy theories, according to this view. The Muslim world is bursting, and we will all burst along with it if we are not cautious, but also steadfast.