Friday, 03.21.08
Osama Versus The Vatican
Photo by Awad Awad for AFP/Getty Images
God's Country
March 2008
Islam Versus the Pleasure Principle
March 2002
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Islam
January 2005
What Went Wrong?
January 2002
There are all sorts of problems with the coinage "Islamofascism," but Bin Laden-style Islamists and Nazis do have one important quality in common: Their posturing would be comical, if its consequences weren't so serious. If Hitler's Germany hadn't turned Europe into a charnel house, many of the elements of National Socialism -- the clumsy anti-Semitic propaganda, the philosophical pretensions, the ranting speeches, even the uniforms -- would seem almost deliberately comic, like bits and pieces from a Monty Python sketch. Likewise, nearly every pronouncement from Osama bin Laden or his imitators contains something that might be laughable, if it weren't in deadly earnest.
There's the incessant nostalgia for the Crusades, heavy-handed enough to embarrass Sir Walter Scott, and the Risk-board view of geopolitics, epitomized by the oft-cited aspiration to reconquer "Al-Andalus" (known to most of us as "Spain") for Islam. There's the blinkered understanding of American politics, as when Bin Laden criticized George H.W. Bush for "installing" his sons as governors of Texas and Florida, and seemed to suggest (depending on the translation) that he might make a separate peace with any American state that didn't vote for George W. Bush. And of course, there's the consistency with which Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers greet perceived insults to Islam with threats and actions that seem designed to, well, vindicate the offending parties.
When a Danish newspaper published cartoons portraying Muhammad as an assassin and a terrorist, Islamists responded to these outrageous insinuations by inciting their co-believers to ... assassination and terrorism. When the Pope stirred up controversy by suggesting that Islam might be less compatible with reason and philosophy than Christianity, he was answered with a burst of (no doubt rigorously reasoned) acts of violence committed on behalf of the faith he had insulted. Now, just in time with Easter, he's been answered with al Qaeda's idea of inter-religious dialogue as well. Here's hoping that His Holiness enjoys a quiet chuckle while he puts the Swiss Guards on high alert. There's nothing wrong with laughing at evil, so long as your bodyguards are packing heat.
Threatening EuropeWalid Phares, writing at the Counterterrorism Blog, interprets Bin Laden's message as a call to Euro-Jihadists. |
Islam, the Pope and societyJane Kramer writes that Catholicism and Islam share "a purchase on truth; a contempt for the moral accommodations of liberal, secular states." |
Orthodoxies of faithAfter Pope Benedict XVI made controversial remarks on Islam in September 2006 Christopher Hitchens wrote that "the bishop of Rome could have become a perfectly orthodox Muslim." |
From Words to WarFollowing the Pope's 2006 remarks on Islam, Op-Eds in several Arab newspapers argued that "the Pope's comments may lead to war." |
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While responding to the insults of the Prophet with violence is wrong and counter-productive, the freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to insult more than one billion people. And by the way, this saga is not about freedom of expression. It is just hypocrisy and double standards. Why it is not allowed to publish any critical discussion of the holocaust in European newspapers?
There's nothing wrong with laughing the hypocrisy and flawed moral of those who only see the world through their narrow view angels
nothing wrong with laughing the hypocrisy and flawed moral of those who only see the world through their narrow view angels
Apologists for terrorists should at least learn to write English at English-medium sites, if they wish to convince anybody.
Freedom of speech is precisely the freedom to offend.
If we are not free to blaspheme, to insult, to disagree with anything and everything, then we are not free at all.
(Europe's holocaust denial laws are indefensible. The truth can withstand a few idiots, but it is weighed down by the clumsy protection of the state.)
I'd just like to point out a small detail: "Al-Andalus" is now known to most of us as "Spain" and "Portugal".
Freedom of speech means freedom of speech, kids. It means putting up with holocaust denial, religious fundamentalism, nutty rants and, yes, cartoons that insult your most precious beliefs.
Mass murderers most especially don't have a right in the world to object to cartoonists!
Freedom does not mean to insult others people believes. We should all respect each other no matter how sometimes politics make things complex for everybody.
Posted by Oscar | March 21, 2008 6:18 PM