― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 3 February 2006 19:44 (eighteen years ago) link
Okay. We live in a country (the U.S.) with various cultural constituencies, including, let's say, Catholics. We have a country in which people are at liberty to criticize the actions, thinking, or culture of those constituencies. Let's imagine for a second that some Catholics -- like some Muslims -- did not respect that liberty when it came to criticizing them. Let's imagine that a Catholic man murdered a filmmaker who made an expose about priests abusing children, and that extremist Catholics threatened to firebomb newspapers for running editorials criticizing Catholic opposition to contraception. This would be a very large problem. Let's even say that this had a chilling effect on free speech, such that people were afraid of offending Catholics for fear of violent reprisal.
If I owned a paper in this environment, and I wanted to stand up for free speech against the actions of these extremist Catholics, I would do that specifically. That would strike me as the moral, dignified thing to do. I'm not sure it would cross my mind to deliberately run an image that would be offensive to Catholics -- say, the Pope wearing a condom -- simply to stand up for my right to do so. Nothing in the situation would seem to call for me to do that. Beyond which it would be childish and counterproductive, because it would be bizarrely misdirected. I would be fighting these extremist, violent Catholics by opposing myself to all Catholics -- by going out of my way to exhibit my disdain for the beliefs of even the ones who support my rights! I would be making enemies of my friends. And all when there were a million very specific things I could have done to (haha) "fight the real enemy," and address my actual issue of extremist violence and my freedom to do something I actually want to do, on my own -- which is to publish reasoned criticism of this theoretical Catholic extremism and maybe even Catholicism itself. In the process, I'll be standing up for people's right to publish the Pope-with-condom picture, even though I don't feel a need to print it myself. I'll stand up for people's rights to do lots of things I'd never personally dream of doing; I don't have to actually do the things in question. The fact that extremists would violently assaults someone's right to do something doesn't make the thing itself a good or necessary idea.
To follow up two ideas that have been cross-posted with mine. Gypsy, you're exactly right about the neo-Nazis, which I've mentioned upthread. If extremist blacks, Latinos, and Catholics were murdering neo-Nazis -- infringing on their given right to distribute neo-Nazi literature -- it would not occur to me that one way to make a noble stand against this violence would be to ... distribute neo-Nazi literature! And concerning violence against abortion doctors: these cartoons strike me as the equivalent of the editor of the New York Times, at the peak of those abortion protest shootings, going out, getting a woman pregnant, having an abortion, and then printing a big article about it -- "we have every right to do this! haha!" Which would offend people well beyond pro-life extremists, especially when the implied follow-up story was "look at them get all mad, see how they have no place in our society."
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 19:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― The Man Without Shadow (Enrique), Friday, 3 February 2006 19:47 (eighteen years ago) link
Sorry, but I do pick and choose my cases. I don't defend the right of a white college professor to call one of his black students a "N******". He might call it free speech, but I don't think it's right.
And Nabisco's long post above is OTM. I'm not disagreeing about the right of free speech in general, I'm disagreeing with this particular instance of it. I think these caricatures were designed to sow division, not understanding, and I think that publishing them was neither admirable nor wise.
― o. nate (onate), Friday, 3 February 2006 19:50 (eighteen years ago) link
(Not all protected speech is good speech, is I think most of what Nate and I are saying, and the good news is that with Gypsy at least I think we're on the same page about being suspicious of the paper's speech-choices here, if to different extents.)
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 19:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 19:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 3 February 2006 19:58 (eighteen years ago) link
Because there's been a lot of useless bickering about this so far: by saying this I'm not defending the reactions to the cartoon that involve sanctions, measures against the Danish government, etc. Some of the comments on this thread read to me as, "that's it, Muslims have to learn to stop being so Muslim." As hstencil points out upthread, that is not going to happen. If relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West is going to get better (and the contact between the two is a given: there's no undoing that), both groups are going to have to drop the posturing of the utter insupportability of all of the values of the other group. That's why the cartoons are so unfortunate, on my view. (There are, of course, hundreds of stances that have been taken by various groups of Muslims that are similarly unfortunate.)
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 19:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― horsehoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 20:03 (eighteen years ago) link
It's the toxic portrayal of Muhammad that is really driving the outrage
The radicals aside, this is what most of my Muslim friends are saying.
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:11 (eighteen years ago) link
I agree, this was an inflammatory action - I see the attraction of Gypsy Mothra's theory but I don't really believe it. This was specifically targeting Muslims to widen an already huge cultural gulf. Because I can think of instances where British people would behave in just as ugly a manner. If the Indpendent published a provocative picture of a naked child tomorrow even if it had a stated reason for doing so, I'd bet everything I own there'd be a baying mob outside its office saying and possibly doing some pretty fucking ugly things. Would the editor stand there going "I'm going to defend my right not to be intimidated?" or would he be sacked?
This is a facile analogy I know, but then again I'm typing this in a country where footballers get death threats for moving from one club to another so maybe we're not all so fucking enlightened after all?
The other thing that depresses me is that the BNP are going to do really fucking well out of this.
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:14 (eighteen years ago) link
Yeah, I probably made too much of that in my various analogies. I agree it's the sort of blanket insult against all Muslims that I find more offensive.
― o. nate (onate), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― phil d. (Phil D.), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 20:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― Bnad, Friday, 3 February 2006 20:24 (eighteen years ago) link
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 20:26 (eighteen years ago) link
Hmmm. Everything I have found agrees with that. Only Allah should be worshipped.
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:34 (eighteen years ago) link
I am going to work on shutting the fuck up now.
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 20:36 (eighteen years ago) link
Also I'm glad you're reasonable and not devolved into ILX-snippy like I am: I'd have said the same thing to Bnad in a much ruder way. Which also has to do with the weird personal proximity stuff, but whatever.
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:44 (eighteen years ago) link
my bottom line is, if i ran a newspaper, i wouldn't run the cartoons and would look for another way to make the same point. but that said, i respect the reasons for doing it if not the execution, and if we have to ultimately choose sides between the newspaper and the people waving banners saying "slay those who insult islam," i'm on the side of the newspaper. and if we don't have to choose sides and can just find fault all around, fine. but i'm still more with the newspaper.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:11 (eighteen years ago) link
'On the blackboard it says in Persian with Arabic letters that 'Jyllands-Posten's journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs',' Refn said. 'Of course we shouldn't let ourselves be censored by a few extremist Muslims, but Jyllands-Posten's only goal is to vent the fires as soon as they get the opportunity. There's nothing constructive in that.
Hee hee.
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:12 (eighteen years ago) link
And there's where we slide into my personal stuff, of which I'll just give you the short version. I have a particular consciousness here: I grew up in a situation where the people "like me" were immigrants from a big bloc stretching from, say, Senegal to Bangladesh, a bloc not always much internally distinguished-between in the country I'm from. It's inevitable; it's much easier for white westerners to align themselves against that bloc, in parts or as a whole, than it's going to be for me. I can't take sides with myself (secular westerner) against myself (person from a place). And these cartoons, by aiming themselves at the religion instead of the extremism, ask me to do that. And more importantly, these cartoons read to me -- and this is talking-to-your-spouse "how I feel" part, not so much an argument -- to be very much in the same spirit as a lot of very indefensible insults and disdain that get directed more generally at my whole bloc. I guess some people here don't feel that. I don't even know if Horseshoe feels that, and she's closer in than I am. But that's what I feel lurking in this.
The general thing, on this thread and others, is that I'm not against reasoned criticism of other cultures. My problem tends to be that the people who are happiest to do this are often my enemies, and they often do it with a glee that I can't stand, and they do it in a way that promotes and leaves room for very bad things beyond the reasoned-criticism part.
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:35 (eighteen years ago) link
I was proud of him.
I want this precious little bubble of freedom, that an infinitesimal number of humans have had the privilege to exist in, destroyed. Fk everyone else who is, or was, excluded from this. I've got this freedom and I take it for granted, so I should show it contempt.
I don't want freedom of speech, I don't wanna be free to satirise what I choose, I don't want my mum to do what she chooses.
What I want is to condemn the west.
I want girls to grow up and know they'll never be allowed to feel the sun on their face, and that they'll be kept ineducated and housebound. The concept of liberty means I'll defend this position even though it doesn't affect me, yet there are hundreds of millions of women living this life that I'm free from, yet I will defend to the death the rights of the people who keep these souls in such grim supplication.
At 7 I climbed trees, fished in the nearby stream, felt the sun shine on my gangly awkward limbs, kissed a boy, rode my bike, had my first crush, and even watched the Dukes of Hazzard. I'm proud that I support systems that will condemn girls like me to grow up beneath a black woollen rag, forever denied such pleasures and afraid to even contemplate them. My time could be better spent contemplating consumating my marriage at 9, like in Iran, following the teachings of the good book.
I say we give a government grant to assist in a fatwa for the cartoon protesters, like we should have done with salman rushdie. This freedom sh1t that the few of us have indulged in is crap. We should give in to the dogma of a preaching bully boys. I want my daughters to grow up under it's rule, rather than the freedom of the west.
Go boys, lets read the good book and figure out how to diminish and pollute this beautiful ephemeral tapestry we call life.
― sunshine, Friday, 3 February 2006 21:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:40 (eighteen years ago) link
Oh wow. I've felt exactly this so many times, though it's less about being from somewhere than being weirdly entangled with people who are identified as a problem within the secular West. it's almost like my existence, given the narrative of west v. islam, is impossible, which makes you feel odd after a while.
nabisco, you haven't been snippy, as evidenced by the fact that you persuaded someone to think differently about something with words, something I sometimes worry is impossible. yay reasoned debate!
and yeah, I'd like to kiss this Lars Refn dude on the mouth.
― horsehoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 21:40 (eighteen years ago) link
I said upthread that I didn't agree with TOMBOT's analogy and I am leery of the allusions he made but it really does amount to a giant, unwise and unnecessary 'fuck you'.
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:52 (eighteen years ago) link
Yeah, "person from a place" doesn't quite capture it, but there's something there. I think maybe what I'm trying to say is that I feel (I feel) like I have a decent radar for the difference between principled criticism of extremism and blurrier aggression toward a whole. I feel (I feel) like I can tell the difference between someone who's attacking extremism and someone who's attacking, in a way, and by several degrees, me and mine. And for obvious reasons I'm not content with blurry edges on that distinction. For some people, it seems like a little sloppiness there is okay, so long as the general thrust is right. I don't feel comfortable with that, because in the end it'll mean making common cause with people who are against me.
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 22:24 (eighteen years ago) link
that said, i can't help finding the overall drift of this conversation a little depressing. it really just adds to my concern about who exactly is going to defend the values i think are most important to civil society.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 22:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:50 (eighteen years ago) link
Doesn't the Koran have something to say about Muslims living under non-Muslim rule?
The other question I'll ask when I can formulate it more elegantly.
― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― Olde ilxor, Friday, 3 February 2006 23:01 (eighteen years ago) link
xpost: M White, honestly, I don't think it's easy to read the Qur'an in terms of contemporary geopolitics (or at all, frankly; it can be kind of opaque.) The period the Qur'an comes from is so different from our own, where there's national sovereignty and at least ideally some international protection of human rights. I have definitely encountered (smart, historicist) interpretations of it that state that Muslims living under non-Muslim rule must conform to the laws of the nation in which they live: Khalid abu-Fadl makes such an interpretation, I think. I'm sure there are many crazy interpretations, too, though.
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 23:01 (eighteen years ago) link
i know. it's just that you and nabisco are choosing a somewhat different value to defend than me. which is fine. but when i see the bush administration joining the chorus of people condemning the cartoons, it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 3 February 2006 23:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― horseshoe, Friday, 3 February 2006 23:08 (eighteen years ago) link