I don't think we have any discussion about the Danish Muhammad cartoons....

SOME OF US JUST FIND THAT (A) DEPRESSING ENOUGH THAT WE DON'T GET BONERS EVERY TIME WE POINT IT OUT, PLUS (B) SO TOTALLY OBVIOUS THAT THERE ARE MAYBE MORE COMPLICATED AND INTERESTING ASPECTS OF THIS TO TALK ABOUT

-- nabisco (--...), February 7th, 2006.

Honestly, I find it odd that some people on this thread get so uncomfortable talking about the violence, when that seems to be the most worrisome aspect of all of this.

see, here's where i get all ARGH-y. whatever you think of the cartoons, i don't think there's any fair way to see this whole thing as just "a way of annoying all Muslims." the paper's stated reasons and context are very clear. people keep wanting this to be simple xenophobia, because oh how much easier the argument would be, but that's just not what happened. i'm not saying xenophobia hasn't gotten bound up with the issue -- a lot of things have gotten bound up in the issue. but like the guy from die welt says in that wapo piece, it's too simple and smug to just see this as "european intolerance vs. muslim intolerance." it really does have to do with press freedom and pluralism.

(btw who is brandon flowers?)

however i can envisage much the same situation developing over works of art which depicted mohammed - and there, even the basest of shock-tactic motivation would be perfectly valid, i feel.

there's an argument that this isn't so much ISLAM vs THE WEST but rather RELIGION vs SECULARISM. and maybe i have too many emotional stakes in this one (i would quite like to see all religion obliterated etc) but there's no question over which 'side' i'm taking.

i think this is very much a bad thing. otoh open criticism of a religion or aspects associated with a religion in the interests of healthy debate and social progression is a very good thing. it seems they may not have got the balance quite right. but i'm sure this has already been argued to death.

but then we know The Lex loves to deliberately rile certain groups ;)

i really do want to think of it as Religion vs Secularism but who can judge that and would they be right? to the people who burned flags and buildings, they presumably deem the cartoon to be just as bad as actual murder. which is baffling and disturbing, but then why else would they have done what they did? if that attitude is to be challenged it can probably be done only by committing to a belief that 'we' are right and 'they' are wrong - logic is perhaps useless as a weapon. see also convincing a large proportion of people in the world (i don't really want to single out a group e.g. big proportion of Jamaican men) that homosexuality is NOT evil.

steve, no, i definitely think deliberately riling and shocking religious groups is a good thing! unchallenged religion is, i feel, a very dangerous thing.

but then why else would they have done what they did?

because they're idiots?

if that attitude is to be challenged it can probably be done only by committing to a belief that 'we' are right and 'they' are wrong - logic is perhaps useless as a weapon.

but don't most of us believe that we ARE right and they ARE wrong? that a cartoon drawing of a religious figure is pretty unimportant in the overall scheme of things? i'm not suggesting that anyone should force religious crazies to believe any differently - merely that a) we should have more faith in our values, and b) religious values should not be allowed to shape how a society operates.

haha - good luck with that.

oooh! a contest over who can be the most offensive! (I'm pretty sure the West is gonna win this one...)

because they're idiots?

unsatisfactory. granted this was my kneejerk reaction when i saw them on TV, and that's part of the problem. members of the B the N and oh yes the P, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and Hitler were/are all scumbags but not idiots etc. - they all had blinkered, bigoted views but often such views are based on being educated a certain way.

just as much as we believe we are right and they are wrong, so do they believe they are right and we are wrong. Unstoppable force, immovable object. Which will give? If either can?

(b) I restate that we do not have to choose sides. I disapprove of violence far more than I disapprove of anything the newspaper did, and I approve of one of the newspaper's principles (free expression) far more than I approve of one of the frothy-mouthed's (repression), but nothing in the world necessitates taking sides, especially when that's what the worst on each "side" are trying to push us into doing.

(c) Gypsy you keep clinging to the "context" that made this worthwhile -- but you've also said many times that there would have been much better ways to address the same point. Why do you think the newspaper chose this one? It's not, I don't think, incompetence or blindness. They knew what the implications and results of this would be, and I distrust their motives in making the choice they did.

(d) xpost stuff: Going back to my first point and my all-caps shouting above, I can take Gypsy's framing and offer a few reasons why the multiculturalism vs xenophobia framing is more important to me. One is that I think the religion vs secularism one -- at least as framed against Muslim extremists -- is largely settled, in the west and definitely on this board. There's not a question of what "we" (the west) are going to do on that front. There is a question on the latter. We do have xenophobes around us, on this board even, and if you want to get personal, chances are just as likely that my life will be negatively affected by xenophobia as by Muslim extremists. (And I live in New York! Those scales would tip a lot more in Kansas!) Focusing only on the violence (instead of having a conversation about the world) bugs me when I read it as filled with xenophobic self-satisfaction (i.e., "The only thought I'll take from this whole experience is 'They're Bad'"), and it bugs me because it's never expressed what anyone thinks should be done with that disapproval. The implication is that they're Bad, and so we'll fight them. This is weird, because it seems to me more responsible to think about what we can do to support them in being less Bad. This isn't imperialist guilt or asking us to cave on principles -- it means thinking about ways to help. Even Bush at least seems to believe there's a point in encouraging democracy and moderation and development there, whatever the problems with his methods. I worry that these cartoons want (or anyway just will) lead some down a path to giving up on even that -- writing off a whole portion of humanity. Very European, that -- insularity, xenophobia, and maybe even worse impulses.

(e) Which is, for those wondering, why someone like Bush will condemn the cartoons. The whole logic of his mid-east plan is that people really want freedom and democracy, and they've just been hijacked by theocrats and extremists. It's absolutely essential to him to make that distinction, and it was critical in selling military action there -- i.e., "once we get rid of extremists and corrupt governments, the bulk of the citizens will be relieved and just want to go about their lives." Again, methods aside: the general thrust there is better than this. Plenty of people will still believe lots of the same things that extremists do. But this is a long-term project. And I think we should commit to the spirit of the long-term project, if not the invasions -- which is that breaking down extremists demagogues and empowering people in the mid-East to participate fully in their own societies will lead to new generations for whom this kind of fundamentalism has no appeal. This is a big project, but it's the only thing that can work. Rehabilitation is the only option here, because you can't imprison or execute an entire culture.

Is the secularism vs. religion questions really settled? It would certainly not seem so in the U.S. where intelligent design and Ten Commandments debates have begun to flare up more and more and where more Americans are referring to themsleves not only as religious but as 'evangelical'. It does not seem to be the case in Iran or even Egypt. That Europeans do not wish to backslide with the rest of the world makes sense to me.

but is this because they believe they can change things? and would refusing to take a side result in no change occurring?

if it's true that the desire to offend wouldn't exist without the desire to get upset about that which you do not agree with, how can this vicious circle be broken? or do we just allow the circle to continue? is it easier to encourage newspapers to not be so sensationalist and provocative, rather than to dissuade a faction of one culture/group to not react so strongly to provocation? should we be trying to do one, both or none of these things?

Is this true? Is this not equally true if not more so of China, Iran, or Sudan? The West's guilt wrt to the last several hundred years doesn't exonerate present crimes or misdeeds committed by their onetime victims.

this is sort of ridiculous to point out to a dude as well-versed as you, but it's rather presumptuous to presume that it's only the west that's capable of self-reflection. several centuries of islamic scholarship and revision certainly suggests otherwise.

not so much what made it "worthwhile" as just what prompted it. i think there's still some confusion on that (i.e., it was "just to offend muslims"). and i don't think it's really fair to say they knew what the results would be. i think they probably anticipated angry letters, and maybe some muslim delegations demanding to meet with the editor. maybe even some calls for local boycotts. i very, very much doubt they expected anything like what's happened, and i think it's unreasonable to expect them to have. the editor has even said that if he had anticipated that, he wouldn't have printed them.

but see, i don't distrust their motives because they seem pretty clear. i think they intended to be provocative on an issue they thought was important, and i'm sure there was some kneejerk we'll-print-what-we-want-to thinking -- which maybe i'm more sympathetic to than some people, having been there myself in various forms. (granted, mine more took the form of, "we'll use profanity in the paper when appropriate, and put gay-rights stories on the cover, even if both of those things might lose us advertising and get us kicked out of some distribution points," both of which happened.)

but i don't think the newspaper's intent was to "denigrate islam." that's not the call they put out to cartoonists. the intent was to assert that freedom of the press wasn't subject to anyone's religious codes. and remember that they ran a whole range of cartoons, including one that criticized the paper itself, which seems perfectly in keeping with the stated purpose of the exercise. as has been noted elsewhere, the same paper apparently has printed caustic cartoons about christian religious authorities, and presumably would do so again if it felt like those authorities were intimidating people into not criticizing them.

and i admit that part of my take on this, as i've said, is that i'm just not very sympathetic to religious taboos. i don't mind people having them -- don't eat pork if you don't want to, don't work on saturdays, don't take the lord's name in vain, fine -- but i do mind them being imposed either by law or by some kind of threat. and my own experience plays into that too, because i grew up in a religious-minority family (parents are zen buddhists, of all things) and i've been very aware all my life of just how much the majority religion permeates even a society with constitutional protections against religious discrimination. of course, that also makes me sympathetic to religious minorities, but it's hard for me to see this particular conflict as just a minority-vs.-majority one when so much of the pressure and anger is coming from muslim-majority countries. (countries which, obv., have much less protection for religious minorities than the offending country does.)

so anyway, that's the thing: as an agnostic newspaper guy with a religious-minority background, the freedom of expression/freedom of religion angle is the one that most immediately jumps out at me. i do believe in the need for mutual respect in a pluralistic society (or pluralistic world), but i think that's something that comes after those basic freedoms are established.

also, i wouldn't use kansas as a place to test whether religious freedom or ethnic/cultural acceptance gets compromised first. that's a state that keeps trying to dump evolution from the curriculum, and where the attorney general is currently on his own little jihad against teenage fornicators.

xxpost

yes, *rolls eyes*, all of us are hypocrites but this is is just too much.

not to mention how kansas actually came into being, dudes.

m. white, wasn't sure, seemed outta your character, tho it's certainly not beneath others on this thread to pretend that islam is some big unchanging-through-time monolith.

not to mention how kansas came into being, dudes.

if only these people could show just as much anger when christian school girls are beheaded or when innocent people are slaughtered in terrorist attacks in the name of Islam. surely that should be much more offensive? but no! it isnt! instead going after ONE little newspaper in denmark is the way to go.

1. roffle "these people"
2. how do you know about "anger" towards innocents killed in the name of islam? how do you know that doesn't piss other muslims off?
3. awww one poor widdle danish newspaper! roffle again!

c'mon now, anybody whose met more than like 3 muslims from 3 different places can answer this question.

i said "just as much anger", and I haven't seen any. have you? you know there hasn't been any so don't try to make that case.

call 'em whatever you like but don't be surprised when you get called out for sounding like my dead southern grandma re: "minority groups."

i said "just as much anger", and I haven't seen any. have you? you know there hasn't been any so don't try to make that case.

poll one entire "muslim world" then get back to us, pls.

maybe people should just stop referring to them as Muslims if they are going to exhibit what is surely non-Muslim behaviour such as this? the same would apply to people who purport to be of any other faith who then exhibit behaviour contradictory to what that religion teaches or suggests.

That's fine, frankly. Going after Denmark as a nation is either disengenuous or hypocrtical or just stupid bordering on malevolent.

Who gets to define true Muslim behavior?

certainly not the western news media!!!!

I don't know that I am with you at all in this whole idea that we in the west must engage in some sort of "transformational diplomacy" with the Muslim world.

Off to a faux pluralist food court.