Fark Islam!

Free speech and Photoshop….what can go wrong. Thanks Glenn.

Written by jay on February 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Terror and media.

Them and Us

Political elites in the West are surprisingly united in the view that publishing the Danish cartoons was an error:

Chirac told the India Today magazine: “I am appalled by what happened as a result of the publications of these cartoons.

“I am, of course, in favor of the freedom of the press, which is a pillar of democracy. But I am equally for respecting everyone’s sensibilities … so I deplore the situation.”

Clinton, on a private visit to Pakistan, said he saw nothing wrong with Muslims demonstrating peacefully but feared a great opportunity to improve understanding had been squandered.

“This is not a time to burn bridges. This is a time to build them,” he said.
reuters international

It is, after all, the responsible, tasteful thing to do.

However, what is going on in the Islamic world is rather different from what the elites would like. In the Palestinian Authority, where the terrorist Hamas organization has just taken power after winning a somewhat democratic election, here is what the guy on the street is looking forward to:

One thing that most the attendees hope for was that Hamas will be able to put an end to the state of social anarchy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “Military anarchy is easier than social anarchy where women sit in coffee shop and drink beer — that’s unacceptable. That’s what causing us so many catastrophes: Allah’s fury and not Israel. When women want to smoke cigarettes, drive cars, go to coffee shops, smoke Nargila and drink beer, may Allah help Hamas in restraining these immoral permissiveness,” Abu Mohammad, 40.

According to Abu Mohammad, Hamas has to impose Islamic law. “In the end, Allah will bring us freedom and victory, but we have to follow his words before reaching these ends. We need to pray, to preserve morals and respect and to stop immoral acts. I have a little girl, here in Ramallah. When she grows up and sees all these girls smoking cigarettes, driving cars and going to coffee shops without a hijab, how can I tell her that wearing a hijab is the right thing to do? It is not simple, and therefore I hope Hamas will liberate us from this shame even if they fail to liberate Palestine.”
ynet news.com

The resistance of Islam to change, to reform, is controversial to say the least. In fact, as Asia Times columnist “Spengler” points out, the entire basis of the American engagement with Islam is that there are moderate, reformist elements within Islam which are looking for alternatives to the iron grip of the 13th century. A more worldly wise and theologically well equiped Pope Benedict XVI is rather sceptical of such assuptions:

And immediately the holy father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said, well, there’s a fundamental problem with that because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it’s an eternal word. It’s not Mohammed’s word. It’s there for eternity the way it is. There’s no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism’s completely different, that God has worked through his creatures [emphasis added]. And so it is not just the word of God, it’s the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He’s used his human creatures, and inspired them to speak his word to the world, and therefore by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there’s an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.
spengler, asian times online

The problem of getting along with Islam is going to be with us for a while. And it is a problem which is implicit in Islam itself. The Koran is a crusading document. Moreover, as the Pope points out, it is seen as inerrant and the direct, immutable word of God by the great majority of Muslims.

The Christian Reformation began with close textual analysis which exposed the flaws in the Catholic Church’s interpretation of Scripture. While the Catholics burnt the textual analysts as quick as it could catch them, the possibility that the 1500 year old traditions of the Church could be called into question, once raised, never again could be ignored.

While it is vaguely possible that the current Islamic orthodoxy might be challenged in a similar way, it is more than a little unlikely. In any case, it is not up to the nominally Christian West to reform Islam. Instead, it makes more sense for us to recognize the essential incompatibility of Islam with a secular, liberal, society and get on with the job of containment.

What the Danish cartoons underscored is that the Islamic view of the nature of society and the Wester view are in fundamental opposition. Where the West, after several hundred bloody and intolerant years of religious war and sectional politics has come to see religion as an essentially private matter. Islam, as exemplified by Abu Mohammad’s desire to have the religious police crack down on uppity women setting bad examples for his little girl, brings religion to every aspect of private life.

A good deal of the debate about the Danish cartoons has been framed within the language of free speech. However, free speech itself is framed within the great Enlightenment premise of a bright line dividing public from private, state from church. The reason we have free speech is that we circumscribe the state. In the West we have come to the conclusion that individuals should have the right to their conscience and the expression of their beliefs. And, from that derives the argument in favour of free speech.

Such a view is simply incompatible with Islam’s view that every aspect of the lives of a believer is subject to Islamic law. This is not an incompatibility which can be resolved by compromise because there is no compromise which will allow the West’s committment to individuals’ freedom of conscience to mesh with Islam’s prescriptions.

Which brings us to the nub of the problem and a nub from which the great and the good wish us to avert our eyes: Islam is constitutionally opposed to the very ideals and practices which are the foundations of Western secular society and, more importantly, its own logic of revelation makes Islam virtually immune to change.

What this means is that there can be no room in Western societies for orthodox Islamists because virtually everything which we believe, and most especially our commitment to freedom of conscience, is anathema to a religious political movement which cannot acknowledge an inviolate private sphere. There is no multicultural principle which can absorb people whose religious commitment requires absolute rejection of any but God’s law.

At a practical level this means that it is a huge error to make any concessions whatsoever to Islamic sensibilities as any such concession simply weakens our own commitment to the principles upon which our liberal democracies have been founded.

The vast majority of Muslims in Canada are not and will never be radical Islamists. Indeed, to the tiny minority of Islamists who too often are seen as the spokemen of the Canadian Muslims, such people are not really Muslims at all as they have absorbed the secular, liberal values of Canadian society. But for all of that, we in the West have to be prepared to answer our own Abu Mohammads. We need to answer with the conviction that if you want the state to prohibit women from drinking coffee, driving cars and drinking beer because you think God wants you to you have no place in Canadian society.

A good deal of the mealy mouthedness which has surrounded the Danish cartoons is driven by the fear that if you tell Abu Mohammad to take his 13th century views and get on back to Pakistan or Somalia or wherever you will be called a bigot or a racist. For many years those two words have terrified people who are neither bigotted or racialist in outlook. However the Danish cartoons have underlined the essential difference between radical Islam and the secular West. They have made it possible for people to say: “sorry, we’ll print and read what we want and you’ll just have to deal with it. If you don’t like it, leave.”

In a sense, the Danish cartoons, despite the blithering of the political and media elites, may have marked the end of the West’s retreat before Islam. Our era’s own, badly drawn, Gates of Vienna.

Written by jay on February 19th, 2006 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.