Tamerlane Could you tell me a little bit more about the Zaydi Shia?
It’s a smallish sect that for ~1,000 years has been centered in mountainous northern Yemen, which they have traditionally dominated ( another medieval stronghold was once along the southern shore of the Caspian sea ). They represent the earliest split in Shi’ism, or at least the earliest one that is still considered Shi’a.
Basically the division was over the succession to the fourth Shi’a Imam ( hence the other common name of “Fivers” ). The designated successor was Muhammed al-Baqir, who followed a cautious, quietist approach to the Sunni authorities ( hence the creation of the concept of Taqiyyah, usually credited to him ). However his brother Zayd led a popular open revolt against one of the last of the Umayyad Caliphs and was crushed ( this at a time when the Umayyads were becoming near-universally unpopular and tottering as a dynasty - they would be overthrown less than a decade later ). His followers accordingly rejected the concept of designated successors and passive acquiescence to repression. They still believed ( and believe ) that only Ali’s line by Fatima were acceptable candidates for the Caliphate/Imamate, but in their mind anyone of that line who was righteous and stood up against tyranny could claim leadership. Said leadership was entirely “human” in conception - it was a divinely sanctioned dynasty, but not the individual position. Zaydi Imams had no special infallibility associated with them.
Accordingly they reject Taqiyyah - one should not dissimulate to tyrants, but struggle against them. They reject the concept of a Mahdi - there is no “Hidden Imam” that will arise to save them from oppressors, they should do that themselves.
Poking around there is a fair number of descriptions on the web. Theologically they are called “moderate” by many, but moderate can mean a lot of things. They’re not very accepting of Sufism for example and the society they dominate is tribal and often violent. Northern Yemen shares more than a few characteristics with the wild tribal northwest of Pakistan - blood feuds and banditry are supposedly rife. One, possibly apocryphal claim ( I can’t remember the source ), is that Yemen was known as the “graveyard of the Turkish soldier” in Ottoman times - i.e. not an easy place to hold or govern.
Yemen is also curious in that FGM, otherwise largely unknown in Arabia, jumped over from the Horn of Africa, with which Yemen as a geographical region has a long and colorful historical association. However it is irregularly distributed ( mostly coastal ) and hence more a Sunni thing - the Zaydi apparently don’t practice it at all.
Wow, they sound quite interesting. Thanks for that info!
Ah well… the thread’s still on the front page.
Heck, I’m not even sure it’s as cut and dried as all that. Looking at the example I gave earlier, for instance, of attitudes in Jordan, I think it’s quite possible that people either interpreted and/or held an idiosyncratic view for the “sometimes” position (see the example of Iranian responses, later on in this post). There were also quite a few problems with the CSM article. For instance…
Depending on how that was interpreted, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War would agree with the 24%.
So, according to that GC, is it “sometimes” valid, under military necessity, to, say, destroy roads or power plants if it is a matter of military necessity? I think that there’s no way to conclude anything other than that, yes, it is sometimes valid under that GC. As I stated in an earlier post, language in a poll can get mighty sticky mighty fast. What does “in defense of Islam mean?” That it’s okay only in the context of ‘total war’ and a campaign of genocide, that it’s okay to ‘defend’ Islam against unflattering cartoons? What? Likewise, what is an attack ‘aimed’ at civilians? Is it the same as one that deliberately ‘targets’ civilians?
It’s also worth pointing out that the CSM piece was a bit… sloppy.
There is no such thing as the “Program on International Public Attitudes”, it’s “Program on International Policy Attitudes”. Also known as PIPA.
They also seriously flub up claims when they say that Americans are more supportive of terrorism than any Muslim countries other than Nigeria. The CSM also doesn’t point out the Orwellian use of language that’s going on. First, from the actual data rather than the CSM infotainment.
The study and the survey questions.
Notice that, on page 17, 80% of the Iranians surveyed said that attacks against civilians were never justified. Right after that, 53% of the surveyed Iranians say that they support targeting Israeli civilians. With that being the case, what does it really mean to say that they never believe that attacks which are aimed at civilians are justified? How can a surveyed group say that attacks against civilians aren’t justified and then turn around and say that they are? And what does it say of the CSM when their own source of information puts paid to their fiction in the very next question after the one they’re citing?
Further, their article was also written in 2007. And yet, the Pew poll I’ve already cited from 2006 has numerous examples where the often/sometimes group is more than 24%, including Jordan as I already mentioned. So either CSM didn’t perform due diligence in the rush to write a sensationalist article, or they ignored the facts in order to paint Americans as more bloodthirsty than almost anybody else.
There is a significant percentage of Muslims who support terrorism (in any given poll), as a large number said that terrorism was valid “in defense of Islam” but the Americans were asked a more nebulous question about whether or not attacks aimed at civilians were ever justified.
Attempting to equate support for killing civilians “in defense of” a religion with a rather nebulous question as to whether or not it’s ever justified to aim an attack at civilians is not good methodology. A roughly equivalent set of questions might be made by asking if such attacks were ever justified “in defense of democracy”. I know that equating collateral damage with the deliberate targeting of civilians in support of a religious ideology are often set up as a moral equivalence, but international law says nothing of the sort.
Of course, with all of that said, the fact that any Americans would feel that attacks targeted at civilians without military necessity were justified then yes, that’s disturbing and they support war crimes. I’d still like to see a much more nuanced set of questions and a longitudinal study carried out to determine what, for instance, ‘in defense of Islam’ means or what circumstances the queried Americans justify attacks that are aimed at civilians.
And, for that matter, what does “aimed at” mean? If military commanders deem it necessary to hit a civilian operated power plant, or a highway that can also be used to move tanks, were they aiming at the civilians or the power plant/highway? Just as a moral equivalence between deliberately wanton killings and legally sanctioned collateral damage is fashionable for some… so too is has it become somewhat muddled as to what the proper use of the words “aim” or “target” are.
Did the survey respondents mean, for example, that the power plant workers should be the target, and if they moved into the middle of the desert they should be bombed and the power plant itself should be ignored? Or did they mean that the power plant itself was the target and that if the power plant was moved into the desert, then it should be bombed and the power plant workers left alone?
Ah well.
As an addendum, I’d also like to see the word “civilian” clarified, especially with the way our modern memesphere has gotten. Major media outlets routinely refer to certain people engaged in violence as “activists”, “protesters”, “militants” or “dissidents”. We’ve had legal wrangling over the status of people who aren’t soldiers but who take up arms. Some factions object to the use of the word “terrorist”, because they see no difference between hitting a military target with collateral damage and hitting a civilian target with no possible military objective. Heck, groups like B’tselem have classified people who were armed, and engaged in attacking people with their weapons as civilians.
In short, basing a comprehensive worldview on one single question in one poll isn’t a very good way to go about anything, especially not with the sloppiness that the CSM showed.
The Koran is a collection of things that Mohammed said during his lifetime.
When Mohammed (PBUH) was younger and didn’t have many followers, he said a lot of good things about Jews and Christians (the “People of the Book”). Mostly he talked about domestic and social affairs, that’s all in the Koran. He didn’t speak much about war and violence, he comes off as being pretty tranquilo during that time.
When he was older and had lots of followers, on the other hand, he was their military leader as well as their prophet. During this time, he personally led his men to raid and capture a neighboring Jewish town, and personally endorsed the killing of all males with pubic hair, and the enslaving of the women and children. He then divided up the sheep and goats and houses and slaves and the rest of the booty amongst himself and his brothers in arms, had sex with one of the slave girls (whose husband and father he had killed), took her as yet another wife, and kept going.
As you might imagine, during this time he spoke at length about war and violence and how it was OK to have sex with your slaves even if you were married … and that’s in the Koran as well.
As a result, Islam has an extremely schizophrenic nature about violence. On the one hand, there’s plenty of gentler verses counseling reason and compassion and talking about peace and the religion thereof. Nice stuff, stuff you could live by.
But on the other hand, if The Boss did it, it must be all right … and The Boss not only committed violence, he wove half of his religion around and through it, as well as making himself very rich off of the legally sanctioned booty.
And that’s the difference I see between religions. If someone wants to live like Buddha lived, to meditate on his navel and achieve enlightenment, all I can say to them is, you go for it. And if someone wants to live like Jesus lived, grow a beard and wear sandals and turn the other cheek, that’s mighty fine by me. And if someone wants to live like the early Mohammed lived, struggling for peace with his neighbors in an unfriendly world, that’s OK too. Hey, I’m a shamanist myself, so who am I to complain?
But if someone wants to live like the later Mohammed lived, to kill and enslave his neighbors and personally spread Islam with the sword, it makes me very nervous …
…
All of which is to lay a context for the question you ask in the OP. The problem with answering your question is, there are two Islams and two Korans, a gentle one and a violent one. But because there has never been an Islamic “Reformation”, to be a true Muslim, you gotta believe all of the Koran, every Sura. So, everyone openly declares to believe it all, but in reality everyone ignores whatever parts don’t fit with their world view.
Now, are the people who ignore the violent Koran the radicals? Or are the people who ignore the peaceful Koran the radicals? Both points of view have ample textual support in the Koran, both sides have plenty of people who favor them to a smaller or larger degree depending on time and circumstance.
And both sides can find support in Mohammed’s life, a man who on the one hand said you can’t force someone to come to Islam through violence, and on the other hand conquered people with the sword and gave them a choice: either embrace Islam, or give part of your possessions to Muhammed every year for the rest of your life … oooh, tough choice for a dirt poor family, but at least he’s kept to the letter of the law, he’s not forcing anybody, right? And yes … even that’s in the Koran as well.
Perhaps the most outrageously violent part of the Koran is the imposition of the death penalty for three crimes: adultery (of course mostly women paid the penalty), murder of a Muslim, and … leaving the religion.
The death penalty for adultery, murder, and apostasy? What’s wrong with this picture? And yet all Muslims claim to believe this.
And for those who are foolish enough to think that the last one (death for apostasy) is some kind of forgotten old-time rule, check out the writings of Abul Ala Mawdudi. (To forestall possible objections, yes, it is not the actual law in very many countries. However, death for apostates is certainly in the Koran, so all Muslims claim to believe it. And it certainly continues to cause heaps of problems, including death, for some of those who leave Islam.) In short, the Koran is as loving and peaceful, and it is as violent and anti-human, as anyone could ever want.
…
Now, in the interests of personal disclosure and transparency, I am obliged to reveal that I do have a dog in this fight. You see, I am an Islamocriminal. And not just an Islamoscofflaw or an Islamojaywalker, I’m an Islamofelon. My crime against humanity is that I am a cartoonist who has drawn the Prophet (PBUH).
As you may imagine, I found the response to the publication of the Danish cartoons to be reprehensible. Yes, I suppose it was a minority response, although when a mob of hundreds of people beats you to death that might not matter much … but the sight of “religious leaders” or imams or whatever they call themselves urging their followers to violence, and issuing death decrees and rewards for anyone who killed cartoonists like me, was … mmm … let me just call it very revealing of the Islamic ambivalence regarding violence. My cartoons of the Prophet from that time are here (375 Kbyte pdf).
And one thing I can say for sure (at the risk of being banished to the Pit), is that anyone who thinks I deserve execution for drawing those cartoons is definitely a …
… Muslim …
Just a couple of random points, intention:
I think you’ll find the penalty for adultery (in the quran) is 100 lashes or exile and this is only for pre-marital sex.
There is no prescribed punishment for extra-marital sex (at least not in the quran). Hadith suggests stoning to death but then the hadith say a lot of things.
Certainly true of the salafists who believe one must follow the path of the prophet, not so true of everyone else.
I found this whole issue to be somewhat yawn- inducing. Leaving aside the initial drawing of the cartoons and concentrating on the republication of them in numerous magazines, it seemed to me highly unnecessary and just going out of the way to be offensive.
It is prohibited in islam to portray any human likenesses but especially ones with religious significance and even more particularly Mohammed himself. If it was absolutely necessary to draw Mohammed for some extreme reason (eg it would save someone’s life) then go ahead but if the only reason you’re doing it is to piss off the muslims then, really, you ought to find a different and more fulfilling interest in life.
I don’t think you need to bother with the PBUH. That’s generally just something muslims say. Coming from a non-muslim, it’s a bit superfluous. Especially if you’re a non-muslim talking to a load of other non-muslims.
Coming from you (as a non-muslim) it’s a bit like putting RIP after the name of a dead person every single time you mention a dead person. Would get tiresome pretty quick.
mutantmoose, thank you for your thoughtful and interesting reply.
Consider my ignorance fought. I found an interesting analysis of the question here. There seem to have been two schools of thought since day one. One held for lashing, the other held for stoning. Lashing takes its authority from the Koran, and stoning from not one, but a number of the Hadiths.
So from the beginning we have again this continuing dichotomy in relationship to violence. It is worth noting that the “gentle” side of this particular dichotomy is a whipping that could cost your life, take out an eye, or strip the flesh off of your ribs … and the “violent” side advocates using small stones so that the victim’s death is slow …
My actual point was not about adultery, however. It was about the death penalty for the heinous crime of apostasy (leaving the religion). Islam bills itself as “the Religion of Peace” … and its Holy Book sanctions killing people who want to leave said Religion of Peace … like I said, dichotomy.
Again, you are correct. However, to try to illustrate the moral dilemma this poses to all Muslims and not just salafists, suppose after a lifetime of preaching “turn the other cheek” Jesus had seized a sword from one of the Roman soldiers and, with the aid of his disciples, killed all the soldiers, only to later surrender peacefully and walk to his crucifixion.
I’m sure you can see the difficulty that this hypothetical occurrence would pose for the “turn the other cheek”, peaceful message of Christianity. The very real occurrence of Mohammed’s personal leading of campaigns of war, subjugation, and rape poses that exact same problem for the “religion of peace” …
I’d have to ask for a citation for the prohibition, as there are a number of early Islamic portraits of Mohammed still extant. For that many to survive, images of Muhammad must have been common at the time.
But more to the point, are you truly saying that a religious leader offering a reward to his followers to kill people like me is … boring? Because where I come from, that’s a crime, offering to pay someone to commit murder.
The republishing of the cartoons was done as an act of solidarity with the original cartoonists and their publisher, who were under threat of death. If more papers had had the balls to publish them at the time, we’d be better off now. I did my cartoons for the same reason, for solidarity and to show that “die gedanken sind frei” … your speculations about my motives were totally incorrect.
You see, what you are condoning and calling “boring” is actually called “extortion”, which is using violence and the threat of violence to get your way. It is not a religious right or duty, it is a crime.
Certainly, we should all be polite to our neighbors. I don’t put out ham sandwiches for my Muslim and Jewish friends, nor serve steaks to my Hindu friends.
But that’s because I like them, not because they are threatening me with death.
This is particularly true when what cartoonists are threatened with death over is ideas. Thoughts. The images in my head, made real on paper. Sentencing people to death and offering rewards for their murder because of their ideas is a crime against humanity in my book, no matter how “boring” it is in your book.
Actually, I did it for two reasons. 1) to see what the reaction would be, and 2) because people assume they know what I mean by it …
My best to all,
w.
Not too sure about the website you linked to - it seems to try to justify it’s conclusions by means of a mathematical analysis of the verse numbers of the quran.
Regarding the violence you mention, well islam’s not a fluffy, cuddly religion. It’s not buddhism. Even so, the death penalty for apostasy is only mentioned in one verse and then somewhat obliquely. It is on the statute book in a minority of muslim states (the usual suspects being among them) and even in those states is rarely actually carried out.
Certainly it’s a problem wrt issues such as freedom of thought and religion although social ostracism is the more likely outcome of apostasy than execution by the state.
Mohammed was involved in campaigns here and there during his lifetime but it’s a fairly muddled mess of attack and counter-attack. There were many groups around, not all friendly to his grouping and some were outright hostile and attacked him. When he attacked others, it was often a case of getting your attack in first before they launched their next attack. Primitive warlords abounded in pre-islamic arabia.
Re the cartoons, you’re right that there exist a number of portraits of Mohammed. I think it was mainly the shia who did not have such strong prohibitions against idolatry. In any case, I think I didn’t make myself clear in that I was talking more about the situation as it is now than how it has been historically.
At the moment, among the sunni they seem to feel pretty strongly about it wouldn’t you say? I think where we start to part company is where you say this:
The cartoons were published - people were offended. I don’t see the solidarity in offending them again.
I know what you’re getting at and I sympathise with your ultimate point. For example, the Salman Rushdie affair is a battle over ideas and freedom of expression. I just don’t see it with the cartoons (not with the republication anyway).
What did you think people would assume you meant if not what it usually means? Pile Bananas Under Him?
(Apologies for any errors, it’s really late here - I need to go to sleep and I’m not thinking entirely straight. )
Sorry, I meant to say - what did you mean if not what people would assume you meant…or something like that
I choose option B.
mutantmoose, as before, a thoughtful and interesting post. You say inter alia:
If that was all that happened, that people were “offended”, you’d be 100% correct. However, you left out the tiny little insignificant details about the riots and the death threats requiring police protection and the religious leaders offering rewards for the death of the cartoonists and the people murdered and the property destroyed … but yes, other than those minor points, your theory works.
You keep trying to claim that the issue is that the Muslims were “offended”, which has absolutely nothing to do with it. I don’t mind “offended”. I do mind “death threats”. My expression of solidarity was solidarity with those whose lives were threatened by religious extortionists. Now, you may have some reason to be expressing your solidarity with the other side, with the religious extortionists, as you are doing now. Me, I have no solidarity with them at all, and I find it astonishing that you defend them in any way.
What, cartoons are some kind of second-class freedom of expression? Either I am free to draw and publish (or re-publish) the images in my head, or I am not. Or to relate it to the current situation, either I am threatened by death for what I draw, or not. Bowing to the death threats and sucking up to the religious extremists, as you so passionately advocate under the guise of not wanting to “offend” them, is dhimmitude of the highest order.
I thought that people would assume I meant what the Muslims mean by it … however, if you read my cartoons (cited above in my first post in this thread), you must know what the odds of that are.
In fact, I try to think up a new and interesting combination of words each time I use the term … I do like “Pile Bananas Under Him”, however, if you don’t mind, I’ll use that next time … only inside my head, of course. I do it as an exercise, to remind myself that the map is not the territory, and to stay aware that it is always dangerous to assume that I understand what someone else means.
w.
PS - perhaps I can clarify the idea of “solidarity” with an issue that came up in a British Council Office. One of the workers had a piggy bank on their desk. One of the other workers, who was Muslim, complained to management. Management told all of the workers that they could not have piggy banks, or any representation of pigs, on their desks.
Now if my workmate had a pig on their desk, and a Muslim worker came to them and politely asked them to remove the pig, I’d side with the Muslim. It’s a polite gesture that costs nothing.
However, the day that management ordered the workers not to have pigs on their desk, or the day the Muslims threatened the worker with the pig, I’d bring every piggy bank I had to work, and I’d rent one of those cute miniature pigs and I’d sit with that pig and eat a bacon sandwich in the middle of the lunchroom. I would do it out of solidarity with the poor threatened fool who is just saving his pennies in a piggy bank. The question is not whether someone is offended. It is what they do when they are offended. Me, I’m offended by people who advocate giving more concessions to the Muslims than Hitler got from Chamberlain (and with as little result) … but I don’t offer a reward for killing them.
Here’s another story about the same issues. I worked for many years in the field of village-level community development. As a part of that, we had a campaign in a very remote (and as the story shows, non-Muslim) part of the planet. Our campaign encouraged people to keep their traditional customs and culture alive … who could object to that?
One day I was talking to a woman who told me that our “Hold on to your Culture” campaign was incredibly destructive. I asked her why. She said “The custom and culture of our village is that the women have no rights. They are property, like the pigs. After years of contact with the outside world, we women were finally getting some rights.”
“And now you come in with your pious ‘Hold on to your Culture’ bullshit, and all the men say ‘See, our customs and culture were right all along, you women are the same as pigs.’”
I learned a couple of big lessons from her.
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Some historically venerated customary views, whether culturally or religiously based, are not worth a bucket of warm spit, and in some cases they are very destructive to everyone involved.
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Sometimes it is necessary to “offend” people in order to move forwards, and some people’s minds are so closed that almost anything “offends” them.
So yes, it definitely “offends” the men of that woman’s tribe for her to stand up and speak her mind … now ask me if I give a shit. What I learned from her is that to effect change, or at times even just to maintain our freedoms, sometimes we need to be willing to “offend” those with ridiculous, outmoded, anti-feminine, or anti-human ideas and beliefs. Giving in to their oh-so-easily-offended sensibilities does not help any of us.
Obviously people went over the top but that’s irrelevant to the argument. The argument is about whether it’s right to offend people not about what the reaction of those people is once offended.
So, given that, I’m glad we agree that my theory works.
I’m not defending those who riot or make death threats, they should be dealt with through the legal system in the normal way. I have no reason to express solidarity with those people, I’m completely non-religious. If you wish to show solidarity with the original cartoonists then I would suggest you do it in a different way. By supporting the republication of the cartoons you are not showing solidarity you are merely causing offence - again.
I think art is equal to the novel in every way. If you have an idea for a drawing that has something to say then by all means go ahead. The republishing of the Mohammed cartoons says nothing new. It merely repeats what has already been said with the originals. The Satanic Verses was a new piece of art - it had something to say.
There is no reason to republish the cartoons other than to cause offence again. There was a reason to write the Satanic Verses because it said something new. This is how I would differentiate between the two things. This is why I would defend the publication of the Rushdie book but not the (republication) of the cartoons.
It’s not dhimmitude, it’s not wanting to offend people in the same way as I would not want to offend you. You need to be careful not to let your eagerness to not be a dhimmi cause you to go over the top in doing things that are just causing offence for the sake of causing offence.
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Hey it’s fun this game. You can have that one for free.
Re the example of the piggy bank. It’s odd because I think I would do the exact opposite to you. Muslims are forbidden to eat pork, they’re not forbidden to look at pigs. If my workmate asked me to remove a piggy bank, I think I would tell him to fuck off.
Despite what you may think from the above, I’m not averse to offending people if it’s something worthwhile. I would know that he can’t really be offended by a piggy bank and if he is then it’s a mental problem he has since there’s nothing in the religion about piggy banks.
If management told me to remove it then I’d probably do it to avoid getting the sack. Either that or look for another job but that would be a bit silly - resigning over a piggy bank.
And re your second story: Yes, some cultural and religious traditions stink and I personally would not adopt them. But I think, to some extent, you just need to worry about what you do in life and not worry about what other people do. This is applicable to all facets of life IMO.
I’m all in favour of working to change obnoxious traditions and I would be happy to see all religions fade away in the future. But there’s a right way of doing things and a wrong way. Don’t underestimate the power of the internet in getting arguments such as the one we’re having right now out across the world. And this force will only get bigger and bigger.
I posted this earlier, but it must have been during the part that got erased.
I lived two years in a largely Muslim village in west/central Africa.
During that time I never got a single bit of pressure to convert. During Ramadan I’d get some curious questions about why I wasn’t fasting, and now and then someone would say “So why aren’t you Muslim?” but a simple answer like “My family is not Muslim” was all it took to end that. I could even joke about it- often I’d say “You have to pray five times a day- I only have to pray once a week” and everyone would laugh.
People in this part of Cameroon did not like Arabs, who they regarded as violent people. There were the occasional Osama Bin Laden tee-shirt on sale at the market, but people were hazy about who he actually is and often the other side of the shirt would say something like “Beverly Hills 90210”. On September 11th, everyone who knew what that date meant had warm words for me and angry words for the people who did it.
People converted back and forth fairly often- usually for family reasons. The word for God in the local language was “Allah” no matter what religion you were (it was odd hearing prayers to Allah at the Catholic church!) and there was a real sense that it was all the same deity.
It wasn’t perfect-happy-land by any means. Women’s rights were terrible and education wasn’t in great shape. But it does show that it is possible to have an Islamic society that values other religions, doesn’t value violence, and doesn’t try to force their religion on others.
mutantmoose, you say:
Perhaps you have been arguing about “whether it’s right to offend people”. However, I have not. Why not? Because in general, we agree that gratuitously offending people is not a good thing. So there’s no argument between us about gratuitous offense at all, read back over the thread.
Where we disagree is in how we should respond to people who react to some perceived slight (real or imagined) with violence, threats, and extortion. You think we should give in to those people who respond to some fanciful offense with violence, by not doing whatever they might claim offended them in the first place.
I, on the other hand, think that the Muslim response to the Danish cartoons was wildly disproportional, unjustified, and criminal. And not criminal in the sense of “real bad”, but criminal in the sense of “punishable by jail in most countries”. They have moved the game out of the arena of “I feel offended”, to the arena of “I am offended and so I will riot and kill you and burn your house down” … and yet amazingly, you still persist in thinking that the issue is whether we should have offended them.
When a group kills people and burns down houses because he doesn’t like a cartoon, a cartoon for goodness sake, I’m sorry, but at that point the issues of whether they are justified in being offended by cartoons and whether I should have offended them fall off the table. I don’t give a rat’s ass at that point whether someone is “offended” or not. We don’t let somebody off on second degree murder just because they say “But the victim offended me! He really did!”.
At that point, the issue is not whether it was “right to offend” the murderer. Through the murderer’s own actions, the issue has become what he did when he was offended. And when the Muslims were offended (or claimed to be offended, since most of them hadn’t seen the cartoons), what they resorted to was murder, arson, mob violence, and extortion.
You seem to have some theory that the proper way to respond to this type of criminal threats and extortion is to give in immediately, and to not do whatever the extortion artists are trying to stop us from doing. Both the radical Muslims and the Mafia love guys like you, you are their natural prey. They complain of some imagined offense, like a cartoon that most of the complainants had never seen, and you advise everyone to roll over and play dead, to not offend, to not republish the cartoons, not to be mean to the poor offended parties … how sweet is that for them? That’s why I called the attitude “dhimmitude”, because dhimmis can only live in a Muslim society if they don’t make waves as you advise.
Me, I’m a wavemaker when their actions turn criminal. My theory is that giving in to extortion is rarely a good idea, and that the proper response to extortion is to oppose it by whatever legal means are at hand.
So, it appears that between someone like yourself, who thinks we should turn belly-up at the first sign of religious extortion, and someone like myself, who thinks that caving in to extortion is almost always a mistake, there is a very wide gulf. We may just have to agree to disagree.
w.
even sven, I had seen this when you posted it, but then it went away. Thanks for reposting.
As you say, there are Muslim societies that are more tolerant, and Muslim societies that are less tolerant. And, as is common around the world, in general the more diversified a society is, the more tolerant it is. Your village had a Catholic Church, for example. And if you actually know people who are Catholics, or Muslims, or any group, it is much harder to believe that those folks are the devil incarnate. I experienced much the same thing as you when I worked in Muslim villages in West Africa.
And your point is well taken, that there is nothing inherent in Islam which forces people to be mean to their neighbors, it’s just one of those options that gets you bonus points and virgins in Paradise … and yes, I’d say that the radicals are in fact in a minority among Muslims.
The problem with that is two-fold. First, it is a very substantial minority. And second, it is a very, very violent minority. A few months ago, a Shiite (or was it Sunni) bomber loaded a truck with bombs and covered it with watermelons. Then he drove to the nearby Sunni (or was it Shiite) village, and offered an incredibly low price for the melons. When the women and children of the village were gathered around the truck, he set off the bomb …
See, what many of y’all seem to be missing is that the overwhelming majority of people killed and injured by radical Muslims are Muslims themselves … and what the Shiites did to “offend” other Muslims is that they believe that fourteen hundred years ago, their man should have been the leader of Islam, but he got aced out by the opposition. And the Sunnis “offend” the Shiites by believing vice versa.
Now mutantmoose would have us believe that if only those Muslims hadn’t been so crass as to “offend” the other Muslims, that everything would be just fine, no bombs in watermelon trucks and the like.
Me, I think the problem is not the “offense”, everybody offends somebody sometime, although holding a grudge for 1,400 years seems a bit extreme.
For me, the problem is the violence, and that will never be cured by ceasing to “offend”, no matter how hard we might try. If people kill people because the are “offended” by a cartoon that they never even saw, the problem is not the offense. It is the violence.
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I think radical Islam would include the support of terrorism. There are parts of Islam that I believe are radical which don’t support terrorism; like automatic death sentences for those who leave Islam - that’s pretty radical. Or Muslims who believe they have the right to kill their daughters if they feel shamed by them. That is deeply radical as far as I’m concerned. But I think this thread is discussing radical Islam that supports terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda or suicide bombings, etc… They are Muslims in a minority, I believe.
No, I think we should let the law deal with them.
It wasn’t the “muslim” response. There’s no such thing as a “muslim” response. It was the response of a group of whackos. By republishing the cartoons you are punishing all the other muslims (the vast majority) who were not involved.
See what I’m getting at - the set of all muslims is x, the subset of muslims who acted unlawfully is y. By the actions which you support you are punishing set x who have done nothing.
They’re a bunch of loons, we agree.
No, if they’ve acted illegally then prosecute them, send them to jail. That’s not giving in.
There’s not as wide a gulf as you think. You’re just acting emotionally (understandably) instead of thinking rationally.
The issue that you think we are discussing, I agree with you 100% - freedom of thought. But we’re not discussing what you think we’re discussing.
- There’s no need to offend the full set of muslims (again) for the actions of a few loons
- There’s no need to offend them again anyway when the law can deal with the miscreants
- They do, on this occasion, have a point in that their religion does indeed prohibit idolatry especially portraying Mohammed with a bomb on his head etc
I know muslims can be a bit annoying with their endless strictures and rules but that doesn’t mean they’re not right sometimes - even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Maybe you’re right that we’ll have to agree to disagree but I at least wanted to make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
Please Be Understanding Here (hey I’m getting good at this)
What I see being ignored is that such acts of terrorism have much more to do with politics based on cultural situations in history that were accidentally linked to religion than they have to do with religious belief.
Nothing in the Catholic religion supports blowing up pubs. Nothing in the theology of the Presbyterian Church or the Church of Ireland supports taking random Catholics off the street and shooting them because one’s Uncle Seamus was hurt three weeks ago.
Not one attack by the IRA or any of the TLAs beginning with U (for Ulster) was carried out over a disgreement about Transubstantiation of the infallibility of the pope. Not one. That fighting was carried out for forty years, (80 if one includes the preceding subjugation of the Catholic population for economic reasons, several hundred if one goes back to the Plantations), because there were social and cultural conflicts in which religion was just a marker for which side one was on.
Portraying that feud as “religious” was always silly and was every bit as wrong-headed as portraying the conflict between Sunni and Shia in Iraq as being attributable to Islam. Ian Paisley always made a big deal about the “whore of Rome,” but I never saw an interview with a member of the UDF that mentioned Paisley’s anti-Catholic rhetoric that included his odd theology.