North African Muslims are his core audience. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a secret convert like George Galloway, but whether he’s a Muslim or not, the popularity of Dieudonne is very much tied into the Muslim preoccupation with Jews.
So yes, I would even accept “the fact that the mainstream of French Muslims are very receptive towards an anti-Semitic comedian” as “one thing you dislike about Islam” regardless of whether the comedian himself is a Muslim. But I don’t except to get even that much. Just like Teju Cole’s support of free speech, Miller’s willingness to criticize Islam for even the most trivial and obvious thing is always something that will jam yesterday and tomorrow, but never today.
Easily addressed: I’m firmly opposed to any such attempts at censorship. (Of course, that doesn’t mean I think that Muslims or anybody else shouldn’t be allowed to freely criticize any speech they don’t like. Nor do I think that Muslims or anybody else are required to deem all speech equally appropriate in all contexts.)
I think it’s pretty much on a par with the tendency of mainstream organizations of all stripes to attempt to put pressure on speech they don’t like, which typically stops short of actual criminalization or legal censorship but is nonetheless intended to have a repressive or chilling effect.
Compare, for instance, the repressive policies of US Hillel and several other mainstream US Jewish organizations that protest or forbid public addresses by speakers for the pro-Palestinian-rights (and in many cases, anti-Zionist) Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli government policies. Compare likewise the National Baptist Fellowship of Concerned Pastors protesting an invitation to an openly lesbian bishop to speak at American Baptist College, or Catholic organizations protesting campus speakers on the subject of abortion rights, or several majority-Christian national governments banning or censoring the Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ.
There’s absolutely nothing unique to Islam about the way that mainstream groups even in relatively free societies often try to deny the legitimacy of speech acts they consider inappropriate, dangerous or hurtful to their members.
This is no fact, but a persistent delusion on your part. It seems to be absolutely impervious to being addressed by any peaceful and rational means, and I staunchly repudiate the use of any other kind.
Yes, by all means – hold Muslims to the same standard as you hold Christians and Jews. React to today’s news as you would if right-wing Republicans in Congress called for the exclusion of liberal speakers from the United States on the grounds of them being “Christophobic.” This is what I’ve been asking you do to and what progressives never actually do.
While your characterization of the man is generally correct, this bit is a off ; in that Dieudo’s *rapprochement *with the Front National took a weird-ass road to happen.
Dieudonné was basically all about the historical struggle of black people, and Africans in general, under the knuckle of white Europeans. Which is fine - unlike in the US, that angle isn’t really on the forefront of public history and a reminder doesn’t go amiss. But somehow somewhere along the way he got the notion that Them Jews™ were somehow responsible for that, and/or major funders (and thus, in his twisted mind, drivers) of the transatlantic slave trade. From that point onwards he started making more and more antisemitic statements in public ; which caused his erstwhile friends (mostly on the left) to go “eeeerrr, dude ?” and start giving him the Mel Gibson treatment.
Which gave him a whole martyr to free speech/of the international Jewish conspiracy shtick to bang his drum with. Which made him friends in the upper echelons of the Front, since they too had been banged up over antisemitic or racist statements ; and they to ply the martyr trade. And from there it’s been a long honeymoon.
But you’re absolutely right that he’s not really a Muslim. Mostly he’s whatever will be the most controversial at the time, it seems to me.
Sometimes he plays the areligious and even anti-religious card, mocks Islam and Muhammad in his sketches, and was a vocal supporter of the ban on hijabs (and not only in public buildings, but in public period) - but then one year later he also supported the protest of a Muslim girl who’d refused to take off her veil in class. In other interviews he points to the fact that he was raised a Catholic, is a sincere believer, and considers himself “Islamo-Christian” because according to him that’s the same religion when you get right down to it.
The only thing that doesn’t change from day to day is his all-encompassing antisemitism, which is also what cements his crowd of fans who’d otherwise probably be at each others’ throats. He’s popular among part of the Muslim/immigrant community, part of the bourgeois anti-establishment pro-Palestine crowd, and the neo-fascists all together.
Hate conquers all, I guess.
Really? Because in the photos accompanying this article on the quenelle, for example (Dieudonne’s “trademark” gesture that many people argue is an antisemitic “inversion” of the Nazi salute), there seem to be an awful lot of white people posing with that gesture.
Even if Muslims make up a numerical majority of Dieudonne’s followers in France, which you have yet to demonstrate with anything like, y’know, actual evidence, it seems undeniable that his cultural and political clout owe a great deal to the French non-Muslim (in fact, strongly anti-Muslim) hard right.
[QUOTE=Haberdash]
So yes, I would even accept “the fact that the mainstream of French Muslims are very receptive towards an anti-Semitic comedian” as “one thing you dislike about Islam” regardless of whether the comedian himself is a Muslim.
[/QUOTE]
I have no doubt that you would be willing to accept pretty much anything, including such facts as “the geography of many majority-Muslim countries means that they have uncomfortably hot summers” as “one thing you dislike about Islam”.
Oh by the way, Haberdashi, being as you’re so opposed to representatives of the mainstream censoring free speech and all, what’s your take on the official mainstream-representing British national government slapping an exclusion order on Dieudonne to ban him from performing in Britain? I’m sure you went out and protested that ban, right? An ardent free-speech supporter such as yourself certainly would feel obliged to do that.
While I personally dislike Dieudonne’s aggressively bigoted “comedy”, I definitely hope he doesn’t end up getting taken out by a militant Jewish “defense” group or other ideological opponents of his. For one thing, my free speech principles repudiate anybody killing anybody over offensive speech no matter how offensive it may be; and for another, Dieudonne becoming a free-expression martyr would place the PEN American Center in a verrrrrrry awkward position.
And you’re back to punching your vaguely-generalized strawman, I see. Oh well, I guess at least it saves you from some of those embarrassing errors of fact that you seem to get bogged down in whenever you try to discuss specific details.
Yes, I didn’t mean to imply that Dieudonné was a creature of the National Front right from the get-go. On the contrary, he was indeed a pretty fiery anti-racism socialist back in the day. And then apparently he had his “Hitchowitz Moment” and decided to make common cause with the right-wingers.
And, as with the late Christopher Hitchens, the traces of his decidedly non-conservative past gave him a certain cachet of “authenticity” and “independence” that meant even some anti-conservative types could go on liking him. (Not that I’m suggesting Hitchens’s views in the aggregate were anywhere near as hateful or virulent as Dieudonné’s are, just that there are certain similarities in the ways both have used ideology in the service of attention-getting “bad boy” attitude.)
And despite all his pearl-clutching about members of Congress lobbying to deny visas to people based on their hateful speech, I am somewhat doubtful that Haberdash was as upset about US Representative Sue Myrick sending a letter to the State Department asking them to deny a visa to that bigoted asshole Anjem Choudary as he is about Muslim members of Congress asking them to deny a visa to that bigoted asshole Geert Wilders.
I’m pretty sure that the “Muslim” part is what’s really bothering Haberdash, and not the “asking them to deny a visa to a bigoted asshole” part.
Cole is perfectly within his rights to decline to attend the award ceremony.
But to agree to attend, suddenly withdraw, and then hypocritically claim to be a free-speech fundamentalist is a joke.
The award is not for what Charlie Hebdo wrote. It is for what Charlie Hebdo’s writing stood for amidst attempts to stifle freedom of expression by radical Muslims.
Cole caved, putting political correctness above the higher principle of a fundamental allegiance to freedom of expression. I don’t recall anywhere where I said Cole’s opinions should be stifled. It is peculiar that you and others are suggesting I have advocated as such. If you can point out such an instance (which you won’t be able to do) then I would gladly retract it.
Oh, and, your intelligence is fecal matter on the crust of my anus. Does that pejorative add weight to my argument, because one is led to believe you think it does…
Why do you think that? Remember, Cole agreed to be a table head for the American PEN Center gala before the organization decided to give the award to Charlie Hebdo. It’s not as though he had endorsed the decision and then changed his mind about it.
[QUOTE=Stringbean]
The award is not for what Charlie Hebdo wrote. It is for what Charlie Hebdo’s writing stood for amidst attempts to stifle freedom of expression by radical Muslims.
[/quote]
Everybody knows that, including Teju Cole. Cole’s point is simply that he thinks there are better choices of writing that also stood for courage and outspokenness amidst attempts to stifle freedom of expression (in many cases also at the hands of radical Muslims), and that he doesn’t agree with the PEN American Center’s choice of Charlie Hebdo as the recipient.
There’s nothing intrinsically anti-free-speech about saying “I support your right to free expression and I acknowledge your courage in insisting on your right to free expression, but I don’t support choosing you over all the many other authors in similar situations to be the recipient of our award for such conduct.”
As we were discussing earlier, if the abhorrently antisemitic but unquestionably courageous and outspoken French comedian Dieudonne were to be murdered by someone wanting to silence his free expression, he’d be a free-speech martyr too. Do you think it would be “putting political correctness above the higher principle of a fundamental allegiance to freedom of expression” if somebody then objected to giving him a posthumous PEN award to honor what his writing “stood for amidst attempts to stifle freedom of expression”?
:eek: Excuse me for intruding on your conversation with Miller about personal hygiene issues, but I gotta point out: ew, dude, you should not be letting a “crust” accumulate on your anus. Sounds like you may need to wipe more carefully.
Except, it’s clear that he would never actually sign on to honor anyone persecuted by Muslims; evidence includes the fact that the only time he has ever mentioned Badawi or Roy in his life was in his list of “people who should get the award instead of the person actually getting the award” and his lack of mention or involvement in the award that PEN actually did give to Badawi six months ago.
If this award was going to Roy, Cole would call it Islamophobic and racist and boycott and hypothetically suggest it could have gone to Charlie Hebdo instead.
Rushdie continues to disagree with Cole and the other Sharia-compliant cowards in this thread. Is he wrong? Does he not know something about free speech in the face of Islam?
Absolutely bizarre that anyone defending Islam in this thread would bring up Anjem Choudary, since his main issue, apostasy, is the biggest source of embarrassment for the “moderate” organizations within Islam in Britain. Every big name in “peaceful Islam” in the UK – Abdullah al-Andalusi, Usama Hasan, even Mohammed Shafiq who has himself been targeted by the even more hardcore Muslims for his efforts at moderation in other areas, at least before he started making death threats against an MP candidate for linking to a cartoon – has refused to distance himself from the death penalty for apostasy when directly asked.
There isn’t any active Muslim who will say anyone has the unequivocal right to stop being a Muslim. It’s the easiest way to understand that sincere devotion to a religion is poison to correct modern values.
And even with that said, of course Anjem Choudary should have the right to travel to the U.S. until and unless he is convicted of involvement in an actual crime (and not a fake crime like the UK’s “hate speech” laws). The only hypocrites are the progressives who refuse to hold Muslims to the same standard as anyone else and constantly “support free speech, but…”. The position of the people holding correct, superior Western secular values has always been consistent in the face of numerous fizzled “gotcha” attempts from the progressives who think everyone is as confused as they.
Setting aside the basic errors of fact that Kimstu has already pointed out, so what if he had changed his mind? What about being a “free speech fundamentalist” precludes someone from being able to change his mind?
What it also “stood for” was a revolting level of racist and anti-Islamic bigotry. It’s absolutely tragic that they were murdered for it, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were saying really horrible shit, and giving them a reward is implicitly approving all the horrible shit they used to say. It’s absolutely correct for Teju Cole not to want to be a part of that. I wouldn’t want to be a part of it, either. You wouldn’t want to be a part of it, if you didn’t fundamentally agree with the bigotries Hebdo routinely expressed.
You are a truly massive hypocrite.
At least I know how to wipe my own ass.
No, his “main issue” is that he’s a fundamentalist lunatic who is ostracized by British Muslims for being such a fundamentalist lunatic.
Do you ever get tired of being wrong all the time?
And yet, the very people you claim have refused to distances themselves from the death penalty for apostasy have done exactly that.
Free hint: stop relying on the bullshit peddled by the likes of Robert Spencer. You’ll look like less of a fool.
You would think anything in your links would contain a single example of a Muslim saying “there is a right to leave Islam.” Instead it’s a bunch of irrelevant nonsense and the usual whining about being persecuted by being asked questions on a question-and-answer show, though I do enjoy the fact that you included al-Andalusi stating “As Muslims we should not have to change a single Islamic law to please anyone, or anybody.”
The apostasy issue is incredibly illuminating. How about you – will you simply state that there is an unlimited, unqualified right for anybody to leave Islam without consequence? Or will there be whining and equivocation at best?
“Murder is bad, but”
“Free speech is good, but”
“Islam can be criticized, but”
It’s no wonder you’re in a bizarre exchange about butts. "But"s are all the progressives have when it comes to questions of freedom and values.
By the way, since Teju Cole is so concerned about Badawi and Roy, I look forward to him using any one of his six different magazine columns to write about them. I’m sure it will happen any day now.
Wow, this is amazing – not only does anyone killed by a Muslim deserve it, but anyone who so much as expresses sympathy for murder victims is now automatically a racist!
Yeah, keep telling me how there were no progressives celebrating what happened. You probably baked a fucking cake, you ghoul.
Dipshit, you just quoted me expressing sympathy for the people who were shot two posts ago.