Sense & Sensibilities
As I’m sitting here listening to reports on the BBC of the Danish embassy burning in Beirut, I give thanks to non-existent deities for godless atheists like PZ Myers at Pharyngula , who has summed up exactly my feelings on the Danish cartoon imbroglio, so I don’t have to:
“There are some things a cartoonist would be rightly excoriated for publishing: imagine that one had drawn an African-American figure as thick-lipped, low-browed, smirking clown with a watermelon in one hand and a fried chicken drumstick in the other. Feeding bigotry and flaunting racist stereotypes would be something that would drive me to protest any newspaper that endorsed it?of course, my protests would involve writing letters and canceling subscriptions, not rioting and burning down buildings. There is a genuine social concern here, I think. Muslims represent a poor and oppressed underclass, and those cartoons represent a ruling establishment intentionally taunting them and basically flipping them off. They have cause to be furious!
I’ve seen the cartoons, and they are crude and uninteresting?they are more about perpetuating stereotypes of Muslims as bomb-throwing terrorists than seriously illuminating a problem. They lack artistic or social or even comedic merit, and are only presented as an insult to inflame a poor minority. I don’t have any sympathy for a newspaper carrying out an exercise in pointless provocation.
So on the one hand I see a social problem being mocked, but on the other?and here comes the smug godless finger-wagging?I see a foolish superstition used as a prod to mock people, and a people so muddled by the phony blandishments of religion that they scream “Blasphemy!” and falsely pin the problem on a ridiculous insult to a non-existent god, rather than on the affront to their dignity as human beings and citizens. Religion in this case has accomplished two things, neither one productive: it’s distracted people away from the real problems, which have nothing at all to do with the camera-shy nature of their imaginary deity, and it’s also amplified the hatred.
It also doesn’t help that their riots are confirming the caricatures rather than opposing them. Once again, religiosity turns people into mindless frenzied zombies, and once again it interferes with progress.”
Thanks so much, Denmark and the countries like The Netherlands who fanned the flames by reprinting the cartoons so provocatively, thus providing the ammunition for those groups just waiting to foment violence and discord. I’ve heard nothing from Europe as yet but loud claims to the absolute right to free speech, which I support, but nothing yet of its concomitant values, courtesy and civility.
At the same time I’m firmly of the opinion that those protestors who are inciting violence, calling for the beheading of newspaper editors or violent jihad against Denmark, should be arrested and charged with public order offences – as certainly should have happened yesterday in London, but didn’t. I’ve been on enough protests to know that the police clamp down on any sign of incipient or threatened violence, even if it’s only in their own imaginations (remember May Day?). So why didn’t they yesterday? That small number, around 250, protestors were organised extremists who have built this campaign for months, rumoured to be, accordingly to various sources, either Hizb ut Tahrir and/or al-Muhajiroun.
Either the police were scared to make arrests, which is ridiculous ; they were politically pressured not to, which is shameful ( and likely) ; or they missed the tensions building, which is plain incompetent. The signs were there for those with eyes to see : even on the tv reports yesterday you could see the placards had been mass-produced. That demo was planned, as have been the embassy invasions in Damascus and Beirut.
What began as a legitimate political action, the boycott of Danish goods, is supported by many moderate Moslems, just as the Nestle boycott is by white liberal Christians. But these latest incidents of embassy invasion and incitement to violence are of a different order entirely, and have piggybacked a legitimate protest.
This new violent and threatening campaign is as though the Nestle boycott were hijacked by the neo-nazi Stormfront and had begun using neo-nazi tactics. The police should deal with those tactics, leaving the religion and politics out of it, merely dealing with the crimes committed. Unlikely with a Blair government:
‘[…] cabinet minister Peter Hain said politicians should not second-guess the police.”The police monitored the situation, they’re investigating it,” said Northern Ireland Minister Hain.”Those offences should be judged by the police on operational matters, not cabinet ministers, let alone shadow cabinet ministers,” he told Sky News television.”
There is a terrible feeling abroad tht we are teetering on the edge of a precipice.
Tags: Politics Islam Free Speech Europe
