Animuslimation
It can't hurt you. It's just a "cartoon". No reason to kill people over cartoons. Cartoons are just humorous, satirical, and/or otherwise creative visual ways to express opinions. My dear Mr. Mencken writes: “…shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.” It takes devout theologians to riot about cartoons. Religion is not simply nonsense and superstition... it's a Neurological Disorder. [this post will self destruct]
posted by Aethlos at 12:43 AM
15 Comments:
I've updated the link at BaT, thanks for the info.
On the cartoons, I've noticed that in the past 20 years, other religions -- if mocked by cartoons -- either sue someone or start a boycott. The particular religion mocked here, well, they burn shit and slit people's throats. Slightly different in my book.
I've been traveling for two weeks and haven't been able to read much. What contract did you sign?
Did you see the sketch of Mohammed done completely with the hand-written screed "Je ne dois pas designer Mahomet!"
Again with the Mencken. Don't make me pull an intervention on your gay-boy hoop.
GREAT post Spence! Made me smirk. Quite clever this week, I haven't loved you this much since the fucking scary Bling Burger King post.
okay chiron.. i'm not that fancy... you're going to have to translate for me???
"I must not draw Mohamed...I must not draw Mohhammed..I must not draw Mohaammed.I must not draw Mohamed...I must not draw Mohhammed..I must not draw Mohaammed." `:)
What saddens me most about this whole afair is that they very people we need within in Islam to speak out against this violence are at the same time largely alienated by these cartoons. I'm as passionate an advocate of a free press as any, but you'd have to be a little brain dead to not believe that on the street in Damascus or Tehran (place we seek to "reform", yet suddenly now hold to the same standard used in Copenhagen), the reaction is going to be much different.
Worse yet is consensus among the Western Punditocracy that this all about something fundamentally bad in Islam;a tendency towards violence, as one of the commentors on this thread has noted, an "insecure faith" as Andrew Sullivan liked to refer to us a few days ago. Mr. Sullivan and Company don't quite realize that the view is quite different from DuPont Circle as it is from Cairo and the burden on them is neither to create nor implement policy. As such, they have no need to come up with any argument more elegent than "Look at those angry, savage wogs".
Whatever your views on organized religion (and mine are rarely positive) this was provocation. It's protected, and must always be protected, but it's provocation. It does not justify the most extreme results we've witnessed in the past few weeks, but it is still provocation. And if anyone thinks it's a problem with Islam per se, ask yourself who your audience is. I can almost guarantee it is not going to be actual Muslims.
-haniok
I lived in Indonesia... the fourth most populace country on earth, and MUSLIM. But you don't hear about the same kind of middle east insanity coming out of Lombok. Christians, jews, and muslims get along fairly well in Indonesia. So please don't think i'm singling out any one religion for ridicule and scorn. They are ALL ridiculous. But a few radical groups in Islam are more wicked, sinister, and bloodthirsty than any i can find in any of the other religions (at present). They all have neurological disorders... but not as many with the christian neurological disorder are blowing up busloads of school children and killing people over cartoons. At PRESENT. If the Crusades or the Inquisition were still in swing... my harangues wouldn't be aimed at Islam.
I was addressing the aggregate of commentary out there, including on this comment section. I otherwise completely agree with your actual post.
I think my point would be best expressed by saying that I am torn right now between the emotions of deep embarassment and shere disappointment. Embarassment with my own co-religionists for once again behaving like children, and disappointment at my fellow liberals for failing to see this as something other than a freedom of the press issue.
Many Muslims would agree with me and are therefore at a loss to really offer either side what they want to here; that we either believe these cartoons should not be published or that they are in any way acceptable to us.
-haniok
i used to be a devout christian... and i once saw a painting of someone defecating in the mouth of christ. it made me physically ill, and sent me into an apoplectic outrage... but i also remember, very specifically, believing with all my heart that the filthy creature that painted it... was totally within his/her right to both create and exhibit it. Responding to opinion with physical violence--to the point of homocide is barbaric, uncivilized, and totally immoral. I'm ashamed of my muslim brothers and sisters who are participating in this, and i'm proud of the ones who condemn it.
Well, I think it's been clear to anyone who's been following news from region in the past several weeks ("Wait a minute? How did Hamas win?!!") that this an area where there exists no tangible civil society within which there exists a safe space for self-critique, disagreement, and dissent. A free press and a fully developped concept of free expression are among the most salient aspects of a healthy civil society and it exists nowhere in the Middle East (i'm imposing a geographic distinction, as we haven't heard much coming out of Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, or Dhaka on this issue).
I say this is someone who had to sit through enough the bullshit about human rights being "a wholly Western construct" while studying in Egypt. I say this as someone whose mosque (in fucking NORTHBROOK, of all places) all but got on board with the Salman Rushdie fatwa back in the '80s. I never underestimate Muslims capacity for outright idiocy. I've had enough. But it's just not clear to me where so many get off (considery how far up the region's ass we are these days) expressing surprise at this kind of reaction.
It's almost like we can't reconcile our aspirations for the region and its component parts (it's religion, politics, and society) with the reality on the ground.
"wholly western construct"... yes, that is absurd. From a wholly pragmatic standpoint: the saddest irony about this, is that all this violence GUARANTEED that countless more people would see these cartoons. If no one would have rioted... the cartoons would have faded away. I certainly would never have heard of them... but this reaction has assured hundreds of millions of people will see them who would not have otherwise. Backfire.
'"wholly western construct"... yes, that is absurd.'
-yes, and it sounds even scarier when you hear it in your polisci small section at UW-Madison.
It's not been my experience that in dealing with extremists of this stripe that they are able to see the circumstances beyond themselves. Pragmatism is not their strong suit, and it's not just confined to extremists. As my cousin, a florist on the Upper East Side, once remarked (about something that had nothing to do with politics . . . I believe about an argument he got into with this Venezuelan chick he was sleeping with), "I am an Arab Man and my feelings need to be taken into consideration."
Without the slightest tinge of irony. I wish I could explain why this is the case. The truth is that you're simply not going to find any explanations within Islam itself, and obviously your experiences in some Muslim countries would suggest the the same, but it really does feel like a Gordian Knot and those of who by design are asked to straddle both cultures are not altogether encouraged by these cartoons or the reactions they inspired.
-haniok
i can't imagine. I wish i could. i wish i could see the whole thing through your eyes for even a minute. that's part of what's so frustrating to me about all of it... i really have no idea what is going on the heads of the rioters. It's so insane to me... i wish i could get my brain around it. I wish there was an analogy to my life... something someone could publish that would make me riot... but i can't imagine it.
I've seen it with my own eyes for most of my life and I still don't understand but perhaps the best analogy I could think of is the following:
Several years back, when my grandmother was still alive, my brother and I went to have lunch with her in her apartment in Cairo. The street outside is noisy, chaotic, and largely unpaved. The buildings next door have their roofs missing. Two young men were getting into an argument down in the street, about what we're no longer sure. They both dispersed, until about ten minutes later when one of them came rushing back onto the street after the other one, weilding a butcher knife, and screaming "I'm going to kill him! I'm going to kill him! Somebody stop me before I kill him!"
Suffice it to say, he didn't put up much of a fight. But imagine that machete-wielding young man, all full of bravado and anger with no one in particular to direct it to. He probably doesn't have the opportunity to go to college and get a nice cushy civil service job which he can report to for only four hours a day for the rest of his life. John Q. Cairo, let's call him.
His energies wasted, his talents latent, his intellect dulled by sermon-after-sermon from the imam down the street, his focus will always remain on easy targets and easier comforts. No easier comfort than the Almighty, who's name he sees written literally everywhere and whose Messenger is supposed to represent the totality of his existance. And there's simply no easier target than a third-hand representation of a cartoon that someone tells him not only insults the Prophet but also DEPICTS him. These are the choices, which to most of us would look like the lack thereof.
And here is where the analogy loses even myself because I, like you, have choices. That is partly why it is so hard to imagine.
btw, one interesting bit about all this coverage was that this cartoon wasn't particularly well-received in Iraq either.
-haniok
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