A blog today joined the mass of those supposedly 'defending' the 'right' to be offensive. This time though, the blogger was reasonable and seemed less rabid than the average. So I thought it might be worth a response. The article is called "On offense" and uses the danish cartoons as well as the case of Christian groups suing the Jerry Springer opera and Sudan's teddy bear as examples. Here is what I said:
You are right that religion is misused for political goals - that is not new. And you are right that there are interesting parallels between the various cases you mentioned. You drew them together on the basis that they were all about 'religious offense'. But I would argue that there are nuances to each case that make a discussion limited to this one theme problematic.
The danish Muhammad cartoons issue is a turning point and, I believe, one of the major events of our generation. The issues you mention and many others can only be properly understood with the cartoons as a backdrop.
Firstly, I must take issue with statements about the necessity for newspapers to publish them to show people. I found them online like that *(snapping fingers), and I'm sure you did too. And copious attention is given to "the legitimacy of the criticisms of Islam that were in the cartoons" and more.
But Muslims are not part of our society like Christians are, and this raises some issues in comparing them. We, firstly, have relatively scant understanding of their religion or society beyond vague impressions - many of which are unbalanced. Second, that they are not part of our society makes criticizing them a very different issue than criticizing Christians or Christianity, which are. Lastly, as a group, they are in a relatively precarious social position, which makes them far more sensitive to an attack that to us may seem trivial. This is obviously not true of Christians.
Thinking of Muslims as a society rather than just a religious group helps. Some more devout than others, but they share a common sense of identity. Sure, the cartoons were not offensive to us, and it is hard for us to imagine how they could be. But that is where the tolerance of the West failed: we failed to understand the nature of the offense. We don't have anything in the West to compare to the proscription of images in Islam, so people wrote it off as a 'taboo'. Further, what does the prophet mean to Muslims? Muhammad could be understood as a concept that is central to Islamic society and even the individual's identity. It may be hard to find a parallel in Western culture to help put this in perspective, but that is why cultures are different. The social implications of the cartoons, supported by the West as a whole was an affront to Muslim society, and this cannot be overlooked. The unity of newspapers, politicians and populations must have been terribly intimidating.
2 comments:
And here is the continuation:
armchairdissident Says:
January 29, 2008 at 11:13 am
Z-Lo: The problem I see with your response is that it must inevitably raise the question of Muslim integration within Western societies. If the problem, as you suggest, is that Muslims are not part of our society like Christians are, the question then becomes, “How do they become part of our society?” Is there something about Islam that means that Muslims can never be a fully integrated member of Western societies? Whilst there are certainly fundamental value differences between, say, Britain and Saudi-Arabia, is this because Islam is incompatible with British society? Or is it because the interpretation of Islam by the Saudi authorities is fundamentally incompatible with British society.
One of the questions is, “who is taking offense?” Take the issue of Jerry Springer the opera. One organisation took offense at the play, and sought to shut it down by fair means or foul. That organisation was ostensibly a Christian organisation, but would it therefore be right to say that Christians as a whole were offended, or would it be more correct to say that an extremist group of christians were offended.
The same question should be asked with the Danish cartoons, or the Sudan bear, “Who is actually offended?” Were all muslims in Britain offended because the Muslim Council of Britain says so? Or is it an extreme group of Muslims who are offended? I would argue that it’s the latter. Some might have found them distasteful, much like I find the Archbishop of Wales, or Tony Blair, distasteful, but distaste is not offense, and certainly not reason for censorship. But if I’m right, and it’s purely the extremists who are offended, then we are essentially going to be setting public policy through the lens of extremist religion, and that is bad policy.
# Z-Lo Says:
January 29, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I like your thinking in general. But I do not think that it was only extremists who were offended. This is one of the major aspects of the issue that caught my attention: the alienation and outrage expressed during the events surrounding the cartoon crisis are not limited to extremists. The scale and scope of the Muslim response was what revealed this to me. Also, protests were not limited to violence - Wikipedia calls the boycott of Danish goods in the Middle East one of the largest in history. To say that only extremists were offended is to label a huge number of Muslims extremists - which, I might add, many nowadays seem more and more willing to do. Of course it would also be ridiculous to say that all Muslims were offended when there are so many billion of them - there are certainly some who never even heard about it.
You are right, it does raise the question of integration. I do not believe that there is anything about Islam that means that Muslims can never become fully integrated members of Western society, and I never meant to imply that I did. There are many Muslims who are perfectly integrated.
Our society, though now overwhelmingly secular, is based on Christian roots. So to criticize Christians is in a way self-criticism. But in this time of high tension between Islamic and Western societies, criticism of Islam cannot be understood as similar to criticism of a movie or a book or a politician. Or Christianity or Judaism. In addition to this context, there are other groups which are integrated whose identities and sensitivities we are familiar with and generally respect (at least we know where to draw the line). With this in mind, claiming ‘free speech’ and the ‘right to offend’ itself can be offensive - even to me :]
It is in many ways akin to the issues of Blacks in the U.S., though different in that it is unrecognized as such. Try considering ‘criticism’ and ‘offense’ in that context. Trying to understand the Muslim point of view requires some mental flexibility for a Westerner, but we are asking Muslims to understand us as well, so we can at least try. It is not just about trying to understand Islam, but about their social position and experience.
These elements are essential in understanding the cartoon issue, and I think that the cartoon issue is essential in understanding many of the other problems we face today.
And it continues...
# armchairdissident Says:
January 29, 2008 at 6:49 pm
There are two issues here: one is criticism of people lumped with the designation “Muslim”, and the other is criticism of religion itself.
It is a highly unfortunate side-effect of the press that the term “Muslim” has come to mean both “a follower of Islam”, and “a person from the Middle-East”. It’s also unfortunate that this is a linguistic tradition that appears to have gone back to when the British empire consisted of “moslemen” and “christendom”. Them, Us.
If the criticism of Muslims is code-speak for “dem damned foreigners”, I think I would be inclined to agree with you, and I can see that it is often difficult to separate out puerile racist commentary from religious criticism.
Religious criticism is legitimate. I will always maintain that criticising someone’s belief system should be no-holds verbally barred: all opinions into the circle, last man - philosophically-speaking - standing — and that includes my own humanist-atheist-secular philosophy. Cultural criticism is also legitimate: there is nothing inherently racist in stating that the burkha is misogynistic, or noting that circumcising children purely because of their parent’s faith can be harmful.
Racial discrimination is not okay. Racial profiling on middle-eastern people on the presumption that all middle-eastern people are radical muslims is not okay (and not even sensible for that matter, but that’s a discussion for another day). Presuming that people with middle-eastern origins are radical muslims is not okay.
So, yeah, I can see the racist argument. I can see that anti-muslim sentiment can just be an expression of racist sentiment: the “muslims do this” angle, inciting feelings against anyone who looks “muslim”; and I must admit I’d not really made that connection before, and from that perspective, I can see how people can become so offended at otherwise apparently innocuous statements.
That I get. BUT.
I don’t get the reaction. I don’t get Theo Van Gogh being murdered because he helped produce a film - along with ex-muslim Ayaan Hrisi Ali - critical of Islam. I don’t get why Ayaan Hirsi Ali should receive death threats for her apostasy. I don’t get the idea of a death-sentence being imposed on Salman Rushdie - who was himself raised muslim and turned apostate - for writing a book.
These events preceded the cartoon case, so they cannot be taken in the context of the Danish cartoons. They were genuine discussions about the Islamic religion and were not racist.
So, where does one go from there? Yes, there are discussions about Islam that are racist in nature, and these are intolerable. But there are equally discussions about Islam that are not racist in nature, and the reaction to these has been threats of violence by extreme muslims.
# Z-Lo Says:
January 30, 2008 at 7:27 am
Armchairdissident, I have thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. I think we agree after all : ) There are some who maintain a basic level of respect when criticizing another or when discussing, say, religion, and those who do it with a racist agenda. I say ‘racist’ though it’s not always about race - I think we’re on the same page about that. Discriminating against someone for dressing Islamic is different from criticizing religion or culture.
Now, analyzing extremism, I think it will begin to get really thorny.
I think your reaction that “I don’t get the reaction” is dead right. I don’t claim to understand it either. Although these acts of violence apparently in the name of Islam are absolutely unacceptable, they are complex in nature. I think you are right because it is necessary to acknowledge first that we don’t understand before we jump to rash conclusions. This is the only valid starting point.
I think that in the examples you give, the perpetrators can reasonably be called extremists. But labels like that must be used carefully and not dismissively. If it is used to write them off, for instance as ‘brainwashed’ or ‘insane’, it is at that point that they become an enemy that can only be fought with brute force. But what makes all of this so interesting is that it is ideas, complex contexts and culturally determined world views that are at the center. As soon as we stop trying to understand one another, the only thing that’s left is fighting.
In the examples you give, it was not a precedent, but I believe that understanding the cartoon crisis helps us understand the relevant issues. Many of the sentiments we saw surface there are, I believe, the same. But lines seemed to be blurred between ‘extremists’ and ‘moderates’ in regard to the cartoons. To me, this helped to illustrate the vastness and multi-dimensional nature of the situation. There are those who commit violent acts, those who support them indirectly and those that share their sentiments but disagree with their methods. Then there are the victims, who are overwhelmingly Muslims themselves. Some may be raised uneducated and with a Kalashnikov on their shoulder. Many have a world view and reasoning that is radically different from ours but is not based on religion alone, just like our world view is determined by multiple factors.
In conclusion: The question of combating extremism, I think we will find, differs significantly from theological criticism. Islam itself may be a relevant aspect, but the tendency of people in the West to put the two questions into one is something that many Muslims are offended by. This then feeds the alienation and polarity. So we just need to be clear about our purposes and then ask the appropriate questions: How do we combat extremist violence?
I began this reply intending to make it a short one… oh well : )
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