Rising above your normal and usual bestial tribalism.  The call of Barack Hussein Obama.

Yeah.

And the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

In a liberal democracy, it's crucially important that a person's right to be a total douchebag not be limited by the state (I think it's in our Constitution somewhere). So while I think he should be ostracized -- shamed -- by reasonable people everywhere, it warms my heart that there are no widespread calls* for the Dutch government to censor the latest stupidity from xeonphobic Dutch wingnut (is there another kind of Dutch wingnut?) Geert Wilders ...

As The Observer reported last week:

The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Koran being torn up and otherwise desecrated [Ed: It's since been put on hold until March].

Dear Comedy Central,

It is with great concern that I learn of your censorship of the show "South Park". Your refusal to allow "South Park" to broadcast an image of the Prophet Mohammed has caused great harm to the cause of Muslims in the United States and the rest of the world. You have inadvertently strengthened the hand of extremists on both sides of the issue. By your actions you have given further credence to the growing image of Islam as a religion of violence and hate.

Unsure whether the cookbook reaction to FlagstaffHank's What About the Threat From Islamic Fundamentalism reflects antipathy to Daniel Goldhagen, the time of day, or something else, I reproduce a British socialist view of Islamic fundamentalism. The Sharia socialists, from Workers' Liberty, begins by quoting a 1994 pamphlet from the British Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyist group that is the mainspring of George Galloway's Respect Party:

"But [against the state] socialists cannot give support to the Islamists either.

That would be to call for the swapping of one form of oppression for another, to react to the violence of the state by abandoning the defence of ethnic and religious minorities, women and gays, to collude in scapegoating that makes it possible for capitalist exploitation to continue unchecked providing it takes 'Islamic' forms. . . .  

continued

BBC News reports that "Salman Rushdie is among a dozen writers to have put their names to a statement in a French weekly paper warning against Islamic "totalitarianism"."

The writers say the violence sparked by the publication of cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad shows the need to fight for secular values and freedom.

The statement is published in Charlie Hebdo, one of several European papers to reprint the caricatures.

[snip]

Almost all of those who have signed the statement have experienced difficulties with Islamic militancy first-hand, says the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris.

They include Dutch MP and filmmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali and exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen.

The statement and information about the signers are below the fold.

Well I would. If it were real.

You see, it's all snark. It's all written with a giant sarcastic smirk on his smug-ass face. I wish that the conservatives would own up to their responsibility. But we all know these days, what the neo-cons mean by 'taking responsibility' and an 'ownership society' is to let everyone else take responsibility for our screw-ups, and let everyone else own up to having monumentally stupid judgement. (More below the fold.)

Reposted with permission of the author, David Aaronovitch, winner of the George Orwell prize for political journalism.

"EUROPE MUST LEARN to live in and with the world, not to dominate it, nor to assume it is superior or more virtuous. Any continent that has inflicted such brutality on the world over a period of 200 years has not too much to be proud of, and much to be modest and humble about." Martin Jacques, The Guardian, on the cartoons row.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe . . .

From a Reuters report, Rome, some time around now

The Vatican has protested in "the strongest possible terms" against the publication in paperback of Dan Brown's bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Cardinal Loopi, of the Office of the Defence of the Faith, condemned the book for defaming Catholicism and, in its suggestion that Jesus Christ was married, of heresy. "We demand that the book be destroyed and that the author be punished," said Loopi, "otherwise we cannot be held responsible for how Catholics throughout the world may react."

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Gilbert and George's SONOFAGOD PICUTRES: Was Jesus Heterosexual? are now showing at the [White Cube Gallery www.whitecube.com] in London. In the largest work (viewable here),

"Jesus Says Forgive Yourself" is written along the top of the largest in the group, a whopping six metres long and nearly four metres high. Two crucified figures dominate the page surrounded by objects which, on closer examination, turn out to be crucifixes. Gilbert and George appear (as they always do) towards the bottom of their pictures, like two bank managers with halos, and below them the words: "God Loves Fucking! Enjoy".

In some works, "the head of some primitive deity replaces that of Christ on the Cross."

The Evening Standard reports: "Former shadow home secretary and Tory MP Ann Widdecombe says it's "blasphemous in the extreme, as they will find out when finally they stand before the Son of God"."

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What do these phenomena have in common?

• claims that a Danish newspaper, and subsequently other news media, should not have published rather mild cartoons (as The New York Times called them) depicting Mohammed (and making fun of the Islamist version of Islam) because many versions of Islam forbid depicting him;

• the impending request by the four Roman Catholic bishops of Massachusetts for permission from the state to exclude gay couples as adoptive parents of children placed through Church-affiliated (but publicly-supported) social service agencies because the Catholic Church believes such adoptions are "gravely immoral"; and

• demands that pharmacists morally opposed to abortion be permitted to refuse to fill prescriptions for the morning after pill and RU-486?

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http://kurtnimmo.com/...
http://bellaciao.org/...
http://www.danielpipes.org/...

Today there is a fascinating article in The Guardian
which charts the background to all of this, which is the emergence of far-right xenophobic and Islamophobic politics in Denmark over the last decade

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

more below the fold

So it is with the objections raised by this cartoon.

More on the flip...

   I am so sick of hearing our poloticians appologize to these people, the same people who stap dynamite onto theirselves and run onto a bus or into a dinner in Israel and detonate themselves.  Grow up Islam, and learn that yes you can make fun of yourselves. Grow up Muslim world and figure out how stupid you are for beliving that religion should control the state.  Grow up women of islam and realize that you are just as smart as your men, and not the second class citizens like you have been told.

In hopes of clearing up some of the confusion, I offer here parts of Jyllands-Posten's original article which accompanied the pictures and explained the reasoning for printing them, as well as some later quotes from Danish, Egyptian and Norwegian sources.  

(My first diary on dkos is about Islam.  Who'd a thunk it...)

"If you hold her out as a role model, then model her behavior."

Of course, he was speaking of the late Coretta Scott King and to those who admired her.   But I think the quote applies to another situation as well.