The new enemy to world peace:
US backs Muslims in cartoon dispute
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States backed Muslims on Friday against European newspapers that printed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a move that could help America's battered image in the Islamic world.
Inserting itself into a dispute that has become a lightning rod for anti-European sentiment across the Muslim world, the United States sided with Muslims outraged that the publications put press freedom over respect for religion.
"These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims," State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said in answer to a question.
"We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images or any other religious belief," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
This is a cartoon published in 1973, i.e. more than 30 years ago in "L'écho des Savanes", a satirical publication. It depicts, left to right, Jesus Christ, Robert Wothan, Monsieur Jupiter, Louis Bouddha, Claude Allah and Gustave Jehovah. The French have long been equal opportunity religion-bashers, and see today's debate taking place between freedom and religious intolerance.
I know this will be an unpopular stance here (even if dKos is probably one of the least religious places in America), but I'll say it again: organised religion (in which I include, for the avoidance of doubt, communism and other similar 'atheist' ideologies) is the single deadliest invention of man, and the most dangerous to freedom. It has been used, and abused, repeatedly by men more interested in power than in morality, while cloaking itself in the highest kind of values. Note that I use the term organised religion, to distinguish from individual faith and religious practise, which I have no problem with, and from the stated values, which are usually admirable.
Muslim anger spreads round the world
In London, hundreds of Muslims marched from the Regent's Park mosque, one of the biggest Islamic centres in Europe, to the heavily protected Danish embassy, bearing placards declaring "Behead the one who insults the prophet" and "Free speech go to hell".
That's fine with me. Not being baptised, I am already going to hell, or so tells me the catholic church. In fact, most organised religions inform me that my life is wrong, that I will go to hell, and that I have no morality. But do we ever talk about the intolerance of these churches, and their desire to judge, and if possible, invade and control, my life? (I know it's a rhetorical question, at least on dKos... but do we ever organise protests against the big organised religions and their offensive and perpetual comments about how we run our lifes?).
Anyway, I must say I am not surprised in the least to see the Bush administration side with religion against freedom, and I know which camp I am in.
That which thinks that both of these cartoons have the right to be published:
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Before you start an angry retort, I DO know that you Americans do not have such a simplistic approach to this debate, and that freedom of religion was one the main freedoms you fought for, and for which your ancestors fled Europe because it was lacking. And that you do not consider religious practice to be intolerant, and that maybe, you even think that I am being very intolerant with my comments on religion.
So I'll say it again: our experience in many parts of Europe is that organised churches (mostly of the christian variety) have wielded way too much political power, and that they have almost always been on the side of dictature against freedom, and that the fight for democracy has been a fight against religion.
You are free to practise your religion as you care to, but you are not free to bring it into the political arena.
So, to me, the issue here is whether we allow an organised religion, in this case islam, to impose its rules and requirements on us, and my answer is an emphatic no.
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Finally, to acknowledge the complexity of this issue, I'd like to point out to you a number of comments from the other side of the debate in the extremely interesting thread we had on this topic over at the European Tribune (now continuing here). Europeans by no means have a monolithic opinion on this:
londonbear
There comes a time when the requiresments of politeness deman that you not shit on your neighbour's face and demand they not object because of your right to free expression.
For the most part this is not an exercise in free speech but a deliberate and calculated insult to the deepest sensitivities of our fellow citixens. Can I shout "fire" in a crowded theate as a joke? Could I drag apig's head through a synagog? Can I draw yellow stars of David on Jewish owned shops? Can I demand the right to daub swastikas on the gates of Auswitz?
(...)
Why should you be so arrogant as to demand free expression of our opinions when you denegrate the objections of those these insult?
DeAnander
the tone of some of the absolutist defences of these (mostly puerile, ignorant and crudely offensive) drawings reminds me of the class bully who has finally pushed the class underdog a bit too far, and then proclaims triumphantly when Teacher rushes over, "But all I said was..." are we not wrapping a noble principle (freedom of speech and press) around an ignoble sport (baiting, hazing, humiliating, insulting those who have no real-world power to retaliate)?
(...)
there is a crucial concept in civility and diplomacy, called "saving face" -- to allow others the illusion, at least, of respect. the deeper the loser's condition of disempowerment or defeat, the more crucial is the wisdom or generosity of the victors in not rubbing salt in. many historians still insist that if the Allies had not been so bound and determined to humiliate Germany utterly after WWI, the political/emotional soil would not have been so fertile for invasive species of fascist and racist politics... again, is it really wise to kick a man [sic] when he's down?
what I seem to hear in the enthusiasm with which the Western press reprints these mocking 'toons is not so much the courage of paladins of free speech, as the jeering of the powerful at the futile rage of the powerless -- neener neener neener, 'because we can, and you can't stop us, so there!' seems to me if the western press really wants to test its freedoms, it might better lampoon a genuine threat to its civil liberties and democratic traditions -- King George of the USA, to whose nuclear arms and trade sanctions most of their government and industry is held hostage.
I do not much like to witness this taunting of people who are already at their rope's end. as my old Mum would say, "you mark my words, it will all end in tears."
DeAnander again
I think when we picture ourselves (or the taunting cartoonists) as Davids of rationality contending with lumbering, brutish Goliaths of monotheism, we leave out the other side of the picture that I was trying to paint in -- ourselves (the West) as gloating conquerors dragging the toppled idols of their colonised victims through the mud. every imperial power has done this -- the literal or figurative pissing on the losers' gods, the profanation of the temple, whatever. and as a gesture of colonial contempt I do dislike it and feel that, as with repeated Israeli provocations, vandalism, crop destruction in the OT, it only deepens the wound and postpones any possibility of making peace.
and let us face it, the feelings that are being stirred up in the proletariat by this type of cartoon are not about a lofty Voltairian disdain for doctrinal religion per se, they are about making fun of Arab-looking people with a "weird foreign religion". they are playing to xenophobia, ignorance, BNP-like tendencies all over Euroland. in that sense a present danger does exist, since Muslims are a small minority embedded in a large population during a time of economic instability (which is about like being committed to a land war in Asia, in the catalogue of unenviable strategic situations).
Migeru
It's hopefully a clash of fundamentalisms, not a clash of civilizations, but we keep allowing the extremists to speak for our communities, among other things because moderates seem not to have such strong emotional identifications with their race, religion, nation, you name it, as the extremists.
The ironic thing is that many places in Europe have much stricter laws on free speech than the USA, and we end up arguing for a much more expansive version today. So, hypocrisy? Anti-Muslim prejudice? Anti-religious zeal?
But Migeru is spot on: we are hearing the extremists too much.