Danish Cartoons, Geerts' Fitna and Muslim Indifference: On a Means to Coexistence
So this Dutch anti-Islam nutso fanatic something something Geerts, I can't remember his name, anyway, it seems his major legislative initiative is a repeated and unsuccessful but nonetheless high publicity effort to ban the Qur'an. I'm not sure how this agenda actually helps anyone in the Netherlands, so I'm not sure how the party manages to get its votes, but whatever. (Reminds me of the Islamists they make ministers in random Arab countries now and then--make the guy Finance Minister, and he starts complaining about unveiled women. Dude, you're Finance Minister, can you do something about inflation maybe? Then there's Teheran's traffic department chief, who went after insufficiently veiled women because apparently they were the source of the traffic problem in his world, via rubbernecking--subsidized gas, clogged roads and cheap cars apparently were nothing compared to all the traffic stopping babes. Though unfortunately he didn't get to test out his theory for too long--resigned after being implicated in menage a trois trysts with foreign prostitutes. But now I digress.)
Anyway, this dude, his Qur'an banning efforts seeming to get a bit old and his platinum blonde hair dye not quite getting him the publicity he is hoping for, just put out a movie on the Koran where he more or less takes the side of Osama Bin Laden; namely, if you take this book seriously, then you really have to be a terrorist, there is no other choice. I read something from the atheist evangelist along the same lines, Sam Harris, to be honest neither I find intelligent enough to refute on this blog, both are actually too fundamentally dumb to engage. (Billions of people spanning thousands of years of human history calling this their Holy Book, in any number of countries and cultures and understanding it any number of ways. But you've checked it out from the local library, leafed through it, and can tell all of these folks what it "really" means. Anyone who believes something that stupid really isn't worth my time.)
But something interesting I did note was how different--how markedly and fundamentally different--Muslim reaction was this time relative to the cartoon controversy. You have protests, but they are peaceful. The long standing and continuing boycott of Danish goods(seriously continuing, go to a Gulf supermarket, there is an empty shelf indicating this is where Danish goods used to be, to prove they are on board I guess--not buying Danish stuff is a sign of piety these days) in the Muslim world is not being repeated, no riots, no firebombing, nothing of that sort. It is fair to ask why this is, clearly this guy with this really incendiary stuff was hoping for that, and didn't get it. Why not? A few reasons, I think.
First, it's important to understand the nature of the Muslim paranoia sometimes. There's a certain inferiority complex, Muslims know they don't actually have much power or influence these days, and that fuels a lot of Muslim rage. We were great once, what's wrong now? So if someone then makes a movie about how evil and threatening you are, it's not like you're happy, but it doesn't gnaw away at the real source of discontent. If anything, you're exaggerating the power. But when someone takes a deeply revered figure and starts laughing at him to your face, that's putting salt right on the wound. It suggests what you believe is silly, your leader is not worthy of respect, he's contemptible and low, we can mock and laugh and make fun of this really stupid crap of yours, how dumb you are with your virgins in paradise--that type of humiliation at a people mad at their weakness is precisely what fans the flames.
Add to this the different government reactions. don't forget what the Danish did at first when told this was offensive. Arab papers all note this, Western ones rarely. The Danish at first completely ignored the complaints, the cartoon conflagration took months to really come to a head. Initially the reaction was come on, dumb Muslims, haven't you heard of freedom of speech? Who cares about your dumb respected religious figures anyway, get over it, it's just a cartoon. (okay, they didn't say it like that, but clearly the complaints were not taken seriously.) take a people who feel marginalized, isolated, weak and enraged over that, make fun of the person they revere above all else, and then when you complain, have even the government feel it's not worth their time (for a bit, clearly when the shit hit the fan, they changed their tune), it's almost the perfect storm.
This time, the Dutch handled this pitch perfectly. They came out and declared Geerts to be wrong. They said his film was offensive and objectionable. They opposed it in the strongest possible terms. And then they said, as any liberal goverment should say, in my view, that it is protected speech. And that's right, it is protected, but the point is, they came out and told the Muslim community we aren't with this guy, we are with you, but we do have values that require us to respect this. And that went a long, long way to placate the community I think. The Dutch prime minister's statement is everywhere on the blogs, websites, listserves. Now I said before, I don't think certain clerical conservative Muslims take the same view on freedom of speech, obviously, but clearly, the position here was far more positively received than the Danish one, which was we'll ignore you until we realize you're really mad and then we'll pretend we didn't.
And finally, and you can't discount this, in large portions of the Muslim community, there was a fair amount of embarassment at what happened last time. Even conservative Muslims, even those who rail against the West, even the Arab and Muslim governments that helped fan the flames (they do that, distracts people from the real problems), realized it got out of control. Muslims looked bad, everyone could see that, the insult to the Holy Prophet was being completely overshadowed by violence, sometimes at the oddest targets. What the hell does KFC have to do with a Danish cartoon? Nobody on the Muslim side wanted a repeat either.
I don't know, I found this episode encouraging. I think the Muslim community came out looking more reasonable and moderate, the platinum dude looked rabid, everyone found a way to get along and isolate the extremists on either end. Good template for the future, I hope.
HAH
Anyway, this dude, his Qur'an banning efforts seeming to get a bit old and his platinum blonde hair dye not quite getting him the publicity he is hoping for, just put out a movie on the Koran where he more or less takes the side of Osama Bin Laden; namely, if you take this book seriously, then you really have to be a terrorist, there is no other choice. I read something from the atheist evangelist along the same lines, Sam Harris, to be honest neither I find intelligent enough to refute on this blog, both are actually too fundamentally dumb to engage. (Billions of people spanning thousands of years of human history calling this their Holy Book, in any number of countries and cultures and understanding it any number of ways. But you've checked it out from the local library, leafed through it, and can tell all of these folks what it "really" means. Anyone who believes something that stupid really isn't worth my time.)
But something interesting I did note was how different--how markedly and fundamentally different--Muslim reaction was this time relative to the cartoon controversy. You have protests, but they are peaceful. The long standing and continuing boycott of Danish goods(seriously continuing, go to a Gulf supermarket, there is an empty shelf indicating this is where Danish goods used to be, to prove they are on board I guess--not buying Danish stuff is a sign of piety these days) in the Muslim world is not being repeated, no riots, no firebombing, nothing of that sort. It is fair to ask why this is, clearly this guy with this really incendiary stuff was hoping for that, and didn't get it. Why not? A few reasons, I think.
First, it's important to understand the nature of the Muslim paranoia sometimes. There's a certain inferiority complex, Muslims know they don't actually have much power or influence these days, and that fuels a lot of Muslim rage. We were great once, what's wrong now? So if someone then makes a movie about how evil and threatening you are, it's not like you're happy, but it doesn't gnaw away at the real source of discontent. If anything, you're exaggerating the power. But when someone takes a deeply revered figure and starts laughing at him to your face, that's putting salt right on the wound. It suggests what you believe is silly, your leader is not worthy of respect, he's contemptible and low, we can mock and laugh and make fun of this really stupid crap of yours, how dumb you are with your virgins in paradise--that type of humiliation at a people mad at their weakness is precisely what fans the flames.
Add to this the different government reactions. don't forget what the Danish did at first when told this was offensive. Arab papers all note this, Western ones rarely. The Danish at first completely ignored the complaints, the cartoon conflagration took months to really come to a head. Initially the reaction was come on, dumb Muslims, haven't you heard of freedom of speech? Who cares about your dumb respected religious figures anyway, get over it, it's just a cartoon. (okay, they didn't say it like that, but clearly the complaints were not taken seriously.) take a people who feel marginalized, isolated, weak and enraged over that, make fun of the person they revere above all else, and then when you complain, have even the government feel it's not worth their time (for a bit, clearly when the shit hit the fan, they changed their tune), it's almost the perfect storm.
This time, the Dutch handled this pitch perfectly. They came out and declared Geerts to be wrong. They said his film was offensive and objectionable. They opposed it in the strongest possible terms. And then they said, as any liberal goverment should say, in my view, that it is protected speech. And that's right, it is protected, but the point is, they came out and told the Muslim community we aren't with this guy, we are with you, but we do have values that require us to respect this. And that went a long, long way to placate the community I think. The Dutch prime minister's statement is everywhere on the blogs, websites, listserves. Now I said before, I don't think certain clerical conservative Muslims take the same view on freedom of speech, obviously, but clearly, the position here was far more positively received than the Danish one, which was we'll ignore you until we realize you're really mad and then we'll pretend we didn't.
And finally, and you can't discount this, in large portions of the Muslim community, there was a fair amount of embarassment at what happened last time. Even conservative Muslims, even those who rail against the West, even the Arab and Muslim governments that helped fan the flames (they do that, distracts people from the real problems), realized it got out of control. Muslims looked bad, everyone could see that, the insult to the Holy Prophet was being completely overshadowed by violence, sometimes at the oddest targets. What the hell does KFC have to do with a Danish cartoon? Nobody on the Muslim side wanted a repeat either.
I don't know, I found this episode encouraging. I think the Muslim community came out looking more reasonable and moderate, the platinum dude looked rabid, everyone found a way to get along and isolate the extremists on either end. Good template for the future, I hope.
HAH
Uh, the movie was just released yesterday! Sabr, ya ustaaz, sabr!
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Excessive optimism perhaps. But early signs are good anyway.
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Why are Muslims "a people mad at their weakness?" Isn't it the countries they're in that are weak? Some predominantly Muslim countries may have had empires, but were they empires because they were Muslim? Doesn't this sound like Islam -- or any religion -- is a powerplay rather than a way to live?
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If your religion is so shaky that someone making fun of it causes riots- someone needs to rethink their religion.
Nobody died when "Piss Christ" was put out. Christians didn't like it, but they didn't riot or kill over it.
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