I haven't blogged about the Islam cartoon controversy until now because I didn't have much to say that hasn't already been said. I think the cartoons were offensive and not nice. But in a liberal democracy, everyone has the right to their political speech, including hatemongers and racists. We still have the Klan in the United States, and even though they are a contemptible group in every sense of the word, they have their right to say what they believe. I don't think anti-Semitic speech bans, which I didn't even know about until this cartoon controversy, have any place in modern society. Although I understand the historical reasons for such laws in Austria, I still believe people have a right to hate speech.
But people in a free society are not free to use violence, contrary to what Donald Rumsfield might say. The reaction by some Muslims in the Middle East was completely unjustified and immoral. It is not just retribution to torch a building simply because someone said something not nice about you.
The violent reaction did not come from all Muslims. There are good, liberal-minded Muslims that recognize that fanning the flames of hatred is not the solution to the problem. Two journalists wrote to this effect and published a few of the cartoons as part of their stories. The result: they were thrown in prison.
To illustrate their points, both editors published selections of the drawings — and for that they were arrested and threatened with prison.
Mr. Momani and Mr. Assadi are among 11 journalists in five countries facing prosecution for printing some of the cartoons. Their cases illustrate another side of this conflict, the intra-Muslim side, in what has typically been defined as a struggle between Islam and the West.
The flare-up over the cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper, has magnified a fault line running through the Middle East, between those who want to engage their communities in a direct, introspective dialogue and those who focus on outside enemies.
The situation in the Middle East shares an eerie parallel to the western world. A minority of violent hatemongers distorting religion and hellbent on destroying an external "enemy" weilds enormous power. Any sane person who dares to cross these extremists is branded as an enemy themselves and, in the Middle East, often imprisoned and/or killed.
Is it fair to compare American extremists to Muslim extremists? Absolutely. Both sides ground themselves on an absolutist us vs. them ideology which they spread through the use of religion. Radical mullahs Bin Laden and Falwell stand united against homosexuality, uppity women who want rights, tolerance for minorities, and a host of freedoms we take for granted. Consider the following quotes that seem like they come straight from Pat Robertson:
The government is committed to supporting God's religion, the country remains a strong bulwark for religion, and the people are among the most protective of God's religion, and the keenest to fulfill His laws.
The American people have put themselves at the mercy of a disloyal government, and this is most evident in Clinton's administration. The American government is leading the country towards hell.
All these crimes and sins committed by Americans are a clear declaration of war on God.
In fact, it was Bin Laden who made these remarks. Do they seem very different from these remarks by Robertson?
We have allowed rampant secularism.... We have insulted God at the highest levels of government.
There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world.
A condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.
Conservative idiots will argue equivalency. The idea that they're not nearly as bad. They don't use chemical warfare, torture innocents, and hate democracy. Except that they do. The Pentagon has admitted to using white phosphorus, a substances that causes deep burns down to the bone, in the battle of Fallujah. Reports have indicated that children have been hit with this substance.
Besides the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which keeps getting worse as more pictures are released (Note: the link has very disturbing graphic images), just yesterday a federal judge approved the outsourcing of torture. Our government will continue to export prisoners of the war on terror to countries such as Syria that will torture them for us. Already one innocent Canadian man has suffered this fate.
But this is all okay because America is a democracy. We have a national debate about what we should do and then hold elections. But conservatives don't want that either. An increasing number of right-wingers have been talking up the possibility of criminalizing dissent. Al Gore asserted to an Arab audience last weekend, "There have been terrible abuses, and it's wrong. … I want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country." In response, Ben Shapiro of the influential conservative website wrote an article arguing we should imprison Gore, Dean, Kerry, and others.
At some point, opposition must be considered disloyal. At some point, the American people must say "enough." At some point, Republicans in Congress must stop delicately tiptoeing with regard to sedition and must pass legislation to prosecute such sedition.
This is no Ann Coulter joke. These people are dead serious and if they are allowed to continue down the current path, they will invoke a fascist state. President Bush himself has now begun routinely referring to his opponents as traitors, claiming that war opponents "bring comfort to our adversaries."
The terrorist question will not fully be resolved until the moderate and sane voices on both sides rise up and quell the extremists. These people have no sensible plan to end this conflict. All they do is spread the flames of hate.
Finally, I'll close with a more light-hearted interesting tidbit one of my colleagues found. According to a Reuters article, one shopkeeper in Gaza City acted as a rational arbitrageur. This is the guy that makes economic models work, and that's why we love him.
When entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Dayya first heard that Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being reprinted across Europe, he knew exactly what his customers in Gaza would want: flags to burn.
Abu Dayya ordered 100 hard-to-find Danish and Norwegian flags for his Gaza City shop and has been doing a swift trade.
"I do not take political stands. It is all business," he said in an interview.
Genius.