Posted on 02/17/2006 11:53:44 AM PST by 2banana
Cartoons merely fed Muslim fury
It's easier to shrug off offense when you're feeling powerful.
Kwame Anthony Appiah is Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University
In ninth-century Moorish Spain, we are told, in the splendid city of Cordoba, an impetuous Christian monk named Perfectus violated the one inviolable edict of Mohammedan rule: He cursed the Prophet, publicly reviling him as a lecher, a pervert, a brute. The punishment for such an offense was, as he knew, death. He was brought before the Islamic judge, or qadi, along with many witnesses to his blasphemous invective. There could be little dispute about the facts. And no dispute that the disparagement of the Prophet Muhammad was intolerable. Yet the authorities declined to exact the only possible penalty. Perhaps, the qadi ventured, the monk had been provoked by the crowd. Perfectus, it seemed, sought martyrdom. Instead, he was given clemency.
More than a millennium later, the politics of blasphemy proves no less vexing. During the past weeks, thousands of protesters throughout the Muslim world have taken to the streets, outraged by cartoons in a Danish newspaper that flouted an Islamic prohibition against images of the Prophet Muhammad.
The violent protests are, on their face, puzzling. For one thing, the cartoons appeared four months ago, and they were addressed to a readership not of Muslims but chiefly of Danish Christians. What's more, creeds do not, as a rule, expect outsiders to respect their own taboos.
Plainly, the cartoon riots must be understood politically, not just religiously. Like the recent blaze in California's Orange County, they had their origin in what was meant to be a "controlled fire."
First, Danish imams launched a campaign to "internationalize" the offense, hoping to make an issue of Western hostility toward Muslims. Then broadcast television based in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - countries where elites legitimize their rule by displays of piety - brought it to the masses. But the fury swiftly passed beyond the control of those who had sought to orchestrate it, confirming, rather than confronting, Europe's anti-Muslim prejudice.
In most cross-cultural conversations about a moral affront, there's a simple, powerful move to make: You try to find a cultural equivalent. If you want to understand how we feel, imagine how you'd feel if... . Yet the turn-it-around approach has been a striking failure here. Trying to conjure up something that the Danes would find comparably offensive, one jihadi commentator wrote, "The Muslims could have made satirical cartoons of Danish men and women fornicating openly like the beasts in the jungle, reflecting their crass culture of porn and Viking heritage." Well, quite, if they wanted to try their hand at storyboarding a future Lars von Trier film. And when an Iranian paper proposed to match the offense by running cartoons about the Holocaust, the Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose asked if he could run them, too. No doubt part of the trouble is that the concept of blasphemy has relatively little purchase on the secular European mind. (Imagine a book with the incendiary premise that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and a powerful Vatican faction had been killing people to cover up the truth! Yet somehow the Holy See has contented itself with bland cautions that The Da Vinci Code should be read as fiction.) In this country, certainly, attempts at blasphemy seldom prompt much more than reproachful words and protests about NEA funding practices.
But what's ultimately behind the cartoon riots is a sense of relative powerlessness. As the same jihadi commentator maintained, "A tiny nation like Denmark would not antagonize a population of more than one billion unless it knew that it can do it with impunity." That's what feeds the fury. And that's why the turn-it-around efforts fail to persuade. It's just easier to shrug off offense when you're feeling powerful. This is one lesson from the ninth century caliphate of Cordoba. There, the Muslims represented an advanced, regionally dominant and self-confident civilization. Like many Westerners today, they had the magnanimity of the mighty.
Even such tolerance has its limits. A few days after his arrest, when Perfectus let loose another tirade against the Prophet, the authorities reluctantly gave him the martyrdom he sought - a fate they had then to confer on dozens of others who, in the summer of 850, were inspired by his example. To the emir of Cordoba, Perfectus was a fanatic, an extremist, even a lunatic. To the Catholic Church, of course, he's a saint. You'll have to decide how you prefer to see the man. No images of him survive.
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Contact Kwame Anthony Appiah at anthony.appiah@gmail.com.
But Christianity continued to grow in Rome despite the oppression. The Roman government was very desultory in its persecutions, and Christianity steadily grew until it took over the Empire. One might say that God judged pagan Rome, and gave the laurel of victory to the Christians.
The USSR was defeated, and there is some resurgence of Christianity in Russia. Some. (Russia still has an imploding birth rate and massive violence and corruption, and has in no real sense returned to being a "Christian country". It is now a country where Christianity is not officially suppressed. Also, the USSR failed within a couple of generations. Assuming Christianity does re-establish itself broadly in Russia, one might again say that, after a three-generation Communist hiatus, God gave the victory to the Christians.
But Islam...Islam took over half of Christian lands well over 1000 years ago. And Christianity died out almost completely in all of them. It was only in the Catholic West, particularly Iberia, where Islam was pushed back out, for a time. Today, Europe is more atheistic and secular than Christian, and Islam is the surging, vibrantly growing religion there.
Christianity defeated paganism in Rome and, perhaps, Communism in Russia, and this may have been the judgment of God.
But Islam defeated Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa, and is rapidly overtaking Christianity in Europe (where Christianity remains, but as a weak tradition versus a strong and growing Islamic pressure). Indeed, Christian Europe looks an awful lot like pagan Rome versus the Christians, but without any of the violent killings that did drive Christianity underground for a time in the Roman era. Might one see, too, the judgment of God in the apparently permanent victory of Islam over most of Eastern Christianity, and the steady and apparently inexorable advance of Islam against Western European Christianity (what's left of it)?
I'm not advocating that position, particularly.
But it is a serious question that I would like to see answered theologically.
Daughters only.
Great Post. I agree whole heartedly. The author is part of the problem.
BTW, the Koran and the Hadiths also recognize that they maynot be able to conquer their neighbors by force of arms. In these cases muslims are encourage to emigrate, infiltrate, breed and conquer from within as soon as they are numerous and powerful enough.
This is the way they are doing it today.
But his conclusion, about the psychological effects of feeling "powerless," is ridiculous.
There are reasons that Muslims are both "powerless" and fanatical -- mostly because of deep flaws in their culture. But in the world of multiculturalism, the obvious truth can't be uttered and it can't be discussed.
Not exactly. The Roman Empire, which included Spain at the time, became Christian sometime around 315.
The Muslims began their conquest of Spain almost exactly 400 years later.
Your list of disabilities placed on Christians and Jews by dominent Muslims is accurate. However, it is only fair to point out that where Christians were dominant at the time their restrictions on Jews and Muslims were often a good deal more severe. Like the choice between forced conversion, exile or death.
The problem is not the historical record, which has a lot to criticize in all three religions. The problem is that Christians and Jews have changed and Muslims haven't. Yet.
Hey! That guy with the upraised fist is the owner of our local 7-11!
pwned!
Free Will?
"Free Will?"
Good answer.
Christianity stresses Free Will. Humanity is free to choose good or evil and suffer the consequences.
Islam denies Free Will and turns all that happens over to the capricious desires of Allah.
'And a soul will not die but with the permission of Allah; the term is fixed; and whoever desires the reward of this world, I shall give him of it, and whoever desires the reward of the hereafter I shall give him of it; and I will reward the grateful.' - Koran, Surah III: 145
You might as well blow yourself up because you have no free-will and you'll die when Allah wants you to, and if you die blowing yourself up, it must be because Allah wants you to, so why feel guilty about it?
"O you who believe! take care of your souls; he who errs cannot hurt you when you are on the right way; to Allah is your return, of all (of you), so He will inform you of what you did." - Koran, Surah V: 105
This one is kind of interesting. If the enemy wins it is because you were not faithful enough.
"For his sake there are angels following one another, before him and behind him, who guard him by Allah's commandment; surely Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition; and when Allah intends evil to a people, their is no averting it, and besides Him they have no protector." - Koran, Surah XIII: 41
I call this one the catch-22 passage. I suppose Mohammed meant to say that God helps those who helps themselves, but remembered it wrong. Instead you have a recipe for fatalism.
"And those before them did indeed make plans, but all planning is Allah's; He knows what every soul earns...." - Koran, Surah XIII: 42
More fatalism. In the end, it's all up to Allah.
"Allah causes the unjust [unbelievers] to go astray, and Allah does what He pleases." - Koran, Surah XIV: 4,5
More catch-22 from Allah. No free-will to choose to believe or not believe because Allah decides who will or will not, and then punishes you for what is essentially his decision.
"Surely Allah will defend those who believe; surely Allah does not love any who is unfaithful, ungrateful." - Koran, Surah XXII: 19-23
So, if an American Army full of unbelievers beats a Muslim Army, what does that mean? I'd like to hear an Imam explain this one. Good thing they don't allow tap shoes in mosques.
"Nay! Those who are unjust follow their low desires without any knowledge; so who can guide him whom Allah makes err?" - Koran, Surah XXX: 29
There's that catch-22 again. Allah makes us err, and then sends us to hell because we did. That's I'd call unjust.
How so? His basic premise is correct: it is a well-known fact of human nature that, when you feel that you've got the short end of the stick, you tend to get PO'd more easily.
What he failed to point out is that the muzzies have been hacking off their own end of the stick for a dozen centuries...
All very interesting, but it then begs the question: the Byzantine Christians did not want to become Muslims. They were worshipping God in the Christian way, and many were quite devout.
The Muslims invaded, thinking the way they do, and the victory went, in province after province, to the Muslims. There were a million different instances of chance and good fortune that could have cut either way, but God chose to let the Muslims win. One example of this, in a slightly later period: on the Third Crusade, a truly enormous Western Army was descending on Outremer to assist it in beating off Saladin. The Christian army was in three parts, with the largest part being the army of Fredrick Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany. With that Army, the Crusaders were virtually guaranteed a victory, and thereby would have restored most of the Middle East to Christendom, and preserved Christianity.
But Barbarossa had a freak accident crossing a river in Asia Minor, and drowned. This was not a matter of act of free will; it was an act of God...an act of God that caused the Imperial Army to melt away and abandon the cause. Coeur de Lion and Philippe Auguste were both still able to reduce Acre and to hold their own against Saladin, but there was no prospect of breaking Saladin and Muslim power after that. Now, I look at that and I see a divine choice, an act of God that determined the outcome of the Third Crusade, and thereby doomed Christianity in most of the Levant.
And I wonder, theologically, why God let the Muslims utterly triumph over the Christians.
The Christians weren't just defeated, but the Christian religion and way of worship was permanently deleted from those lands.
"But what's ultimately behind the cartoon riots is a sense of relative powerlessness. As the same jihadi commentator maintained, "A tiny nation like Denmark would not antagonize a population of more than one billion unless it knew that it can do it with impunity." That's what feeds the fury. And that's why the turn-it-around efforts fail to persuade. It's just easier to shrug off offense when you're feeling powerful."
That is a fine example. According to this, we don't riot and kill at every offense because we "feel powerful". He's using the old "you would do it if you were in their shoes" meme, which is utter BS.
I'm not doubting your premise but being PO'd and going on murderous rampages over drawings that appeared in a forigen country are a little diffrent in my book.
The concept of free will is an all or nothing concept. If you believe in free will, whether or not you are devout will have nothing to do with whether or not you will win a battle. It's on you.
The free will to conduct yourself properly while on earth has nothing to do heavenly intervention.
If free will is absolute, then there is never heavenly intervention. But the Bible indicates that, at least on occassion, there is intervention, which implies that free will may not be absolute.
But it is also a false premise to assume that heavenly intervention and free will must be connected in any way.
In order to make choices on good or evil, one must know the difference. Perhaps God let Islam spread for just that reason. Perhaps there needs to be a balance. To choose, one must have choices. To choose properly, one must understand the nature of the choices.
That is one of the problems with many people today, especially with regard to the war on terror. They have had it too good for too long. They are unable to understand evil. Some people have to experience a thing before they understand it.
Why did God let 3,000 people die on 9/11? Perhaps God lets us do what we want to each other in hopes that some of us will "get it" before the end comes. If he intervenes from time to time, it may be only to bring things into balance before things get too far out of whack.
Who knows? I don't. None of us do. All we can do is stand against evil where we can, promote good to the best of our ability, and hope it all works out in the end.
"The concept of free will is an all or nothing concept. If you believe in free will, whether or not you are devout will have nothing to do with whether or not you will win a battle. It's on you."
I disagree with this statement.
Free will means that the things that are in your control are yours to choose. You can make moral decisions, and then you have to live with the consequences.
However, we still live in a natural world that is not governed at all by our will, upon which our will has no effect. A lightning bolt that comes out of the sky and kills a man - unless he ran out into a thunderstorm with a lightning rod this has nothing to do with free will and is an act of God.
Frederick Barbarossa's accidental drowning in the river in Asia Minor may or may not have been the result of free will (I don't have an account that tells me whether or not he charged impetously into a swollen torrent, or if, rather, his horse slipped and fell into a small brook, killing Frederick in a freak accident. I believe it was the latter. I agree that if it was the former, Frederick's free choice of will exposed him stupidly to foreseeable dangers. But the danger of drowning in a small, unthreatening stream whilst on horseback is not foreseeable. It is like a lightning strike from the blue, or a sudden earthquake: not a product of the will, and not something a man could evade with foresight. Nature is commanded by God, and does not itself have a "will", so these strange and random occurrences are properly described as Acts of God, not acts or consequences of free will.
Any realistic description of the world must, I think, contain both things operating in tandem. God decides the outcome in the throw of a true random die.
Free will means that the things that are in your control are yours to choose. You can make moral decisions, and then you have to live with the consequences.
Agreed.
we still live in a natural world that is not governed at all by our will, upon which our will has no effect. A lightning bolt that comes out of the sky and kills a man - unless he ran out into a thunderstorm with a lightning rod this has nothing to do with free will and is an act of God.
Here we are essentially still in agreement. However, you assume that God makes the lighting strike at a given place and time, making an idiot's death by electrocution an "act of God". I make no assumption. God may be responsible for creating the world of which lightning is a part, but I do not believe he controls when or where it will strike on a regular basis, even though he could. The lightning is a random occurance in my construct, as it must be for free will to have any meaning.
Frederick Barbarossa's accidental drowning in the river in Asia Minor may or may not have been the result of free will (I don't have an account that tells me whether or not he charged impetously into a swollen torrent, or if, rather, his horse slipped and fell into a small brook, killing Frederick in a freak accident.
No assumptions can be made here. His drowing may have simply been an act of stupidity, or chance, or God's will.
Free Will implys lack of divine intervention or interferrence, including so called natural acts of God. If God wants to end my life, it matters not whether I choose to carry a steel rod in an electrical storm. He can simply stop my heart.
That's the way I see it anyway. The problem with these arguments is that there is no way to prove or disprove any of them. For every argument you make, I can formulate a counter argument, and vice versa. We all start from our own set of assumptions. Those assumptions determine how we perceive these arguments. If we do not accept the same assumptions, we will never agree.
Inaccurate.
Islam believes in both human free will, which makes men accountable for their deeds, and in the ultimate control of Allah.
This view is actually very similar to that of Christianity, especially those branches such as Calvinism which stress predestination while still claiming to believe in free will. All these groups get around the obvious contradictions in very similar ways, which to an objective observer look very much like sophistry. :)
Your quotations from the Koran can be balanced by many other quotes showing that man is a free agent and responsible for his actions. If taken out of context, similar quotations from the Bible would "prove" that Christians believe God's omniscience does not allow for human free will.
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