Now history is off limits lest we offend Islamicists

The Austin American-Statesman ^ | September 25, 2006 | James Lileks

[neverdem]

NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Clip and save, for this may come in handy: If you mock Islam with a drawing or a novel, you get riots and dead people. News of mishandled holy books yields riots and dead people. Insufficiently reverent short films by a Dutchman yields a dead person, specifically the Dutchman.

Now we add this detail: Quoting medieval religious colloquies is a reasonable justification for burning churches, shooting a nun and holding up signs demanding that the pope convert to Islam or saw off his own head. (There have been reports of carpal tunnel syndrome among radical Islam's enforcers, and they have requested we all help out.)

This is a new twist: Now history itself cannot be discussed. Since it's difficult to predict what else will enflame the devout, Islam has to be treated with unusual deference, like a 3-year-old child with anger management problems.

But it's not what we say that truly offends. It's what we are. The West's lack of interest in joining the Ummah is an affront in itself, and we broadcast our sins in High Infidelity. If you believed that the West's apostasy was an affront to God, you'd spend your leisure hours torching straw popes, too.

Progressives at home and abroad seem oddly unconcerned. "Islamophobia," after all, is just a product of the BushCo junta's relentless fearmongering, and Benedict is the Nazi pope who personally swipes the condoms from people's bedroom drawers.

But it's an inconvenient truth, to coin a phrase, when the ranters show up with vibrating uvulas demanding the pope's assassination. (Would they be satisfied with a docudrama version? It would go over big at Cannes.)

It's inconvenient when glowering young men line the walk outside Westminster Abbey with anti-pope signs, thereby showing that England's radical Muslims have sunk to the level of idiots who protest funerals with "GOD HATES FAGS" placards. Such images cause a momentary pang of dismay among some: That's not helpful, chaps. Not helpful at all.

See, the real problem is the West and its bluenose brigade, its Wal-Marts and Hummers and Big Gulp lifestyles. The Christianists, as some clever equivocators call them, are an impediment to Utopia as great as the terrorists. No less a philosopher than Rosie O'Donnell said so on "The View" recently, proclaiming Christian fundamentalists and Islamicists equal threats to America. They're both judgmental — boo, hiss! — and that makes them equal.

O'Donnell had a point, one supposes. Using the legislative process to pass faith-based initiatives, driving jets into skyscrapers: madness, everywhere.

At the risk of making a generalization: The secular right seems more tolerant of Christianity, and skeptical toward large swaths of Islam. The secular left often seems annoyed and contemptuous towards American religion — unless the pastor on the dais insists Jesus would have been a board member of Planned Parenthood — and oddly protective of Islam. Not because they believe in it; heavens, no. Some progressives are simply besotted by any civilization not their own.

Others have no vocabulary to oppose its more radical manifestations, because, well, we cannot judge other cultures. (Unless they're in the American South.) Others are less concerned by Islamicists because they have greater dislike for the people who oppose radical Islam, who are probably bigots. (Boo, hiss!) When those theo-neos get tough on radical Islam, it's just a convenient mask for their dislike of the Scary Non-Christian Dusky Hordes. Besides, what about the Crusades and the Inquisition? Huh? OK, then.

Thus the most enlightened and well-intentioned beneficiaries of the human civilization excuse or wish away the words of their most implacable opponents. It'll take something drastic to change their minds. A dirty bomb? Maybe. A demonstration in Pakistan in favor of Wal-Mart? That would certainly reorder some opinions.

In the meantime, we will learn to say less and less about more and more. As the grim cliche has it: If you say Islam isn't always a religion of peace, the Islamicists will kill you. This doesn't make them hypocrites, of course. The grave is a very peaceful place.

[kublia khan]

You are absolutely 100% right. The fervent hope of those who are facing the Muslim problem realistically is that such a provocation comes sooner rather than later. The longer the end game is delayed the more lives it will ultimately take when it does come. I guess mother was right when she said "Never put off for tomorrow what should be done today".

[quantfive]

Their is only one major obstacle that requires real thought and strategy on overcoming this problem. The Muslims believe that we all must convert to Islam to have a better world.

They must be convinced either through force or arms and/or education that all men have the right to believe whatever they want as long as it does not interfere with another mans free will. We can publically broadcast to the world that we will be the first to initiate such a policy (since it exists in our Constitution anyways) but that any offender of the policy is labeled a terrorist against humanity and is now a target.

[horse_doc]

A Jewish scholar friend of mine 10 years ago said the Jews and the Christians had their reforms, when Islam does, it will be very very bloody.

The Christian Reformation was a return to the teachings of the early Church. The problem with Islam, is that the Jihadist movement IS their Reformation - their return to the roots of their faith.

This is as good as it gets, for them.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The problem is that the radical-Wahhabi movement IS the Muslim "Reformation."

Just take a glance at Monasteries and Madrassas: Five Myths About Christianity, Islam, and the Middle Ages by historian H. W. Crocker III. They've got their "Sola Scriptura" ("Sola Korana"), they've got their Young Puritans (Taliban) banning holidays and smashing religious art; they believe in a Henry VIII-style fusion of the authority of Church and State (think Caliphate.)

Islam needs a Reformation? Nah, that's what's happening now--- that's what's sweeping the Islamic world as we speak. What they need is a Counter-Reformation.

[Mrs. Don-o]

In the interests of liberty, we should discuss Mohammad, the Koran, and Islamic history a lot, in every venue, every chance we get.

I don't mean going out of your way to be egregiously insulting. I'm just urging the kind of freewheeling discussion that people in the Free West are used to doing about any topic that strikes our fancy.

I don't think our audience should be limited to like-minded FReeper-types, either. We should be writing letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines, addressing substantive issues in the classrooms (for those who teach) and the pulpits (for those who preach) and any other forum that is available to us.

Any honest, fair-minded Muslims would find it refreshing, I think, to have all kinds of long-buried issues out exposed to the sunshine and fresh air, for once.

Besides, liberty is like muscle: use it or lose it.

[M1Tanker]

I was thinking islam is more like the undertow that drags the unwary and weak to their deaths.

Either way, it is the antithesis of civilization and, unless they start acting like a religion of "peace", they are damning themselves into perpetual war and barbarianism. BTW, to the appeasers and 'enlightened' left, islam means 'submission' or 'surrender', not 'peace'. Though maybe to the 'peace at any cost' crowd, submission/surrender is preferable to actually defending your life, loved ones, and civilization.

[Tolik]

James Lileks:

...This is a new twist: Now history itself cannot be discussed. Since it's difficult to predict what else will enflame the devout, Islam has to be treated with unusual deference, like a 3-year-old child with anger management problems.

But it's not what we say that truly offends. It's what we are. The West's lack of interest in joining the Ummah is an affront in itself, and we broadcast our sins in High Infidelity. If you believed that the West's apostasy was an affront to God, you'd spend your leisure hours torching straw popes, too.

...At the risk of making a generalization: The secular right seems more tolerant of Christianity, and skeptical toward large swaths of Islam. The secular left often seems annoyed and contemptuous towards American religion — unless the pastor on the dais insists Jesus would have been a board member of Planned Parenthood — and oddly protective of Islam. Not because they believe in it; heavens, no. Some progressives are simply besotted by any civilization not their own.

Others have no vocabulary to oppose its more radical manifestations, because, well, we cannot judge other cultures. (Unless they're in the American South.) Others are less concerned by Islamicists because they have greater dislike for the people who oppose radical Islam, who are probably bigots.

...Thus the most enlightened and well-intentioned beneficiaries of the human civilization excuse or wish away the words of their most implacable opponents. It'll take something drastic to change their minds.

...In the meantime, we will learn to say less and less about more and more. As the grim cliche has it: If you say Islam isn't always a religion of peace, the Islamicists will kill you. This doesn't make them hypocrites, of course. The grave is a very peaceful place.

Nailed It!

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[Valin]

(Minnesota's own) James Lileks usually does..nails it that is.

[bitt]

lol ping

[george76]