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Religion and Speech
February 3rd, 2006 (08:26 am)
A few thoughts on the Danish cartoon controversy currently pissing off Muslims worldwide:
- They're not funny. I don't mean from a religious or so-called "P.C." point-of-view. The cartoons are simply not funny. They suffer from the same problems afflicting American mainstream cartoons: cheap gags, oversimplified caricatures of ethnic stereotypes, no evidence of any real knowledge of the subject, and just plain stupidity. Why can't editors hire cartoonists who demonstrate some intellectual depth or emotional maturity? Is Tom Toles the only one?
- It would never occur to me to lampoon Islam or Muhammad, because it's not my religion, man. Despite being an atheist and raised non-religiously by a secular humanist, I still identify as a cultural Christian, much in the way friends of mine identify as cultural Jews. My grandparents and many other well-meaning true believers wasted a lot of time trying to convert me in my youth, including a trip to a Southern Baptist bible camp (which almost got me), and the town I grew up in is a Catholic-dominant town. For the most part, I like the religion, as religions go, and respect most of its permutations (still not sure about the snake-handlers.) And I like Jesus Christ himself: reformer, radical, populist, challenger of the Roman empire, gadfly of the religious establishment of his day, advocate for the poor, the afflicted and the socially spat-on, author of the Golden Rule (which Kant and Sartre wound up reaffirming in their own ethical investigations), he's all right. So, yes, given all that, I'd happily lampoon the guy and his certainly his followers.
- That said, no one is above criticism. No one. Poor Salman Rushdie has been saying this for years: grow up, get a thicker skin, play with the big kids, or face arrested theological development and gradual marginalization. I agree with Shannon that Muslims have a right to be outraged and feel insulted by yet more rude treatment from clueless Westerners. With a ban on any representation of Muhamad, good or bad, and a history of controversy over art in general as potential blasphemy, iconography is obviously a sensitive subject in Islam. However, lacking much evidence outside a few moderate Muslim thinkers that the Muslim world as whole is willing to engage in necessary constructive self-criticism, the reaction to the Danish cartoons seems out of proportion.
- Not that emotional immaturity and lack of self-criticism are features restricted to Muslims. Witness any given press conference with or without the President; or sticking within this subject, the decision by European papers to republish the offending cartoons across the continent in a demonstration for "free speech" and "freedom of the press." Sure, yell fire in a crowded theater. Have at it. Schmucks.
Edited to include link to cartoons themselves. Oops.
Edited again to correct the reference to the cartoons as "Danish," not "Dutch." Double oops and an a-doy.
It's weird that it's 'freedom of speech' that's being defended.
It's too bad that the cartoons weren't just ignored. The whole thing would have come and gone.
It also seems to be a big part of the east/west idiological difference. The muslims are asking for respect, and the west says no. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but that's part of it.