connecting*the*dots

Nas, a blogger from Jordan whom I recently began reading, writes today about Jordanian Muslims attempting to use Oprah as a means to spread the love of the Prophet Mohammed. Kinda funny and spot on:

[…]

Today I read an article about a “campaign� of sorts that was started (as I’m lead to believe) through the discussion boards at IslamOnline’s website. The purpose was to “vote in droves for our prophet on Oprah’s Web site to draw the world attention to our religion and the prophet of Islam�, according to a user named Hadeel.

This is in reference to…

“Oprah Winfrey announced a hero voting competition, she asked people to send true stories about a teacher, a firefighter, a parent or a relative, who has done something extraordinary for them.�

IslamOnline even sent an email to the show to ask for a comment and recieved none. It is mentioned of course in the article as if it were an insult that the Oprah Winfrey Show, the biggest talk show in the world with virtually millions and millions of viewers, would not reply personally to their email.

Let me list the reasons why I find this whole thing absurd:

1. First of all its not even a voting competition! It’s a webpage where you enter a story about a hero in your life that has helped you in some way or form. The page even has 2 long paragraphs detailing exactly what they’re looking for. They are looking for real life modern examples such as firefighters who save your life, neighbours who helped you out of a bind. Not a Prophet, or a historic figure!
2. Second this is in my opinion done as one of the latest reactions to “defend the Prophet�. I draw this conclusion based also on the fact the cartoon fiasco is mentioned in this very article.

Listen, when it comes to defending the Prophet pbuh, and when it comes to spreading awareness and knowledge about Islam, I am all for it. In fact I’m first in line. But there are channels of which to do it, ways and means of which to approach it. One one hand, going out to the streets and burning embassies or churches is definitely not one of them. And on the other hand flooding Oprah’s website with “I vote for the Prophet as my hero� contributions that are so obviously misplaced, is not the way either.

Please people, I implore you, think harder. Or just think. We have the perfect example right in our history: the Prophet pbuh sent emissaries all over the place with simple scrolls to present to kings and rulers, to call them to Islam. He warned them not to hurt even a tree on their journey for God’s sake! But note not only the non-violent method used here but the way in which the message was presented.

So please everyone… leave Oprah alone

(they should’ve never started airing her show on our tv’s)

Translation: “A cartoon targeting the prophet, Bush�

(via The Black Iris of Jordan)

Steve Gilliard on the cartoon controversy:

What I don’t find surprising is the wave of liberal anti-Muslim commentary. After all, it took a major effort by the President to prevent lynchings after 9/11, and then 8,000 Muslims were expelled for reasons having nothing to do with national security.

And let’s face it, we have a lot in common with the Danes, or so we think.

But reality is very different.

Most major US newspapers will not run these cartoons any more than they run racially or sexually offensive cartoons. They wouldn’t run a cartoon mocking church buildings being burned either. To the most vigorous defenders of free speech on the planet, in a country which allows all manner of hate speech, these cartoons will not be shown, because they are needlessly offensive.

But what is lost in all the rioting is how badly the Danes handled this.

The government admits they wanted to force a culture war. The problem for them is that Danish Muslims, feeling outnumbered and under siege, went for help. They toured the middle east, showed the cartoons to leading Islamic scholars and then, the ambassadors asked to speak to the foreign minister, and despite the advice of 22 Danish ambassadors, refused.

Now, I can’t speak to being a Muslim, but I can speak to being an outsider.

There is always the tension of never truly being accepted. You see things, cartoons, TV shows, and you wonder is there a hidden insult there, are you being depicted fairly.

Hell, people routinely tell me they had no idea I was black online.

I know what it’s like to walk into a classroom of 200 people and be the ONLY black person in the room. In that situation, you either deal with it or retreat.

For a lot of minorities in Europe, not just Muslims, but Africans and Asians as well, there is the sense of being an outsider even when you try to fit in. You teach your kids the language, they root for the local sides, they go to the schools, but at the end of the day, you get a nice slap in the face by people who wish you would disappear.

But you’ve played by the rules and there is no reward.

Now, some folks play on this to push their version of Islamic revivalism, and the right talks about how they’re coming to take over, and why they don’t just fit in.

Well, if you’ve ever been accused of not fitting in, despite your best efforts, it can make you angry or even worse, doubt yourself. You wonder if it’s you or because people dislike the way you look.

No one wants to be excluded from the society they live in, but at some point, you’re faced with a challenge to your dignity. In this case, an insult to your religion. And the Danes stubborn refusal to deal with this as it became a crisis, says much about their racial attitudes.

A lot of Europeans believe, like a lot of people, that if the Muslims go away, all their discomfort will end. But it won’t. As Pat Robertson noted in his usually subtle way, Europeans are having less children. Well someone has to pay taxes to support the growing numbers of elderly and if there aren’t enough Europeans, they will have to import workers.

And while people say “well, they should just accept that they live in Europe”.

Ok, and I say, what is the reward? A scut work job, racial contempt from cab drivers to government officials, a continuing message that you don’t belong and if you object to being insulted, you can leave?

You can’t have it both ways: you cannot say you want an inclusive society, yet when people demand basic respect, and muslim leaders went to the government and the courts, insult them for doing so.

It is hard enough to be different in the US, it must be that much harder in a monocultural society like Denmark.

My attitude here is simple: I respect Muslims and their concerns because I want them to respect mine, enough so that they reject terrorism and inform on those that do embrace it. We cannot say reject terrorism and then mock what they see as holy. It’s as if we’re doing Osama’s work for him, and I don’t want any part of that.

Exactly.

NPR: All Things Considered - February 3rd, 2006

[…]

Robert Seigel: Well, this is a very personal question. You’re an American of Iranian extraction and a Muslim. You’re also an academic and you’re I think a person who lives a secular life, no? Reza?

Reza Aslan: That’s right

Robert Seigel: You see a satiric, insulting image of The Prophet. Does your blood boil or do you say “those crazy Danes.”

Reza Aslan: Well, my blood boils, not because I’m offended by the image. My blood boils because I feel as though that the purpose of publishing these depictions was to deliberately provoke Muslim societies in Europe. So, I’m angry that there wasn’t more care and concern about trying to maintain a sense of reconciliation and unity, not so much about the pictures themselves.

Robert Seigel: It’s the motive you infer from the publication that ah…

Reza Aslan: Absolutely.

[…]

Listen to the entire interview to get a full picture of Aslan’s perspective. But be warned; it’s not a sexy, free speech position.

Aslan doesn’t spend much time analyzing the ills of the various cartoons. Instead, he takes the same position that I’ve been pushing for the last few days. Understanding that there is a small, but fanatical sub-section of Islam within the delicate balance of religious co-existence in Europe, it is irresponsible to provoke Muslim society by republishing these depictions.

At least the European newspapers that republished the depictions have skin in the game; their readership and neighbors represent a vocal community of Muslims. The European balance of Islam and Christian faith will be tested once again, but like I said, they’re already engaged. What baffles me is this apparent need for the right blogosphere in the US to jump in and support wholesale “free speech.” Without skin in the game, it’s beyond irresponsible; it’s reprehensible.

Chickenhawkish, actually.

Translation
top right: “This is Anti-Semtic!�
top left: “And this is Racism!�
Bottom: “And this is Freedom of Speech!!�

==========

Think about it.

(via The Black Iris from Abu Mahjoob)

Steve Gilliard over at The News Blog does a consistent job of tearing through the doubletalk and bullshit surrounding an issue.

This past weekend, I attempted to frame the Prophet Mohhamed cartoon incident through an artistic representation of my feelings regarding freedom of speech vs. respecting beliefs. Well, today Steve found this uber-contextual gem from Sisyphus Shrugged that thoroughly expresses my feelings on the matter:

Shouting fire in a crowded theater, Piss Christ, Der Sturmer and other speech issues

A few things you may not know about the danish cartoon controversy, if you’ve been reading the same stories I found on Google News

A right-wing danish newspaper printed a number of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed (I am, naturally, not linking to any of the papers whose stupidity set this off). According to the paper, they were exploring the effects of Muslim activism on self-censorship. Islam, historically, has been against representational art, and pictures of Mohammed are a big, big taboo as they’re thought to lead to idolatry. Caricature is considered blasphemy.

Some of the pictures commented on the paper’s inflammatory intentions, while some were, given the intrinsic insult of the assignment, surprisingly respectful. Amongst the others: Mohammed with a lit bomb in his turban, Mohammed with devil horns sticking out of his turban, and Mohammed informing terrorists that they had to stop blowing things up because Islam has run out of virgins to reward them with in heaven.

The talking point of the moment is that the cartoons were mild, not intended to be interpreted as anti-Islamic statements and merely a comment on freedom of speech. That is, of course, utter bullshit, as prominent liberal organizations the Vatican and the ADL agree. The ADL, by no means an apologist organization for radical islam, compares the cartoons in matter and intent to antisemitic caricatures in the muslim press, which is a fairly strong statement coming from the ADL. Both agree that the speech should have been suppressed.

That last, of course, isn’t right either.

On the other side of the debate, we have the people represented by the Danish Prime Minister, who believes that the matter is purely a free speech issue and (despite the urgings of 22 former danish ambassadors) has refused to meet with diplomats from muslim countries accedited to Copenhagen to discuss the issue in late December.

This again is bullshit. It is in no way a restriction of anyone’s freedom of the press for the head of government to say that the country, while supporting the right to free speech, condemns the racism and religious bigotry expressed.

It was still a primarily diplomatic wrangle, though, until two Norwegian evangelical Christian magazines reprinted the cartoons a week later with the stated intention of making a comment on Islam and terrorism (are you beginning to notice a common thread amongst the free speech enthusiasts here?) and all hell broke loose.

Well, not all hell - arab groups called for a boycott, there were threats against the newspaper that commissioned the cartoons, protesters burned flags and fired bullets in the air, and islamic countries recalled their ambassadors.

No, full-metal hell didn’t break loose until various newspapers in Europe, giving reasons ranging from support of free speech (see above) to anti-religious principles (France, of course), went ahead and reprinted the cartoons again. One brave soul printed them in Jordan. He’s been fired. The boycott, largely a pipe dream before last week, is now severely damaging danish industry.

Meanwhile, the original newspaper, which apparently has more sense than the Prime Minister does, acknowledged that although the publication of the cartoons was completely legal, they were offensive, and apologized for causing offense. European leaders (with, of course, the exception of Denmark and Norway) have pointed out that while free speech is a basic human right, the material printed in this case was deeply offensive and to be condemned.

By this time, of course, the culture warriors of the anti-islamic right had succeeded in attracting enough attention to their antics to draw the attention of the violent extremist wing of the muslim world.

So now embassies are burning and (while mainstream islamic leaders condemn the riots) there is lovely juicy footage of islamic mob violence on every station and in every newspaper just as the effort to escalate against Iran ramps up.

Quel coinkydink.

If you want a real educational experience, go look at the Google hits for this, and read what the LGF wing of the blogosphere has to say about it, and how few facts about the situation they give you (among other things, they uniformly suggest that the boycott and the violence have been going on since the original publication of the images in September rather than since late December or mostly in the past week).

If you want another educational experience after that, Google what the same sites had to say last week about free speech in the matter of Cindy Sheehan’s tshirt.

If you want to break your heart, Google for what they have to say about rape and asking for it.

There was a joke going around when Salman Rushdie had the (thoroughly inexcusable) fatwa aimed at him that he was using his time in hiding to work on his next book, “Buddha, You Fat [rude anglo-saxon noun]” Dave Barry, on the other hand, back when he was still funny, wrote a piece about nature documentaries where he imagined the producer, seduced by the prospect of highly salable attack footage, gravely intoning “Now we’re going to see what a shark does when you poke it in the testicles with a cattle prod”

Free speech means that you have the right to express yourself. You even have the right to be protected by law from people you’ve offended who want to express their offense in illegal ways. It does not mean that if you act like a dumb [rude anglo-saxon noun] you’re really a brave warrior for truth and the rights of man or anything but a really, really dumb [rude anglo-saxon noun].

Congratulations, o culture warriors of the right. You’ve gotten the deep offense and the highly-telegenic violence you wanted. You must, although resembling them closely in many other significant ways, be much happier than pigs in shit.

You know, I’m really fascinated by the discussion I’m seeing, both here and around the internets, about this subject.

I find particularly interesting how Good Liberals are ignoring the fact that state-sponsored islam shares quite a lot of ideological space with the extreme millennialist right-wing corporate christianity that’s in bed with our own ruling party. Women, speech, individual rigihts - lot of common ground there. If you recall, they were the only religious leaders who wanted us to go to war.

US foreign policy has been the single most influential factor in building the political structures of the islamic world, and we didn’t give a shit about it as long as the oil kept coming and we were given the russkis whatfor. We installed the House of Saud, the House of Saud funded wahhab. We installed the Shah and we propped him up when we knew him to be every bit as noisome as Saddam Hussein (who we also installed and propped up and sold lots and lots of arms to - fun fact: he was developed as an asset by the CIA under the senior George Bush). We funded the Taliban and taught them to fight. We were perfectly OK with the governments we supported in the region ruthlessly shutting down free speech, and we were perfectly OK with the people of those countries being kept ignorant and poorly informed about the world.

Just as the right and the (koff) “credible” center are willing to pretend that our own homegrown extremists are valid voices and adjust our laws and what we teach our own children in public schools for them as though they represented mainstream religious thought because their preachers tell them how to vote.

it’s a bit precious for us to turn around and deplore the way people who have lived their lives in a world we built and maintained think about us. If we had given a shit about them at any time in the last sixty years this would not be happening.

(via The News Blog)

(concept derived via Navaho Gunleg)