And They're Off

Remember a few years back when Muslims around the world elected to throw a hissy-fit over a handful of cartoons, some of which allegedly depicted the historical figure Mohammed? To judge from the accounts of the attempted murder of one of the cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard, the other day, most people don’t. A casual reading of more than a dozen news stories, blog entries, and other ephemera, turns up the following “facts”—

• Kurt Westergaard drew cartoons of Mohammed;
• These cartoons depicted Mohammed as a terrorist;
• The publication of his cartoons “sparked a storm of protest and violence across the Muslim world.” [see The Guardian and The Hot Joints for examples]

Well, that may be how people remember it, but it ain’t how it happened. First, Kurt Westergaard drew one—count it—one caricature of the popular conception of Mohammed. The image was depicted with a bomb-shaped turban—an obvious reference to the prophet being used to justify violence. There were eleven other cartoons in the series, but they were not drawn by Westergaard; they were drawn by other artists. At least one of them did not depict Mohammed (the prophet) at all, but rather a schoolboy bearing the same name. The publication of the cartoons occurred without incident; it was only later that Muslim riots occurred. They appear to have been organized by activists with an agenda; the images shown to the Muslim world included three concoctions (one supposedly depicting Mohammed as a pig) that were not part of this or any other published cartoon series.

Anyway, it seems that a deranged Muslim fanatic broke into Kurt Westergaard’s home wielding an axe and a knife with the attention of murdering him—this during a visit by the cartoonists five-year-old granddaughter. This (alleged) assassination attempt is only one in a series committed by Muslim fanatics in the past few years over this or that fancied grievance. (Anybody else remember Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, and Hitoshi Igarashi? [“Publish and Be Damned”]) Various media accounts are now saying that the unidentified 27-year-old Somali man had “ties” to al Quada (who doesn’t?) and may have been involved in a plot to murder Hilary Clinton, but I’m skeptical of these tidbits. Nothing about this suggests the hallmark precision of an al Quada attack; it seems more like the result of a single deranged man who—like John Lennon’s assassin—has been fed on religious propaganda for too long. Time will tell. Danish Muslims don’t want anything to do with the guy, apparently: “The Danish Muslim Union strongly distances itself from the attack and any kind of extremism that leads to such acts,” at any rate [The Guardian].

A spokesman for a radical Somali group cheered him on, however—from a safe distance. “There could be some people who might say that boy was related to Shebab or other Islamic organisations, but I tell you that this incident is not something that could be related only to Shebab or other Islamic organisations. It is a general obligation for all Muslims to defend their religion and the prophet. He really did what was to be done by any other Muslim.” [“Somali Group hails attack on Danish cartoonist”]

See also:

• Danish Police Start Inquiry in Cartoonist Attack (New York Times)
• Danish cartoonist attacker charged (aljazeera)
• Danish Muslims Question Cartoonist Attack (Islam Online)
• Police foil attempt to kill Danish cartoonist (Saudi Gazette)
• This new decade not off to a real great start (Newsarama)

For Want of a Nail

Okay, we can't all be captain, as my father used to say, there has to be crew--there has to be something for you to do. Apparently in France they have something called a pig-squealing contest (not to be confused I guess with our own American hog-calling contest). Last August the AP circulated a picture of a man taking part in the contest. AP Protests Use of Photo in Controversy: "The picture shows a bearded man wearing fake pig ears, a pig nose, and a pink embroidered cap on his head. He was wearing the costume while participating in a pig-squealing contest at an annual festival in a farm village in southern France last summer." Okay, fair enough--so what?

So how did this picture help lead to riots, the burning of embassies, the destruction of property and the deaths of at least ten people?

Well, see, that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, as they used to say in my time. Somehow this picture got included with the eleven caricatures of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) that were published last September in a Danish newspaper. The Danish Muslim leader responsible for this had no explanation, except that it had been "sent to the group as an example of a provocation" according to the AP report. Earlier accounts claimed that it had been sent to an unnamed Muslim (presumably in Denmark) who apparently interpreted it as a depiction of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) as a pig. (Maybe a friend sent it to him as an example of the idiocies of the West?)

Somebody's been hoaxed here, and my money's on--well, okay, I don't know who's responsible. I do find it puzzling that the Danish delegation felt it necessary to add other material to the eleven caricatures, if those caricatures were the issue. There's no question about the eleven--why intermingle extraneous and irrelevant material then? Is it, as some have charged, because the cartoons themselves weren't considered inflammatory enough? In other words, is this just an elaborate publicity stunt for Islam?

In any case, it's clear that the Muslim rioters owe Denmark a humble and abject apology over this issue. Will they get one? I'm not holding my breath.

Chicago Tribune | Eric Zorn

Chicago Tribune | Eric Zorn: "The opinion of the Tribune's editorial page is that the cartoons were 'juvenile' and 'cheesy,' a judgment I don't share after going online to see them for myself"

Gates of Vienna: Anne Frank and Hitler, Reclining

I'm not sure what "Blog This" does, but I'm trying to create a link to Gates of Vienna: Anne Frank and Hitler, Reclining; the discussion of cartoons there is at least mildly interesting.

Standing on Fire

I have no topic but as usual my fingers will come alive on the keyboard and make words until sense follows. This may or may not have some sane point, but nobody is reading this anyway. Certainly not me.

The night has been filled with images of Orientalists and infighting, with ancient peoples and modern, and with scrolls and palm leaves. I remember reading the Koran for the first time--a copy that had the suras (or chapters or whatever they are) in the wrong order, or at any rate in an order different from the traditional. I had to go back to the index repeatedly to read it in sequence. I was in a high-school gym, seated on bleachers, while people were screaming all around me. (I'm not sure why, now--maybe some event was in progress.) I was working my way through a long piece on "Women" and I had the thought--my god, what a long-winded asinine piece of boring garbage this is. In a way it was a heretical thought--I felt committed to the notion that there was some "good"--some piece of significance anyway, some reason, some purpose, something--in any piece of literature people had chosen to deify. Even Gone with the Wind.

The Rig-Veda had kind of shook me up in that respect, but at least it had the charm of antiquity. It is not unreasonable that in trying to get in touch with people over ten thousand miles and three thousand years away the connection might be faulty. But the Koran was born in the full glaring light of history--it was written down on palm leaves, and assembled in a big council immediately after the death of its creator--why did people read it? What were they thinking? It was like reading Atlas Shrugged.

It was a moment only, and I went back to inputting data, taking it in as I took in other stuff--provisionally. Some day I would read it in Arabic, I told myself, and I could form a real opinion.

But that day never came. At school I had a choice among several possible languages, and actually signed up for Arabic--but at the last minute a chance to learn Coptic came up, and I switched. I figured that Arabic would come later--but so far it hasn't. And I haven't learned Chinese for the Tao Te Ching or Spanish for Don Quixote either.

Translations are always unsatisfactory, somehow. Like listening to a description of a banquet rather than being there.

Outrage

Today's quick pick of various random blogs found some in foreign tongues, and some equally incomprehensible even though in English. The only one I stumbled into that made sense to me was this one I guess called Our Vortex or something like that.

Okay, sorry about that--something just killed my browser and I lost most of the rest of this post. It's discouraging to try to repeat myself, but I'll give it a stab. "Somebody, somewhere, will use these cartoons as a pretext for violence," this author wrote. "But don't expect me to have any sympathy or understanding for their cause. All they're doing is proving the cartoonist's point."

This is the thing that gets me. These maniac Muslims make it perfectly clear that the newspaper in question was right--their attitudes are indeed a menace to freedom of the press. You can try to spin that in any direction you like, blasphemy, politeness, whatever--and it still comes down to that. These guys have the same attitude toward the press that Stalin, Mao, and George III did--the press is free to print anything it likes, so long as they agree with it. That way lies--well, I don't remember what I wrote before, but something slimy and probably spineless is what it looks like.

The thing is, as this guy wrote, "I have the right to outrage you just as much as you have the right to outrage me. Put down the Kalishnikov, grow up, and join the Goddamn world community." It's high time. And by the by, if you've got to boycott something, take a lesson from our own Dixichristians--boycott somebody who can make a difference. Don't pick targets at random or call for government apologies--it just makes you look like loons. What you want to do is go after the pocketbook of the publisher. That will get their attention.

Tempests for Two

I overslept again, probably an effect of this miracle medication I'm taking, but who knows? I see by the news today that we who complain about being censored by people with opinions are being bigoted and narrow-minded and right-wing, or at any rate insensitive to the beliefs of others. Okay, let me put it this way....

All my life people have trampled on my beliefs. People have ridiculed them, kicked them around, and told me in no uncertain terms to shut up. My fifth grade teacher told me that I was clinically insane for believing in the scientific fact of evolution, not merely Darwin's theory of the causes of it. (She also believed that "nobody really knows what electricity is or how light switches work--we just take it all on faith" and that the abbreviation Xmas is some sort of conspiracy to take the Christ out of Xmas and that "a noun is a person place or thing" so she may not be the best guide to what is sane or insane.) A guy recently told me that saying "Happy Holidays" is an insult to Christians. Still another proclaims loudly that objectivity is some sort of Western con, rather than an achievable state. Tolerance, I am told, is the easy way out and only the irrational is worth believing.

Whatever. I know there are a lot of people out there who don't share my beliefs. It would be a much duller world if everybody else did. (It would probably also be a much safer world in many respects; and as we followed the buffalo herds we would all have animated discussions about the possibilities of some day domesticating animals, or maybe planting edible grains for ourselves.) Every day animists, patriots, christians, libertarians, baconians, muslims, objectivists, canonical critics, and devotees of the Byzantine text of the New Testament are doing things that (if I knew about them) would offend me deeply. When they come to my attention I am outraged. Just because I don't go out on some rabid snark hunt, jumping wildly about and making a monkey of myself, doesn't mean I'm not infuriated. It does mean that I've got better things to do.

If I buy into this notion that certain muslims and their western apologists are making--that every time somebody says, writes, or draws something they might find offensive, somebody owes them an apology, then, by the same token, every time somebody says, writes, or draws something I find not merely offensive, but downright filthy, I am owed an abject and irrevocable apology. In this spirit, I submit a list:

People who Owe Me Apologies

(1) Donald Rumsfeld: If for nothing else, for his callous reaction to the destruction of one of the great temples of knowledge in this world: "Stuff happens." Practically every time he has opened his mouth in public, it was to say something so contemptable that even a civilized person might be tempted to throw something in his general direction--a rotten egg at least, or maybe a small explosive object of some kind.

(2) General Peter Pace: His outrageous misrepresentation of a cartoon that appeared in the Washington Post--a cartoon whose meaning is obvious to the meanest intellect--as anti-serviceman, is an insult not only to all Americans, but to all thinking people everywhere.

(3) Michelle Mashraqi: Her claim that "The press is very disrepectful if they see the outrage as Muslim's rebuking free press" is utterly offensive to all believers in the free press everywhere. This is not an issue of what Muslims believe--this is a matter of what free people are allowed to do or say. She, and any others expressing this inane viewpoint, are being deliberately disrespectful to all of us, and especially to me.

In fact, as I start thinking about all the people who owe me apologies on this basis, I start feeling a bit overwhelmed. Which, I suppose, is one of the reasons not to think about it. I really do have better things to do. And I suggest that if these protesters don't have better things to do, they should at least make a start by re-evaluating their lives.

Teapots and Tangos

Maybe I'm in hibernation or something; I find myself sleeping all the time this winter. I can't seem to stay awake. But I'm up now this afternoon or evening of the last day of January, and maybe writing something here will get me going a bit. I'm not actually counting on it, however.

A winter storm rages outside, but things are calm here, and with any luck, maybe they'll continue to be. If the electricity holds. And the supplies don't run out.

I've written "winter" now twice, but by my current eight-season model of the year, we are well into the season I call Sheol, or simply, The Pit. Winter, or Christmastide, is past, and we have nothing to look forward to till Spring. Hibernation may well be a good idea.

In the news we hear of the death of Coretta Scott King, the projected elevation of Judge Samuel Alito, and the coming (or is it now over) State of the Union speech. And we hear that Muslims are once again in an uproar over some silly thing or other--in this case, the running of a handful of cartoons by a Danish newspaper depicting the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). This upsets them. I used to think that southern Baptists were the most idiotic people on earth for flying into a rage over nothing at all, but I've got to admit, these rioting Muslims take the cake. "...what they've done is beyond forgiveness," says one Abdul Qader Ibrahim, described as a Sudanese housekeeper in Jeddah. "...we demand that the Danish government make a clear and public apology for the wrongful crime," proclaims Nafez Azzam, a leader of Islamic Jihad. "It's a matter that touches the heart of Islam," says Hatim Misfer, a Saudi receptionist. A Saudi college student, Ahmad Alsaeed, said that a boycott of Danish goods was necessary because without it "the Western world would not have understood how serious this issue is to Muslims."

Okay ... I can't speak for the entire Western World here, but speaking for myself, what I get out of this is that some Muslim people, at least, have been living in a cocoon for too damn long. Wake up! There's a huge world filled with people who don't subscribe to your beliefs, who don't care about your notions, and who aren't even going to notice your boycott. What most people get out of this kind of behavior is that Muslims (in general!) are weird flaky people who are likely to fly off the handle for no good reason.

I remember a fellow named Wildmoan who was like that. Could've been Wildman. Seems to me he was a Southern Baptist--he acted like one, anyway. Flew off the handle over the strangest things--you just wouldn't believe it. One time he got it into his head somehow that CBS was going to broadcast a drama depicting Jesus as a child conceived through the rape of the virgin Mary by a Roman soldier. He did. Course CBS denied it, said they had a program in the works about Jesus, but nothing like what Wildeman was saying. But he wouldn't rest with that, no sir, he got people all stirred up--reeling and writhing and fainting in coils to beat the band. They were boycotting here and protesting there till you wouldn't believe it. They did. And then when Jesus of Nazareth came out, there wern't nothing like it in the show at all. Not a thing. So was Wildermann at all embarrassed? You'd think so, wouldn't you? After a mistake like that, it'd be all a body could do to show his face in public again. But no--this guy was made of sterner stuff. Not only did he appear in public, but he had the brass to declare victory! Seems in Widlemon's world he had forced CBS to back down and remove the Roman rapist from the story.

The issue here is control. Who gets to determine how a historical character is presented--his self-proclaimed followers, or all of us? The instrument is censorship--the attempt to prevent somebody with a message from reaching those who wish to hear (or in this case see) it.

And as for apologies--well, for one thing, the Muslim organizers of this boycott owe one hell of an apology to the people they've hurt with it--people who, by the way, had nothing to do with the cartoons or those who put them out. They owe an apology to all those they've offended in the West for their disrespect to the most basic law of civilized discourse--freedom of speech.

Whether anybody owes these Muslims an apology is harder to say. They certainly have every right to be offended, if that pleases them. They have every right not to subscribe to the Danish paper in question, if that pleases them. But they have no right whatsoever to keep me from looking at these images, if it pleases me and the cartoonists who made them. And the crime they are committing in trying to prevent that is indeed unforgivable.

(For a look at these cartoons, click here.)