Letters to the Editor
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Sticks and stones...
... may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Remember when your mother told you that? Sadly, all too many people do not, especially when the words in question are critical of their strongly-held beliefs. We in the US are hardly immune, as anyone who has ever witnessed an Internet flame war can testify, to say nothing of the controversies over gay marriage and "intelligent design".
Hani Shukrallah implies that "demarcating between freedom of expression and racist hate speech" is or should be "well established in the 'Western' democratic tradition". I don't know what country Shukrallah lives in, but in the US, freedom of expression, including "racist hate speech", is guaranteed by the first amendment to the Constitution (except in certain circumstances which are immaterial to this discussion, such as incitement to criminal activity).
The danger in suppressing any speech, no matter how abhorrent to the majority of people, is that this may lead to suppression of any speech the majority disagrees with. Denounce the cartoons as "racist hate speech" if you wish, or grow a thicker skin and ignore them, but don't imply that they should have been censored.
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IGNORANCE PERSONIFIED: None of the Muslim haters on this thread address Shukrallah's basic point - Part 1
"One can’t help but wonder how Shukrallah explains the spectacular and expressly religious violence that Muslims routinely visit upon other Muslims in the Islamic world."
I don't wonder at all because I (unlike the bigots on this thread) actually read Shukrallah's writings in Al Ahram (easily available online), and anywhere else he writes. If you actually TOOK THE TIME to, gee, like READ Arab/Muslim writers (and those in the west who actually know something about the region) you'd know that Shukrallah routinely denounces (always with a tone of derision) columns condemning violence by Muslims against ANYONE. But since you people are too damned lazy and racist to educate yourselves about the people you just love to despise, Shukrallah's name is completely unknown to you and you thoroughly distort his entire article, seeing only what you WANT to see. I'm shocked that Salon has actually published him -- like most of the western press, Salon never publishes Arab or Muslim voices like Shukrallah's. Discussion about Arabs and Muslims in the western press is always conducted by western pundits and so-called western experts (or self-hating Arab fawners of the West like Fouad Ajami who haven't lived in the region for decades). Oh, maybe some joker gov't official from Saudi Arabia or Egypt is quoted, and that's about it.
The moral hypocrites on this thread fume with such self-righteous indignation about the intolerance of Muslims, it's a pathetic sight to behold. They love to use articles like this to scold Muslims (never actually knowing any Muslims themselves). Osama bin Laden is right after all: hey all you Muslims living peaceful lives in the West, working, raising your kids, you're just clueless; you'll never be accepted, you'll always be hated and treated with contempt by people in the west. Give it up and join our jiha.d
Shukrallah's article was accurately entitled "a bogus 'clash of civilizations' reduces complex cultures to empty caricatures." That is the entire point of his essay. Which of the know-it-all bloviators on this thread actually addressed that point? You either agree or disagree with this. Or you are a hypocrite and believe the following: yes, "our" superior society is indeed complex, irreducible to the ignorant caricatures held by bigots in the Muslim world (and elsewhere). "Your" inferior society, however, is totally reducible to one-word caricatures, easy labels and stereotypes (and ONLY your society -- everyone else in the world is superior). The posters on this thread with their utterly revolting obscurantism and stupidity don't think---they parrot, they preen, they react with emotion only (oh look at us, aren't we so superior to those subhuman savages?), they argue using sweeping generalizations about a group of people who constitute hundreds of different cultures around the world, speak hundreds of different languages, constitute almost a billion people in every single part of the world, inhabit every single continent (except Antartica), have experienced an enormous multiplicity of cultural and political histories. All this incredible diversity of people can OF COURSE be reduced to this: backward, savage, violent, fanatics, adamantly and uniformly hostile to the west and its "liberal values". This is what passes for intelligent, rational discourse among westerners (liberal or conservatives), and among the bigots on this thread. You people are a fine bunch indeed to judge anyone.
If any of you even cared to learn about the region you rant and rave about on forums like this, you'd know that Christians all over the Middle East and South Asia have also strongly condemned the cartoons for being highly offensive. This Christian writer at Al Ahram, for example, writes as an "oriental Christian" and expresses his strong offense at the cartoons: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/781/op7.htm . He is not alone. You might understand that the violent reaction is perhaps limited to a small number of political situations in certain countries, as Juan Cole tried to explain in a recent article on all this.
Shukrallah is absolutely correct that the cartoons were RACIST -- of course they were. The argument that Muslims aren't a race betray unbelievable ignorance here. Racism against Jews (anti-Semitism) doesn't stop being racism just because Jews come in many colors and nationalities. (Or does anyone here really argue that Jews are a separate genetic race?) You people are taking "racism" all too literally -- bigotry against any collective group based entirely on their nationality, race, religion or gender is just that: bigotry. "Racism" is just an easy shorthand term. Perhaps a more accurate term would be "anti-Semitism" just as Bradley Burston said in his article in Ha'aretz - however not all Muslims are semites, so that doesn't work here.
If I published a cartoon showing Moses (wearing a star of David) gleefully profitting from the Iraq war, laden with gold coins as civilians die all around him, is that not a racist depiction of ALL Jews as inherently, innately conniving people who profit from the deaths of innocents?
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IGNORANCE PERSONIFIED: None of the Muslim haters on this thread address Shukrallah's basic point - Part 2
It is absolutely clear that the depiction of MOHAMMED (not bin laden or some imam calling for violence) drawn with a bomb on his head in a country in which racist attacks against Muslims and other immigrants have DOUBLED within the last year (the EU commission on human rights singled out Denmark in early 2005 for its increased racist attacks against Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim) is a bigoted comment against ALL Muslims as inherently, innately terrorists. The idiots who argue that "Islam is different," that it's "a warrior religion" argue just like those who follow bin Laden when they say Christians and Jews are inherently violent -- after all, look at all the violence they perpetrate against Muslims (which Muslims see every day on their TV screens and Americans and Europeans do not). My family in Brazil believes Americans are a violent, ignorant people people because they're always going around the world bombing the crap out of some poor country and murdering whole villages, destroying whole countries -- and that its people are collectively ignorant and easily led by their leaders. Is that an accurate picture of Americans as a whole?
And why does condemnation to you people equal a call for censorship? Why can't you people be as intelligent as this gentleman in today's Washington Post letters section when he makes the obvious distinction between condemning the content of a cartoon and calling for censorship:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021401895.html
And where does Shukrallah call for censorship? Again, if you people knew anything about his writings, you'd know that he tirelessly writes against censorship in Egypt (his home country) and the Middle East as a whole. You people are just as incapable of making rational, informed distinctions as the people committing violence in the aftermath of the publications of these cartoons. As Gary Younge writes in an excellent piece in The Nation this week ( http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/younge ), people have a right to be offended. He quotes Steve Biko in the context of this whole cartoon debacle: "Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked."
Exactly.
None of you fully understand how deeply rightwing and racist Europe has become in the last decade (even before 9/11), even more than the US. In today's Guardian, a Danish musician writes about how he has witnessed his own country, once known for its liberal values, has swung to the far right and is causing more and more fear not only among Muslims (who are on the receiving end of constant racist threats and attacks) but also ordinary Danes who are deeply worried about the growing racist demonization of less than 2% of their population. One leading politician has labeled Muslims a "cancer" and has said that the way to cure cancer is to kill it. That is the context of the reaction to these cartoons. His column can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1709754,00.html
There have been no riots (or even street protests, peaceful or not) in the US, Latin America (where there are millions of Muslims), Canada, most European countries (east or west), almost all east Asian countries, most of Africa and even some Arab countries. Most of the street protests have been peaceful. We are talking about literally a handful of incidents. But the western press--ever eager to tout this as some worldwide tumult of irrational violence--as inflated the reaction to something it simply is not. Shukrallah is absolutely correct in saying that extremists on both sides are deeply invested in the propagation of the idea that Muslims (AS A PEOPLE) are in a timeless, universal, absolutist conflict with the west. If that is what you believe, then you are in total agreement with Osama bin Laden, Zarkawi, the guys who flew into the World Trade Center, and all the rest of Al Qaeda.
Finally, ask yourselves this: would there have been any reaction to these cartoons at all if all else was fine with the Muslim and western worlds? No Iraq invasion, no Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, no US military presence all over the Middle East and South Asia going around bombing people, etc.? Do you really believe that the general international context in which these cartoons appeared is irrelevant to the reaction they sparked? In other words, do you really believe that this reaction is just about a bunch of idiotic cartoons?
And those of you who are just dying to see these cartoons, why aren't you equally interested in seeing those anti-semitic cartoons sometimes published in the Arab press (and often denounced by writers like Shukrallah, by the way)? Would you also demand that Salon and all newspapers publish a cartoon with a blood-drenched Moses (pictured with a star of David) gleefully shooting missiles into the bodies of innocent children in a refugee camp? And that such a cartoon be published and re-published and re-published ad infinitum, all in the name of free speech? Hypocrites, all of you.