I really hate it when other people make me look like a fool.
Most who know me are aware that I need no help in that department. I am quite capable of looking like a fool all by myself without so much as a “by your leave” from anyone else, thank you. Hence, when others, by their actions, show me to be either naive or just plain wrong, I really hate it.
First of all, it requires the obligatory mea culpa post full of angst-ridden questions like “How dare they?” Or perhaps “Am I really that stupid?” This is followed by a flood of comments from readers along the lines of “I don’t like saying “I told ya so’ but I told ya so,” and other deep thoughts. In the end, I give the lie to the old adage “There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers” by proving that if the interlocutor is clueless, no answer on God’s green earth is dumb enough to justify being wrong in the first place.
I have been dead wrong about the Cartoon Controversy. I haven’t been just a little off target or slightly misguided. I have been four square, 100%, dyed in the wool, hugely mistaken about both the issues at stake and my analysis of so-called “moderate Muslims” whose almost virtual silence on these matters has made me look like an imbecile while trying to defend them.
I really hate being made to look like an imbecile by people I’ve stood up for. In short, my call for forebearance and understanding on the cartoon issue has been tossed back at me with a sneer and a kick in the ass by many of the Muslim leaders I counted on to calm the situation. This is no longer an issue of trying to separate the jihadists from the so-called “moderates.” At bottom, they are both using each other and the controversy itself to advance their own agendas while at the same time, viciously attacking the very concept of free speech as we in the west understand it.
When radical Muslims like President Ahmadinejad of Iran start echoing the arguments made by what passes for moderate Muslims in Great Britain, it is time for everyone who supported the notion that the cartoons were making it more difficult for moderate Muslims to marginalize the fanatics to admit they were wrong.
Ahmadinejad is trying to pressure Europeans to address Muslim “sensitivities” by making it illegal to criticize Islam. He is trying to do this through the “moderate” Organization of Islamic Council (OIC) who know a good thing when they see it:
Iran has demanded an emergency meeting of the 57 Muslim countries comprising the Organization of Islamic Council (OIC), which announced it would call on the European Union (EU) to pass laws to counter hostility to Muslims.“The OIC member countries expect the EU to identify islamophobia as a dangerous phenomenon to be scrutinized and combated as is the case with xenophobia and antisemitism,” the council said in a statement to AFP Saturday.
Europe had to create “appropriate mechanisms of surveillance and to look again at its legislation with the aim of preventing in the future repetition of recent unfortunate events,” the statement said.
By piggybacking their victimhood claims on the back of the cartoon controversy along with the radical’s call for suppressing free speech, we see an instance where the fanatics and “mainstream” Muslims scratch each other’s backs in order to advance their own agendas.
Thanks for that kick in the groin, guys.
Not to be outdone, the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the most important mosque in holiest city in Islam, has said “thanks but no thanks” to western apologies for the cartoons and instead, has called for the arrest and trial of the cartoonists:
Speaking to hundreds of faithful at his Friday sermon, Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Seedes, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, called on the international community to enact laws that condemn insults against the prophet and holy sites.“Where is the world with all its agencies and organizations? Is there only freedom of expression when it involves insults to Muslims? With one voice…we will reject the apology and demand a trial,” Al Riyad, a Saudi daily newspaper, quoted al-Seedes as saying.
Al-Seedes said the cartoons “made a mockery” of the Islam and the Prophet and called them “slanderous.”
Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Seedes is not some obscure radical preaching from the hinterlands of Islam. He is one of the most important leaders in the Muslim world. To “reject” the meek apologies of the Europeans and call for criminalizing free speech goes beyond the pale. Charles Johnson has noted that the US has taken the Syrians and Iranians to task for stoking the fires of this controversy but have been unconscionably silent about our Saudi friends.
Don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
More suggestions from “moderates” on what the West can do with their free speech comes from the President of the semi-free, military dominated government of Indonesia:
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reiterated that many Muslims consider the cartoons an insult to their faith, but he called on Muslims to forgive those who have sincerely apologized.“Reprinting the cartoons in order to make a point about free speech is an act of senseless brinkmanship,” he said in a commentary in the International Herald Tribune.
“It is also a disservice to democracy. It sends a conflicting message to the Muslim community: that in a democracy it is permissible to offend Islam. This message damages efforts to prove that democracy and Islam go together.”
How very big of President Yudhoyono. He forgives us while accusing the west of “brinksmanship” for practicing free speech and then showing how really clueless he is about the idea of freedom by saying that it is undemocratic to offend Islam.
If I got a dollar every time I’ve read over the past three weeks of some Muslim “leader” giving lip service to the idea of free speech and then undercutting it by saying it should be illegal to criticize Islam, I’d be able to buy a new laptop.
Since my original postings on the cartoon controversy, we have learned about how both the Syrians and Iranians are using it to deflect attention from other problems. We have learned that western Muslims are using the controversy to advance their own agendas by playing upon the timidity and meekness of European governments. And we have witnessed the depth of hatred that the fanatical jihadists have for us and the contempt with which they view our most cherished freedoms.
What good does empathy and forbearance do in the face of such calculated calumny? To be considered whatever the Muslim equivalent of a “useful idiot” is does not sit well with me. It’s a mistake I will not repeat.
In fact, if the moderates want to impress me, they can start by coming out and laying into President Ahmadinejad for his constant denial of the Holocaust. That would be a pretty good start toward initiating a useful dialog that would lead to a better understanding between Islam and the West.
9:06 am
“if the moderates want to impress me, they can start by coming out and laying into President Ahmadinejad”
Nice, but no cigar…”laying into” isn’t good enough any more. It’s time to take that bastard out…out….before it’s too late to do it without killing a lot of other, more or less innocent Iranians.
10:59 am
Rick,
I’m inclined to agree with your original thoughts rather than the retribution crowd, but not for multicultural or sympathetic reasons. Check out http://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2006/02/my-enemys-enemy.html. Hugh Hewitt makes the argument that we don’t want Danish cartoonists setting the time and place of our cultural conflict with Islam. I’d argue that we don’t need to stand up for the cartoonists any more than we need to stand up for Hollywood’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.”
The Islamofascists rioting over cartoons adds exactly what to our list of reasons to oppose them? It’s like having your neighbor blow up your toolshed and kill your dog, but then getting even angrier when his watering moistens your sidewalk.
11:57 am
Rick, say it ain’t so! You take your time (no knee-jerk) and think (don’t follow the leader) before you write. You were so close to becoming an Independent.
Does this mean that the president has to apologize for Iraq? NSA? The NYT? Getting elected?
I guess that you simply “grew†while writing.
12:28 pm
Rick:
Your attempt at forebearance and understanding with the “Cartoon Controversey” was exemplary. And I appreciate your candor in the manner in which this forebearance was thrown back in your face.
Islam is attempting to raise itself out of its torpor. Decades of stagnation within the “Arab Street” have come to a head. No longer will the continued attacks on the Jews and Zionism as the great enemy or the United States as the “Great Satan” suffice. The world itself is the target and the establishment of the Great Caliphate and the Dhimmitude of all non-believers the only acceptable result.
We knew this regarding the fanatics, terrorists, and Islamo-Fascists for some time. But we have held out hope for the Moderate Muslim world. The problem has been the Moderates’ silence in the face of continued terrorism. The deafening quiet heard from the Muslim Moderates when the African Embassies were bombed, the Bali bombings, the USS Cole, Suicide bombers in Israel, and then 9/11. What would it take for the moderate muslim to raise himself up. We have found out – cartoons.
When we all bow to the Muslim world and offer our necks to the sword of Islam and humbly beg to live in servitude to the will of Allah – only then will the Muslim world feel content. How else can you view the evidence?
12:39 pm
Was it not Henry Kissinger who said (more or less), “A moderate Arab is the one without ammunition?”
1:58 pm
Muslim word for usefull idiot: dhimmi. Or in a word, “slave”.
There are no moderate muslims. Back in July when I first started becoming political in the blogosphere, I dipped my toe in the waters of terrorist website jihadwatch.org, and pulled out an article by a muslim columnist for the London Free Press, where he said that there are no moderate muslims. The London Free Press article is gone, but relevant quotes from the article are still available at http://iamthepaperboy.blogspot.com/2005/07/there-are-no-moderate-muslims.html.
The upshot is that in muslim society violence is to be expected and never questioned.
So it’s not surprising that they have such extreme reactions to such innocent cartoons. In fact, only two of the twelve cartoons depict Mohammed as being violent. The majority of the cartoons either depict Mohammed as being peaceful, are abstractions, or contemporary social commentary about the violent tendencies of muslims. This is why I believe the cartoons should be published widely, to show the world the true nature of this controversy, that the muslims are intentionally over-reacting as a way of furthering their global jihad against western civilization. I plan to publish my own in-depth analysis of all of the cartoons within a day or two.
4:47 pm
The world is far too dangerous for blind optimism. This is an excerpt from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and it is both jarring and frightening in its relevancy.
“In the very outset, at first meeting with them (referencing tribesman and townsman of ME, was found a universal clearness or hardness of belief, almost mathematical in its limitation, and repellent in its unsympathetic form…
…They were people of black and white, who saw the world always in contour. They were dogmatic, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questioning. They knew only truth and untruth, believe and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades.
This people was black and white, not only in vision, but by inmost furnishing: black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice. Sometimes inconsistents seemed to possess them at once in joint sway; but they never compromised; they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity…
…They were a limited, narrow minded people, whose inherent intellects lay fallow in incurious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative. There was so little Arab art in Asia that they could almost be said to have no art, thought there classes were liberal patrons, and had encouraged whatever talents in architecture, or ceramics, or other handicraft their neighbors and helots displayed. Nor did they handle great industry: they had no organization of mind or body. They invented no system of philosophy, no complex mythologies. They steered their course between the idols of the tribe and the cave. The least mobid of peoples, they had accepted the gift of life unquestioningly, as axiomatic. To them it was a thing inevitable, entailed on man, a usufruct (means: The right to use and enjoy the profits and advantages of something belonging to another as long as the property is not damaged or altered in any way), beyond control. Suicide was a thing impossible, and death no grief.”
on and on…
To get a sense of the sad, maybe Churchillian, state of affairs, peruse the transcript of Meet the Press. In all his pomposity and churlishness, Russert exchanged barbs on the NSA controversy with the ranking Senate Republican. He began by obfuscating the facts about the allegation L. Libby released classified information on direction of superiors (see Powerline discussion). Then his puerile behavior turned to defending the indefensible (treason in effect) using parsed legal definitions, equivalence and recrimination. Another nail in the coffin performance by the Fourth Estate (and for all the free speech chicken littles, information has never been as democratized as it is today).
7:11 pm
A Change in the Cartoon Debate
Quite an interesting happening occurred today at Right Wing Nuthouse. To give you some background, last week he posted about the need for Empathy and Understanding in the Cartoon Case:
I have tried to imagine anything similar in my own experience th…
11:34 am
jordan
jordan
Q:What’s yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
A:Zorn’s Lemon.