The Missing Link

February 04, 2006

Danish Cartoon Update

Instapundit has a round-up of updates on the Danish cartoon affair, including a link to this BBC story:

A Jordanian newspaper editor sacked after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has been arrested.

Jihad Momani is accused of insulting religion under Jordan's press and publications law.

I hope Mr. Momani is flooded with job offers from Western newspapers seeking foreign correspondents.

Oh, did I mention that they torched the Danish embassy in Syria?

Amid all Christopher Hitchens--an atheist if you can't tell--argues that we ought to mock religion.

For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.

Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general...

You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.

Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible proof of an aggressive intent. This current coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive" become really offensive lately?) I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs, and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts toward me the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to individuals who have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fuelled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.

As someone who attended 14 years of Catholic school and attended college at an elite liberal arts school decidedly antagonistic toward religion I can assure everyone that there are faithful and atheists among the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species; there are also faithful and atheists among the wise and compassionate.

Hitchens is right, however, when he notes that establishing prohibitions based on offense would mandate not only that we ban material that mocks religion, but that we ban religion itself too. After all, it offends people.

Posted by Conor at February 4, 2006 02:15 PM