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Sorry, Back to the Danish Cartoons…

Conservatives rage in rebuttal that Islamic nations tolerate cartoons, books, billboards and TV shows far more anti-Semitic and anti-Christian than these cartoons were anti-Islamic. All of which is true, and none of which is relevant. For this is not a debate over double standards. It is a battle for the hearts and minds of Islamic […]

Conservatives rage in rebuttal that Islamic nations tolerate cartoons, books, billboards and TV shows far more anti-Semitic and anti-Christian than these cartoons were anti-Islamic.

All of which is true, and none of which is relevant. For this is not a debate over double standards. It is a battle for the hearts and minds of Islamic peoples. And if we are to have any hope of winning that battle, we cannot condone insults to what they hold most sacred and dear: their faith. ~Pat Buchanan

I suppose the argument that Islamic newspapers routinely engage in publishing demeaning, provocative and genuinely far more spiteful images of Jews and Christians is not strictly relevant to the question of the Danish cartoons, because it would have been right to print and defend the printing of the Danish cartoons regardless of what images Muslims put in their newspapers. Their newspapers could (but are not going to) stop printing what are pretty obviously anti-Semitic and hateful cartoons tomorrow, and this would not make their threats of violence and demands for censorship of a European newspaper (that printed moderately satirical cartoons) any more acceptable, nor would it relieve us of our obligation to stand with the Danes and all those who republished the cartoons.

Maybe in this case, for me, it is something as elemental as what Dr. Fleming has called “the call of the blood,” and so I would be identifying out of a distant ethnic loyalty with my Danish cousins regardless of the principle at stake. Maybe, maybe not. But there also happens to be a rather important principle at stake, and I think Mr. Buchanan would have the same view of this principle if, if I may be so blunt, instead of Muslims protesting Danish cartoons of Muhammad there were Mexicans protesting the satirical depiction of one of their national heroes in an American newspaper by reacting with intimidation, threats and perhaps burning down a consulate in Acapulco. Would we want to accommodate and understand their grievances, or defend American rights? We could chide the cartoonists for being crude and the editors for being thoughtless of the larger consequences of their publishing such things, but in the final analysis we either side with the people who most share our way of life or we abandon them. In reading Camp of the Saints, you can sympathise with the handful of holdouts who resist what Raspail called “the Beast,” or you sympathise with the government that capitulates to it.

If the satire of Muhammad is even more offensive to Muslims than would be the case the Mexican example, their response is even more intolerable because it arises not simply from one provocation or a few inflammatory incidents, as might be the case in comparable controversies, but from a fundamental rejection of the idea that it is permissible in a free society for non-Muslims to satirically depict someone whom they do not regard as a prophet and may, in fact, regard as something closer to a war criminal. The shoving of alien values down somebody’s throat usually causes resentment in the people on the receiving end, and if we recognise our own way of life in that of the Europeans at all it seems to me that we ought to resent it as well.

Via Lawrence Auster.

If the Europeans yield to these demands for censorship or self-censorship, a terrible precedent will have been set that all but guarantees the collapse in Europe of any protected speech remotely critical of Islam or Muslim immigrants. It would in all likelihood strengthen the marginalisation and criminalisation of most anti-immigration parties in Europe, thus helping to undermine European resolve to resist Muslim immigration and preserve Europe’s identity, and that’s just for starters.

But doesn’t this controversy jeopardise “winning the hearts and minds” of Muslims? I suppose it would, if such a victory were possible on a large scale in the first place. Supposing it were possible–winning their hearts and minds for what purpose? To assist in antiterrorism? Most of the North African (heard of many Algerian and Moroccan demonstrations against the cartoons–no, and this is likely because those governments are really our allies and are keeping discontent under wraps), Near and Middle Eastern governments either will or will not assist us in antiterrorist campaigns as it suits their own interests in combating Islamism, regardless of what their staged mobs or Islamist critics feel about it. The only cases where popular feeling on this matter would necessarily affect our strategic interests are mostly in those Islamic countries where Mr. Bush has already foolishly encouraged democratisation and where the man in the street has some say in what government policy will be. As for Turkey and Pakistan, we have these countries as allies largely because the governments in power today are directed to maintain the alliance with us by the military–the Turkish people would have long since severed the alliance with us, if it had been up to them, and that would have been the case even before the U.S. invaded Iraq.

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