In the year 2005, a Dutch cartoonist by name of Kurt Westergaard drew this brilliant cartoon. In case it needs explanation, it depicts the prophet Muhammad as a man of war. The cartoon set off a worldwide controversy for its blaspheming the prophet Muhammad and, by implication, the religion of Islam. Westergaard died in his sleep at age 86 in 2021.
In the year 2015, two Muslim brothers murdered a dozen people and injured 11 others in response to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's persistent satirization of Islam and its prophet Muhammad ("We have to carry on until Islam has been rendered as banal as Catholicism").
This new year, friends of Charlie Hebdo commemorated the tenth anniversary of the attack.
Decades ago, in a well-meaning attempt to stifle the hateful speech of our own home-grown racists, our own pre-woke legislators attempted to outlaw hate speech. But they ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press") and thus we have no laws outlawing hate speech. Let me be clear here: while the government - federal, state and local - cannot abridge your right to hateful and bigoted expression - about race, sexual expression or religion - private organizations (like your employer) and private individuals (like your friends and colleagues) need not tolerate your free expression, and you can lose your job and your friends quite legally, your blessed freedom of expression be damned.
Where do I sit with this? I am an American who believes that the framers of our Constitution got it right, Americans are free to be racists, sexists, homophobes and even antisemites. Free, that is, from government coercion. But their employers and their friends and even their families are free to shun them. Legal but foolish, legal but stupid.
In a terror attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day, mere days ago, "fifteen people were killed, including the perpetrator, and at least thirty-five others were injured, including two police officers who were shot." The perpetrator was an American who had been raised as a Christian but had converted to Islam. The attack was "seemingly motivated by his religious views." It was this incident that triggered my writing this piece, As early as ten years ago, when I began to write this blog, I wrote a piece about Muslims and blasphemy. What I said then was: "This is America, and what you call blasphemy is free speech here. And in the West in general. Get used to it or be damned!"
Here is a very uncomfortable "List of Islamist Terror Attacks." What is "uncomfortable" about this list is how excruciatingly long it is; and it begins in 1980, ignoring all terror attacks since the 1940's or the 1920's or before. Please note that the vast, vast majority of these attacks were NOT against Jews or Israel. And "We have recorded 48,035 Islamist terrorist attacks that killed at least 210,138 people between 1979 and May 2021" (1144 attacks / year and 5003 deaths / year, 3.13 attacks / day and 13.7 deaths / day).
What is my point? The original Westergaard cartoon depicted Muhammad as a man of war, and by implication, Islam, as a religion of war. How did Muslims react to this slander? They reacted with murder and bloodshed, proving the cartoonist's slander. The 1989 "fatwa" (a clerically ordered assassination) against satiric novelist Salman Rushdie for the crime of blasphemy - a "crime" against Islam punishable by death - has not been lifted, some 36 years later. And recent history, at least one hundred years, proves that Islam is a religion of the sword, of violence, of war. It is surely the case that fewer than 5%, perhaps fewer than 1%, of Muslims have ever been involved in terror attacks anywhere in the world (Palestine and allies an unfortunate but real exception). It is equally the case that an unfortunately large %age of such murderous acts have been committed by Muslims.
Much of the West has acted cowardly to Islamic terror (check out Douglas Murray's The Strange Death of Europe). Muhammad is no friend to Western civilization; and Donald Trump is no friend to the American experiment with democracy. If we don't recognize the enemy when he stabs us in the gut, who have we to blame when we breathe our last breath.
There are a lot of threads in this blog post. I think the main one being that all Muslims are bad since there are some Muslims that committed heinous terrorist acts.
ReplyDeleteI think that any terrorist attack is terrible, but I don’t think it is a reason to condemn a whole religion. I would think that Islam is more than just murdering infidels. Do we know how many people or families, Muslim or not, have been helped by Muslim charity?
Are all Christians to be condemned as racist murderers because of crimes committed by American white nationalists? Or are all Jews murderers due to the number of intentional civilian deaths in the Gaza war?
From my perspective this is another very complex issue with many dimensions . Trying to find a simple generalization may not help us getting to the root cause and working on finding a positive path forward in a very multi-culturally diverse world.
I wish there were more blogs and articles about looking at different perspectives to an issue, and showing the positive intent people are doing to understand these problems and coming together to address these issues.
But I do appreciate your perspective and willingness to engage on the issue. So thanks for that.
Dear Anonymous,
DeleteThanks for reading and thanks for responding.
First, you said that I made the case that “all Muslims are bad since there are some Muslims that committed heinous terrorist acts.” Perhaps you missed these words: “It is surely the case that fewer than 5%, perhaps fewer than 1%, of Muslims have ever been involved in terror attacks anywhere in the world (Palestine and allies an unfortunate but real exception).” My target here is NOT the average Muslim, my target IS Islam itself, or that part of it that is so militaristic, and intolerant of criticism.
Muslim charity (toward whom?) is irrelevant. When a man stands trial for a crime, how patient would the judge be if the defense called character witnesses who could testify that the defendant was otherwise a good guy? Stories abound about Israeli hospitals taking in wounded Palestinian soldiers, fixing them, and sending them out to do battle against Israelis again. The same cannot be said about Israeli soldiers in a hospital in Gaza.
Please show me a source for “intentional civilian deaths (at the hands of Israelis) in the Gaza war.” Not individual instances but enough to make it a pattern.
Islam is complex and multi-dimensional, but the patterns that I have laid out are real. At least at the leadership level, there is huge intolerance of criticism, with fatwa as their answer. Do you think that Salman Rushdie believes that all Muslims want him assassinated?
The problem with “finding a positive path forward in a very multi-culturally diverse world” is that Islam (at least its leadership in the Middle East) is not interested in multi-cultural diversity. The Palestinian cause is not to have a state, but for all of “Palestine” to be free of Jews. To some Muslim leaders, Israel is Little Satan, and the USA is the Great Satan. No doubt, very few Muslims believe this way; but it is a strain, a powerful strain, in today’s Islam. To ignore it is not the path to peace or to multi-culturalism.
How about this as the cause: “Our way is the only way.” Christianity spent centuries practicing this creed, Islam (or a large part of it) still does.
It was not my purpose to try to fix a problem, it was my purpose to identify a problem (“the first step in solving a problem”). If you have a solution, I am all ears.
Thanks for reading and replying. BTW, if you have not followed the links in my post and read them, please do so.
You’re welcome!
Ben
From reading your post and reply, I get the impression that you think all Muslims are bad since a few of them commit terrorist attacks. You blame Islam as a religion of hate. Muslims are adherents of the Islamic faith.
ReplyDeleteI don't personally think all Muslims are bad, just as I don't think all Christians or Jews are good.
Maybe the more we try to understand other group's perspectives and reasons for their thinking and beliefs, then perhaps we can all become more tolerant of each other and move towards making the world a more peaceful and better place. I think pointing fingers and pointing out the problems of others just escalates differences and makes things worse.
"The literal meaning of Tolerance is “to bear.” Tolerance is a basic principle of Islam. It is a religious and moral duty. It does not mean compromise. It does not mean lack of principles or lack of seriousness about one’s principles. It means accepting the fact that human beings, naturally distinct in their appearance, situation, speech, behavior, and values, have the right to live in peace and to be as they are. It also means that one’s views are not to be imposed on others. We have to tolerate others according to their point of view we can’t just impose our point of view on others.
Islam is the religion of mercy and kindness, the religion of tolerance and ease. Faith/Belief is from the first of the 5 pillars upon which Islam is based, they also consist of more than seventy branches (i.e. parts) and one of these parts is, “Tolerance”. The Quran speaks about the basic dignity of all human beings. The Prophet (SAW) spoke about the equality of all human beings, regardless of their race, color, language or traditional background."
- https://www.quranreading.com/blog/tolerance-in-islam-quranic-verses-and-ahadith-on-tolerance/
Dear Anonymous,
DeleteThanks again for taking the time.
Para. 1: I don’t get the impression that you really did read my reply. Here it is again:
First, you said that I made the case that “all Muslims are bad since there are some Muslims that committed heinous terrorist acts.” Perhaps you missed these words: “It is surely the case that fewer than 5%, perhaps fewer than 1%, of Muslims have ever been involved in terror attacks anywhere in the world (Palestine and allies an unfortunate but real exception).” My target here is NOT the average Muslim, my target IS Islam itself, or that part of it that is so militaristic, and intolerant of criticism.
Para.2: Agree
Para.3: I think that we will never solve intolerance unless we begin with the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is.
Para.4&5: I think that we can find good and bad in the Jewish Torah, in the Christian Bible’s New Testament and in Islam’s Quran. My essay is about the reality of terrorism, not the principles in any faith’s holy book. And while much fewer than 1% of Muslims will ever commit an act of terror, terror acts do seem to belong overwhelmingly to Islam in the last 50 years at least.
Thanks for your perspective. My essay was not written to dishonor Islam or the Muslim people, rather to shine a light on Islamic terrorism that continues to today. In the scheme of things, Islamic terrorism is NOT a major cause of death; nevertheless, 48,035 acts of terror in 42 years is concerning.
Ben