Your Blasphemy Ain’t Like Mine
By Callimachus | Related entries in Cartoons, Ideas, Media, Partisan Hacks, Religion, The WorldThe European commitment to freedom of speech, even offensive speech, is rather seriously undercut by this. The way to handle a Holocaust-denier is to refute his presentation thoroughly, then if he persists unchanged, write him off as a crank and ignore him. You don’t throw him in jail.
Needless to say, this has been noted in the Arab press, which has of course a longstanding affection for Western Holocaust deniers.
As for the U.S. State Department’s “Guardian”-worthy response to the controversy, it’s disappointing, at least. I understand the explanation that says we have men and women in harm’s way in Iraq and an urgent need to prevent the flames from being fanned. But so do the Danes, at our behest, and they are standing up for a core Western Liberal value.
Meanwhile, here’s a disappointing performance from one who ought to know better. Kevin Drum’s reaction to the civilization-clash involving Danish drawings of the Prophet Muhammad:
I fully realize that I should be taking this more seriously â€â€? it involves issues of free speech, national sovereignty, gratuitous religious insults, Islamic radicalism, etc. etc. â€â€? but it’s hard. I mean, just look at whose flag they’re burning in the Middle East right now: Denmark’s.
Cuddly little Denmark! Home of Hans Christian Andersen, delicious pastry, and tasteful furniture. Home of Tivoli and the Little Mermaid. Denmark!
If there’s a lesson to be learned here â€â€? and I assure you there won’t be â€â€? it’s that Arabs rather obviously don’t hate America any more than any other country. We just provide them with more opportunity to show it. If the Danes would just step up to the plate more often, maybe we could sneak our troops home from Iraq and no one would notice.
That’s not an exerpt. That’s the whole thing.
It is the mark of a political hack, when he confronts an issue where his whole philosophy requires him to make a stand for his beliefs yet he finds his political opponents already there with flags unfurled, that he chooses to pass by with a sneer and a jest.
Here is a blogger who many, me included, have held up as speaking for the genuine convictions of the old American liberalism, unblinded by partisan bile. Here, furthermore, is someone whose blog is published by a media outlet.
Here, furthermore, is a voice from a faction that proudly braves the chill of disapproval in the name of speaking unpopular views to political zealots and religious fundamentalists.
And here he confronts a case of open blasphemy — for that is the crux of the Muslims’ problem with Denmark’s artists. Blasphemy! The charge which has sent so many great liberal men and women of history to the stake. The accusation which Robert G. Ingersoll, the great American agnostic, called “the bulwark of religious prejudice” and “the breastplate of the heartless.” And from the mosques of the Middle East and South Asia comes a crudely violent, bigoted demand for a blood price of the blasphemers.
And all Kevin Drum can manage is a shrug and a snide dismissal of the Danes in this crisis as unworthy of his serious attention (a tone-deaf reaction from supposed internationalists, a la Michael Moore’s mocking of the coalition partners in Iraq). All it rouses in him is a half-hearted attempt to twist the whole story back on itself so that somehow it becomes an embarrassment, not for men such as himself, but for the upholders of the Iraq War.
Who wants to speak truth to the power that butchered Theo Van Gogh? Not Kevin Drum. Unless he sees Jerry Falwell in the ranks on the other side, religious violence doesn’t concern him. Those with vast audiences, like Drum, have the power to shape public sentiment. They have an obligation to stand up for the core values of their causes, even when it means standing side by side, for the time being, with their political enemies. The peril of not doing so is far greater than the unpleasantness.
An artist’s freedom to blaspheme sits in the same frail boat with the journalist’s freedom to dissent from popular prejudices. Kevin Drum can’t be bothered to take his turn at the tiller. Here, he is incapable of rising above political interest, and grasping a principal.
For a true-hearted liberal’s reaction to this, I much prefer Roger Sizemore:
We constantly see satirization of Christian symbols in the popular media, and that interest group doesn’t have the power to force the US government to condemn the publications that carry them. Why should Muslims have the power to enforce their symbols’ sanctity outside the confines of their mosques? … There is no way to negotiate the absolute, and the sooner we realize extremity in religious belief is a dead giveaway of mental disorder, the sooner we can focus on issues of genuine importance to our future quality of life on this planet.
[Hat tip: Phylax, a great Greek-oriented blog]
The comparison many people (including me) are drawing is to the reaction to Piss Christ. OK, look, I’m no Christian, and I have no idea what personal and spiritual daimons motivate Andres Serrano, but I thought “Piss Christâ€Â? was one of the most moving works of holy art I’ve ever read about. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but its purpose seems quite straightforward.
What is the essential act of Christianity? God � the supreme deity � descended from eternal heaven and partook in the blood and piss and shit of human existence. The creator lowered himself to the level of the creature, for a noble purpose. That’s an asonishing statement, from a theological point of view.
Greek and Roman and Hindu gods sometimes took the mask of humanity, but to seduce or to punish, or to spy, never to suffer. I don’t believe the Christian story, but I honor that aspect of it.
And Christianity, since then, has spent so much time and effort elevating God back into Heaven � untouchable, unknowable, untainted by human dirt � that it seems to have lost touch with its most powerful image.
And in one blasphemous opus, this Serrano character re-connected God and man. Perverse! And brilliant.
Now, as to the rest of it, the difference between a scattering of delusional Christian bigots and a state-subsidized, community-supported mass of them capable of taking down embassies and executing translators in far-flung lands is � exactly that. The problem of Christianity is in its wild fringes. The problem of Islam radiates from its core.
I call myself a liberal still, though most Americans who wear that label deny me membership in their club. But I say any liberal who only stands up for the right to blaspheme when the object of blasphemy is the religion of their own homeland deserves not the name of liberal.
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 and is filed under Cartoons, Ideas, Media, Partisan Hacks, Religion, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 6th, 2006 at 1:17 am
Absolutely excellent; this post is right on the money.
Ever since this whole incident went down, I’ve been paying very, very close attention to the story. I’m really glad to see you taking this stand. Honestly, I’ve been wanting to turn this thing from a rediculous PR stunt into a worthwhile (online) display, but I have a funny feeling that I’d never find a web host that would permit it once they discovered what I was doing. And I have a funny feeling that it would get me fired too. (And I have barely even started considering the possibility of fatwas yet.)
And that is what has me so incredibly concerned. Because if that is what I’m up against, what we’re all up against if we want to speak our minds, then what have we allowed to happen to our freedom of speech?
February 6th, 2006 at 2:25 am
We welcome your comments Bob. Feel free to express yourself freely on this blog.
February 6th, 2006 at 3:05 am
For some reason, I, being a fairly conservative Christian Catholic, seem to think that Christ ON THE CROSS is a better depiction of what Christ suffered for us than Christ IN THE CAN. Maybe I’m just not the type who goes into an art gallery and gets “WOW”‘d by swirls of colors on canvas or objects hewn out of stone. What I appreciate about art is that someone put their blood, sweat, tears, and piss into it. But there is a fine line between art that conveys emotion and art that conveys hatred or misunderstanding, much like that Bush = Hitler “art” display that went around a while back.
Jesus depicted onthe Cross with the crown of large, several inch long thorns is more than enough to remind us of what Christ suffered for us. The Romans knew A LOT about how to torture a man.
The key difference here though, is that Christians didn’t go around waving “behead those who insult Christianity” signs around. A rather amusing spoof on that Islamic sign angle was a photoshopped sign which said “Behead those who say Islam is violent”. It got to the REAL point of the matter. As tactless as any given piece of expression is, it should not insight a Jihad against its originator.
February 6th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Moch of modern Christianity — Catholic and Protestant — focuses on the passion of Christ. But what PC reminds me, at least, is what a hell it must have been to step down from godhood into the frailty and hunger and need and pain of just daily mortal existence. The madhouse moment wasn’t just the end of it. It was every cramping compromise involved in making flesh out of word.
February 6th, 2006 at 10:07 am
The most shameful aspect of this whole cartoon story isn’t that there are people who would denigrate a religion (nothing new), or even that there are religious zealots who would incite violence to avenge that denigration (again, nothing new). It’s that more or less by default, the former have become the de facto standardbearers for the defense of free speech and other Western values from the latter.
As I’ve noted many times on this blog, there’s much more to the war we’re in now than just terrorism and counterterrorism - after all, one doesn’t have to be a terrorist to be an Islamic supremacist. That a bunch of cartoonists in tiny Denmark accomplished almost by accident what the Western mainstream media at large has not dared to even attempt - to expose the Islamic supremacist mindset to the world in all its ugliness - doesn’t say much for the MSM’s inclination to do its job, much less to stand up for the very freedoms upon which it relies, which the supremacists stand against.
February 6th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Agreed, Joshua.
We’re in WWIII now… most of us just don’t know it yet.
February 6th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
This issue is real interesting. I think that there is quite a bit of common ground on it, though. Violence by terrorists is wrong, and creating violence merely because something offends you is wrong. The actions taken by the upset Muslims make the American Christians’ protests look entirely benign. Boycotts against Target and shopping malls that don’t say,”Merry Christmas” are nothing compared with riots. Also, the newspapers certainly have the right to publish these things, even though they understandably offend many people.
Past that, there are a lot of things to sort out. One thing that I don’t like about this is all the copycat newspapers reprinting the cartoon to show a united front on free speech rights. We all know that you have the right to reprint this, so what are they demonstrating? This seems like a cop out and an easy way to appear to be a noble champion of free speech. The idea behind the cartoon that Islam has many violent followers is an entirely unremarkable proposition, and reprinting this cartoon just unneccesarily inflames extremists.
As an ACLU liberal, I understand the need for the right to free speech, but that isn’t even at issue here. It would have made sense to let Denmark publish the original cartoon, let some Muslims get angry, and then let the issue drop. Reprinting the cartoon time and time again was needless and just irresponsible journalism. These people are no more champions of free speech than some crazy liberal performance-artist who craps on the American flag just to be dramatic and to show that he has the right to do so. It’s a pointless, shallow gesture.
February 6th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
From Christian Times - http://ctlibrary.com/1648
Virgin in a Condom Provokes Outcry
Virgin in a Condom Provokes Outcry
by Vic Francis in Auckland, New Zealand.
June 15, 1998
When New Zealanders opened a $250 million national museum in the capital, Wellington, in February, much was made of the museum’s name Te Papa, Maori for “Our Place.”
But one of the museum’s first exhibits, Virgin in a Condom, a three-inch statue of the Virgin Mary sheathed in a transparent condom, has stretched the credibility of “Our Place” and caused a furor among Christians.
The outcry saw daily protests outside the museum, an attack on the statue itself, a national television debate, and a 33,000-signature petition demanding the exhibit’s removal. Te Papa officials refused to budge, and the exhibit remained on display until April 26 as planned. Another museum exhibit, a picture of The Last Supper with a bare-breasted, female Jesus, sparked further outrage. Catholics, joined by evangelical Christians and Muslims, led the outcry.
Christian Heritage Party leader Graham Capill says the museum took great care to observe Maori spiritual mores but ran roughshod over Christian values. “It’s increasingly clear that any faith or belief is acceptable in New Zealand, except for the Christian faith,” Capill says. “Te Papa needs to be not only culturally sensitive, but also spiritually sensitive.”FREEDOMS BRING RESPONSIBILITIES
The basis of this whole dustup is some w***ing little editor in Denmark who used an opportunity to get his paper its 15 secs of fame. In this case INfamy is the result.
February 6th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Pharisees have always been the biggest threat to Christianity, and often those Pharisees are in the Church. Justin is dead on the money about the value of Piss Christ, and with respect Brian, he was not talking about the Incarnation and not the Crucifixion. Sometimes the emphasis on the Crucifixion in a couple of wings in the Western Church can overshadow other aspects of the faith. The pint of that blesedly disgusting art is that, contrary to all the happy-happy of Humanism and Man Is the Measure and all that, the Church teaches that humans are basically shit, just with endless possiblities. God is a gardener, after all!
February 6th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Kevin’s point is that a culture that burns down buildings over a set of stupid cartoons (which frankly, weren’t that offensive) in a second rate newspaper hundreds or thousands of miles away is backwards and irrational. That it isn’t us, it’s them. If they hate the Danes, who have welcomed other cultures and religions for close to forever, they’re not going to love us no matter what we do.
February 6th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Well, I am entitled to disagree with any piece of art, thats one of the wonderful things I love about my country.
But the whole burning the flag of Denmark? DENMARK?!
I don’t even know whether Denmark has an army or not, nevermind ever having been offended by the Danes. The way I see it, if left wing cartonnists can say “**** you!” to Christians when they print up cartoons, they should be able to have the same testicular fortitude when they piss off Muslims. “Oh, sorry we offended you Muslims, here, have a box of burka chocolates and our finest virgin daughters” vs. “get out of heal you right-wing religious zealots!”
Nevermind they are apologizing to a group of people who through out the Koran long ago for this 3-point mantra:
1. Any expression we don’t like is an insult to Islam.
2. Any insult to Islam requires the originator of the insult to be brutally killed in a Jihad.
3. Jihad justifies all things, and killing other believers of Islam is merely “collateral damage” in attacks made against infidel scum. Praise Allah!
Tactless cartoons? maybe. But I don’t see the sissies apologizing to all the conservatives and christians they have mocked over the years, so I would tell them to grow some freaking balls. What happened to their fire or gusto? I guess when your target is actually going to KILL you in retaliationg instead of filling your inbox with outraged e-mails at worst, you suddenly lose your breath and start making apologies.
No offense, but the kind of people who put up:
“Europe will have your 9/11 soon”
“Behead/Butcher/maim/slaughter those who insult/mock Islam”
And
“Get ready for the REAL Holocaust”
are not the kind of people I’d feel too bad about offending. Maybe if blowing up women and children wern’t what they do for kicks, I’d feel some largely misguided compassion for them.
February 7th, 2006 at 10:03 am
The point of reprinting is not to assert the right to do so - that goes without saying - but to show that one has the courage to exercise that right in the face of intimidation. Reprinting is not giving gratuitous offence under these circumstances (though it might have been if there had been no threats of violence). It means refusing to be bullied.
February 7th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Michael Reynolds (”The Mighty Middle”) gets it right-
“Muslims make a career at taking offense. Fundamentalists of all stripes do. Taking offense is just a pretext for thuggish behavior, just an excuse for them to intimidate us and to attack the liberty they despise. Offending them is now a civic duty. No surrender of liberty, no acquiesence to threats, no compromise, no kowtow, fuck them and the prophets they rode in on.”
By the way, I think that you and Professor Stephen Green are liberals extraordinaire. Somehow, few see it.
February 7th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
“Well, I am entitled to disagree with any piece of art, thats one of the
wonderful things I love about my country.”
Agree, Kevin. What I as a Christian find much more offensive than Piss Christ is the Koran’s assertion that “God was not born from a woman.” That is a blatant slam at the divinity of cChrist and atChistianity. Fortunately we don’t have blasphemy laws in the US, but they have one in Denmark. How would Muslims there feel if their few imiams got the Koran declared blasphemous?