More on the Mohammed Cartoons

This topic is beginning to challenge the nomination of Samuel Alito as my major obsession for the past year.

At least the U.S. media has ended its silence and we’re beginning to arrive at what appears to be something of a reluctant consensus. Jyllands-Posten shouldn’t have published the cartoons, but they had every right to do so. That may sound like a contradiction, but it isn’t. It is the basic foundation of freedom of speech. I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

No mainstream U.S. media has, to my knowledge, published the cartoons (although as you can see below, some U.S. cartoonists, such as Daryl Cagle, are making their position known). This is not much of a surprise as the U.S. press is probably too busy polishing that yellow streak up its back.

The only poll I’ve seen on the topic was an impromptu (and therefore very unscientific) Internet poll by Mercury News. When last I checked some 1,500 people had voted and 74% were saying that the media should publish the cartoons. However the percentage has been steadily dropping. Earlier it was as high as 83%. I’m not exactly sure what, if anything, that means.

President Bush continues to decry the violence when he’s not wagging his fingers at the Danes for daring to publish something so offensive. The New Republic, in an article by Peter Beinert, claims that the Europeans have a hard time taking religion seriously while in the U.S. the right to be openly religious is considered precious. Yeah, that’s why I’ve been considering moving to Europe. I have a hard time taking religion seriously too.

Allow me to make a point or three. If the Danish editor had asked me about the cartoons before he published them, I would have advised him not to do it unless he had a legitimate reason for doing so. But what’s a legitimate reason? It’s subjective. What I consider legitimate you may not and vice versa. If after the cartoons were published, but before the violent reaction, I didn’t feel the editor’s reasons were legitimate, I would have criticized the publication while recognizing the right of the editor to have a different opinion. However the reaction changed the focus of the conversation. No longer was the topic the questionable publication of some cartoons, it became the assault on democracy inherent in the Islamic reaction.

The reaction demonstrates the enormous gulf between Western Culture and Islam. The violent reaction extended well beyond religion into politics. The West has learned, through sad experience, that this volatile mixture leads to oppression and an environment that will suffocate human rights. We called it the Dark Ages and have been trying to crawl out from under this particularly virulent form of religo-political tyranny for 400 years.

Of course not everyone wants to be free of the Dark Ages. Europe shipped most of those folks our way so it’s managed to climb further out of the quagmire. In the U.S. progress has been hindered by the Fundamentalist Christians among us and the notion that religious freedom somehow implies that either freedom of speech does not include what is offensive to religion or, even if it is included, it’s bad manners to say anything offensive to religion. In the Muslim world the journey out of the Dark Ages either hasn’t even begun or has been completely stopped, and any progress undone, by the Islamic Fundamentalist movement.

Here’s a flash for you kiddies. Freedom of speech and religion are not really compatible. Most religions would like nothing better than to stifle speech that opposes religious dogma or speech that criticizes or ridicules religious beliefs. Convincing everyone that it’s bad manners to criticize religion is a velvet handcuff approach toward accomplishing the same thing. This sets up an off balance situation where religion is free to criticize whatever it wants to but no one is allowed to criticize religion. The next step, already a reality in the Islamic world, is that no one will be able to even disagree with whatever religion says. If religion says chewing gum is bad, then not only won’t you be able to chew gum, you won’t even be able to argue that maybe it’s not bad!

Too extreme? Not really, take a look at the ways things are in Iran and the way they were in Afghanistan. Then you might want to look up the history of Massachusetts Bay Colony where the lovable Puritans held sway. That’s why even if you don’t like what’s being said, you have to defend the right to say it regardless of who it offends or what their reaction is likely to be.

It is only a strong secular society that can insure the continued existence of democratic principles including the freedom of religion. In Islam they don’t consider democratic principles important; in Western Europe they understand that democracy can only flourish in a secular society. What scares me is that this simple truism is NOT understood as well as it should be in the U.S. even by those of us that are not particularly religious. The Christian Right is even openly hostile to the idea of a dominant secular society.

Beinert, in his New Republic article, says that Europeans equate “modern and democratic” to secular while folks in the U.S. do not. Beinert seems to think that the U.S. attitude is a good thing. I have to disagree. It’s a very bad thing. This attitude may very well represent the greatest threat to our democratic freedoms that has ever existed.