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Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 20:56:34 -0500
To: <improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu>
From: "James Mickens" <jmickens &AElig eecs.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: view the infamous cartoons, support free speech, buy legos
Status: O

I think that too much attention is being lavished on the cartoons
themselves. Personally, I am agnostic as to whether Danny should
publish them on his website. It's his decision. But we shouldn't lose
sight of the larger issue, which is the relationship between Islam
and free speech. Yes, some (but not all) of the cartoons depict
Muhammad and Islam in a poor light. Yes, the pictures could be
construed as violating the Islamic injunction against idolatry. But
does that mean that we, the West, are prohibited from discussing
Islam within our own cultural context of free speech? To what extent
does toleration for external sensitivities constitute a sacrifice of
our own principles? I would argue that portions of the Islamic world
have sought to limit Western free speech on Islam for some time, and
the chilling effect on our free speech is very evident.

As a well-known canonical example, consider the publication of Salman
Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" in 1988. The book contained
descriptions of Muhammad that some Muslims considered offensive. A
controversy ensued and Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for
all faithful Muslims to kill Rushdie and anyone else involved in the
production of the book. An eruption of violence and mayhem ensued.
Rushdie's publisher in Norway was shot to death. The Japanese
translator of his novel was stabbed to death in Tokyo. Several
bookstores at UC Berkeley that sold "The Satanic Verses" were burned,
and so on and so forth.

This type of reaction is unfortunately quite common when satirical,
controversial, or otherwise unusual commentary on Islam is proposed.
For example, an Arab scholar named Suliman Bashear was literally
defenestrated by angry students at the University of Nablus when he
suggested that Islam evolved over time instead of emerging perfect
and completely formed from Muhammad's original speeches. As another
example, a German scholar of Semitic languages recently proposed that
parts of the Koran derive from older Aramaic documents, documents
which were later mistakenly identified as contemporaneous by early
Islamic scholars. The scholar was forced to use a pseudonym due to
death threats, and he had enormous difficulty in finding a publisher
for his work. Both of these examples are discussed in a fantastic New
York Times article about the dangers of Koranic scholarship:
    http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/03/1bkk/04b.html
I highly recommend reading this article. Amongst other things, it
describes scholarship suggesting that the passages in the Koran which
promise 72 virgins to martyrs were mistranslated. The infamous
"virgins" should have been translated as "white raisins," which were
a delicacy in the ancient Middle East. This is an incredibly
interesting claim, since, if true, it would remove a primary
justification for many suicide bombers. Unfortunately, it's difficult
for research like this to be released when the Islamic reaction is
likely to be so volatile.

The issue is not that all Muslims are violent, illogical fanatics,
because this isn't the case. However, it's important to realize that
Islamism has a non-trivial number of adherents, and we have to
confront this reality if we are to defeat this pernicious ideology.
It's also important to realize that, as mentioned above, there *has*
been a chilling affect on free speech and the expression of rights
considered non-Islamist. This is not a slippery slope
argument---these effects have already started. In this regard, I
disagree with Erica. One need only look to Europe, where in some
Muslim enclaves, female police officers are rejected as
authority-less and some parents are refusing to send their children
to mixed-sex schools. What's going to give? Will the Europeans
abandon their revolutionary ideals of égalité, assigning only male
police officers to Muslim neighborhoods and creating new segregated
schools? Or will they willfully dismiss these Islamic sensibilities
as un-European? Only time will tell, but the moment of reckoning is
soon, and we can't be afraid to talk about it.

Indeed, the fact that it's so difficult amongst the American left to
denounce Islamism as an obvious problem is leading to broken analyses
of important issues. Consider suicide bombing. The empirical reality
is that the majority of suicide bombers are Muslim. The American left
is quick to point out that the bombers are driven to blow themselves
up because of poverty or living under an oppressive government. These
factors may contribute to the phenomenon, but there are billions of
poor people who live under oppressive governments, and most of them
don't blow themselves up. A key component of suicide bombing is the
glorification of martyrdom, a glorification which is tightly
associated with fundamentalist Islam. To understand suicide bombing,
we must accept a particular strain of Islam as problematic and then
roll forward from there. This isn't any more racist or xenophobic
than the vilification of the KKK is racist towards whites. As another
example, if we can say that the Crusades were evidence that
Christianity was troubled during the medieval ages, we can say that
suicide bombings and the torching of embassies are evidence that
Islam is troubled now. This isn't a blanket accusation against all
Muslims. It's simply accepting the reality that a vocal minority of
Muslims possess a problematic ideology, much like some Christians
during the medieval age had a troubling tendency to assemble armies
and march towards Jerusalem. A cartoon satirizing suicide bombers in
a virgin-less heaven is not a slur against all Muslims, and to act
like is it is a little ridiculous. The fact that we can't make fun of
these things without being called racist or imperialist, while we can
make fun of Bush as a simple-minded Bible banger taking instructions
from God, is absurdly inconsistent. Either everything is sacrosanct
or nothing is.

We can't improve the world if we can't talk about the state of the
world. Christianity became more liberal and more open by questioning
its key tenets. Most of us would call this liberalization progress.
For similar progress to occur in Islam, we must examine it, question
its key tenets, and yes, open it up to ridicule and satire. The
Danish cartoons were not particularly clever or insightful, but that
is not the point. The point is that in an open society, you are free
to make statements about arbitrary topics. I'm personally glad that
Americans and Europeans can make fun of Jesus and not get thrown in
jail, even though it might offend some. I look forward to the day
when a similar spirit of openness and tolerance can be found in all
parts of the ummah.

~j