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Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 03:49:07 -0500 (EST)
To: James Mickens <jmickens &AElig eecs.umich.edu>
cc: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: Re: view the infamous cartoons, support free speech, buy legos
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This is downright enlightening, James.  Thanks so much for the careful=20
analysis and thorough research!  Despite being one of the least egregious=
=20
examples, I was particularly alarmed to learn about the Palestinian=20
professor who was thrown out a 2nd story classroom window by angry=20
fundamentalist muslim students.

In light of your insights below I added #5 to the list of things we can=20
do.
   http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves/improvetheworld

It's a good place to start, but what's next?
Any ideas for worthy charities?


--- \/   FROM James Mickens AT 06.02.05 20:56 (Yesterday)   \/ ---

> 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 =E9galit=E9, 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
>
>

--=20
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"

Humans are genes' way of making more genes.  -- Richard Dawkins

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