It’s time, long past time, for civilized people of all faiths or non-faiths, from every country, to quietly, deliberately raise a middle finger to the Islamo-fascist goons, murderers, reprobates and numskulls who seek to destroy the pluralistic way of life, which is a good way of life. And how we do that now is to politely but firmly insist that no one’s prophet, avatar or deity gets special treatment.
As Gautama Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, Moses, King David, Zoroaster, Osirus, Zeus and Odin are mocked, so should the Prophet Muhammad be. As other major figures of world history or spirituality are depicted, in drawings, photographs and cartoons, so should Muhammad be. As Christians, Jews, Hindus, Wiccans, agnostics and atheists are subjected to unkind gusts of skepticism from people who neither share nor understand their faith, so must Muslims be. Because the common human right to free thought and expression trumps any individual’s desire to not be offended. Full stop.
There really cannot be any middle ground. The Islamic State lummoxes in their black hoods, mewling about their lost iPods as they embrace their retrograde death cult, can’t kill the whole world. Yes, I can poke fun at your beliefs, just as you can poke fun at mine. I can be a dork about it. I can make an utter ass of myself, and of you, as the Monty Python crew did so brilliantly with Roman Catholicism in their 1983 film, The Meaning of Life. I can do all this, without fear of you throwing a stone, or a punch, much less your shooting me dead. Unless the foregoing is true, and can remain true, then democracy as we’ve known it is on the way out, or gone.
In the wake of the slaughter Wednesday of 12 people at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine, much attention has fallen on the magazine’s controversial cartoons, and whether re-publishing them was or is wise. Some of the images, in addition to being blasphemous according to conservative Islam, are vulgar and crude. Quite obviously, there’s the practical consideration: Publishing such material can get your offices burnt, incite a mob — as occurred in 2005-06 following publication of the Danish Muhammad cartoons — or get you killed. Some outlets chose to publish only pixelated versions. Others published some images but not all, leaving aside the cruder ones.
But the vulgarity issue, while a legitimate subject of debate, is a red herring, it seems to me. There are two critical questions here, neither of which relate to taste. The first is whether non-Muslims, out of deference to Muslims, should reflexively refrain from publishing depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, which Islam forbids. The second is whether, in the current climate, the content, tone or style of any depiction should matter. In 2006, as I nervously watched the cartoon riots unfold while on assignment in Pakistan, I had mixed feelings. Now, the only possible answer seems to be, depict away.
Here’s why: Islam, like Christianity, Judaism and other large faiths, is not uniform. There are subsets of each religion that are more alike than they are different. Sufi Islam, for example, has elements in common with Jewish Kabbalah, gnostic Christianity, esoteric Buddhism and Sikhism. Orthodox Wahhabism, with its Shariah law, stoning, female genital mutilation and chopping off of hands and heads, is a barbaric facet of Islam, as the Spanish Inquisition was a barbaric facet of Christianity. But the two are alike, fundamentally the same, if freedom of thought and respect for the human spirit are the standards of comparison.
The point: Just as the Enlightenment in Europe was a reaction to the brutality and despotism of church and unfettered monarchy; and just as reform required that figures such as Voltaire and Rousseau flout the conventions of their time and “insult” traditional practice that had outlived its usefulness; and just as none of that was easy at the time; so too must civilized people today “insult” the conventions of any belief system that tries to impose universal limits on free expression. Either we use the gifts of free thought and speech, or we lose them.
The reasons are pragmatic as well as philosophical. It is not possible, in one web-linked world, for critical expression not to offend someone, somewhere. The choice is therefore to impose censorship, by self or others, or to accept that all human beings are free to think and speak independently, to criticize, to mock or needle, without fear of anything harsher than a rebuttal, and to gently but firmly insist that adherents of all belief systems get over it, and to never relent.
The Enlightenment was a 200-year process, fraught with hardship for its standard-bearers. Among other things, that history shows the desire for free expression won’t easily be denied. There is no going back. So Islam, like Christianity, Judaism and the rest, just has to grow up. The more people speak, the easier that will get.
Twitter.com/mdentandt
Source:: canada.com
