Leaving aside the rent-a-mobs and the opportunists, there is a not small segment of the Islamic world that is genuinely offended by the visual appropriation of Muhammad for the purpose of comic relief. For them, mocking God's prophet--even in making a political point--is no laughing matter. Americans, accustomed to Jesus appearing on South Park and Alanis Morrisette playing God on the silver screen, don't get the outrage. And if we don't get it, Europeans certainly don't get it either. God, though treated irreverently, still lives here. Europe, once a synonym for Christendom, is now the godless continent.
Westerners should be thankful that they would never react in the barbaric manner of the Islamic mobs in response to any cartoon on any subject. Free expression, particularly in America, is sacred. But is God held sacred?
Americans profane God, mock God, ban God. But the First Amendment is so sacrosanct (except when we're banning God) that even its enemies deny they oppose it. Mock it, and amputate yourself from polite society. Mock God, and you're invited into polite society.
The reverence awarded to freedom of speech is healthy. It is a demonstration of society's appreciation for something that is good. But is not God, our Creator, good too? If He is not held sacred, then what (and I am addressing cultural practice and not legal proscription here), precisely, deserves reverence?
A devout Muslim looks at our society and sees a thousand things we would protect from abuse before we would shield God. Misplaced priorities, they certainly think. A Western secularist wonders why an imaginary deity provokes Muslims into the streets the way foreign invasions, domestic oppression, and economic hardships fail to do. Neither understands the other. The taboo that surrounds blasphemy in their culture and the taboo that surrounds condemning blasphemy in our culture point to a divide along religious lines that is more powerful than any divide along class, ideological, linguistic, or ethnic lines. This chasm won't be sutured. Middle-Eastern Muslims will not become Westerners, just as Westerners will not become Middle-Eastern Muslims.
The world can get better, but it will still be the world--no matter how many nation-building projects embarked upon. If you want another world, build a spaceship. This is a more realistic course of action than attempts to transform Muslim Arabs into New England town-meeting members. As the Hamas elections and cartoon riots prove, Muslim Arabs are anything but New England town-meeting members. And they are not going to become them anytime soon. What makes them Muslims is not their relative poverty, the oil beneath their sands, or the Arabic language they speak. What makes them Muslim is their religion, a concept that Westerners don't acknowledge in their own lives and pretend away in the lives of others.
Muslims are outraged by Western cartoons. Westerners are outraged by Muslim outrage. Muslims are outraged by Western outrage at Muslim outrage. And so it goes with two cultures that don't understand the other's attitude toward God.
Suggest you take a quick look here. You'll find this isn't about God at all. Its about pandering, inciting to riot, and phony outrage.
There are many religions in this world and most are benign. Catholics do not much care if you use birth control as a Baptist - that restriction is only on them. And so on. But only these fanatical Muslims are flying airplanes into buildings, beheading hostages, and wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, all the while assuring everyone who is gullible enough to believe it that they are the "Religion of Peace."
'Fraid not. They are radicals bent on world domination and will stop at nothing to achieve it. This is no "disagreement" between faiths. This is WAR!
When you say that neither side understands the other, I have to disagree. I think the Muslims understand us very well. And I would further agree with many Muslims, that the things we protect, long before we rush to protect God (not that He needs our protection, something the Muslims will never understand), are what make us the weaker side in this fight.
I wish I were more optimisitic about our prospects, but I fail to see how the West can fight a regligion that is so uncompromising, when the very ethos of the West is compromise in all thing (including religion, sadly).
Homer, as an example of how Muslims misunderstand Westerners, I would offer up their fetish of reflexively labeling any Western military action in the region the action of "crusaders." In other words, because Islam plays a massive part in their own lives, they imagine that Christianity plays a massive part in our lives. Religion, or the religions practiced here in the West, played no role in the invasions of Somalia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, and points beyond. Ann Coulter's famous column aside, there is absolutely no interest among states in the West of converting Muslims to Christianity. The wars we fight aren't, at least on our part, religious wars. Yet, large numbers of Muslims have misperceptions that we are crusaders intent on Christianizing the Middle East.
I stand corrected. You're correct, of course. They over-estimate us. I wish their perceptions were true!
Even their vision of Crusaders is wrongheaded. The Crusades were not started to convert the Muslims but to protect Christians and Jews from Muslim coercion. That, in practice, Crusaders were often sinful was lamentable but unavoidable. We should thank God that the Crusaders accomplished much of their primary goal (at least for the first thousand years)and that Islam's Western march was considerably slowed.
Tru dat.
I would offer up their fetish of reflexively labeling any Western military action in the region the action of "crusaders."
The recognized leaders of the jihadists, people like bin Laden, fantasize about going back to a place and time where they could do battle against the "crusaders." That is where that comes from - their own delusional romanticizing of a world lost long ago.
Also, it is important in any culture that in order to garner public opinion and support for your adventures that you have to demonize the object of your hate. Nothing demonizes Westerners more in Muslim eyes than the labels "infidel" and "crusader." It is much easier to hate a cartoonish figure than an actual diverse population. But I still maintain that this all has little to do with understanding. They want to conquer the world and subjugate everyone to Muslim law. Those who resist must be killed. What's so hard to understand about that?
If Islam is a threat to the West it isn't because the Islamic world has grown stronger, it's because the western world has grown weaker. Militarily and economically Islam simply cannot compete with the West. Everything from extracting and refining oil to weapons and cities stems from the west's infusion into the Islamic world. The Islamic world isn't greater than it was in the 1920's, a time when no one feared world domination by the Muslims.
Islam appears stong now because they do believe in something more than material gain and are willing to fight for it. Westerners really don't believe in anything and willl not even defend their own countries from Muslim immigrants, in fact they welcome them. So there isn't a war between the West and Islam. The West is a spiritual corpse and Muslims are just the vultures eating the remains.
Double tru-ayyight.
Great post overall and excellent point Eric.
The West has gotten weaker starting with a decimated post WWII Europe where Islamists found it easy to infiltrate and take root. Combine Europe's dying gene pool with their overt or covert adoption of socialism and the death of religion and it's no wonder Muslim cultures have proliferated there and are now taking more control.
Here in the good old U.S.A., our Globalist corporations and complicit politicians have weakened our borders and our society to the point were our identity as Americans is a shell of what it once was. Lots of flag waving but Americans are now predominantly greedy, selfish and Godless.
Ya'll are a drag man....oh wait. I'm just as bad....
sigh
You know, you're right. I'm depressing even me.
Reality bites!
