Our Duty to Offend

The strain of Islam that motivated the killers in Paris appears to be Wahhabism.  I say this because one of the killers is said to have been trained by al-Qaeda. This strain of Islam is clearly incompatible with western concepts of civilization.  While Francois Hollande may say that these attacks have nothing to do with the Muslim religion, that is like saying that an action by say, the Southern Baptists, has nothing to do with Christianity in America.  Wahhabism has been the most successful global cultural export in modern times.  From Frontline: 

For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi Arabia's dominant faith. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all those who don't practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. Critics say that Wahhabism's rigidity has led it to misinterpret and distort Islam, pointing to extremists such as Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Wahhabism's explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi charities started funding Wahhabi schools (madrassas) and mosques from Islamabad to Culver City, California. 

This brand of faith has millions of adherents and its precepts infuse al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban with their religious fervor.  And the drastic interpretation of Islam contained in sharia law enjoys widespread support in Muslim countries. 

Overall, among those in favor of making sharia the law of the land, the survey finds broad support for allowing religious judges to adjudicate domestic disputes. Lower but substantial proportions of Muslims support severe punishments such as cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning people who commit adultery. The survey finds even lower support for executing apostates.

I infer that there are also many Muslims who believe that the publishers of Charlie Hedbo deserved death for heaping disrespect on the Prophet.  This belief system is the cauldron from which killers emerge.  This belief system is a threat to the west because its adherents tolerate those murder by select members of their sect.  It is unfortunate that their are other, more tolerant, Muslims who are offended by the images in Charlie Hedbo.  But as long there is a credible threat of murder in retaliation, then such images should be published, to hammer home the lesson that our right to free expression is inviolate.  I am sorry that the following image from Charlie Hedbo is crude and offensive.  I personally dislike giving offense to someone's religion; but if Muslims make a credible threat to murder in retaliation then it becomes a duty to offend them to defend our sense of the civilized order.  And the burden must be shared so that there is not a single convenient target for the terrorists to seek out.

I would prefer to live in a world where I could merely offer my indifference or hostility to cartoons that offend religious sensibility.  But today, it is only images that offend Muslims that have the remotest possibility of getting a publisher killed, so it is Muslim sensibility that will have to be offended.

And to answer my friend KT, yes, if a KKK rally was shot up by Black Panthers due to the presence of confederate flags, I would display a confederate flag.  But I note that even Black Panthers aren't provoked by mere symbols and drawings.

What You Should Be Reading:

• KTCat who has a different take on Charlie Hedbo.
• Dean proposes an 8 team college football playoff, which seems inevitable.
• A scholarly look at why Diversity Training backfires.

Letting Mohammed Out of the Closet - Hate and Intolerance from the AP

Dean has a great wrap up of the brouhaha over the maker of the "Innocence of Muslims." I wanted to look at their reporting from a different angle. The AP asserts as fact that the film denigrates Islam. They base this on the report that the film depicts Mohammed as a homosexual and a pedophile. One question. Is the AP rendering judgement that accusations of such predilections are denigrating? What happened to gay pride? Why aren't they celebrating Mohammed being let out of his closet? Why aren't we celebrating the diversity of Islamic culture, because we have learned that its founder was gay? I think the AP needs to rethink their assertions. They are flat out hateful and intolerant.

Meanwhile I saw a post from The American Muslim web site that I sort of agreed with until I thought through the moral equivalence being advanced. Judge for yourself.

Based on what was initially reported, it seemed that a group of extremist Jews produced and distributed a hateful film insulting Islam, Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad to further their pro-Zionist agenda. This was FALSE, it was extremist Christians Muslim religious extremists drew attention to the film to further their own agenda. Extremist Christians promoted the film and held a “trial of Prophet Muhammad” event to gain publicity for themselves. Egyptian political extremists used the film to stir up the masses to promote their political agenda. The extremist political organization Al Qaeda used the film as further proof of their propaganda effort to say that the U.S. is at war with all Muslims to gain support for their cause. And, all of these extremists succeeded in provoking ignorant or extremist Muslims into carrying out acts of terrorism (hirabah). Update: Al Qaeda, or one of their affiliates actually seems to have been the perpetrator of the attack on the Libyan Embassy

The only figure that I know of in the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur’an, who would be honored by the actions of any of these extremists is Satan.

These religious and political extremists use religion as a cover to attempt to justify actions that can only be called evil. They want to provoke a reaction, as it feeds into their narratives, or they believe they can use the suffering of others to aid their own political cause. All of the extremists have more in common with each other than they do with the majority of decent people of their faith.

There is some truth to what Sheila Musaji is saying, except for this. How can one draw a moral equivalence between offending someone's religion and suffocating and murdering an innocent person and dragging his body through the streets?

Who's Afraid of Islam?

The news story about a small Florida Christian group that plans to burn the Koran got me to thinking about all of the angst surrounding Islam. But first, some questions about their hare-brained idea. Why associate yourself with Nazism? Why pick September 11, when we should be remembering the bravery and sacrifice that prevented the tragedy of those attacks from being worse? Why give evidence to those who find a moral equivalence between Christianity and Jihadism? (Warning: Last link may induce vomiting.) Are you guys crackheads? I just can't figure out any other explanation.

But I digress. There seems to be a great fear of Islam among conservatives. My only fear is that some jihadist moron will slip through our crack security system and kill some of us. With regards to the larger issues, Western culture and religion will prevail over the medievalist interpretation of Islam for a number of reasons, religious, cultural and political.

1. Religion. Fundamental Islam has not reconciled itself with modernity. Its treatment of women is appalling, even if considered enlightened by 8th century A.D. standards. By contrast, Christianity fundamentally considers every man and woman equal in the eyes of God. Further, Christianity has thousands of years of intellectual tradition from some of the finest scholars to explain its tenets. The Bible is translated into far more languages than the Koran and there is not even general agreement in Islam that the Koran should be translated out of Arabic. Judeo-Christian values suffuse the moral compass of most of the world, even that of Western atheists, not that they would admit it. Christianity has a way of renewing itself to meet the challenges it faces in the world. African Episcopalians are leading the fight against Anglican church's acceptance of homosexuality, for instance, because they must compete with Islam for the hearts and souls the people on that continent.

2. Culture. The culture of Islam is too puritanical to succeed indefinitely. Even if Western culture is often too "decadent" or infused with the culture of pornography, it is not hopelessly so. Taliban prohibitions on alcohol, requirements for the burqa, and rules about which vegetables men or women may handle do not strike the educated as sensible. Further, Western culture is richer in content and more liberating than Muslim culture. But strict Islamists reject every facet of Western culture and cannot cope with the inevitable intersection of cultures that result from a global, networked economy.

3. Political. Fundamental Islam is antithetical to democracy. This was articulated during the insurgency in Iraq, where al-Qaeda in Iraq actually argued that they had to kill fellow Muslims to prevent them from voting, because by voting, they might commit a sin by voting against Allah's will. This is not a serious ideological challenge. No serious person, except maybe Thomas Friedman, thinks that any other form of government is preferable to democracy. How can one take seriously a political challenge from an ideology that advocates theocracy? Even Kim Jong Il call his country a Democratic Republic for crying out loud, but Islamists are unapologetic in their disdain for democracy. Are you kidding?

For these reasons and so many others, I am supremely confident that radical Islam is not up to the challenge of Western democracy, particularly as practiced in America. Fell free to build a mosque, but stand by for an onslaught of the most successful political-economic system the world has ever seen.

This Can't Be Good

Picture above is of a canister filled with $3 million being parachuted onto a ship held ransom by Somali pirates. Source here, with more great photos. Piracy has been a scourge for centuries, despite the romance you might see in film, and our nation's earliest naval battles after independence involved piracy. Although piracy is certainly a form of injustice and a proper topic of this blog, I haven't commented because I am conflicted on how the United States should deal with this. Turns out the two leading Naval bloggers, Information Dissemination and CDR Salamander, are also at odds over tactics and strategy; I highly recommend their blogs for naval topics. Information Dissemination is arguing the need for a coalition to fight piracy, with an eye on the longer term goal of drawing China and India into long term strategic partnerships. The good Commander argues that we can never really count on such allies, even temporarily, because ultimately our national interests diverge, calling this the triumph of hope over experience.

A further complication is that I am not sure if the Somali pirates aren't the enemy of my enemy, specifically Islamic extremists. In a previous seizure, the pirates claimed that they were preventing shipments of heavy weapons through Kenya to help the vicious Islamofascist regime of Sudan pummel Christians in the Darfur. From Questionable Source:

This story is interesting because it paints a highly accurate picture of the political realities at play in Africa. Somali pirates, who are hired to hijack ships to pay for food, seize a shipment of Russian arms inbound to either Kenya, Somalia, or Sudan, to either aid or repel Islamic extremists, depending on where this particular shipment was going. American and Russian battleships surround the Somali pirates to ensure that the arms reach a favorable destination, which could be anywhere in a region where loyalties can change instantly with some financing. Islamic extremists wage a daily war against the transitional Somali government and their Ethiopian allies, fueled by arms imports from Russia and China.

Ultimately, this rash of piracy highlights the failure of the rule of law in the entire region. Putting an end to it, we must, but by what means? Further, we need to keep in mind that the same militant Islamic extremism that fueled the 9/11 attacks is on the march not only in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, but in East Africa as well. Call it a war on terror or not, we are in for a long slog against enemies with whom we can not compromise.

As to those pirates and all that swag?

But as they made off they continued to row about the payout.

'Two of them swam and survived. One is still missing.

The weather was so terrible that it blew the boat over, then sank it.

We got five dead bodies and we are still searching for the missing one. The waves were disastrous,' said Farah Osman, an associate of the gang.

It is not known what happened to the money or those who survived.

Nice. Maybe we should suggest sending T-bills in the future.