The Business Of Islam
Among other things, it's quashing free speech, but even better, getting those of us who have it (or some semblance of it) to preemptively quash it for them.
Johann Hari has a terrific piece in The Independent, in part, about the book Random House recently dumped, about the child molestation victim Aisha, better known as Mohammed's wife.
For those not in the know, he married her at six and had sex with her when she was nine. In civilized societies, we jail people for this sort of behavior. (Oh, and did you know that, for Muslims, anything Mohammed does is to be emulated?)
Hari writes:
Some people will instantly ask: why bother criticising religion if it causes so much hassle? The answer is: look back at our history. How did Christianity lose its ability to terrorise people with phantasms of sin and Hell? How did it stop spreading shame about natural urges - pre-marital sex, masturbation or homosexuality? Because critics pored over the religion's stories and found gaping holes of logic or morality in them. They asked questions. How could an angel inseminate a virgin? Why does the Old Testament God command his followers to commit genocide? How can a man survive inside a whale?Reinterpretation and ridicule crow-barred Christianity open. Ask enough tough questions and faith is inevitably pushed farther and farther back into the misty realm of metaphor - where it is less likely to inspire people to kill and die for it. But doubtful Muslims, and the atheists who support them, are being prevented from following this path. They cannot ask: what does it reveal about Mohamed that he married a young girl, or that he massacred a village of Jews who refused to follow him? You don't have to murder many Theo Van Goghs or pulp many Sherry Joneses to intimidate the rest. The greatest censorship is internal: it is in all the books that will never be written and all the films that will never be shot, because we are afraid.
Since Jones has brought it up, let us look at Mohamed's marriage to Aisha as a model for how we can conduct this conversation. It is true those were different times, and it may have been normal for grown men to have sex with prepubescent girls. The sources are not clear on this point. But whatever culture you live in, having sex when your body is not physically developed can be an excruciatingly painful experience. Among Vikings, it was more normal than today to have your arm chopped off, but that didn't mean it wasn't agony. If anything, Jones's book whitewashes this, suggesting that Mohamed's "gentleness" meant Aisha enjoyed it.
The story of Aisha also prompts another fundamentalist-busting discussion. You cannot say that Mohamed's decision to marry a young girl has to be judged by the standards of his time, and then demand that we follow his moral standards to the letter. Either we should follow his example literally, or we should critically evaluate it and choose for ourselves. Discussing this contradiction inevitably injects doubt - the mortal enemy of fanaticism (on The Independent's Open House blog later today, I'll be discussing how Aisha has become the central issue in a debate in Yemen about children and forced marriage).
So why do many people who cheer The Life Of Brian and Jerry Springer: The Opera turn into clucking Mary Whitehouses when it comes to Islam? If a book about Christ was being dumped because fanatics in Mississippi might object, we would be enraged. I feel this too. I am ashamed to say I would be more scathing if I was discussing Christianity. One reason is fear: the image of Theo Van Gogh lying on a pavement crying "Can't we just talk about this?" Of course we rationalise it, by asking: does one joke, one column, one novel make much difference? No. But cumulatively? Absolutely.
Speech must remain free -- to maintain a democracy and a civilized society. Even minor cases of silencing must be stopped. For example: A friend of mine is one of probably five Republicans in Beverly Hills. She put out George Bush signs on her lawn before the last election. One after another, they were all stolen. Now, I am not a George Bush fan (nor was I a Kerry fan for that matter), but I find it criminal to silence political speech. I've given her a suggestion for how to catch and actually prosecute the scumbags when they very surely steal the McCain signs she'll put up.
In my own life, just yesterday, I discovered some grudge edits in my Wikipedia entry. Now, I did think it was pretty hilarious that somebody had posted that I'm a male-to-female tranny (if you want to upset somebody with something like that, you picked the wrong girl, because I kept laughing and saying throught the evening to Gregg, "Can we talk about my penis?" and such, which he found somewhat annoying. Still, as I just wrote in an e-mail to Johann Hari (who I apparently share my Wiki vandal with), "the spirit of censorship, even in the smallest form, is something I find terribly disturbing."
Look, if you've got a problem with something I've written or said, bring it on: verbally, or on the page or on my site site, and fight fair: truthfully and on point. If you're not smart enough or articulate enough, well, sorry, you should have watched less television or something, but leave the debating to people who use their heads as more than staging areas for their hair.
Thanks, Deirdre!
I like his Viking analogy and am going to keep it in mind for the idiots that make this different times justification. I find the implications terrifying that we don't even dare say sick bastard, marrying a 7-year-old girl.
Even scarier than the silence is the fact, even after what happened to Theo Van Gogh, that we're not only expected to keep silent about the evils of Islam, we're supposed to condone them. We're supposed to accept that if they want an alternate sharia court in a secular country, that country has to let them have them in the name of freedom of religion. Bullshit. It isn't freedom of religion for anyone forced or coerced into using a relgious court instead of the secular government's court.
If you don't want a secular government, don't move to a secular country. Why are we citizens born in said secular country rolling over and playing dead and ceding our country over to these tyrants? We shouldn't be intimidated by what happened to Theo -- we should take it for the warning it is and protect ourselves.
T's Grammy at August 15, 2008 7:08 AM
Funny thing about Islams rule about no depictions of the pedophile, I mean prophet.
You cant draw a picture and name it mohomed but you can name you kid mohmed.
And apperently you cant name a bear mohomed either, any one remeber that little fiaco?
It got me wonder though, if a stffed bear is an accurate enough representation of the pedophile, I mean prophet to cause riots - doesnt that mean he was a small, overly hairy, glassy eyed freak with no cock, and a bunch of white material stuffed up his ass?
lujlp at August 15, 2008 10:33 AM
Damn, damn, damn, f-ing keys keep sticking.
Here we go again with a new keyboard
Funny thing about Islams rule about no depictions of the pedophile, I mean prophet.
You cant draw a picture and name it mohomed, but you can name you kid mohmed.
And apperently you cant name a bear mohomed either, any one remeber that little fiasco?
It got me wondering though, if a stuffed bear is an accurate enough representation of the pedophile, I mean prophet, to cause riots -
doesnt that mean he was a small, overly hairy, glassy eyed freak with no cock, and a bunch of white material stuffed up his ass?
lulp at August 15, 2008 10:36 AM
My country of Canada is going through a debate these days about whether we really have free speech. I *think* the free speech side is winning but we must forever remain vigilant against the Politically Correct set.
If Obama wins then free speech on U.S. radio is likely in peril. I'm not talking about swearing or hateful comments, but rather just right-of-center political views espoused. Many extreme leftists don't want to debate such views, they just want them silenced.
Robert W. at August 15, 2008 12:12 PM
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