islamophobia or free speech?

Interesting post! I'm not sure I agree - but my thinking on the matter isn't completely clear yet, so I might change my mind, still. Some thoughts...

> wrong because the clear motive is racist (as we can assume islamophobes have only one ethnicity of muslim in mind) and marks of unwarranted disrespect to 1.3 billion muslims who were just chillin'...

I'm not sure I see why you say the motives must clearly have been racist. Are you saying this because of some part of the content of the cartoons (which I haven't seen all of) is directly racist? Or are you thinking that just the act of doing something you know the group finds offensive is racist because you're assuming that the people doing it are outside that group and that they're doing it to make that group upset / harm them, and that group is roughly defined by race so you might as well call it racism? Would you apply this as well to the Jordanian paper that reprinted them?

Also, I'm not sure it's appropriate to take it as a sign of disrespect to all Muslims. The cartoons, as best I can tell from the printed descriptions, had direct political points to them - they were, in effect, it seemed to me, criticising particular interpretations of / uses of Muslim ideas. Which is a totally legitimate thing to do, I think. Just like there are political cartoons with eg Jesus doing weird warlike things to reinforce the strangeness of the Christian right supporting the invasion of Iraq that clearly aren't trying to say "All Christians are warlike nutcases!" cartoons like these aren't necessarily something that's attacking all Muslims.

> some claim solidarity with the first journalist - but that could have been effectively accomplished by saying that he had a right to print what he wanted.

Again, I'm not sure I agree - there's a real difference between stating in words that you support someone and actually following that up with acting in solidarity with them.

> now the stupid factor is of equal concern. and it sort of mirrors one of my main concerns about bush which is that even if we ignore all moral impetus, it's simply a bad idea to make people hate you when you already feel the environment is ripe for violence.

and

> western values have ceased to be intrinsically meaningful (which is why bush finds it so easy to destroy them); they have become a tool for white men and brown men to pee on each other. this is why despite the apparent randomness and cruelty with which sinn fein sometimes seemed to express its concerns, no one ever depicted the pope blowing up a school. and there's not even a rule against that!

these two sections contain a lot of interesting points, but i couldn't figure out how to talk about them separately, so please bear with me in trying to sort through them as a big jumble =)

(part 2, because there's a length limit, it turns out!)

so, first off, perhaps I don't understand what you mean when you say that western values have ceased to be intrinsically meaningful. I think they're meaningful! I believe in them!! I think they're worth protecting at very high cost! Concepts like personal responsibility, and the inherent value of an unbiased search for truth, and the idea that true virtue can only exist in the presence of libery - in uncoerced right action (which honestly, is the biggest reason i really do in the end support / want to participate in a traditional (educated) ammericn style family vs a traditional, say, middle class Jordanian family in large part because i think the freer reign put on an individual to live as he sees fit - as he sees to be the GOOD life.)... all of these things I value highly.

And, these are, I think, at least in part relevant to the issues at hand, here - part of the issue is related to things like (1) are governments responsible for policeing the speech of their citizens? should entire nations be held responsible for what individuals in those nations do and say? and (2) even more to the point, to what extent is it appropriate to have things that some segment of the population considers immoral be still legal? i think this is the central issue in the relationship between religious fundamentalism and politics everywhere, and it's a really important one. so, i think that not compromising on these two points is absolutely appropriate - that if you can't stick to them under pressure then you're giving op on a lot of what makes our overall value system possible, which is a terrible loss.

anyways, those are my thoughts so far... but i'd love to hear more comments, because i'm still thinking about it

Re: (part 2, because there's a length limit, it turns out!)

hey, thanks for responding.
1) why the motives are clearly racist. note, in the context that any depiction of the prophet is offensive (so, further one associating him with terrorism would be more so but generally the point is the any depiction factor)
i don't question the motive of the first cartoonist. but later, when it came to light that this was something clearly forbidden by the religion, why the need to publish again? so 1)islamophobic because people theoretically promoting free speech think it's appropriate to do something that is against muslim dogma for no other reason than to print a joke that was in questionable taste in the first place (because it dangerously links islam with terrorism)2) because i disagree with your perspective that equally offensive images of christianity are tolerated in mainstream media 3) finally, to the racism point, because i think people who see terrorism as a fundamentally muslim question also see muslims as a fundamentally arab-brown people and are not concerned about the actions of the less politically active but numerous african muslims or converted muslims.

on to western morality
i didn't clarify enough that i do think western values and my values are of moral importance and worth significant investment. where i think they have lost meaning is where people use important values like free speech as an excuse to insult muslims for what i see as no good reason. or where some facets of american media and government have used values like freedom to justify their infringement. in this way, i think my moral fabric has been manipulated to political ends in a dangerous way.

on legality
i absolutely think printing that cartoon or any other should be a legal act. i certainly do not think there should be a policy-based response to any newspaper or anyone who espouses what i see as generally inappropriate discourse. i think the newspapers should be more sensitive on moral and practical grounds, but not on legal ones. i also think that the current environment of islamophobia and misunderstanding about terrorism should inspire extra sensitivity on this issue from the media (but again not via legal means)

on jordan,
i believe the stated motivations of the guy who printed them who claims he wanted to "tell them these cartoons are not the end of the world, that insults have happened before and will happen again. The cartoons are silly. They don’t deserve such an intense reaction."
so, to be fair, if i believe him, i should also give the others the benefit of the doubt. certainly, the jordanian guy and the french guy didn't expect to be fired, but the jordanian guy acknowledges that it's an insult and has the simply rational perspective that it shouldn't have been responded to violently (with which i agree, of course). but my instinct is that despite the hypocrisy of my judgment, the others published with much less thought and much more peeing.

not to say that i don't understand journalists desire to defend free speech in a passionate way. but i don't think this is a free speech discussion, because there's no legal question, only a moral one.

as for solidarity, i think the first french response - to publish cartoons of buddah, jesus, etc. in funny ways, with the headline "we can caricature god if we want" was plenty of solidarity and makes a stronger point by acknowledging the choice and then making the respectful one.

Re: (part 2, because there's a length limit, it turns out!)

Ok, i think i'll respond in bits in between bouts of actual work... first bit:

> 1) why the motives are clearly racist. note, in the context that any depiction of the prophet is offensive (so, further one associating him with terrorism would be more so but generally the point is the any depiction factor)
i don't question the motive of the first cartoonist. but later, when it came to light that this was something clearly forbidden by the religion, why the need to publish again? so 1)islamophobic because people theoretically promoting free speech think it's appropriate to do something that is against muslim dogma for no other reason than to print a joke that was in questionable taste in the first place (because it dangerously links islam with terrorism)2) because i disagree with your perspective that equally offensive images of christianity are tolerated in mainstream media 3) finally, to the racism point, because i think people who see terrorism as a fundamentally muslim question also see muslims as a fundamentally arab-brown people and are not concerned about the actions of the less politically active but numerous african muslims or converted muslims.

So, I'm not sure I understand all of your agruments here. Here are the issues I see:

1) I feel like you at times imply that the fact that printing this image is prohibited by the rules of Islam should have been a reason for it not to be published. I'm not sure I agree. Should an individual jouranlist / publisher hold him/herself to the rules required by every major religion? How about non-major ones? So, to the extent that it's an issue of it simply being an act not allowed of Muslims, it doesn't seem like that has anything to do with the issue - just like it's ok that some religions say you should never depict an image of God or even a saint and yet we have even government sponsored publications of great historical art doing just that, it's ok for a non-Muslim to break to break the "rule" that Muslims shouldn't print an image of the prophet with impunity. Whether it's ok to do so in a purposefully insulting way or not is a separate question, but I want to take the "it's against the rules" aspect out of it.

Re: (part 2, because there's a length limit, it turns out!)

2) A lot of this is seeming to come down to the question of why these images would be published in the first place - that this could have only have been done "for no other reason than to print a joke that was in questionable taste in the first place (because it dangerously links islam with terrorism)". Ok, a couple of points on this one...
- (a) I'm not sure that there's any reason to think this was the only goal at all. I really did take the descriptions I saw as being a juxtaposition that's supposed to make it clear that it's NOT a natural combination - that an honest attempt to really understand Mohommad's teachings does not lead to the conclusion that he wanted people to go bombing infidels. You can disagree, but it at least seems unfair to just assume that the entire point was meanspirited mocking.
- (b) This might be a major point of contention, but... I don't think it's inappropraite to openly talk about and discuss and look at the extent to which there is a link between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. It doesn't mean that no other groups have used terrorism, or that other groups haven't used equally awful or even more awful strategies to do wrong, or that every Muslim supports terrorism. But to suggest that it's inappropriate to hold a public discussion that includes the suggestion that there's a link there seems strange and impractical (and dishonest) to me. A parallel example would seem to me to be the abortion clinic attacks of a decade ago. It was clear that there was a link between Christian fundamentalism and those attacks - that everyone who perpetuated the attacks was a Christian fundamentalist, and that they justified their acts based on the ideas they considered to be their understanding of Christianity. It didn't mean that all Christians were murderers or that only Christians were murders, but it was a real link that was worth discussing. And I'd be shocked if you couldn't find political cartoons from that period showing how ridiculous it would be to imagine Jesus taking out abortion doctors with a sniper riffle (I feel like I even remember them, but I don't want to swear it) - and I would not feel that publishing those images would be inappropriate.

>2) because i disagree with your perspective that equally offensive images of christianity are tolerated in mainstream media

Even if I'm wrong in my memory of the Jesus cartoons above, I cerainly remmeber very clearly a photo in the nytimes of that art exhibit that occured a while ago with a giant crucified Jesus upside down in a vat of piss - and if that's not offensive, I'm not sure what is. And yet, the controvercy I remember was mostly around the fact that this guy was actually receiving federal support for his art - I don't remember any concern at all that eg newspapers covered the story complete with photos. And I don't remember any concern at all being raise over, say, the numerous depictions of Jesus in South Park, doing things like taking out Santa Claus - it's not even an issue. People will protest it in the sense that they decide not to put their money there and they encourage others to do the same, but it's nothing like the response we're seeing - and I don't feel like the creators of south park are wrong to present these images to the world.

> 3) finally, to the racism point, because i think people who see terrorism as a fundamentally muslim question also see muslims as a fundamentally arab-brown people and are not concerned about the actions of the less politically active but numerous african muslims or converted muslims.

I think I still don't understand this point. I don't see how this is saying that anything about the cartoons was racist - it sounds more like you're saying "I just know from experience that anyone who would do such a thing is also a racist person." Am I misunderstanding?

Ok, I need to go do some real work, but - thanks for discussing this! I think it's really interesting, and worth talking about...

part one

initial post - about the "against the rules" point. yes, basically, i think that because so many people with whom we have strained relations feel strongly is a moral reason to respect them. and i absolutely think newspapers work hard to fit their discourse within a politically acceptable framework... so the fact that they don't here speaks to the degree to which they think the people upset by the cartoon matter. it indicates they don't matter. why don't they matter? because they don't follow our cultural dictates and because terrorists look like them. i think typically it takes significantly fewer offended people to get a newspaper apology and i don't think that's a censorship debate. i think this is about perception. i think that most people upset by this are actually upset about a much larger issue of marginalisation and disrespect of the muslim world and i think they're right. but the point is that people's perception that they're being disrespected is reason enough for newspapers to reevaluate the decision to print given that i don't think not reprinting infringes on the newspapers' rights in any way.

an example where i disagree with the offended people is in france when comedian dieudonne had a skit about nazism intended to criticise israeli policy. he was branded as an anti-semite, boycotted, and publicly criticised by the president. even though i think people were wrong and hypocritical to interpret his sketch as anti-semite (while they accept other types of racist comedy), i think dieudonne's decision to alter his comedic style was morally sound in addition to being financially necessary.

consider the debate about whether to have the confederate flag above the south carolina state building (and secondarily, above or below the american flag). while i fully acknowledge that some (hypothetically, all) white southerners see the flag as historic, traditional and entirely non-racist, morally i think what matters next is how the majority of black south carolinians felt. obviously i don't think the legal decision should have been based on a black referendum, but i do think even if most people agreed with the flag being on the capital building, it would be morally and politically wrong to put it there if most black people see it as threatening.

part two

2nd post
1a) distinction between the creator of the cartoon and the reprint - again, i felt bad for the creator and am willing to accept that the original intent was positive (i.e. incongruity rather than association between islam and bombings, though i acknowledge i didn't know that before). this is clearly not the intention of the people reprinting it... which is the base for our debate - what is the intention of people reprinting? genuine investment in free speech or a big, loud "i don't care what you think" to the insulted people? i have trouble buying genuine investment in free speech; i'll leave it to you to disagree.

1b) open debate about islamic fundamentalism and terrorism - you're right, totally valid. i don't think this falls under that category - 1st because when some people are deeply insulted by the vehicle of the message, the message cannot be validly debated in an open forum and 2nd because this debate requires clarity about the difference between islam and islamic fundamentalism, and even more subtly, the difference between islamic and islamist. the fact that this was not approached in the original cartoon is not a problem - when it became a larger, more sensitive issue, it should have led to a more refined discourse.

2. equally offensive christian images - 1)the nytimes issue wasn't offensive because nobody thought the nytimes was making the statement - it was reporting on the truthful existence of something and the ensuing debate about its funding. 2)printing an image of jesus is not the same because it's not prohibited and people don't interpret it in the same way as evidenced by no one having been offended. show me an example where christians went crazy and the media continued the offensive act (and south park doesn't count because a-its not news media and b-it's tolerated for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that a lot of people like it 3)when sinnead o'connor burned that picture of the pope, people boycotted her and saturday night live and, had it not been live i don't think that would've made it on the air - why? because people went ballistic and when they did, it was generally agreed that that sort of thing would not be tolerated and lo and behold, it wasn't repeated. similarly, when bill mahar said terrorists weren't cowardly, he almost lost his job despite his being absolutely right. no such indiscretion was repeated on any of the mainstream/semileft semi-news outlets. so i think if you're suggesting that americans tolerate offensive remarks in the media, it's because we have a curious definition of offensive, not because we tolerate what we don't like. more importantly, i think the fact that people adjust their behaviour based on negative response is not solely a ratings/financial issue. i honestly think it's also about respect and civil discourse.