Internationally, some people are taking the opportunity to stick it to America, accusing it of not being the land of the free when it comes to Muslims. Take, for instance, Robert Fisk’s column in the Independent, which is being e-mailed around quite frequently today. There are many meritorious arguments which explain how America overreacted to 9/11, but this is not one of them:
Did 9/11 make us all go mad? How fitting, in a weird, crazed way, that the apotheosis of that firestorm nine years ago should turn out to be a crackpot preacher threatening another firestorm with a Nazi-style book burning of the Koran…9/11 appears to have produced not peace or justice or democracy or human rights, but monsters.
This orgy of moral relativism and mendacity is a complete misreading of what is occurring in America. The growing fear of Muslims in the United States is not a delayed reaction to 9/11, but is rather a reaction to the very real problem of home-grown terrorism inspired by Islam, which seems to be increasing by the month (see Nidal Malik Hasan, Shaker Masri, Najibullah Zazi, Faisal Shahzad, etc.). Americans who follow the news are increasingly worried about this trend. The home-grown terrorists are simply reacting to American foreign policy, Fisk argues. Ok, fine. But in America, we protest with voices, pens, and ballots, not with suicide vests. Bombing various forms of transportation is not, as Fisk confesses, going to produce "human rights"--it will only produce monsters.
As for Terry Jones, what he proposed to do was an act of free speech. Burning a Koran is ultimately no different from burning a flag. These may be base and infantile forms of protest, typically found in backward countries, but they are necessarily permissible if you believe in liberalism. What is not permissible is violent protest, which is how many Muslims threatened to respond.
At its core, this is a repeat of the Danish cartoon episode, and of the Salman Rushdie episode before that. Yet Fisk, by disingenuously slapping the Nazi moniker on Jones (last I checked, Jones is not building any gas chambers), exonerates anti-free speech Muslims who think that violence is a proper response to insult.
The real point is that American civil society unequivocally denounced Jones as a lunatic moron. Regular citizens protested and organized campaigns against him. And he did stop. In other words, the American system, which balances constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression against a strong civil society, worked.
Fisk, ignoring this, condemns “the West” while exculpating the noble savages who believe that insult from book burnings or cartoons or novels are reasonable grounds for murder. The cause of an isolated idiot burning some books, in Fisk’s world, is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler. In fact, Mr. Jones is not dangerous because of anything he is doing—all he is accomplishing is making himself look stupid. Instead, Jones is dangerous chiefly because of the violent ramblings of thousands of imams who encourage terrorism, and who will use the book burning as propaganda to motivate their minions.
Unintentionally, Terry Jones has exposed the callous hypocrisy of those who are ready to sacrifice the right to free and peaceful expression upon the altar of "religious sensitivity". The irony is, of course, that religious tolerance is built upon that very same right to freedom of expression. It is high time that people remember that.
- Jon
P.S. The general point of the article is to point out how 9/11 spawned lunacy. Fisk is right about this rather obvious observation--few things are more absurd than the story of Arabs in Afghanistan traveling halfway around the world to intentionally crash planes into two skyscrapers, with the purpose of returning the Middle East to medieval government. Less crazy, but probably just as naive, was Bush's response of democratic nation-building. But how is Terry Jones the apotheosis of this?
Comments
I absolutely agree. The loss of perspective by those of Mr. Fisk's ilk is truly appalling. Unlike Muslims in the US, people throughout much of the Islamic world do not even have the right to practice their religion publicly. In Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen, converting to another religion or possessing another holy book is often punishable by death. These country's governments also tolerate violence and discrimination against those of other faiths--in spite of the Prophet's injunction to respect 'peoples of the book.'
Terry Jones is an attention-seeking crackpot, who deserved all of the criticism that he received. Yet if he lived in some parts of the Muslim world, he would probably be making clerical policy or drawing a government stipend. Those commentators who do not at least mention this double standard are just as myopic as he is.
Yea, this article was popping up on my facebook buzz feed, and I'm not the type of person to bandy about the accusation of moral relativism, but this was just ridiculous.
I also went out a few nights ago with a Turkish family, and the parents, Kemalists in their 60s, were very annoyed about the Koran burning. It was obvious that it didn't make sense to them why Jones couldn't be arrested. It's of course hypocritical--there was a famous incident in Malatya (central Turkey) in which gunmen murdered 3 Turkish Christians at their bible printing shop. Of course, there were denunciations, and the killers are in jail (on other charges). But there was also widespread sense that since Turkey is a country of Muslims, these people shouldn't have been printing bibles, and regardless they must be foreign agents so they got what they deserved.
