Re: Muslims... Told You So...

I'm not alone in my opinions. You guys carry on in the most childish
way fueling the East-West divide with ridiculous rhetoric.

Subject: robert fiske article



Robert Fisk: Don't be fooled, this isn't an issue of Islam versus

secularism





Published: 04 February 2006



So now it's cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb-shaped turban.

Ambassadors are withdrawn from Denmark, Gulf nations clear their
shelves

of Danish produce, and Gaza gunmen threaten the European Union. In

Denmark, Fleming Rose, the "culture" editor of the pip-squeak newspaper

which published these silly cartoons - last September, for heaven's
sake

- announces that we are witnessing a "clash of civilizations" between

secular Western democracies and Islamic societies. This does prove, I

suppose, that Danish journalists follow in the tradition of Hans

Christian Anderson. Oh lordy, lordy. What we're witnessing is the

childishness of civilizations.



So let's start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an

issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man
who

received divine words directly from God. We see our prophets as faintly

historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights, almost

caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their
religion.

We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical

vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote

about the sea's "long, withdrawing roar". That's why we talk about "the

West versus Islam" rather than "Christians versus Islam" - because
there

aren't an awful lot of Christians left in Europe. There is no way we
can

get round this by setting up all the other world religions and asking
why

we are not allowed to make fun of Mohamed.



Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I

happen to remember how, more than a decade ago, a film called The Last

Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris,

someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young man.
I

also happen to remember a US university which invited me to give a

lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled "September 11, 2001:
ask

who did it but, for God's sake, don't ask why". When I arrived, I found

that the university had deleted the phrase "for God's sake" because "we

didn't want to offend certain sensibilities". Ah-ha, so we have

"sensibilities" too.



In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularists
when

it comes to free speech - or cheap cartoons - we can worry about

adherents to our own precious religion just as much. I also enjoyed the

pompous claims of European statesmen that they cannot control free
speech

or newspapers. This is also nonsense. Had that cartoon of the Prophet

shown instead a chief rabbi with a bomb-shaped hat, we would have had

"anti-Semitism" screamed into our ears - and rightly so - just as we

often hear the Israelis complain about anti-Semitic cartoons in
Egyptian

newspapers.



Furthermore, in some European nations - France is one, Germany and

Austria are among the others - it is forbidden by law to deny acts of

genocide. In France, for example, it is illegal to say that the Jewish

Holocaust or the Armenian Holocaust did not happen. So it is, in fact,

impermissable to make certain statements in European nations. I'm still

uncertain whether these laws attain their objectives; however much you

may prescribe Holocaust denial, anti-Semites will always try to find a

way round. We can hardly exercise our political restraints to prevent

Holocaust deniers and then start screaming about secularism when we
find

that Muslims object to our provocative and insulting image of the

Prophet.



For many Muslims, the "Islamic" reaction to this affair is an

embarrassment. There is good reason to believe that Muslims would like
to

see some element of reform introduced to their religion. If this
cartoon

had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue, no-one

would have minded. But it was clearly intended to be provocative. It
was

so outrageous that it only caused reaction.



And this is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntingdon
garbage

about a "clash of civilizations". Iran now has a clerical government

again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not
supposed

to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but

that's what happens when you topple dictators).

In Egypt , the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the

recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of

"Palestine".



There's a message here, isn't there? That America's policies -"regime

change" in the Middle East - are not achieving their ends. These
millions

of voters preferred Islam to the corrupt regimes which we imposed on

them.



For the Danish cartoon to be dumped on top of this fire is dangerous

indeed.



In any event, it's not about whether the Prophet should be pictured.
The

Koran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of

Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Mohamed as a
bin

Laden-type image of violence. They portrayed Islam as a violent
religion.

It is not. Or do we want to make it so?

.

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