NYC Letter: Looney Toons

E-NOUGH! ENCOURAGES YOU TO FRUSTRATE
THE MUSLIM BOYCOTT OF DANISH GOODS

Muslims continue to run riot throughout the world, righteously indignant, hysterically indignant, violently indignant, murderously indignant, about, well, about cartoons.

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT: MORAL CHALLENGE TO ISLAM
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This is not a "likeness" of Mr. Mohammed (PBUH).
It is a semiotic instance of Mr. Mo, himself a semiotic significator of Islam.
Please refrain from idolatry.*

* Islamism has determined idolatry is hazardous to your health. Side effects may include but are not limited to kidnapping, fatal or petty deprivations, humiliations, beatings, rape, souvenir wounding, throat-slitting, beheading, murder in its various forms, and the disabuse of fond liberal notions. If you experience any of the above, consult with Al Jazeera immediately to arrange a broadcast to plead your life.

We have posted elsewhere on the beginnings of Muslim cartoon rage. And many read-worthy commentaries have appeared on Muslim cartoon rage. There is little we can add. A lot of Muslims appear angry about cartoons.

But who is kidding whom?

Mark Steyn raises the question how is it that in several Muslim communities where members live in abject poverty brand new Danish flags are plenteous and ready to hand for burning?

Denmark! Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza? Well, OK, that's easy: the nearest European Union Humanitarian Aid and Intifada-Funding Branch Office. But where do you get one in an obscure town on the Punjabi plain on a Thursday afternoon? If I had a sudden yen to burn the Yemeni or Sudanese flag on my village green, I haven't a clue how I'd get hold of one in this part of New Hampshire. Say what you like about the Islamic world, but they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least when it comes to threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offense or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they'd have.

And there are other questions one might ask. How is it that in communities of poorly educated and illiterate Muslims the preponderance of placards are in English and not the native tongue? How many of the enraged Muslims have actually seen these cartoons to judge the severity of the sacrilege for themselves?

MOHAMMED CARTOONS IN EGYPTIAN PAPER - OCTOBER 2005

Egyptian Sandmonkey has scanned images of Egyptian newspaper Al Faqr—who published the infamous cartoons of blasphemy last October, at the height of Ramadan, in the heart of the Islamic world, with not a single squeak of outrage.

We guess free-reading Muslims don't know outrageous blasphemy until properly instructed.

And what is the greater shame to Islam, heinous crimes committed in its name or Western derision of those who commit such crimes in its name? Although there is no explicit injunction against cartoons in the Quran, there are specific injunctions against murder and intolerance. These injunctions are openly flaunted by Muslim terrorists yet no massive crowds of enraged Muslims have been stirred into the streets in protest. Why?

Muslims casually refer to non-believers as "infidels". The very word is a pronouncement of religious defect. Will offended Episcopalians interrupt Sunday golf and pour into the streets? No. Catholics do not riot. Baptists do not bawl. Buddhists do not shoot the imam quietly at his prayers. Why?

The answers to all these various questions are because, whatever its supernatural merits, Islam is a failed cultural force.

Are images of Mohammed haram (scil., forbidden)? No.

Is satirical sacrilege unknown in Islamic culture? No.

Do Muslims, as a practice of sanctity and respect, abstain from ridiculing the kaffir's beliefs and religious heritage, his prophets, his God? No.

Have Muslims spontaneously risen up -- stitched up thousands of Dannebrogs to burn, spent their subsistence wages printing up placards in English, and critically reviewed the objects of their rage? No. (Also here and here.)

Yet Islamic leaders, Islamic nations, Islamic governments all seem to agree cartoon rage is a fitting expenditure of the time, money, and energy of their Muslim charges and citizens. Alas, these same leaders, nations, governments never find this same time, money, and energy for real problems afflicting Muslims. Problems like poverty, infant mortality, clean drinking water, literacy, healthcare -- all these go begging. But enraging Muslims over their miserable lot would require self-directed criticism of the failures of these same leaders, nations, and governments.

If, as we are led to believe, your average enraged Muslim thinks the West responsible for the humiliating backward state of Islamic culture, well, that is a not-too-tacit admission of Islamic culture's failure. A good part of Islam deals with subjecting, subduing, or outright killing the infidel. But modern Islam is powerless to effect these designs. Even the Islamite terrorist can only pretend to Islamic might by abducting and killing the powerless and innocent.

So caliphate-revanchists resort to gaming Western values.

The Arab world understands Europe’s weaknesses far better than the other way around. Criticism of Islamism is usually described by Muslim spokesmen as "racist" as if religious ideology was a biological given. Even more important, they have learned how to game Western liberalism. When Muslim spokesmen deny the Holocaust, they defend themselves on the grounds that they are only exercising their free speech rights. When they insist that images offensive to Muslims should be barred, they drop the free speech bit and argue on the grounds of multi-cultural sensitivity. The latter argument received strong backing from most of the European left which, looking upon Muslims as the new proletariat, insists that Islamophobia, not Islamofascism, is the great issue of the day.

Islamites are angling to extort from the West what Allah has seen fit to deny them, world hegemony under divine sanction. This prompts the question, if Allah has not favored the Islamite project, why in God's name should the West?

There is respect of the Islamic religion and there is submission to the Islamic religion (also this, and this, and this, and more appalling still, this). The West had best draw the distinction. A cartoon will do.

Posted by Damian at February 11, 2006 07:30 AM