Position Paper (2) - Sacred Cows

Kim du Toit
February 6, 2006
1:05 AM CDT

Preamble:

There has been an incredible amount of hoo-hah about the Danish cartoons, which took an irreverent poke at Islam, and aroused fury among Muslims. All sorts of statements have been bandied about—“freedom of speech”, “artistic freedom”, “intolerance” and so on.

It’s all a load of old crap.

Allow me to draw a few parallels.

1.) When Muslims burned U.S. flags in the “street”, Americans were quick to take offense—at the defacement of a sacred (to Americans) symbol. When local hippies and Lefties burned a U.S. flag in their “street” (Haight/Ashbury), we even saw a movement to protect the Holy Flag by Constitutional amendment. We were prepared to alter our primary governing document, to preserve a symbol—making defacement illegal—even though that very document has stated that such an act, as a political statement, is expressly permitted.

2.) When a couple of folks shot up a Koran in the Arizona desert, filmed it, and broadcast it, various Muslims went nuts and called for a “holy war” or “fatwa” against the shooters. The shooting up of the Koran was, of course, an intentionally-provocative act, and aroused an extreme response. What else was to be expected? The FBI got involved, the blogosphere went nutso, and the whole thing spiraled out of control.

3.) When photographer Andres Serrano photographed a cross lying in a glass or urine and called it “Piss Christ”, Christians all over were appalled: boycotts were threatened, the exhibition was closed down, state funding for artists was threatened with withdrawal, and so on.

Here’s a clue for the clueless: symbols have meaning, and carry an emotional impact far beyond their intrinsic value. So if you mess with them, you should expect a reaction: sometimes violent, sometimes extreme, and always hearfelt.

Allow me to illustrate the point with a personal anecdote.

In September of last year, I weighed in with my opinion of Intelligent Design, wherein I basically said that “Intelligent Design” was the equivalent to Alchemy, in that both were full of sh*t. The reaction was immediate, and vitriolic. Several people sent irate emails, a good many canceled their membership at this website, and I even suffered the loss of a couple of friends who took exception to my bluntness. My website traffic suffered quite a bit, too, as people quit coming here.

Here is the point of this anecdote: all those responses were perfectly justified, and all were the proper thing to do.

And here is where I turn my baleful gaze away from the Christians, and towards the Muslims. You will note, my Muslim friends, that while my post aroused considerable anger among Christians, it did not engender threats against my life, my effigy was not burned in the streets, and I did not get a visit from a Mormon hit squad.

Here’s a little tip: it’s time that Islam escaped the 7th century and joined the modern world. It’s also time that Muslims realized that enforced virtue is no virtue at all (to use Dinesh D’Souza’s excellent expression).

Calling for an international boycott of Danish products by Muslim people, or even cutting diplomatic ties with Denmark, would be the correct response. Burning down Danish embassies and killing Danes at random, is not. And let’s assume that Muslim radicals in Denmark burned down a couple of Danish churches, whereupon the Danish government expelled all Muslims from Denmark, regardless of their residence status. See where extreme behavior leads?

And now for my position statement.

As everyone should know by now, I am an atheist. I have no dog in this fight—in fact, to be blunt, I find the whole ”my imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend” stuff quite risible.

What I do stand for, is tolerance and manners. If I know that someone holds something to be sacred, I would never consider mocking that object. It’s rude, and something which should never be done: in the first place, because it shows disrespect for another human being; in the second, because if I say something extremely inflammatory about your sacred object, I would expect something of a strong reaction from you. So to publish an inflammatory cartoon, and then be all surprised when the reaction is violent, is to be either naive, or stupid.

I am not arguing for “political correctness”—the fear of offending someone. Sometimes, when people have overstepped the mark, they need to be offended—your reaction against their excess should be as predictable as theirs against yours. That’s the whole reason for having manners and forebearance in the first place. Moreover, there’s no regulation against me saying that Christians are neo-cannibals by drinking imaginary blood each week, or that Muslims should be impaled on a spike when they kill their daughters for fornication because of what was written long ago in some medieval Arabic guidebook.

What prevents me from saying all that is courtesy, and manners. I don’t mind people’s religions: as long as they don’t affect me directly, or as long as they do not become public policy. So I refrain from passing commentary in the same manner in which I pass commentary on political activity—not because I’m frightened of losing website traffic, or of having a fatwah issued against me, but because I just think it’s rude to do so. One of the very few rules I insist on at this site is that people display good manners—if there’s going to be vitriolic ranting, let me do it—and it’s a rule I find myself having to enforce more and more these days.

More to the point: I don’t think that I have any obligation to allow such disrespect on this website, no matter what the source or whom the target, because my allowing of such rudeness makes me an accomplice, and I refuse to allow that to happen.

I find it ironic in the extreme that an atheist has to remind religious people to mind their manners.

And I wish a whole bunch of people—Danish cartoonists, Christian crusaders and Muslim radicals, to name but a few—would refrain from trying to impose their beliefs and belief systems on everyone else.

A plague on all your houses.