In response to this post on Muhammad Abdul Bari, a commenter noted this cartoon and asked the following question:

“The cartoon lists a bunch of problems that it claims Muslim societies have. Will Western government and society mocking the most sensitive issues of Islam make those problems better or worse?”

Variations of this question are raised on a fairly regular basis, usually with no expectation of an answer – for example see here. Another version of the same was voiced by Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Minister, Ijaz-ul-Haq, who asked, apparently in all seriousness:

“How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?”

This question should, I think, be turned around, quite emphatically. Given jihadists pointedly cite Muhammad’s purported ‘revelations’ as their mandate and motive, how can the spread of Islamic terrorism be resisted if Muhammad and his teachings remain beyond criticism? How does one respond when the Bali bombing ‘mastermind’ Mukhlas Imron asks his captors: “You who still have a shred of faith in your hearts, have you forgotten that to kill infidels and the enemies of Islam is a deed that has a reward above no other?” – and then quotes Muhammad’s own exhortations as his license for atrocity?

In his book, The Truth About Muhammad, Robert Spencer stresses the same key point:

“If the terrorists are correct in invoking his example to justify their deeds, then Islamic reformers will need to initiate a respectful but searching re-evaluation of the place Muhammad occupies within Islam… If peaceful Muslims can mount no comeback when jihadists point to Muhammad’s example to justify violence, their ranks will always remain vulnerable to recruitment from jihadists who present themselves as the exponents of ‘pure Islam’, faithfully following Muhammad’s example.”

Spencer’s book – and the question it raises – has, of course, been banned in Pakistan, supposedly for containing “objectionable material.” Viewed in this light, the blasphemy laws of which Mr ul-Haq is so enamoured, and which so often serve as a license to intimidate and extort, are very much part of the problem. Blasphemy laws exist in order to make people afraid of saying certain things and, by extension, afraid of thinking certain things. And it’s hard to see how such a fundamental problem will be solved if people are afraid to think about it.

By all means, fund my blasphemy. 

Via Tapedeck.org comes this strangely endearing nostalgia-fest. A collection of 138 vintage analogue audio cassettes. I vaguely remember BASF chrome tapes had a distinctive smell, quite unlike other brands. I forget how well they worked, possibly due to the effects of sniffing the tape.

The collection is, naturally, catalogued by brand, running time and tape quality. Stay away from 120s, though. They tend to stretch. More here.

Further to yesterday’s post on Salman Rushdie’s knighthood, this caught my eye. Here’s Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain:

“The granting of a knighthood to him can only do harm to the image of our country in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world.”

There’s something insanely funny about Muhammad Abdul Bari talking about image problems. Bari, like his predecessor and many of his colleagues, is an admirer of the totalitarian fantasist, Syed Abul A’ala Mawdudi. In April 1939, Mawdudi wrote: “Islam requires the Earth – not just a portion, but the whole planet… [Muslims are] under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge [non-Muslims] from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.” Lest we forget, Mawdudi’s writings influenced Sayyid Qutb, who in turn inspired bin Laden.

Some readers may recall Bari’s awkward evasions regarding the preaching of supremacist hatred during John Ware’s Panorama documentary, A Question of Leadership. Others may recall Dr Bari’s assertion, made last year, that while there are “a few bad apples in the Muslim community”, “negative attitudes” towards Muslims would result in Britain being faced with “two million Muslim terrorists — 700,000 of them in London.” Again, like his predecessor, Bari has the knack for undermining his own arguments and turning protestations of victimhood into barely-veiled threats. And this is the man who presumes to lecture others on the importance of how one seems.

For some reason, I’m reminded of this Cox & Forkum cartoon, published during the last bout of indignation on demand:

Salman Rushdie’s knighthood has, predictably, upset the Iranian authorities. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said the decision to praise “the apostate” had “insulted Islamic sanctities,” before wheeling out the familiar stall of pretension, gasbaggery and affected victimhood:

“Giving a medal to someone who is among the most detested figures in the Islamic community is… a blatant example of the anti-Islamism of senior British officials… Paying tribute to this apostate and detested figure will definitely put British statesmen and officials at odds with Islamic societies, the emotions and sentiments of which have again been provoked.”

Today, and no less predictably, the Guardian ran a generically tendentious piece by Priyamvada Gopal, a lecturer in literature and “postcolonial studies” at Cambridge University:

“More interesting is the question of why this ‘honour’ comes now and what Rushdie’s alacrity in accepting it tells us about politics and letters in our times… Driven underground and into despair by zealotry, Rushdie finally emerged blinking into New York sunshine shortly before the towers came tumbling down. Those formidable literary powers would now be deployed not against, but in the service of, an American regime that had declared its own fundamentalist monopoly on the meanings of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberation’…

[Rushdie] is iconic of a more pernicious trend: liberal literati who have assented to the notion that humane values, tolerance and freedom are fundamentally Western ideas that have to be defended as such… Now [Rushdie] recalls his own creation Baal, the talented poet who becomes a giggling hack corralled into attacking his ruler’s enemies.”

One might, I think, argue that Rushdie’s defence of basic, universal freedoms has little to do with being “corralled” by “his rulers” (whoever they might be) and rather more to do with the countless followers of a “most merciful” Allah who wish to murder him due to their own hysterical vanities. And perhaps it has something to do with a painful realisation that much of the “liberal literati” is unwilling to defend either him or the freedoms now at stake.

Oddly, Ms Gopal seems unconcerned by the passive-aggressive pretensions of Mr Hosseini, now so commonplace, or by the explicitly genocidal intent of the government he represents – factors, among so many, that would appear to support Rushdie’s position rather than her own. Nor, it seems, is she concerned by the fanatics who burned a novel they hadn’t read, or the psychopaths who hunted down and murdered translators of that novel, or those who set fire to occupied buildings as an act of protest and piety. Or indeed by the familiar pattern established by those acts. Instead, Gopal’s indignation is aimed at Rushdie’s criticism of violence committed in the name of Islam and his support for ousting the Taliban – an act that allowed almost 4 million exiled Muslims to return to their homes and which allowed millions of young girls to resume an education forbidden by the Taliban. But such are the moral priorities of the esteemed educator, Priyamvada Gopal.

I scarcely need to point out that Mr Hosseini and Ms Gopal have something in common. Both dislike apostates, albeit of different kinds. In Ms Gopal’s case, Rushdie’s sin is to depart from the guilt-clotted gospel clung to by Ms Gopal and so many of her peers.

Update: More on this at Normblog.

Update 2: Speaking of predictable, the madness begins. More here. Doubtless we can expect more threats, burning and hysteria after Friday prayers. Note that the BBC website asks, apparently in all seriousness: “Is Mr Rushdie’s award an insult to Islam?” Readers aren’t, of course, asked whether the Muslims calling for the murder of a novelist are an affront to civilisation.

Related, this.

Further to the recent post on Vanessa Engle’s Lefties documentaries, here’s another curio from a bygone age. The People’s Cube highlights video, probably from around 1984, of KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov explaining psychological warfare and the demoralising effects of Marxist-Leninist ideology. It isn’t clear exactly how much is boasting and embellishment, and it isn’t clear whether the word “demoralise” is intended to mean “destroy the morale of” or “render morally impotent.” Both would seem to apply. Of particular interest is the KGB’s apparent focus on influencing the “soft” brains of Western students and rendering them impervious to inconvenient facts.

Make of it what you will.

More at Roborant. Related: this and this. 

There are too many Wangs in China. “There are 93 million Wangs and 92 million Lis.” // When squirrels attack. // Warfare with drugs. And pterodactyls. // Lego furniture. Not really made of Lego. // The Music Sofa. // Robo-chair. // Mary Jackson on Deleuze and the passing of gas. // Oh, look. It’s Carolyn Guertin. Deploy the weapon. // Photoluminescent acrylic brick. // Flow. Trailer. // Julie Szego interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “The term ‘enlightenment fundamentalist’ makes reason and tolerance seem negotiable.” // Iranian judiciary advisor defends stoning. “We had a revolution so that Islamic laws would be implemented.” // Mick Hartley on Jihadi Etiquette. Killing bystanders with car bombs isn’t a problem. Allah will sort innocent souls from their disassembled bodies. // Education as social engineering. Making sure youngsters have the right kind of thoughts. // Via 1+1=3, ambient intermission sounds. Murmurs, coughs, tuning. An extract. More here. // Vintage comic books and dust jackets. // Pies Across America. Where to find good pie. // Exercise your teeth. (1939) // The International Toaster Museum. “The world’s largest online toaster collection.” // The Toaster Film Festival. // Typorganism. // Via Artblog, a rather wonderful TV moment. Nicely done, Mr Potts. Nicely done.

Here’s Jonathan Klassen and Dan Rodrigues’ short animation, An Eye For Annai. For children of all ages.

More here.

Sato Shintaro’s photographs of Tokyo at twilight, as seen from various fire escapes.

More here.  (H/T, Coudal.)

Readers with an interest in philosophy will probably know Richard Rorty died last week. Of the summaries of Rorty’s thinking, two in particular caught my eye. Their connection to each other, and to recent posts, is, I think, pretty obvious.

Norman Geras wrote:

“Rorty’s anti-foundationalism, his refusal of the idea of an objective realm beyond the language in which we try to apprehend it, leaves us intellectually defenceless in the face of a cognitive relativism for which any view must be just as good as any other. Rorty denied this consequence of his own arguments, but the denial struck me as one example among many of his tolerance for internal contradiction.”

Roger Scruton had this to say:

“[Rorty’s] venture into political theory took [him] in new and unforeseeable directions, as he tried to reconcile his view that some versions of political order are superior to others, with his belief that there is no trans-historical perspective from which any such judgment can be made. It is a testimony to his literary skills that he was able repeatedly to stare refutation in the face, and to go on staring…

Undoubtedly he was the most lucid of the postmodernist philosophers – though that is, given the competition, no great achievement… Rorty was paramount among those thinkers who advance their own opinion as immune to criticism, by pretending that it is not truth but consensus that counts, while defining the consensus in terms of people like themselves.”

Rorty was a learned man, to be sure, but, like so many of his postmodernist peers, he tried to deform logic to fit a political prejudice.

Related: On Derrida’s clotted prose.

Via Digital Clendening, a gallery of Chinese public health posters for a happy proletariat. Posture, hygiene, vaccination. “Eat clean food.”

Related: “Japanese Art on the Subject of Medicine.”