Sweet sandals of Allah! Someone is mocking Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

Will riots ensue? (Via Heathen TV.)

I wasn’t going to comment on Geert Wilders’ short film, Fitna, largely because it’s been done to death elsewhere and because, despite the ridiculous fuss, it’s actually rather boring. Fitna’s content, such as it is, will be familiar to anyone who reads Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom or the MEMRI media archive. Juxtaposing acts of terrorism with the sermons and Qur’anic verses that are used to justify them is old news, at least among those who pay attention. And while the texts cited certainly are used to mandate atrocity, and have been for centuries, there’s no attempt to explain the theological context or the lineage of these ideas, or how they’re propagated and rationalised. A much better film, which does provide some context and analysis, is Islam: What the West Needs to Know.

But while Wilders’ film is unoriginal and insubstantial, the reactions to it have been instructive. The company hosting Fitna online pulled it after receiving threats to its staff “of a very serious nature”, which confirms the dismal fact that Islamist thuggery – whose roots we must not speak of – all too often works. (However, such is the nature of the intartubes, the film can still be found on any number of sites.) And, as expected, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, condemned the “offensively anti-Islamic film” and claimed, unconvincingly, that, “the right of free speech is not at stake here.”

In the Guardian, Ali Eteraz described Fitna as “an effort to turn the entirety of Islam into a demonic edifice” – which may or may not be Wilders’ personal view, but is a somewhat loaded reading of the film. Wilders may well be an objectionable self-regarding oaf, as Eteraz and others claim, but that doesn’t address the fundamental issues. It simply avoids them. Instead we get: “Most people familiar with the Qur’an… accept that you can have the Qur’an say pretty much whatever you want.” This is another variation of the “Oh, but all religions can be twisted to mean anything” evasion (discussed at length here) and is based on an idle assumption that Islam has no theological features and precedents that make it unusual among religions. Eteraz also bemoaned the “disgusting conflations of the Qur’an with acts of violence, murder, kidnapping and anti-Semitism” – a statement that reveals an ignorance of Islamic history and jurisprudence that is almost, but not quite, funny.

As usual, umbrage and disgust are directed at those who point to the sacralising of terror by others, rather than those who actually make terror a matter of pious obligation. Would such reactions have been very different if more elevated minds – say, Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq or Andrew Bostom – had made a film, any film, on the subject? Somehow, I think not.

Update:

I’ve often heard it argued, or rather asserted, that “Islamophobia” makes it more difficult to combat jihadist ideology and those who propagate it. But there’s an obvious problem with this. What is very often deemed “Islamophobic” is any attempt to highlight the roots of jihadism within Islamic history and teaching, and ultimately in the purported revelations of Muhammad himself. Thus, efforts to provide essential theological and historical context, as for instance by Spencer, Warraq and Bostom, are routinely denounced as “inflammatory”, “Islamophobic”, even “racist”. To mention the unedifying aspects of Islam’s prophet – which are central to any credible understanding of the jihadist phenomenon – is therefore very difficult to do without being denounced as xenophobic, hateful or in some way nefarious. The irony of this should not need pointing out.

Seumas Milne’s readiness to abandon facts and rhetorically fellate theocratic thugs has been noted many times, along with his fondness for Stalinism and nostalgic Communists. At the Guardian, under Milne’s editorial wing, Milosevic groupies and other assorted rogues have been favoured with a platform from which to misinform readers. In today’s Guardian, the former comment editor and current associate editor accelerates his descent into cartoonish absurdity and attempts to paint religion as an ally in some radical crusade against the evil capitalist system. A system of which Seumas, son of Sir Alasdair Milne, is a notable beneficiary.

Milne sees the scope for

Stronger alliances between the secular left and religious progressives against poverty, capitalism and war… Religion can play a reactionary or a progressive role, and the struggle is now within it, not against it. For the future, it can be an ally of radical change.

Well, perhaps. But given Milne’s extensive history of regarding religious fantasists and bigots as “progressives” and worthy of propaganda space in a “progressive” newspaper, some doubts may spring to mind. This, after all, is a man who gave space to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir and apologists for ritual murder, and who describes Tariq Ramadan, who dreams of an Islamised Europe, as “progressive” and a “liberal academic.” Even less convincing is Milne’s depiction of those who take a different view – say, by criticising aspects of Islam or insisting on the separation of church and state – as

Secular absolutists whose attitudes uncannily mirror those of religious literalists.

Thus, an advocacy of critical thought and self-determination is deemed to “mirror” an urge to impose on others the purported will of hypothetical deities. The arguments of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are, it seems, in no way distinguishable from those of people who do this. Or this. Or this. Perhaps Seumas has started channelling the wisdom of his colleague, Madeleine Bunting, whose search for “authenticity” and disdain for Enlightenment values – of which she, a female journalist, is another beneficiary – are aired at regular intervals. Certainly, a sense of déjà vu is hard to miss, not least when those who criticise religion, and one in particular, often for very good reasons, are denounced by Milne as

Apologists for western supremacism and violence.

As Alan Johnson pointed out, and as was subsequently confirmed, it’s a signature of Milne’s commentary that practically no-one may disagree or refute his claims, even on matters of basic fact, without immediately being labelled a “NeoCon”, “Islamophobe” or “warmonger”. Words which, among some, are immensely effective in shutting down rational thought. One particular passage stands out to illustrate Johnson’s point and highlight Milne’s contortions:

Panicked by the rise of radical Islamism and the newly assertive religious identity of migrant communities in a secular Europe, the anti-religious evangelists are increasingly using atheism as a banner for the defence of the global liberal capitalist order and the wars fought since 2001 to assert its dominance. At the same time, they are unable to recognise the ethnic dimension of their Islamophobia, let alone the deeper reasons why people continue to search for spiritual meaning in a grossly destructive economic environment where social alternatives have been pronounced dead and narcissistic consumption is king.

One might wonder if the above also illustrates how the mind of a true believer, in this case Mr Milne’s, can so easily come undone.

What’s the term I’m looking for? Vanity? Hubris? Ah, yes. Pathological denial. 

Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world’s Muslim nations are considering taking legal action against those that slight their religion or its sacred symbols. It was a key issue during a two-day summit that ended Friday in this western Africa capital. The Muslim leaders are attempting to demand redress from nations like Denmark, which allowed the publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and again last month, to the fury of the Muslim world.

Though the legal measures being considered have not been spelled out, the idea pits many Muslims against principles of freedom of speech enshrined in the constitutions of numerous Western governments. “I don’t think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy,” said Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, the chairman of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. “There can be no freedom without limits.”

The report urges the creation of a “legal instrument” to crack down on defamation of Islam… “In our relation with the western world, we are going through a difficult time,” [OIC secretary general, Ekmeleddin] Ihsanoglu told the summit’s general assembly. “Islamophobia cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but (through) a robust political engagement.”…A new charter drafted by the OIC commits the Muslim body “to protect and defend the true image of Islam” and “to combat the defamation of Islam.”

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference seems to imagine that self-esteem is a default entitlement and that “defamation” should also extend to matters of inconvenient fact; and thus believers – or rather Muslims – have some fictional right not to be criticised or mocked for publicly airing absurd and objectionable beliefs:

The OIC – backed by allies in Africa and by Russia and Cuba – has been pushing for stronger resolutions on “defamation” since a global controversy arose two years ago over cartoons in a Danish newspaper which Muslims say insult their religion. The “defamation” issue has become especially sensitive this year as the U.N. prepares to celebrate in the autumn the 50th anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration, long seen as the bedrock of international human rights law and practice.

That would be the declaration originally intended to protect against the most appalling acts of discrimination – many of which are, of course, still affirmed and perpetuated by orthodox Islamic jurisprudence. But perhaps we should peel away the rhetoric of victimhood, used so indecently, and look at what’s actually being demanded here: A right not to hear that one is being irrational, dishonest or mortifyingly stupid, regardless of just how irrational, dishonest or mortifyingly stupid one actually is. That’s a license of no small magnitude, and one that a person of good faith would neither grant nor desire. It’s one thing for a Muslim to perform whatever mental contortions are required to add the honorific “peace be upon him” to the name of a vain and murderous Bedouin who claimed to talk with God while beheading hundreds of his victims; but to enshrine that pathological dishonesty in international law would be intellectual vandalism on a jaw-dropping scale. 

Speaking at the OIC, Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, mustered the chutzpah to announce, entirely without irony, that “Islam has unjustly been associated with violence.” But events in India, China, the Czech Republic, Afghanistan, Germany, Britain – and, of course, the president’s own country – tell a rather different story. And the supremacist imperatives within Islamic theology, to which jihadists worldwide appeal, are, for many, a matter of religious duty, not some invention of infidels. The association of Islam with intolerance, racism and violence is impressed on the public consciousness first and foremost by those Muslims who, on an all but daily basis, behave in monstrous ways and warp the minds of children in the name of their religion. If the OIC devoted similar indignation and resources to inhibiting the perpetrators of such acts and denouncing what they do, maybe Islam’s public image would be more flattering than it is.

Update:

As I hope the above makes clear, the perversity on display in Dakar is remarkable, if not surprising. Like so many Islamic organisations, the OIC expends much more effort denouncing those who criticise aspects of Islam than it does denouncing those who commit atrocities in Islam’s name. If Muslim groups wish to repair Islam’s public image, to whatever extent it can be repaired, their efforts should be directed at the root of the problem, not at those who dare to point out that a problem exists.

Of the many strange ideas aired at the OIC, one of the strangest is the claim that freedom of religion means the right to have one’s beliefs, and thus one’s vanity, flattered at every turn. This is a novel interpretation, to say the least, and just a tad self-serving. But freedom of religion necessarily entails freedom from religion and the freedom to change one’s mind. Islam is, of course, uniquely barbarous in this regard, and most forms of Sharia mandate punishment, and often death, for those who wish to upgrade to a better faith, or indeed to none at all. For any speaker at the OIC to grumble about how Islam is perceived without first addressing the issue of apostasy and its punishment, and the issue of jihad and the dhimma, and sacralised racism, and blasphemy and censorship, and about a dozen other issues, is inexcusable moral flatulence.

As I wrote in one of my first posts,

Religious freedom is presumed to entail sparing believers any hint that others do not share their beliefs, and indeed may find them ludicrous. There is, apparently, no corresponding obligation for believers to embrace ideas that are not clearly risible, monstrous or disgusting.

Related. And. Also. Plus. 

Ibn Warraq reviews Caroline Fourest’s Brother Tariq: the Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan.

Fourest reveals Ramadan’s art of duplicity, which encompasses an entire repertoire of rhetorical subterfuges, from doublespeak and equivocation to euphemism and lies of omission. Ramadan claims that he accepts the law in Western democracies — so long as the law “does not force me to do something in contradiction with my religion.” He calls the terrorist acts in New York, Madrid, and Bali “interventions.” He claims to be a “reformist,” but defines the term to exclude the concept of “liberal reformism.” He tells a television audience that he believes in the theory of evolution, but neglects to mention that his book, Is Man Descended from the Apes? A Muslim View of the Theory of Evolution, argues for creationism…

That Ramadan is an impostor is evident even in the titles that he freely accords himself. He claims that he is “Professor of Islamic Studies (Faculty of Theology at Oxford),” and the biography in the inside flap of his Western Muslims and the Future of Islam describes him as “Professor of Philosophy at the College of Geneva and Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.” But as journalist Gudrun Eussner has shown, Ramadan is merely a research fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, where has given just three lectures. Nor is he a professor at Geneva, especially not at the university there. He was a teacher at a sub-university level in the Collège Saussure, and he served as a “scholarly associate” at the University of Fribourg, teaching a two-hour course every two weeks, “Introduction to Islam.”

Ramadan has been described by Theodore Dalrymple as “the second-hand car salesman of Islamic fundamentalism” – which seems a tad unfair to salesmen of used cars. For more on Brother Tariq’s habitual dissembling, and the contortions of his left-leaning groupies, see here.

Related. And. (h/t, Andrew Bostom.)