Today brings further confirmation that the Guardian’s moral compass is performing as normal, if not, alas, properly. Jakob Illeborg tells us,

Over the weekend numerous schools in Denmark have been set on fire and one completely burned down. Every night for almost a week the sky in Danish city centres has been lit up by burning cars and bonfires started in the middle of the high streets.

Indeed. For some pious souls, arson and death threats are very cheap currency. But first a detail. Note that the link chosen for the passage above is headlined, Cartoons Blamed for Danish Riots. If headlines are to be believed, the cause of the current riots is the publication of a cartoon drawn by a 73-year-old who is now forced to live in hiding in fear of his life, and the lives of his family. The cause is not, one notes, the individuals who chose to take part in those riots and burnings, and nor is it the absurd theological vanities that, for some, validate such behaviour. This strange causal manoeuvre is one that Mr Illeborg, like many others, has embraced with shameless enthusiasm. In his previous Guardian column, Illeborg argued that,

Once again the Danes could, with some justification, be seen as fire starters, even if all we were trying to do was to stand up for freedom of speech and democratic rights.

In case you missed that, here it is again.

the Danes could, with some justification, be seen as fire starters.

We’ve been here before, of course, and more than once. Last year, Newsweek ran an article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, accompanied by a sidebar with the extraordinary heading, A Bombthrower’s Life. As Christopher Hitchens remarked,

The subject of this absurd headline is a woman who has been threatened with horrific violence, by Muslims varying from moderate to extreme, ever since she was a little girl. She has more recently had to see a Dutch friend butchered in the street, been told that she is next, and now has to live with bodyguards in Washington, D.C. She has never used or advocated violence. Yet to whom does Newsweek refer as the “Bombthrower”? It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it.

Quite. But back to Mr Illeborg.

The fire starters are frustrated young Muslim men who claim that their action is sparked by the re-publication of one of the prophet cartoons –

Yes, that does seem to be the perpetrators most commonly stated motive.

although it probably has little to do with religion,

Oh.

and much to do with an entire generation of young migrants who have not been integrated into Danish society.

Well, when you think about it – and, please, let’s – that may well amount to much the same thing. Certainly the two aren’t easily disentangled. A more integrated Danish society would not, one hopes, be faced with an inassimilable minority of a minority trying to violently impose its superstitious vanities on others. That would, I think, be a plausible marker of an integrated Western society. Indeed, it was also a point of the original Jyllands Posten article, published some two years ago. However, Mr Illeborg is in too much of a rush to linger on such details.

Anti-Danish sentiment seems once again to be gathering pace both locally and around the Muslim world. On Friday 1,000 of Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters were demonstrating in Copenhagen. In Gaza more than 5,000 protesters were on the streets and in Teheran the Danish ambassador was summoned to meet the government… The odd thing is that all this was very predictable from the moment the Danish press insisted on making a headstrong idealistic response to the murder threats towards a Danish cartoonist by immediately printing / reprinting the cartoon that depicts the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban…

Well, yes. But the predictable nature of the lunacy doesn’t address the issue of the lunacy itself, or its grotesque disproportion and coercive, non-reciprocal intent. It doesn’t address the issue of whether those complaining, or demanding, or setting fire to something, have any sane and legitimate reason to do so. This is quite an important point, and one that Mr Illeborg seems determined to avoid. And it’s somewhat odd for him to describe the publishers of a cartoon as “headstrong” for doing something which is perfectly legal, while avoiding such pejoratives when referring to the people actually breaking the law and burning down schools. 

The Danish editors say they are making a stand for freedom of speech and many readers of CiF in their response to my article felt that the action was both brave and justified. But if, as the current press rumours in Denmark would have it, the accusations against the three suspects are less than waterproof, the quick and firm response may come to look clumsy and silly at best. Most of us agree that the Danish newspapers have the right to print / reprint the cartoons, but they don’t have an obligation to do so.

One wonders, then, what kind of right one has – say, to publish an unflattering cartoon – if that right cannot be exercised for fear of riots, arson and death threats – and then of being blamed by Guardian columnists for the actions of those who actually did the rioting, burning and threatening. And, again, another fundamental point whistles by, unregistered. Whether or not the individuals arrested last week are ultimately found guilty, they are merely the latest suspects in a series of violent acts spanning decades and continents, and which are intended to intimidate and cow the free-thinking world – including, lest we forget, quite a few liberal Muslims.

I thought I’d highlight a few of the comments on Friday’s post about the Muhammad cartoons, partly because the discussions are sometimes overlooked, but chiefly because they highlight the remarkable unrealism of Faisal al Yafai’s Guardian piece, and many others like it.

Jason Bontrager set things rolling with this neat summary of al Yafai’s underlying assumption:

If [as al Yafai suggests] the cartoons caused the damage resulting from the various Muslim riots, then the Muslims, not being the cause themselves, can only be thought of as unconscious puppets whose actions are dictated by the decisions of non-Muslims thousands of miles away.

Brendan quoted a Swedish commenter on al Yafai’s article:

I predict that this will not be the last showing of the cartoons. The last showing will be the first one that no one reacts to.

Which brought to mind this comment from MediaWatchWatch:

These cartoons have become the equivalent of a naughty step for violent Muslim toonophobes. Like tantrum-prone toddlers, their behaviour is unacceptable, and if they continue to misbehave the cartoons will continue to be published far and wide. They do not like it, but they must sit on that naughty step and think about their actions until they understand the rules.

And Matt pointed out a rather pivotal fact somehow overlooked in al Yafai’s piece:

The cartoons were drawn and published because of previous acts of violence in the name of Islam.

Indeed. See, for instance, here. And the latest publication was an affirmation of solidarity and free speech in response to the arrest of several Muslims accused of plotting to kill the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard – one of a growing number of artists, authors and scholars now in hiding or under police protection.

It’s remarkable how readily these little details were overlooked by Mr al Yafai, and their omission highlights just how unrealistic the MoToons debate can be. To avoid printing the cartoons – or any public suggestion that Islam is anything other than a Religion of Peace™ – would not only show that death threats and violent thuggery work; it would also imply that such thuggery is a morally legitimate response. It is not. Burning down schools and destroying libraries is simply not a sane reaction to the publication of a cartoon. Likewise, threatening to “take to the streets” because an author critical of Islam has had her visa extended is a display of ludicrous vanity and moral incontinence.

Urges to outlaw and punish such satire and dissent ignore the realities of the history and founder of Islam. Censorship not only blunts critical judgment and perpetuates unrealism; it also extends Islamic ticks and neuroses to non-believers and the broader population. Outlawing such mockery (even if it’s truthful), or discouraging it out of fear or pretentious “sensitivity”, makes the taboos of Islam everyone’s taboos. It obliges everyone to pretend that they respect a religious figure who is by any rational standard undeserving of respect, and whose religion is intellectually trivial and philosophically absurd.

And some of us at least aren’t so ready to pretend.

After a brief flickering of clarity at the Guardian, normal service has, alas, been resumed. Today, Faisal al Yafai shares his wisdom on the recent republication of the Muhammad cartoons:

It’s been two years since I ran down the street from my flat in Damascus to see the Danish and Norwegian embassies burning, because of a cartoon published two thousand miles away. Now Danish newspapers have reprinted the same cartoons, of the Muslim prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his head, despite the controversy and lives that were lost because of it.

Note the repeated word because, and its implications. As so often, it is confidently suggested that the cause of the deaths, intimidation and property destruction was the publication of cartoons, rather than the actual perpetrators of those acts, who chose to respond to unflattering illustrations with arson, violence, murder, even threats of genocide. Hold that thought. Linger for a moment on the displacement and curious moral inversion, and note just how readily, and how often, this contortion is performed.

Mr al Yafai offers no analysis of preceding events and no reflection whatsoever on the moral incontinence of Islamist indignation, or its deranged disproportion, or its coercive intent. Nor does he pause to consider whether those who do commit atrocities in the name of Islam – say, by detonating babies, or children, or the mentally disabled – do so because they believe they’re following Muhammad’s own teachings and example. Which is, after all, an implied point of the cartoons. Needless to day, Mr al Yafai chooses to disregard the 80 or so known jihadist groups whose actions helped prompt the illustrations, and those, like Mukhlas Imron, the Bali bombing ‘mastermind’ and leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, who explain their actions as advancing Islamic imperatives. On his capture, Imron repeatedly cited Muhammad as his mandate and inspiration:

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? Aren’t you aware that the model for us all, the Prophet Muhammad and the four rightful caliphs, undertook to murder infidels as one of their primary activities, and that the Prophet waged jihad operations 77 times in the first 10 years as head of the Muslim community in Medina?

Also disregarded is the stated reason for the cartoons’ republication – i.e., an affirmation of free speech following the arrest of three Muslims accused of plotting to kill one of the cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard. Such trifling details are, apparently, not to be thought about. Instead, Guardian readers are encouraged to believe that the only conceivable motives are trivial and malicious: 

There are so many sacred cows to be slain in the name of freedom of speech: Barack Obama’s colour, the private life of Princess Diana, Kylie Minogue’s chemotherapy. Why pick on just one? Don’t be respectful and discuss these things in private: shout them from the rooftops! Instead of a few cartoons on one theme every couple of years, the Danes could run a new one every day… So come on, Danish newspaper editors, let’s see some cojones. Desecrate a few idols, push some old lady icons down the stairs and damn the consequences. Then we can all revel in how modern and free and European we all are. But don’t just pick on one weak minority over and over: there’s a word for that and it’s called bullying.

Again, pause for a moment to consider the assertion that the cartoons must constitute the deliberate “bullying” of a “weak minority”, albeit one that claims around a billion or so members. Here, al Yafai echoes a number of his Guardian colleagues, including the chronically disingenuous Karen Armstrong, who denounced the same cartoons as both “aggressive” and published “aggressively”, and Tariq Ramadan, who implied a parity of extremism between those who published the cartoons, or argued for the right to do so, and the devotees of Muhammad who made homicidal threats and set fire to occupied buildings. Apparently we’re supposed to believe that unflattering cartoons can hurt a person in exactly the same way that, say, fists, bricks and fire do.

But what is perhaps most curious about Mr al Yafai’s piece is that it shows a familiar and conspicuous disinterest in whether the cartoons do in fact depict some truth about Muhammad, his teachings and how they are used. A detail which might help explain why they arouse such preposterous rage.

Update:

Oh, yes. I forgot.

Bite me.

Amid the customary hokum, there’s a flickering of realism in today’s Guardian. Further to this, Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association picks up on yesterday’s piece by Andrew Anthony and spies a possible explanation for Rowan Williams’ rhetorical contortions.

So, if the Catholic church wants exemption from laws to protect gay people from discrimination, you give them your support and even when you have to accept the case for abolishing the legal protection your own religion has from “blasphemy”, you can still salvage something by raising the spectre of offence caused to other religions (as the archbishop says, “The grounds for legal restraint in respect of language and behaviour offensive to religious believers are pretty clear”).

And if you want to protect the special status of the church and Christianity in law, then you speak up for the rights of those of other religions to have their religious law recognised (to quote the archbishop again, “Christians cannot claim exceptions from a secular unitary system on religious grounds (for instance in situations where Christian doctors might not be compelled to perform abortions), if they are not willing to consider how a unitary system can accommodate other religious consciences”). Replacing “Church of England” with “faith” makes any defence of special treatment seem a whole lot more reasonable.

And replacing Williams’ “secular unitary system” with something clearer and more precise – say, “the law” – makes his claim to special treatment, whether for Anglicans or Muslims, rather less reasonable. Which is presumably why the archbishop chose to deploy such opaque and circuitous language. And there I was thinking dishonesty is a sin.

Theodore Dalrymple on the mellifluous flummery of Rowan Williams.   

British intellectual life has long harbored a strain of militantly self-satisfied foolishness, and the present archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is a perfect exemplar of the tendency. In an interview with the BBC on February 7, the archbishop said that it “seems unavoidable” that some aspects of sharia, or Islamic law, would be adopted in Britain: unavoidable, presumably, in the sense in which omertà seems unavoidable in the island of Sicily…

Rarely does philosophical inanity dovetail so neatly into total ignorance of concrete social realities: it is as though the archbishop were the product of the coupling of Goldilocks and Neville Chamberlain. Those more charitably inclined point out that the archbishop is an erudite man, a professor of theology who reads in eight languages and who was addressing a highly sophisticated audience, employing nuanced, subtle, caveat-laden arguments. He was not speaking in newspaper headlines, nor did he expect to make any headlines with his remarks.

Charity is a virtue, of course, but so is clarity: and it is the latter virtue that the archbishop so signally lacks. He assumes that the benevolence of his manner will disguise the weakness of his thought, and that his opacity will be mistaken for profundity.

Over at B&W, Ophelia Benson also trawls through the verbiage.