Amir Taheri on Islamic humor and the Cartoon War:
[H]ow representative of Islam are all those demonstrators? The "rage machine" was set in motion when the Muslim Brotherhood--a political, not a religious, organization--called on sympathizers in the Middle East and Europe to take the field. A fatwa was issued by Yussuf al-Qaradawi, a Brotherhood sheikh with his own program on al-Jazeera. Not to be left behind, the Brotherhood's rivals, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba), joined the fray. Believing that there might be something in it for themselves, the Syrian Baathist leaders abandoned their party's 60-year-old secular pretensions and organized attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut.
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Islamic ethics is based on "limits and proportions," which means that the answer to an offensive cartoon is a cartoon, not the burning of embassies or the kidnapping of people designated as the enemy. Islam rejects guilt by association. Just as Muslims should not blame all Westerners for the poor taste of a cartoonist who wanted to be offensive, those horrified by the spectacle of rent-a-mob sackings of embassies in the name of Islam should not blame all Muslims for what is an outburst of fascist energy.
This is something that I wrestle with quite a lot lately, and I am not certain that I will find a solution any time soon. But I still keep trying.
Dood...you're an idiot.
Stop thinking that strong opinions equate to strong inteletect.
Tool.
Posted by: Ann | February 09, 2006 at 01:44 PM
Nice spelling there, Ann. Who's the idiot?
But I suppose that I shouldn't expect much from someone at UCR.
Posted by: Daniel | February 09, 2006 at 02:22 PM