Rushdie, et al.'s Manifesto for Liberty and Secularization Triggers Blogger Hate

By Meteor Blades

The rightwing blogs are agog over the manifesto against Islamism. This was published Wednesday in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and Jyllands-Posten, the small Danish paper that gained fame or notoriety - depending on your point of view - for commissioning and publishing 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, setting off riots and killings among Muslims from Indonesia to Libya and an acid debate about violence, blasphemy and freedom of expression among (and between) Muslims and non-Muslims both here and abroad.

The manifesto - "Together facing the new totalitarianism" - was signed by 12 writers and political activists, some of high reputation and some obscure, including Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Ibn Warraq, each of whom has connections or disconnections with Islam. I'll return to their "credentials" further along. Here's what the manifesto says:

Together facing the new totalitarianism
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values.

This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject "cultural relativism," which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia," an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

Signatories: Ali Ayaan Hirsi, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasrin, Salman Rushdie, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Antoine Sfeir

Haughtyness has no special affinity with any particular ideology - leftists can get pretty obnoxiously self-righteous. But almost nothing putrefies one's gastro-intestinal track more comprehensively than rightwingers' selective appreciation for tolerance and freedom of expression, a massive fresh spew of which has been laid down since the Danish cartoons became fodder in the global agora. As expected, the manifesto has given a vast chunk of rightwing wwwLand another opportunity to equate Radical Islamism with Islam and bloodthirsty extremists with all Muslims, plus one more round of applause for invading Iraq as well as huzzahs for fueling up the F-16s for trips to Iran.

While several sites offer little more than a snip-and-stick version of the manifesto and its signers' biographies (including all the typos), the ferocity of murderous hatred expressed in the comment fields by people who see themselves as Western civilization's avatars makes one consider digging a deep, deep bunker. No, I'm not going to link. Try Google. I recommend hip-waders and a full-face respirator.

For the sane among us, however, totalitarianism is nothing to fool around with. Tens of millions of lives have been lost to ovens and gulags and inquisitions and massacres in the name of unbending ideology. The sane among us tremble every time a civil liberty is gnawed on - as in the Patriot Act - every time some powerful somebody says another human being is outside the protection of the law, every time somebody declares you can't say certain things without dipping into treason. We know totalitarianism can happen here; indeed, many of us would say it's a work in progress, although we disagree about how far along it has proceeded.

The questions are whether the 12 signatories of the manifesto are right: Is Islamism totalitarianist, does it pose a threat comparable to Stalinist communism, the fascists and the Nazis, and, if so, how do we fight it?

Let me be clear. I'm an apostate. Raised first a Catholic, then a Lutheran, I stopped being a Christian before I was old enough to vote. If I can be labeled now, I'm a secular animist, which is a discussion for some other day. While some are more enthralling as literature than others, I hold the sacred texts of all religions in the same regard - made-up stuff with a lot of latitude for underpinning oppression and slaughter. Whether it's the prescriptions of Leviticus, the scoldings of Paul, the injunctions of Muhammad or the dictates of the Veda, et cetera, I've got no problem vigorously supporting the right of anybody to believe what s/he wants to believe without interference from the state or vigilantes or the high priests of other religions. Just don't tie me to those beliefs, don't punish me for publicly disbelieving, and don't pass laws giving those beliefs power over my life. If you try, expect more than token resistance.

Here in Los Angeles, as well as multiple trips to Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia, I've become acquainted with numerous Muslims, discussed and argued politics and religion with them at length. For the past four-and-a-half years, as non-theists, my wife and I have had our tolerance for contrary beliefs tested close up on a daily basis as her two Muslim children - kidnapped to Libya by their father and kept from even speaking to her for 15 years - have come first one, then the other, to live with us and go to college. Delightful and loving as they are, their deep-seated crude anti-Semitism, frequent bouts of uncritical thinking and devotion to a religion whose text they have not fully read have made for some, let us say, trying moments. Being told Arabs never kept slaves because Muhammad banned the practice was one of many early conversations that spurred me to delve into perhaps 45 or so books on Islam and Arab history.

I'm no great thinker. And being neither scholar nor linguistically competent to read source material in original languages, I can make no claim to even rudimentary expertise in this arena. But out of personal associations and my admittedly limited research - including reading the Q'ran in three different English translations - I don't find Islam any more or less worthy than any other religion I'm familiar with. I can name a dozen Muslims of four ethnicities whom I'd trust with my life. All the more reason I'm infuriated by the stereotyping and denigrating (not to mention torturing and killing) of Muslims.

However, in my view, radical Islamism is conceptually totalitarian even if its practice - say, in Iran - falls far short of the monstrous evils of state communism, Naziism and fascism. Its very foundation calls for merging of the state and religious ideology. You can't have a free country ruled by Islamic law any more than you can have one ruled by Christian or Scientology law. Merging the state with militant ideology guarantees totalitarianism. Anyone objecting to the rules, to the prohibition of speech, to the outlawing of private sexual behavior, to the shielding of the rule-makers from public criticism, to the suppression of "heresy" is targeted for punishment. If you object, you're opposing the leader, and no totalitarian leader can accept that because totalitarianism requires all power to be vested in the leader. In radical Islamism, that leader is the Prophet Muhammad. Because he's dead, his latterday deputies get to make up the rules they want obeyed. Dissent equates with apostasy, which can be penalized by death.  

In the case of several of the signers of the manifesto, this possibility is not theoretical:

Irshad Manji, the internationally best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, was born a Shia Muslim in Uganda, but her family moved to Canada when she was 4. A self-identified lesbian and practitioner of the Islamic tradition of critical thinking known as ijtihad, she has served as a legislative aide in the Canadian parliament, editorialist at the Ottawa Citizen, and host of several Canadian television shows. She writes for publications worldwide and appears regularly on various television programs from the BBC and CNN to Real Time with Bill Maher, where she was a guest February 24. She has received so many death threats that her apartment windows are reputed to be fitted with bullet-proof glass.

Maryam Namazie, a writer and campaigner for the rights of women in Muslim nations, host of TV International, and director of the International Relations Committee of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. Last year, she won the National Secular Society's Secularist of the Year award. Death threats have often followed her speaking engagements.

Mehdi Mozaffari, a professor born in Iran exiled in Denmark, is the author of several articles and books on Islam and Islamism such as: Authority in Islam: From Muhammad to Khomeini; Fatwa: Violence and Discourtesy, Globalization and Civilizations, and Is It Possible to Combat Radical Islamism Without Combating Islam? He's been the subject of numerous death threats.

Salman Rushdie, born in Bombay, is the author of nine novels, including Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, The East is Blue, and, most recently, Shalimar the Clown. He has received innumerable awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Germany's Author of the Year Award, the European Union's Aristeion Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Mantova, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature.  He is president of PEN American Center. In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini published a condemnatory fatwa against Rushdie for blasphemy and apostasy in The Satanic Verses, a book banned in at least 10 countries, and offered a $3 million reward for anyone who assassinated him. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirmed the fatwa last year.

Taslima Nasrin, a Bangladeshi doctor-turned-feminist-writer, three of whose four novels (My Girlhood, Wild Wind, Shame) have been banned in her home country for blasphemy or allegedly anti-Muslim sentiments. She fled Bangladesh in 1994 after extremists put a price on her head.

Ali Ayaan Hirsi, born in Mogadishu, is a member of Dutch parliamen from the right-wing People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. While attending a Muslim girls' school in Kenya, she says she sought to become a martyr for Iran in its war with Iraq, and was for a time a sympathizer with the Muslim Brotherhood. After being forced into an arranged marriage, she made her way to The Netherlands, where she obtained asylum, attended university and became an acerbic critic of the life of women under Islam. In her book De zoontjesfabriek (The Son Factory), she critiqued social customs such as genital mutilation and later sought to have the Dutch government ban the practice, which it refused to do. She co-wrote the film Submission, which explores women's oppression under Islam. Since co-author and film-maker Theo Van Gogh was assassinated by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004, Hirsi lives under police protection.

Some will no doubt argue that these six have an ax to grind with Islam, not Islamism, and have chosen to try to turn personal grievances into a war against Muslims. To an extent this may be true. Moreover, I have sharp disagreements with at least three of them.

Irshad Manji, South Asian ethnically, has been widely criticized by Muslim moderates for being anti-Arab, and some of her public comments seem to validate that concern. Moreover, she backed the Iraq war. Ali Ayaan Hirsi is a member of a party that vigorously supported The Netherlands' collaboration in the invasion of Iraq. Mehdi Mozaffari once argued:

"Despotism in its various forms (tribal, military, religious, and kingship) is the general and invariable trend of the Middle East. Faced with this hopless and dangerous situation, a liberal external intervention seems to be right and just. It is in this perspective that President George W. Bush's initiative to the democratization of the greater Middle East must be situated."

In my opinion, all three are wrong, dead wrong enablers of the Bush Doctrine and the Neo-Imp blueprint that the likes of Francis Fukuyama have now shied away from. And, while they've signed onto the manifesto, it would be pleasant to hear from them some self-criticism about their wrong-headedness regarding Iraq and about whether they equate Islamism with Islam.

Still, speaking out, even when the leaders of the state think you're wrong, even when 99% of the population thinks you're wrong, shouldn't get you threatened, much less exiled or killed. Needless to say, radical Islamists don't agree.

Again, let me be clear. It makes no difference whether the theocrat in charge is ayatollah or pope or the high muckety-muck of the flying spaghetti monster. This is not about a religion nor an ethnicity. Much to the chagrin of the Christian Dominionists among us, the secular society we enjoy today in most of the EU and North America is the product of hundreds of years of forcing the Church to extract its state-sanctioned claws from meddling with political and religious freedom. Clearly, that fight continues to this day, which the 12 signers would have done well to take explicit note of in their manifesto.

Before I forget, here are the bios on the other signers:

Bernard-Henri Lévy, born in Algeria, is a French philosopher, writer and journalist, whose first book, Bangla-Desh, Nationalisme dans la revolution, emerged out of his coverage of the Pakstian-Bangladesh war in 1971. His university professors included Jacques Derrida and Louis Althusser. In the early 1970s, he became a strong critic of traditional socialism and communism as the founder the New Philosophers, who called Marxism an evil that inevitably leads to totalitarianism, as explored in his 1977 book, Barbarism with a Human Face but he did not accept capitalist economics as a good thing either. He was one of the first French intellectuals to call for intervention in Bosnia. His acclaimed book, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, claimed the Wall Street Journal reporter was killed because he knew too much about interconnections between Al Qaeda and ISI, Pakistan's secret service, a claim U.S. investigators subsequently labeled bogus.  

Philippe Val, longtime editor-in-chief of the polemical and satirical leftwing French publication Charlie Hebdo, which republished the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Ibn Warraq is a pseudonym widely used by dissidents throughout Islamic history. He was born in Rajkot, India, but migrated with his parents to Pakistan shortly after the partition.  He is a sharp critic of Islam, as can be seen in this statement he wrote after 9/11, and in his books, Why I am Not a Muslim; Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out; and The Origins of the Koran, and of political writers like the late Edward Said. He is currently researching the "Origins of Islam and its Holy Book."

Chahla Chafiq, an Iranian exiled in France, is a novelist and an essayist, the author of Le Nouvel Homme Islamiste, La Prison Politique en Iran, and Chemins et Brouillard.

Caroline Fourest, essayist, editor in chief of Prochoix (a review that defends liberties against dogmatic and integrist ideologies), author of several reference books on secularism and fanaticism: Tirs Croisés: la laïcité à l'épreuve des intégrismes Juif; Chrétien et Musulman (with Fiammetta Venner); Frère Tariq: discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan, et la Tentation obscurantiste. She received the National Secularist Prize in 2005.

Antoine Sfeir, a Christian born in Beirut, who chose French nationality because he wanted to live in a secular country. He is the founder of the journal Les cahiers de l'Orient, president of Centre d'études et de réflexions sur le Proche-Orient, and has published several reference books on Islam, inlcuding such as Les réseaux d'Allah and Liberté, égalité, Islam: la République face au communautarisme.

I'm in a quandary. I'm an absolutist when it comes to freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and the freedom to say no. Precious rights I'd defend at the risk of everything, including my life. But I'm also an American, an appalled American, whose tax dollars continue to pay for a war whose concocters have caused the deaths of perhaps 200,000 civilians and thousands of soldiers; who order the kidnapping, torture and sometimes murder of suspects; who build and populate secret prisons; who seek to impale my constitutional rights on the spike of "9/11", who say I am either with them as a patriot or against them as a traitor if I refuse to accept their greedy and reckless preemptive policies; who even as I write this make deals with one nuclear-armed state, turn a blind eye to another and propose attacks on a third (which has only said it has a right to have nuclear weapons); who have founded their foreign policy on hegemony and a crusader mentality, a bloody clash in which Islam is not separated from Islamism, nor Muslims from suicidal fanatics; who are happy to support dictators as long as they say OK, boss; who proclaim to the world, we're going to tell you what to do and if you don't obey, we're going whack you.

Under such circumstances, one wants to be extraordinarily careful not to sign up for anything that encourages the equation of freedom of choice with more bombing, more invasions and more ethno-centric, America-centric, rapacious bellicosity.

Yet nobody should be a pollyanna about the aims of radical Islamism. It is totalitarianist at its core. Its aim is to ensure that all bow to the interpretations of extremist practitioners, with only the narrowest dissent allowed. Even the Nazis and the Stalinists allowed the occasional "on the other hand," so merely because not every Islamist agrees with the Taliban about kite-flying or women doctors doesn't alter the ultimate nature of this ideology.

Some will argue that the manifesto signers are wrong about "cultural relativism," that it is none of our business to challenge the oppression of women, of heretics, of gays, of democrats beyond our borders so long as we do not participate in this oppression, that we should stick exclusively to opposing efforts to wreck secularism here in the USA.

Nonsense.

All my life, I've heard people say about various forms of oppression: but that's the way we do things. It's our heritage, our culture, our religion, our custom, our tradition. Sorry, I'm a human being. Intimidation and oppression of other human beings - anywhere - is my business whether they live in Iran, Mississippi or Darfur.
Whether they're female or brown or worship golden calves.

Does the mere naming of one form of totalitarianism require us to be blind to the possibilities that others may be shaping up in our own back yard? Of course not. The signers themselves speak of the struggle as being between theocrats and democrats, and, by implication, that includes the Pat Robertsons as well as the Ali Khameinis, the difference being that Robertson doesn't have the state apparatus in his paws. Much as he might like, he can't hang gays in the public square, though he often makes suggestions that sound like assassination fatwas or calls for military jihad. The signers would have done well to have specifically broadened their manifesto in this regard.

How then, for those who accept that radical Islamism should be contested, do we challenge and defeat it? Certainly not by nuking Tehran.

The first step ought to accept the words of the manifesto itself (although some signers I've criticized seem to be other-minded on the subject): This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. Radical Islamism will continue to have broad appeal until and unless we separate the neo-imperialist, neo-colonialist baggage - the resource war aspect - from the struggle. No easy task. The signers could have done their cause great good by making themselves explicit on that score as well.

Thereafter, it's up to those who in challenging oppression and intimidation do not make convenient and hypocritical exceptions as do many of the laws of Europe, say, in defining what amounts to punishable hate speech.

Finally, instead of marginalizing them as unimportant rareties in the face of extremism, we should make common cause with those Muslims whose voices so often are crushed beneath the haters of both sides - one saying Islamism is the only option and hellfire to all unbelievers, the other saying Muslims are Untermenschen, carriers of some virus that must be exterminated.

Let me offer one example many such people - Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C., whose 2003 book, Islam Under Siege is an antidote to ignorance and stereotyping. Not only does Ahmed write, he acts.

They are Akbar Ahmed, the former high commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain, and Judea Pearl, the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In 2005 the two have traveled through North America to bring their message of peace to the public.

The tragedy of Judea's son Daniel, who was beheaded in Pakistan in 2002, brought the men together. Each recognized a sense of empathy in the other through their writings and public statements. "In Pearl I saw great compassion," said Ahmed. "Here is a man whose son has been killed in the most brutal of ways, and through this tragedy he saw a need for the bridges of dialogue." Under the auspices of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, of which Judea is president, they started "The Daniel Pearl Dialogue for Muslim-Jewish Understanding, featuring Akbar Ahmed and Judea Pearl."

Perhaps one of the reasons Pearl and Ahmed work so well together is that, like their religions, they share similar histories. Both are academics and have spent their careers in institutions that prize diversity. And both have childhood memories of dwelling peacefully with people of other faiths, which were disrupted by political events.

On all sides are people who are introspective, self-critical and believers in human rights. These are the allies in the fight against theocrats, whether these be Islamists, Dominionists or other varieties of totalitarians.

Comments

[jane hamsher]

Finally, instead of marginalizing them as unimportant rareties in the face of extremism, we should make common cause with those Muslims whose voices so often are crushed beneath the haters of both side - one saying Islamism is the only option and hellfire to all unbelievers, the other saying Muslims are Untermenschen, carriers of some virus that must be exterminated.

Brilliant, MB. Just brilliant. The entire piece is a must-read, thanks for tangling with all the nasty tendrils of this ugly situation. It takes guts to look at them all so directly and not be lured into an easy whitewash. Thanks for this piece of sanity and wisdom.

[Sara]

MB -- I have comments, but it will have to be one at a time. But Jyllands Posten is not a small newspaper. It is the domonant paper on Jutland, and I would recommend looking at a map of Denmark to comprehend. It's focus is on that part of Denmark and not on Kobenhavn. In terms of circulation I think it is the second in that country of 5 million people. It is the paper most representative of the current governing coalition in the Folketing. If I were to name an American model it would be the Chicago Trib. My own intro to the Jyllands Posten was in 1959 when I spent hours trying to make sense of Khrushxhev's visit to the US, Posten on the table, Wordbook in hand. (My prefered Danish Papers are Information and Politiken).

On Rushdie -- One of his novels which you do not mention is Shame. This is the one that got him permenantly exiled from Pakistan. It came shortly after Midnight's Children which is culturally insightfull but politically light. "Shame" is why Rushdie lives and works from London, or other points west. It is a novel that questions the zammadar or landowner+taxcollector implications in the creation of Pakistan (and it's legitimacy) as a kind of original sin. (a kind of serfdom that still exists.)

Of course all that Rushdie actually speaks for is those who had his opportunities -- such as the ability to leave Pakistan (offended) and attend Cambridge. -- not all that common. (and since I read his novels, I am delighted that he got that chance.)

More later.

[DHinMI]

Like Sara, I've got more to add, some of which I'll have to ruminate on through the day. But one thing I think is important to add as a sort of parenthetical point, and that meshes with Sara's point about Jyllands Posten, is that the impetus behind printing the cartoons in the European papers (and then Italian cabinet minister Roberto Caleroli wearing the image on a teeshirt on television) has little to do with celebrating freedom of expression or a free press, but instead was driven by xenophobia and an intent to provoke a backlash. That does not take anything away from the points you make in this brilliant piece. But just as you think the manifesto would benefit from either including or being accompanied by self-criticism on the part of the war-mongerers among the signers, I think it would also have benefited from some acknowledgement of the horrible xenophobia being exploited by many of the European right. The backstory about the cartoons has as much or more to do with immigration, competition for jobs and the danger in several European societies of creating a long-term underclass. The primary distinguishing features of that underclass are as much race and language as religious beliefs and affiliations. True, much of the backlash against the cartoons was prompted by religious zealots and authoritarians. It's also true that the issue of Islamic authoritarianism is much bigger than any cartoon controversy. However, it's unfortunate that the manifesto mentions the cartoons as if the reaction to them was clearly exclusively religious, when in fact some of the backlash was motivated by some of the very non-religious factors supported by some of the manifesto signers--namely, xenophobia, cultural intolerance, militarism, neo-imperialist forign and military policies of some Western nations, and neglect and harassment of Muslim minorities in Europe.

I'm glad you described the work of Akbar Ahmed and Judea Pearl. They are clearly forstering dialogue. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that in some ways the signers of this manifesto and the Islamic authoritarians to whom they object are talking past each other, using Religion and resistance to theocratic suppression as hot-button proxies for discussions that are far more complicated and involve many more issue that either side is discussing in any meaningful way.

[ng]

I am happy to see such a post, especially in light of the coming vital congressional election in the US. First off, let me say that I believe current religious fundamentalism leading to Christian theocracy is the biggest threat ever faced to a secular US Democracy. Here in PA, we progressives are having a strongly pro-life supposedly Democractic candidate (Casey) to Santorum forced on us for totally tangential political reasons by our party elders (I guess). This Casey feels, as his former Governor father did, that abortion is wrong, and as lawmakers, they both want to outlaw most abortions (and who knows what else--contraception?) for their religious-moral reasons.

I define Pro-choice to mean that I will abide by my religion and you abide by yours without using law to force mine on you. My question in light of this Meteor Blade's post is can anyone not Pro-choice be religiously tolerant of others? If you are not religiously tolerant of others, are you fitting the danger profile indicated by the diary?

Personally, I think any strict pro-lifer or strict anti-abortionist is fitting this religious fundamentalist theocractic mold, and they are the biggest danger to American democracy. Any pro-life politician, including democracts, that wish to force woman by law to carry unwanted pregnancies to term because of these politicains religious beliefs, is a dangerous theocract, and not worthy of support under any circunstances if the future of America is to be a secular democracy.

[Meteor Blades]

sara, thanks for pointing that out about Jyllands-Posten's size and influence. I'm so affected by U.S. readership figures that I forgot that the JP's 150,000 circulation is significant in such a (relatively) small market.

[janinsanfran]

Thanks MB. Right after 9/11, I found myself sitting with long time political friends and allies saying to each other we must learn how to navigate a world in which "there is no one to root for." This is a helpful contribution to that effort.

[Sara]

Recently another of my Scandinavian Seminar Alumni posted a point that one could never understand Scandinavian Politics or morality unless one comprehended Martin Luther tacking up his thesis on the church door. I tend to agree. (But I also think you can't understand it till you have lived through a winter season where the sun never really comes up.) These folk "religiously" pay their church tax, and take pride in never attending services except for Baptisms, Confirmations, Weddings and Funerals. But that doesn't mean that posting the thesis is not profoundly important.

While you can interpret it in many ways, posting the thesis was profoundly significant. (it is one of the few times the Danes actually agreed with a German Leader.) But as I read commentary from all different angles in various Danish Publications -- this is where they come down. Martin Luther, his Thesis, and his tacks. "This is where I stand, I can do no other." Since Burning at the Stake was his alternative in those times -- it is a strong statement.

Of course we know that set the fires of the Reformation and the 30 years war, much else and ultimately the enlightment and pluralism. But it was not simple or automatic -- much blood was shed, many a life ruined. But out of all that the Danes constructed something that is as it is -- we won't go to church all that often, we will be most secular, in fact half our priests will be wonem who are into our own brand of feminism, we will read our Marx and build the best Welfare state anyone has ever seen, We will be tolerant and all that -- and we will accept as citizens many from Palestine and all -- but if you cross our cultural understandings -- be it bombs or goat killing in the wrong place -- no equity for women or anything else we have evolved -- we can become very nasty. Martin Luther, hand me some of your tacts.

I certainly agree that American Women should know how the previous Pope did politics with the most extreme Islamists. Carl Bernstein covered that matter most thoroughly in "His Holiness" when he reproduces a Pakistani woman (UN Diplomat) who got a session with the Pope prior to the Cairo Conference and found him actually unwilling to condemn Honor Killings, and these positions totally knit together with the most extreme Islamist positions.

There is a kind of formula in debating these matters -- I ran into it when I did a major review on a public stage of "Satanic Verses" way back when fatwa's were being thrown around. Not only had I read SV, I also had read most of Rushdie's other works, and attended one of his lectures in London. The script is simple -- the speaker or writer is asked if they "respect" Islam. To answer you need to be very awars.

My answer is no -- I don't as a matter of claim respect any particular religion. Nor do I disrespect. I claim a huge middle ground that allows me to learn about, but essentially remain indifferent to the claims.

I actually believe that the first person to identify Bin Laden's gang and al Qaeda was the British Novelist, Doris Lessing. In late 84-early 1985 she accompanied Afghan Women who had landed in London back to Pakistan to see about the condition of their sisters in the refugee camps. Her book about it "The Wind Blows Away Our Words" notes the Chauvinism. In person she said it more directly. (I attended a Lessing "Tea" in Peshawar at Dean's Hotel in 1985). The whole point is that principles really do trump dogma -- and women's status is a principle. Agreed it is colored by culture and much else, but the particulars do not change the principle.

[ng]

Sara wrote:

The whole point is that principles really do trump dogma -- and women's status is a principle. Agreed it is colored by culture and much else, but the particulars do not change the principle.

Who defines what is principle and who defines what is dogma? Your post is too indirect for me to be certain what you are saying, but if I guess correctly, then my question is tantamount!

[Mimikatz]

Thanks for an excellent essay, MB. Surely freedom of conscience, belief and expression are the root values. But not the only values, and not sufficent unto themselves.

About fifty years ago, Camus observed about the struggle with Soviet Communism, "sometimes it is necessary to fight a lie with a quarter truth, and the quarter truth of the West is freedom."

Paul Berman also makes the connection between Islamism and totalitarianism, especially Marxism and its deviants, and their common roots not only in economic oppression but also in the "schizophrenia of modern life". In his NYTimes mag article about Sayyid Qutb (mostly the chapter "In the Shade of the Q'uran" in "Terror and Liberalism") he questioned whether liberalism had any satisfactory answer to offer tom that schizophrenia. In the book he concludes that we must be the "anti-nihilists," reminding us, "In the anti-nihilist system, freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for the freedom of others."

"Let us be for the freedom of others" does not mean "liberating" them at the point of the gun so that they can become like us. That is the mistake of the right wing and the theocrats in this country.

But "let us be for the freedom of others" also does not mean that we condone their freedom to oppress whomever they choose. That is the mistake of the relativists. Freedom always has limits, and it has to go hand in hand with respect for others, or else it is just selfishness.

In short, "freedom for others" means exactly what it says--freedom for all others, a reciprocal freedom founded on respect. Let us above all be for freedom, not just for ourselves but for others.

[Mimikatz]

I think I answwered your question, ng, though I had not read it. The fundamental principle is reciprocal respect, then freedom. Women have to be included. We are people, over half the human race. Period.

[ng]

The fundamental principle is reciprocal respect, then freedom. Women have to be included

I need to be more concrete to get anything out of this, sorry!Talk to me about processes unique to women! With medical drugs and procedures that only would apply to woman, put "reciprocal respect, then freedom" in SOCIAL terms that use or not use such medical knowledge!

[Mimikatz]

Any religion, if taken seriously, requires the individual to surrender to something, to the will of God, Allah, Yahweh, to ones Buddha nature, whatever. If women want to adopt a religion that subordinates them in some respects, that is their choice. But the civil law can't condone that, by, for example, refusing to allow a women to get a divorce if her husband doesn't give consent, or if she doesn't have some kind of religious permission.

Your question is pretty vague. It is hard to take things in isolation--that is the point. Women should have a full range of choices in reproductive rights, and I certainly oppose genital mutilation. Civil law can't allow people to impose their choices on others--pharmacists can't pick and choose which drug prescriptions to fill etc. Just like the Supreme Court refused to enforce a restrictive covenant in Shelley v. Kramer. I would not be opposed to allowing doctors at a facility to refuse to do abortions as long as someone in the facility does them, however. "Conscientious objection" should be facilitated if it does not impinge unduly on the freedom of others.

[ng]

Your question is pretty vague. It is hard to take things in isolation--that is the point. Women should have a full range of choices in reproductive rights,

Try this to maybe avoid vagueness. If they (women) do not have this full range of choices in reproductive rights, who and how are such limits made/put in effect, and are such limits justifiable ever in a secular striving democracy??

[Mimikatz]

Sorry.

[soyinkafan]

I, too, am an absolutist about freedom of expresssion. You put it very well, especially the discomfort of potentially associating oneself with the rest of the signers' issues. But I don't think these are fans of George Bush, nor of his predecessors.

"This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats."

That's the part of the manifesto that alleviates my worries about some of the signers' apparent support for the US invasion of Iraq. The reason that Eastern European leaders tended to support Bush in the beginning of the war was their recent experience with dictators, and their habit of trust in the US. That was Havel's initial take - you want to depose a dictator? Be my guest, and thanks. What does he think now?

So I don't worry about the PEN crowd. I go ahead and worship them for their work, but listen skeptically to the political assessments, and trust that they'll police each other mercilessly as always. Orwell once noted how PEN's annual meeting showed how debased literary criticism had become thanks to political ideologues. I think a large part of the American left patronized the Muslim world and therefore failed to support the good guys in the ideological war of the Danish cartoons. Solidarity works. I hope everyone reads the manifesto, and liberals challenge the rightwingers on their selective appreciation for free speech and opposition to theocrats, ALL theocrats.

I was already a MB fan, but this was really exceptionally excellent.

[soyinkafan]

Rushdie vs. extraordinary rendition, article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on Jan. 10, 2006:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/ugly-phrase-conceals-an-uglier-truth/2006/01/09/1136771496819.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

"Ugly phrase conceals an uglier truth
Behind the US Government's corruption of language lies a far greater perversion, writes Salman Rushdie.

BEYOND any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English language last year was "extraordinary rendition". To those of us who love words, this phrase's brutalisation of meaning is an infallible signal of its intent to deceive."

[John Casper]

MB, I hope you return to this topic, as I think you may have two or three more posts here. Wrt: "Much to the chagrin of the Christian Dominionists among us, the secular society we enjoy today in most of the EU and North America is the product of hundreds of years of forcing the Church to extract its state-sanctioned claws from meddling with political and religious freedom." I'd be interested in the opinion of others, but this "forcing" imo is most often associated with the "Thirty Years War."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War

[John Casper]

MB, if you continue with this topic, you might want run it past
http://markfromireland.blogsome.com/ who routinely comments at FDL. Mark could comment better than I, but imo, you tended to make a stronger division between "secular" and "sacred" than the historical evidence in the West, or the current situation in the Middle East, allows. I completely agree with your thesis, but I think our modern understanding of "secular" comes from the historical development of "pluralism" wrt the evolution of the JudaeoXtian traditions. It was this pluralism and the wars over it that forged our modicum of legalized religious tolerance. Where MarkfromIreland has helped me greatly is in understanding that the Middle East's experience with "legalized secularism" has unanimously been as a diversion for some kind of military occupation or economic exploitation.
OT I hope you frame Jane Hamsher's comment.

[liberal catnip]

I posted my opinion of this manifesto here, along with a follow up asking What is Islamism?.

I do not support this manifesto and I've taken some flack for it, but I stand by what I wrote.

I want to thank you for posting this, MB. While thr right-wing blogosphere has been salivating over this manifesto for days now, it's gone largely unnoticed on the left.

[Paramendra Bhagat]

Hate Speech, Free Speech: Europe Needs To Learn The Difference