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February 17, 2006

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antid


Flemming Rose, the Jyllands-Posten editor who published the Danish cartoons has called for the establishment of concentration camps:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html

Well, maybe not. If this is Mein Kampf 2, it is awfully timid and chastened.

The ambiguities of this issue, in the deepest sense of the term, contiue to fascinate. The latest AWTW editorial notes:

"The Bush regime took a carefully ambiguous attitude, declaring solidarity with allies like Denmark but also not distancing itself from pro-US Islamic forces."

AND, Burningman in his introduction claims:

"Time to stop choosing sides set by our enemies."

The prevalence of this nuance, this oh-so-fine calibration of not offending, serves as a tactic for the Bush regime as well . . . in their efforts to highlight their phony inclusivity and balance among their allies, Islamic or otherwise. At least in Burningman's recent statements, there is more forceful proclaimations of bias and principle:

"Oh -- fuck religious fundamentalists. Mohamed was a man and was not a prophet of Allah, who does not exist. Jesus is more useful to keep slaves turning the other cheek than he ever was with dishing out "salvation." Moses was a dick and the Dalai Lama should get a real job."

(comments: "The anti-Islam cartoon cotrovery -- Not about "freedom of speech" 2/13/06 10:37pm)

AND Burningman opined (in comments: Prachanda speaks to BBC 2/13/06):

"In fact, to the anonymous and hesitant -- I'd ask "what is so dirty about democratic rights?"

Why is freedom of association, freedom of the press and so on called "bourgeois?"

Who gave them the fucking charter on free thinking?"

So, "not choosing sides"?! It looks as if Burningman alread has. Are these not the sentiments and defenses of Flemming Rose?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html


antid

Above comment mine.

the burningman

Yes, I choose the side of the international proletariat and reject the liberal-imperial/feudal-fundamentalist dichotemy of so much use to reactionaries.

I reject racist bullshit and medieval superstition. Like Denmark's state church and cross-embossed flag for a country where hardly anyone actually attends church.

And more than anything, it is crucial to recognize what this campaign of incitement is about -- promoting fundamental hatred towards the masses of Arab and Muslim people as the European states fall in line (more or less) behind the USA's "long war."

Muslim fundamentalists murder revolutionaries, enforce feudal gender relations and will accomodate with imperialism as they have for centuries.

When the NAACP campaigned against Amos and Andy, they weren't "censors," they were demanding that the white power denigration of African-Americans end.

I work for a newspaper in the United States. We did not print the cartoons becuase they are reactionary and, in my analysis, part of the war campaign.

antid


And in choosing to support the international proletariat, you have embraced the tools of democratic rights, of a free press, and of blasphemy. Which system in this "false dichotomy" allows you to deploy those tools for the historical agency of your choice? Could this blog, with its anti-Mohammedan slurs (see above comments by Burningman), operate without retaliation in Iran, in Syria or Pakistan?

The AWTW editorial, while better than its preceding one, still can not accept the claims made by Islamists at face value. The Muslim sense of outrage over PROFANITY must be subsumed as superficial, a primitive superstition that, in actuality, masks a war over material inequality. The idea that a culture could choose a spiritual good, a religous claim, over economic advancement must be horseshit. The other does not know its own desires, and its morality, its sense of the sacred is nothing but false consciousness. We all on this thread take that as a given, but how do you think the Islamic world will receive this most patronizing message? Does the world belong to Allah, or the Hegelian unfolding of history? Yes, sides have been chosen, but at a deeper level than most "communists" can yet admit.

leftclick

antid: it looks to me like you are making two kind of arguments: either the Jyllands-Posten cartoons are really about freedom of speech or you don't really care about that as long as it gives you an excuse to attack religion.

Firstly, in another post I posted a link to an article showing how Jyllands-Posten had refused to print a cartoon depicting Christ because its readership would find it offensive. Here it is again: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/younge. This was also exposed in the Guardian UK [still trying to find that link again]. I read the interview with Flemming Rose and he didn't mention the Christ cartoon. Self-exposure might be too much to expect from him, but why are you taking HIS claims at face value? I don't see any arguments against freedom of speech or the press here. I do see an attempt to address the actual content of the cartoons which 'freedom of speech' allows people to avoid.

Secondly, religion is NOT just false consciousness and you should not assume everyone here believes that. It plays an important structuring role in people's lives and should be taken seriously not dismissed. As an atheist myself I do not subscribe to its ontological claims and despise all religious [and ideological] fundamentalisms, but if we are to struggle with religious forces in hopes of building a more liberated world, all methods, especially racist ones, are not permissible. To call Islam "primitive superstition" smacks too much of good ol' colonialist mentality.

In the same way, we cannot accept anti-semitism as a way of opposing Zionism, nor can we lump in all Christian with the fundamentalists.

oh yeah

Everyone knows about the famous European and Western tolerance.

World famous.

All the kids in France are raving about it... and in the enlightened corners of, say, Texas.

leftclick

clarification: in my last post, the section that begins "I don't see any arguments against freedom of speech or the press here..." should be s separate paragraph since it refers to this blog, not the Flemming Rose interview.

Also, no one here is advocating a double-standard in which we can express what we want but support the repression of speech elsewhere.
In fact, I insist that if Flemming Rose wants to publish his anti-Islamic cartoons he should be open about his agenda.

antid dosen't seem to be advocating freedom of speech as much as freedom to evade resposibility for speech.

antid

left click, you must have misread the interview. Here's Flemming Rose from the Washington Post op-ed (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html):

"On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those."

I don't know, maybe he's right and the Nation's wrong -- that J-P really has posted Christ cartoons before. I've, as of yet, no way to verify these claims at their face value, but Rose HAS addressed the complaint in this interview.

Left click writes: “antid dosen't seem to be advocating freedom of speech as much as freedom to evade responsibility for speech.”

Rose has apologized for the offense both in this interview and elsewhere. What more responsibility should he assume? What sort of responsibility do you think Burningman should take on for his own slurs against the Prophet (see above)? If Burningman’s statements where to be as widely publicized as the cartoons, what do you think the Islamist reaction would be?

antid

leftclick writes:
Secondly, religion is NOT just false consciousness and you should not assume everyone here believes that.

The AWTW editorial DOES indeed posit that the Islamist claims of outrage are a symptom of false consciousness, that materialism is at the base of the Muslim world’s grievances. I agree with you that religious beliefs and claims, especially Islamist ones, should be taken seriously, and that we should try to understand their value systems on their own merits. Communist and hard Left movements have neglected this approach at their growing peril and irrelevance. You inquire as to whether “primitive superstition” “smacks” of colonialism. Well, come on, you know what the communist response would be, don’t you? ALL religions are primitive superstition, Burningman says, and whose minds have been “colonized” into the subservience of waiting for justice in the afterlife? Isn’t Islam simply the religion of Arab imperialism as it carved out its own sphere of dominion?

If we are to take Islam seriously we should also understand how we on the hard Left are viewed by Islamic radicals and imams, the many ways in which our values and hopes are utterly irreconcilable with theirs. Look what is advocated for on this blog: SECULAR social and economic justice, “democratic rights”, free press, freedom of association, free thinking and a right to blaspheme (Burningman). Or, as in your case, left click, religious tolerance as propounded by an ATHEIST. According to Islamist theorist from Shariati to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Sayyid Qutb, these are ALL symptoms of “westoxification” or “hideous schizophrenia”, and those theories are being put into violent practice around the globe. The hard Left is either ignored by Islamist because of its relative impotence or condensed into the West as just another varietal of degeneracy. We do not get an exemption. In thousands of ways, from what we fight for as Leftist to our (agonized and reluctant) paying taxes that fund the war machine, we have already chosen sides in this conflict.

??

"The hard Left is either ignored by Islamist because of its relative impotence or condensed into the West as just another varietal of degeneracy."

You obviously have little idea what you are talking about. Have you ever spoken with an Islamicist? Anti-socialism as an athiest plague is at the VERY top of their concerns, both intellectually and in practice.

One of the first acts of Hamas was to promise release of PFLP prisoners held by the Palestinian Authority on behalf of Israel. In general, outside of the very particular Palestinian conflict where Hamas reconfigured itself as a "resistance" organization, the Islamicists from Egypt to Iran to Afghanistan have had an almost singularly murderous orientation towards the "hard left."

Recognizing this is distinct from issues of demeaning believers, particularly among those who are oppressed because of their particular religion. Islam is no better or worse than any other, but in the context of imperialism's assault (with the non-Christian Japanese in the mix), the "hard left" had better get real hard about all the cultural chauvinism and hypocrisy of looking down on the "barbarians" (Berbers...).

Islam isn't "simply" anything. Nor is Christianity "simply" the Constantinian expansion of the "west." It is that, as it was Dr. King's deep faith and love. Islam is "submission," as it is profoundly internationalist and anti-racist in ways that Christianity has not been. The world is complicated.

What paying taxes has to do with this...?

srogouski

Rose has apologized for the offense both in this interview and elsewhere. What more responsibility should he assume?
____________________________

He needs to come clean about his association with Daniel Pipes.

BTW, there is no "free speech" in any European country. None of them have a First Amendment and all of them have laws against certain types of "speech".

Ask David Irving.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060220/ap_on_re_eu/austria_holocaust_denial

antid


?? writes:
"You obviously have little idea what you are talking about. Have you ever spoken with an Islamicist? Anti-socialism as an athiest plague is at the VERY top of their concerns, both intellectually and in practice. . . .the Islamicists from Egypt to Iran to Afghanistan have had an almost singularly murderous orientation towards the "hard left."

Exactly. Now we're talking, now we're at last getting to the irreconciability between any sort of Leftist politics and radical Islam (Palestine excepted, though what is Left of the PFLP at this point?). So where does that really leave the hard Left as it tries to opt out of a conflict between Islamists and Empire? There is this dominant fallacy that Islamism only has a beef with Empire and that the hard Left is somehow exempt, that it can somehow just speak for the "international proletariat" and not choose sides in this fight. My claim is that by the very nature of our presence, our activism, our agitation under the dominion of Empire, we have already chosen sides in the perceptions of Islamists, and we should acknowledge this fact. Communism is all part of "the West" in the eyes of the radical mullahs and imams.

What does paying taxes have to do with it? C'mon, that's easy. If your a law-abiding citizen in the US you've already contributed to the war effort, you are already constituted as a "Westerner" in opposition to Jihad. I'm ashamed of this but I didn't flee abroad. Did you? What side did you choose with your 1040?

the burningman

Antid, that's just stupid.

antid


As stupid as it is true. Add it up, Burningman. Add up what you are fighting for and who you are. On this blog you list goals such as democratic rights, freedom of press and association, free thinking and above all social and economic justice based of secular prinicples. You engage in blasphemy to show the idiocy of religion. You live and work in the US(?) and a portion of your labor goes to fund a war against Islam. On the deepest level you are constituted as part of the Occident. You want to tell us you haven't chosen sides in this conflict? How does all this look to Islamists, what would they think of you? What do they think of Communists?

scorchedEarth

antid seems hellbent on making this an issue between Islam on one side vs. communists on the other. So far, there has been no mention of the big dog in the fight: imperialism.

Let's concede that Muslims place western communist revolutionaries and leftists on the top of their list of enemies - although I find that hard to believe. So what?

We stand for secular values but should not make common cause with imperialism to advance them. Wouldn't this be just another 'civilizing mission'?

??

Who said it was "Western" communists on the top of the Islamist hitlist?

Did anyone pay any attention at all to the last twenty years? To the build-up of Wannahabi Islamists, subsidized "liberally" by the USA/CIA?

Nawal El Sadawi wrote Death of the Imam about exactly the collaboration between Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood... See the Hamas attitude towards women in the struggle... See over and over again.

Hezbollah reaches "understandings" with US imperialism, but has no love for kaffirs.

When the Islamists in Iraq beat students at the university for cross-gender friendship -- note that they DO NOT fight the US.

Iran...

Afghanistan...

And so on.

Imperialism is the big dog, no doubt -- but the fleas are legion.

Antid is not a leftist. He equates New York, where the burningman roams, with the Occident... I mean, the "Occident?" I keep waiting for Bernard Lewis to pop up. Oh, he did. Ahem.

antid


scorched earth:
"antid seems hellbent on making this an issue between Islam on one side vs. communists on the other. So far, there has been no mention of the big dog in the fight: imperialism."

The AWTW editorial certainly addressed the big dog angle -- my question is too what degree the Left needs to be concerned with the other side in this multi-faceted conflict. For example: where is the Iraqi Left right now? Where is the Left throughout the Muslim world than we might want to stand in solidarity with?

?? writes:
"Antid is not a leftist. He equates New York, where the burningman roams, with the Occident... I mean, the "Occident?" I keep waiting for Bernard Lewis to pop up. Oh, he did. Ahem."

My use of the Occident is from the Lebanese socialist Farqhir al-Maudi's analysis of bin-Laden's missives, a sophisticated conception highjacked by Ian Buruma. ??, if New York is not the equated with the Occident in the minds of Islamicists, then why do you think it was struck on 9/11?

sphinx

Antiid speaking a lot of truth here. Respect.

the buringman

if New York is not the equated with the Occident in the minds of Islamicists, then why do you think it was struck on 9/11?

Uh, "New York" wasn't struck. Terrorists certainly aren't gunning for the Lower East Side or Harlem.

The "World Trade Center" and the Pentagon were the targets.

The two largest building complexes in the USA: economic and military respectively.

The demands were for US withdrawl from Saudi Arabia.

Didn't seem to have much to do with the "Occident" at all, save in the minds of racist douchebags on both sides.

I hope Antid keeps up his defense of Vienna... I mean Denmark.

antid

BM: "Uh, "New York" wasn't struck. Terrorists certainly aren't gunning for the Lower East Side or Harlem.

The "World Trade Center" and the Pentagon were the targets."

BM, have you ever read anything that bin-Laden has written? The heterogeneity, the infidelity, the decadence are part and parcel of his hatred of the Occident -- along with economic and military might. Have your read any of bin-Ladne's inspirations or mentors like Abdullah Azzam or Sayyid Qutb? Are you aware that Al-Zawahiri, bin-Laden's number two has proclaimed his hatred of the Danish cartoons as well? How do you think your own deliberate blasphemy against the prophet Mohammed would go over with that crowd?

As to Lower East Side and Harlem, just what do you think Salafist Jihadis think of queers, commies, Jews, and the Lost Found Nation of Islam? You can't get more tafiri than that cast.

There is something equitable, if not worse than a racist, and that is a militant monoculturist. You might know that if you've ever argued with a real Islamicist.

Forget Vienna or Denmark for a moment. Would you defend Brooklyn? Are you sure it is immune from Jihadi hatred? Really?

the burningman

Different Islamicist think different things. Hamas is saying they will release the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, currently jailed by US/UK/Israeli demand and Fateh compliance.

Hamas is part of a tacit non-aggression pact among all major factions of Palestinians.

Hezbollah does not to my knowledge have a history of attacking the left in Lebanon. It's guns are pointed at Israel for now.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? Viciously anti-communist. The mullahs in Iran decimated the communist movement in all its shades.

But you are intent on making your point, and insisting on dichotemies that I don't accept as principle -- even if the antagonists demand we all fall in THOSE lines.

I don't, most people don't.

Why that's so hard for you to get is beyond me.

Also, don't troll this site.

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