"The world ought to call them on it"

"In Islamic societies [of the 16th and 17th centuries] ruling families formed dynasties of caliphs, sultans, and other monarchs who formulated artistic styles to publicize their power," says the Kimball Art Center's website for a traveling exhibiton of Islamic works from London's Victoria and Albert Museum, focussing on the complex reality behind simplistic claims that Islam forbids graven images. "Human and animal figures often appear on Safavid [Iranian] tiles and textiles, but are completely absent from Ottoman examples. In avoiding the public display of human and animal figures, the Ottomans sought to present themselves as the leading advocates of Islamic orthodoxy, a status they could claim as the guardians of the most sacred Muslim sites in Mecca and Medina. The Safavid court may have embraced figural imagery in deliberate defiance of the Ottomans."

"Conservative strains of the faith, such as the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, maintain that Islamic law strictly prohibits any portraiture because only God can create human images," reports the Philadelphia Inquirer, the only major US paper to publish the notorious Mohammed cartoons. "But scholars say no clear doctrine defines Islam . . . human figures have appeared frequently in Islamic art through the ages, particularly in Persia and Turkey. "What does the episode tell us about ourselves?" asks Theodore Dalrymple in a rousing, must-read call to arms in The Spectator [free registration required]:

The first is that we are not morally serious people; in a word, that we are decadent. In this sense, the Muslim world is quite right about us. It correctly perceives cowardice, weakness and absence of any deep belief in the principles we supposedly espouse . . .

The reaction of Britain and the United States will have taught Muslim extremists that if they are thuggish enough, they can intimidate powerful states, and that professions of belief in freedom of expression are hollow . . .

Instead, Muslims should be told quite clearly that our citizens have the legal right to criticise, lampoon, ridicule and mock Mohammed to their heart’s content, in any way that they wish: that Islam and Muslims have no special claim to protection from the rough and tumble of post-Enlightenment intellectual, political and social life. If they cannot live in a society in which this is the case, they should go somewhere else . . .

As it happens, the Danish cartoons were making a morally serious point, if not very well; which is why, of course, they provoked such outrage. It is a sign of our moral frivolity that we have failed to defend and protect the Danes with the utmost vigour, without equivocation, on a point of the most profound principle.

Fortunately, the President appears to have been channeling Mahmood's words as quoted here the other day -- "I think this situation was used to divert the Muslim nations' attention from the real problems festering their its midst." After an overly nuanced statement from the State Deparment last week that left the impression the Administration considered the publication of cartoons morally equivalent to murderous mob behavior, the President drew a line in the sand:

The Bush administration yesterday condemned the violent response to European cartoons mocking Islam and accused Iran and Syria of exploiting the international controversy to incite unrest and protests in the Middle East.

"I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday. "The world ought to call them on it."

Osama was right:  "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." We like this one, big time.

Update: Speaking softly and carrying a big stick, Bull Moose storms the Vast Islamo-fascist Conspiracy (VIFC).

Comments

[goomp]

You are 100 percent right that our society is somewhat decadent and not focused on what made us great. Freedom of expression that is not libelous must be defended in the strongest terms. Condi says it like it is. She is no wimp.