The purpose of the Muslim fury over a few Danish political cartoons - a carefully orchestrated global campaign - was to create a climate of fear in which everyone censors themselves, not knowing when the wrong remark, or writing, or art, would bring a fatwa down on their heads, no matter where they live. This was also the purpose of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, but the fear of unexpected assassination coming from anywhere and everywhere had spent itself in 15 years, so it was time to once again pick an unsuspecting Westerner to make an example of.
Well, it's working.
“We have all learned from the Mohammed Crisis so that we now exercise self-censorship, or at least think carefully before making any statements. There are things that I would have said previously, which I’m not going to say today. I believe that this is true for all of us!”The Baron drives home the point:. . . . . He believes the same things as before. He just keeps them to himself. Not because of the feelings of religious people. Not out of respect for other people’s beliefs. The minister of education in Denmark has put a gag on himself, because he doesn’t want to expose himself to threats from rabid Muslims. He would rather not have to live under police protection, as several of his colleagues from Parliament have to.
Most people can empathize with Bertel Haarder’s feelings. Police protection is a daily reminder of one’s own vulnerability, and the worries of the minister don’t arise out of thin air, either. Ekstra Bladet revealed a little under a month ago that the Association of Islamic Belief (Det Islamiske Trossamfund) has a hate list, at the top of which Bertel Haarder’s name can be found.
The significance of this event cannot be overstated: Bertel Haarder believes that the government of Denmark — the same government of which he is a member — cannot protect him from people who would kill him because of what he says. He believes that the police, the laws, and the courts of the sovereign democratic state of Denmark are of no use, and are unable to defend him from his country’s enemies.Is this the kind of world you want to live in?
UPDATE: Most of these links are from Gates of Vienna, because one of their readers translates from the Danish newspapers. So here's another example of self-censorship. Those who followed the Motoon story from the beginning know that the cartoons didn't just appear out of a desire to offend Muslim immigrants. Initially, someone wrote a children's book about Mohammed, solicited for an illustrator, and couldn't find one because artists were already censoring themselves because of the examples of Salman Rushdie and Theo van Gogh. The cartoons were a political commentary on this situation. The book was finally illustrated and published, but Danish school librarians are squeamish about stocking it.
And this effect was produced without anyone in Denmark being imprisoned or physically harmed. It wasn't necessary.
The world that I would like to live in is a world where love and peace abound. I know that this is wishful thinking but I am still hoping for all these strife to end, in due time.
http://www.slate.com/id/2143611/
A note of cheer to all those Slate readers who either attended the Solidarity With Denmark rally, or sent encouragement, or rallied round to buy Danish goods. I have today received a note from one of the Copenhagen editors who published the original cartoons, informing me that in the last quarter, Danish exports to the United States have increased by 17 percent and that, overall, the Danish economy has more than compensated for the results of the unjustified Muslim boycott. Let us keep this example in mind
so with all their huffing and puffing and rioting and threatening, what the whole Middle East and Indonesia and any other interested Muslim boycotters ended up doing was burning down one McDonalds, killing some fellow Muslims, and NOT being able to make more of a financial impact with their boycott and not-buying than the United States was able to make up for all by ourselves by buying more Danish Stuff. Pretty pathetic, Middle East. I guess they'll have to fall back to Plan B now, which is just trying to behead us all. And that doesn't seem to be working too well, either.
This points to a core difference, perhaps, in social expectations between a citizen of an advanced nanny state and a Texas Democrat. To paraphrase, I know damn well that the police, the laws, and the courts of the sovereign democratic state of America are of no use, and will be unable to defend me or mine from our enemies at the time they choose to attack. That's how it is in the age of terror and 4th generation warfare - everybody's on the front line, ready or not. States are incapable of guaranteeing security, and anybody who falls for that deal is a fool (just as we're fools for allowing radical Imams in this country to preach the destruction of this infidel nation). The State may show up later with a mop, an ambulance, a SWAT team or a hazmat crew, but that'll hardly make a difference at the moment of detonation or impact, right? Difference is, I'm not surprised by that at all, or for that matter, what's coming. Live free or die.
Genethug, I get where you're coming from. But Haarder is a high-ranking official in his own government. This is like Norman Minetta or Condi Rice publicly saying "I'm censoring myself because my government can't protect me from Islamic jihadis." I 'm sure Condi has a lot of bodyguards but she doesn't have to live in a safe house.
Mr. Haarder's statement may be the strongest evidence yet that the Westphalian order is on its last legs, even in the West itself. A monopoly on the legitimate use of force is the single most crucial characteristic of the sovereign nation-state. For a government official to acknowledge that his own government is incapable of asserting that monopoly amounts to a tacit concession of authority to the Islamic supremacists who are challenging it.
You guys are making an excellent argument against a strong, centralized government with responsibility in everyone's lives.
The west has long had a tradition of fighting a war, then deciding who "won" and who "lost". Winners get stuff and losers accept defeat gracefully.
That tradition is not true in Islamic culture. There is no such thing as "winning" the GWOT, because there is no concept of winning per se. There is only the struggle, or jihad, which always continues. Because of this critical difference, the larger the institution the more vulnerable it is to this cancer of threats and violence.
The Islamists are doing what Ronald Reagan and a lot of others tried to do and failed: they are reminding us of who we really are. We have free speech because, at the end of the day, each of us is willing to use force and violence to practice our right of free speech. We've been putting the dirty work off on the military for so long, perhaps we've forgotten how it's supposed to work.
Yehudit,
I 'm sure Condi has a lot of bodyguards but she doesn't have to live in a safe house.
I hear you on that. For what it's worth, I don't think the demographics in the US favor large numbers of home grown Islamists - too much economic opportunity/social churn in The Great Satan for madrassas to have mass appeal, is my guess (or maybe there's a generational/critical mass demograhy thing that hasn't happened here yet, and we're just in a hudna of sorts, a tactical truce against a stronger opponent that lasts as long as it takes to arm up - this'd make sense, given Daniel #6's point).
The case of Hirsi Ali (the Dutch MP/critic of Islam who had to go into hiding and is now being deported) is instructive in this regard. There's a wildly unrealistic strain of thought among some Euros that if they are harmless and keep their heads down/mouths shut, they'll be safe (as the continent is disarmed and centralized, France burns and Parisians are advised by their rabbis to disguise their Jewishness for their own protection, Englishmen are taught to assume the foetal position when attacked and jailed for acts of self defense, tournante enters the common parlance, etc. etc.). Poor dears! That's going to be one rude awakening.