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Tag Archives: Muhammad

Free Speech Is the Whole Ball Game

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Freedom

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Tags

Cartoon Crisis, Copenhagen, Danish Free Press Society, Death Sentence, Douglas Murray, Fatwa, Free Speech, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Speech, Henryk Broder, Iran, liberty, Mark Steyn, Muhammad, New York Times, One Thousand Days in a Balloon, religion, Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

Salman Rushdie

“What is my single life worth? Despair whispers in my ear: ‘Not a lot.’ But I refuse to give in to despair because I know that many people do care, and are appalled by the upside-down logic of the post-fatwa world, in which a novelist can be accused of having savaged or ‘mugged’ a whole community, becoming its tormentor (instead of its victim) and the scapegoat for its discontents. (What minority is smaller and weaker than a minority of one?)

I refuse to give in to despair even though, for a thousand days and more, I’ve been put through a degree course in worthlessness, my own personal and specific worthlessness. My first teachers were the mobs marching down distant boulevards, baying for my blood, and finding, soon enough, their echoes on English streets…

‘Our lives teach us who we are.’ I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else’s description of reality to supplant your own — and such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs — then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I’ve always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I’ve lived in that messy ocean all my life. I’ve fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.

‘Free speech is a non-starter,’ says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”

__________

Excerpts from a speech by Salman Rushdie which was given at Columbia University on December 11th, 1991, and later adapted into his essay “One Thousand Days in a Balloon”. You’ll find the essay in his perfectly titled collection of nonfiction Step Across This Line.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been in touch with the folks at the Danish Free Press Society, who recently hosted the free speech conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the Jyllands-Posten “Cartoon Controversy”. The process is moving slowly — the result of busy schedules, different time zones, and a language barrier — but I’m working to grow their support network into these United States. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I point you to three speeches from the event. The first two are from Douglas Murray and Mark Steyn, two of the feistier bulldogs on this issue. Then there’s Henryk Broder, an imposing Teuton whose vision of the future of continental Europe (summarized in his 20-minute talk) is compelling and scary.

It’s more than symbolic that the three speakers, who addressed an audience of about one hundred, had to convene in the Danish parliament: it’s the only building in Denmark with enough fortification to guarantee some level of security for attendees. (If you think that’s hyperbole, listen to this bone-chilling recording.) We can’t fault the Danes on this one, however, since they can boast that six of their newspapers ran the highly relevant and globally newsworthy cartoons, while only two tiny papers in all of North America had the guts to show the public what all the fuss was about. As a result, we not only conceded to the murderers’ blackmail, but also failed to show the public just how trivial these cartoons were which precipitated the murder of over 200 people around the globe.

This isn’t a joke. The cartoons may’ve been funny, if also crude and rude, but the fact the civilized world now lives under a shoddy, mutant, violently imposed blasphemy law is alarming.

Among the near-endless blessings of the right to free speech, there is perhaps none greater than its individuating power. It’s a freedom that accentuates the identity and dignity of the individual — to challenge popular consensus, think openly, argue candidly; to demarcate her mind against mob opinion and coercion; and to come to accept or reject certain ideas by herself, for herself, and without fear. Rushdie’s opening sentences above are a sure nod to this fact as well as the ways it is chipped away as freedoms disappear.

Read on:

  • Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose coolly explains why liberty is so critical
  • Neil Gaiman discusses how defending free speech will take you out of your comfort zone
  • On life with a death sentence: reflections on 25 years of the Rushdie fatwa

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The Psychological Scar of the Six Day War

25 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, History, War

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Tags

Anti-Semitism, Arab world, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Conversations with History, Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Harry Kreisler, Islam, Islamism, Israel, jahiliyya, Jordan, Judaism, Lawrence Wright, Muhammad, Muslim, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim World, Nazism, Palestine, Syria

Six Day War Western Wall

“After years of rhetorical attacks on Israel, Nasser demanded the removal of UN peacekeepers in the Sinai and then blockaded the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. [In the summer of 1967] Israel responded with an overwhelming preemptive attack that destroyed the entire Egyptian air force within two hours. When Jordan, Iraq, and Syria joined the war against Israel, their air forces were also wiped out that same afternoon. In the next few days Israel captured all of the Sinai, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, while crushing the forces of the frontline Arab states.

It was a psychological turning point in the history of the modern Middle East. The speed and decisiveness of the Israeli victory in the Six Day War humiliated many Muslims who had believed until then that God favored their cause. They had lost not only their armies and their territories but also faith in their leaders, in their countries, and in themselves. The profound appeal of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt and elsewhere was born in this shocking debacle. A newly strident voice was heard in the mosques; the voice said that they had been defeated by a force far larger than the tiny country of Israel. God had turned against the Muslims. The only way back to Him was to return to the pure religion. The voice answered despair with a simple formulation: Islam is the solution.

There was in this equation the tacit understanding that God sided with the Jews. Until the end of World War II, there was little precedent in Islam for the anti-Semitism that was now warping the politics and society of the region. Jews had lived safely — although submissively — under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio… infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice. After the war Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.

The founding of the state of Israel and its startling rise to military dominance unsettled the Arab identity. In the low condition the Arabs found themselves in, they looked upon Israel and recalled the time when the Prophet Mohammed had subjugated the Jews of Medina. They thought about the great wave of Muslim expansion at the point of Arab spears and swords, and they were humbled by the contrast of their proud martial past and their miserable present. History was reversing itself; the Arabs were as fractious and disorganized and marginal as they had been in jahiliyya times. Even the Jews dominated them. The voice in the mosque said that the Arabs had let go of the one weapon that gave them real power: faith. Restore the fervor and purity of the religion that had made the Arabs great, and God would once again take their side.”

 __________

Pulled from the second chapter of Lawrence Wright’s 2006 book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. The above photo shows Motta Gur’s paratroopers, the first wave of Israeli troops to reach Jerusalem’s Old City during the conflict.

I apologize for the brief hiatus. I’ve been busy in my time off, reading (Pale Fire, the news) and adding to an already massive drafts folder. Your regular programming will resume this week.

You can watch Wright discuss the subjects of Tower with the University of California’s Harry Kreisler below. It’s lulling to listen to such mellowed, Peter Sagal-type tones describe the world’s most notorious barbarians.

Then read on:

  • In a stunning piece of historical footage, Nasser describes his argument with the Muslim Brotherhood
  • Wright cogently illustrates how deposing Saddam resurrected al-Qaeda
  • What did Lawrence of Arabia want to do about the Mideast?

Lawrence Wright

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The Cartoons the Media Will Show Us

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Interview

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Asghar Bukhari, Blasphemy, Charlie Hebdo, Douglas Murray, Hate Speech, interview, Islam, Islamism, Muhammad, Muhammad Cartoons, Private Eye, Terrorism

Douglas Murray - Private Eye

“This is about freedom of speech.

What is going on at the moment, worldwide and particularly in Europe, is an attempt to shut down any and all criticism of Islam — one religion alone.

I’ll hold up for a moment — don’t worry it’s not a cartoon of Muhammad, you don’t have to get scared.

This is the Christmas edition of Private Eye. An image which, on the front cover, lampoons — quite amusing, not very — the Virgin Mary and Jesus and has various jokes about where the frankincense should have been bought from and so on.

That’s perfectly commonplace. But you know what: if anyone had gone into Private Eye’s offices yesterday and massacred the staff because of it in the name of Christianity or Jesus, I think that not only would all the papers today have been a lot more robust, they would have shown — at the very least, shown — this image to give us a sense of what the person who did the killing was so irate about.

The fact is that there is something going on, which we have to identify. It is an attempt, in our society, to make Islam and in particular the founder of Islam immune from any criticism.

It cannot be allowed to continue.”

__________

Douglas Murray, debating Asghar Bukhari on Britain’s Sky News last week.

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Terrorism Works

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Freedom

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, BBC, Charlie Hebdo, Douglas Murray, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Islam, Islamism, Jyllandsposten, Maajid Nawaz, Muhammad, Muhammad Cartoons, terror, Terrorism

150114_EM_CharlieHebdoEbay

Interviewer: In a sense the terrorists are winning, aren’t they? They’ve cowed the Western media into not reprinting the cartoons.

Douglas Murray: Not only are they winning, they’ve won. They’ve won. Terrorism works — that’s the brutal fact of it.

And a lot of people will take lessons from that today.

You know, after the 2005 Jyllandsposten cartoon, by the conservative paper in Denmark, the only paper in Europe, really, that was still willing to draw pictures of Muhammad in the same way they’re willing to draw pictures of every other religious, political — you name it — figure, was Charlie Hebdo.

So Charlie Hebdo stood alone. Charlie Hebdo was attacked.

That’s why I’ve suggested that there’s really only two options that the press can choose from here.

The first is that we all agree that we live under an element of Islamic blasphemy law. I think that would be highly regrettable. I don’t think that is what our society should live under. I think we should do everything possible to avoid it.

But if we are going to avoid it, I think that it’s going to have to be done unanimously. All of the newspapers, all of the magazines — the BBC, Sky, Channel 4 — should unanimously publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons at a particular hour, because as Ayaan Hirsi Ali said after the Danish cartoons row, we have to spread the risk around.

It cannot be that a single cartoonist is holding the line for all freedom of speech. Or that a single, small satirical magazine is doing it.

It has to be everybody.

__________

Douglas Murray, the clearest voice on the issue of Islamism in Europe, speaking during a BBC discussion with Maajid Nawaz.

  • I wrote an open letter to Brandeis University defending Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  • Douglas Murray gives one of my favorite speeches: If we don’t stand for Western values, who will?

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Hooman Majd on the Difference Between Sunnis, Shias, Arabs, and Persians

05 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Journalism

≈ Comments Off on Hooman Majd on the Difference Between Sunnis, Shias, Arabs, and Persians

Tags

Anti-Semitism, Arabic, Christianity, Fashion, George Washington University, Hooman Majd, Imam Hossein, Iran, Islam, Jews, Ken Browar, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muhammad, Muslim World, Muslims, Persians, Reza Shah, Shia, Style, Sunni, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, The House of Majd, The House on Iran Street

Hooman Majd

“It is notable that Arabs, when and if they wish to disparage Iranians, more often than not will also refer to them as Persians: the ‘other,’ and, because they’re Shia, the infidel. Some Sunni Arabs in Iraq have taken it one step further, calling all Shias, including Iraqi Shias, ‘Safavids,’ the name of the Persian dynasty that made Shiism the state religion of Iran, and a clear move in sectarian times to associate non-Sunni Arabs with the non-Arab Persians. Shia Islam, however, because of its beloved saint Imam Hossein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and an Arab, conveniently bridges the Arab-Iranian schism through Hossein’s wife, a Persian princess he wisely (as far as Persians are concerned) wed and who bore him the half-Iranian great-grandchildren of the last Prophet of Allah.

The often contradictory Iranian attitudes toward Arabs can be difficult to explain. What can one make of Iranians who shed genuine tears for an Arab who died fourteen hundred years ago, who pray in Arabic three times a day, and yet who will in an instant derisively dismiss the Arab people, certainly those from the peninsula, as malakh-khor, “locust eaters”? As one deputy foreign minister once said to me, lips curled in a grimace of disgust and right before he excused himself to pray (in Arabic), ‘Iranians long ago became Muslims, but they didn’t become Arabs.’ His scorn was meant, of course, for desert Arabs who brought Islam to the world, and not necessarily Syrian, Egyptian or Lebanese Arabs, whom the Iranians place a few degrees higher on the social scale than their desert brethren. The disconnect between Arab and Muslim for Iranians is not unlike the disconnect between certain anti-Semitic Christians and Jews — a disconnect that conveniently ignores not only that Christ was a Jew but also that Christianity, at least at its inception, was a Jewish sect. (The peculiar Iranian disconnect can work both ways, though, for many Arabs today, or at least Arab governments, would rather Israel remain the dominant power in their region than witness, Allah forbid!, a Persian ascent to the position.)”

Hooman Majd

__________

Hooman Majd, writing in The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.

Every now and again, the pictures on this blog make it look like one of those innumerable, indistinguishable “style” Tumblrs that that college friend of yours made, promoted on Facebook, and maintained for about a week before exhausting her collection of Jon Hamm pictures. I try not to be so superficial, but denying the impulse is ridiculous: some people just look cool, and Majd is one of them. If cool-looking people have something sharp to say, well then that’s even better — and plus, there’s enough weighty stuff here to get you through the day’s pensive minutes.

But about the substantive part. Several pages prior, Majd offers a telling personal detail which should color his above clarification:

I had discovered two years earlier, and there is no way to verify it because Iranians didn’t have surnames, let alone birth certificates or even records of births prior to the reign of Reza Shah in the 1920s, that I am a descendant of his and, more interesting, that he was a Jew: a brilliant mathematician and scholar… In my father’s village of Ardakan, moreover, some people apparently still think of my family as “the Jews.” During my Ashura week visit to my cousin Fatemeh’s house, where a few people I hadn’t met before seemed to drop in from time to time, as is not unusual in small towns in Iran, I was introduced to one older woman who asked, “Majd? Ardakani Majd?”

“Yes, Majd-e-Ardakani,” I replied, using my grandfather’s original name (which just means “Majd from Ardakan,” and Majd actually being the single name of my great-great-grandfather).

“Oh,” she said. “The Jews.”

It is worth keeping this in mind if you to decide to open the book, because many of its conversations and interactions, especially with Iranian officials, revolve around then-President Ahmadinejad’s public denials of the Holocaust and his highly touted, “scholarly” conferences on the subject. Majd confronts these officials, in a restrained but unmistakable way, with the treatment they deserve: disbelief, contempt, and muted ridicule.

Above all of this, however, Majd is an important voice on Iran because although he was born in Tehran to a well-established family (his maternal grandfather was an Ayatollah), he gravitated to the West — first to St. Paul’s school in London, then George Washington University in Washington, then to live in New York City, where he still resides. So there is a very literal sense in which he traverses the boundary between East and West.

If you want to read a shorter piece of non-fiction, check out his essay on rediscovering his childhood home, “The House on Iran Street”. If you came here for the look, click on his style blog The House of Majd, which he maintains with fashion photographer Ken Browar.

Hooman Majd

Hooman MajdHooman Majd Bag

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