e. magill's Intrigue

Terrorism Redux: Motivation Doesn’t Change the Situation

On my living room floor at this very moment is the latest issue of Rolling Stone, which has on its cover a picture of Kanye West in the idolized form of Jesus Christ [1]. Try as I might, I cannot find any protests going on in the “Christian World” condemning this picture and demanding that the United States government apologize for allowing its citizens the right to mass produce such a blasphemous image. Going back a few years, I can remember protests about Mel Gibson’s film depicting Jesus, The Passion of the Christ, but the vast majority of those protests were peaceful and I cannot recall a single instance of anyone—Jewish, Christian, or otherwise—demanding that the government apologize for Mel Gibson (although I’d love to write that apology).

And yet, if I turn on the news today, I see the so-called Muslim World up in arms, literally, over a series of Danish cartoons that portray the prophet Muhammed [2]. The protesters are burning buildings, killing people, rioting, and threatening more violence if the Danish government and several other European governments fail to apologize for the blasphemy and turn over the cartoonists so that they can be dealt with by the Muslim World.

Those of us who’ve payed the slightest bit of attention to current events are already aware of this and have probably already heard several different spins on the subject. Therefore, I will spare you the “threat to free speech” talk or the “responsible journalism” talk and give you my take on it.

This is exactly the problem we are having: militant Islam. I am a firm believer in the right of every human being to believe whatever he or she wants and to act however he or she wants, as long as that behavior does not directly infringe upon the same rights of others. The militant side of Islam—a side that is either growing in size, increasing in volume, or is only now being revealed for its true nature—cannot coexist peacefully with the rest of the world. To act on the belief that those who disagree with you or offend you are worthy of violent punishment, death, and jihad is unnacceptable.

Those who choose to act like this are demonstrating their unwillingness and inability to obey the rules of society and civilization; therefore, it is the right of this society and civilization to stop them in whatever ways it sees fit. We should not waste our time trying to sympathize with them, because no matter what their complaint, there is no justification for the murder of innocent people and no justification for terrorism. This is why I will not entertain conversations about why we shouldn’t try to offend Muslims in these trying times; as far as I’m concerned, we should offend them even more now.

The militant Muslim’s inability to cope with a free society that allows an infadel to draw the prophet Muhammed is no different than his inability to cope with how our society treats women, separates church and state, and rejects totalitarianism. The Danish government should no more apologize to militants for cartoons published in its country than the United States government should apologize to Osama bin Laden for whatever complaints lead to 9/11.

Where are the protests when militants blow up mosques in Afghanistan or Iraq? Is it possible that the blowing up of a holy building and the murder of the people inside is less offensive to Islam than the drawing of a caricature?

The peaceful side of Islam has been far too quiet for far too long. It needs a much bigger megaphone and it needs to spread its message very, very loudly. If it is unable to properly condemn those who would use Islam as an excuse for violence, us non-Muslims might start to think that there is no peaceful side to Islam. There are extremists, even secular ones, who would use that kind of thinking as an excuse for genocide.

I do believe there is a peaceful side to Islam, but I am starting to think that it is speechless in fear of the other side, especially in the Middle East, where peaceful talk is far more needed. If that is the case, I remind all people of faith that you cannot let terror dictate your actions and I remind everyone else that we have to respect one another’s beliefs or else all we will have is chaos and arrogance. We should not apologize for having freedom, and we should not back down when we are threatened by the childish groupthink of extremism. However, we also shouldn’t judge a belief system more than we judge a set of actions.

In the civilized world, we use actions that are non-violent to express our outrage and offense. Take the recent controversy over an editorial cartoon that appeared in the Washington Post that all of the Joint Chiefs found so offensive that they sent in their complaint and had it published in the same newspaper [3]. The Joint Chiefs, who have at their own hands the most violent arsenal known to man, did not feel the need to even threaten in order to get their point across.

We should treat the violent protesters who burn down embassies, hijack airplanes, behead people on the Internet, and blow themselves and hundreds of innocents up, all in the name of Allah, no different than the way we treat a man who blows up an abortion clinic in the name of God. They are criminals, plain and simple, and we did not ask for this any more than you are asking for a home invasion.

If any person, Muslim or otherwise, cannot look at a caricature of Muhammed without burning down a building, declaring a jihad, or killing an innocent, then that person cannot live in our society. After all, we don’t have anyone burning down the offices of Rolling Stone.

LINKS/SOURCES:
(This list does not represent the entirety of my research on this subject)

1. Rolling Stone Cover: The Passion of Kanye West
2. CNN: Deadly cartoon riot near U.S. base
3. Washington Post: Joint Chiefs Fire At Toles Cartoon On Strained Army

-e. magill 02/08/2006