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May 20, 2010

The true nature of imposture fully display'd

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This illustration is taken from The Life of Mahomet, by Humphrey Prideaux, first published in 1697.* It depicts the false prophet Mohammed holding a sword and a crescent while trampling on a globe, a cross, and the Ten Commandments. Strange how Islam forbids the depiction of reality itself; a more accurate portrayal of their explicitly stated ideological aims and commitments is difficult to imagine.

To be clear: Islam is not the problem. Muslims are not the problem. Even death threats are not the problem. Our cowardice masquerading as respect is the problem. Aside from a handful of tenured mental patients there isn't a progressive in the West who genuinely respects Islam let alone cares either way for the depiction of its instigator. Yet here we are centuries after Prideaux labouring under an evil taboo - newly imposed by our own elites - against accurately representing evil by image or by word.

So, what exactly are we afraid of? Being charged with "hate" by people who approve a religion of hate? Losing a job with a spineless, trimming employer? Or is it the prospect of some latter day savages coming at us with knives and murder in their hearts?

Those aren't consequences. Those are excuses (especially the last).

But there is only one important question to answer: Was Prideaux more free in 1697 than we are in 2010? Or was he just a braver man?

* Though despite Wikipedia's entry, this image appears to be from a later edition I have yet to track down. My point stands either way, Prideaux could just as easily fallen afoul of Muslim sentiment by writing the truth about Mohammed as his illustrator could have for the engraving.

While I am on the subject, Wikipedia appears to deserve some kudos for refusing to remove images of Mohammed from their entry on the subject. Congratulations are as much for their achievement as for having the courage of their convictions. Comedy Central bowed and scraped and earned itself a well deserved death fatwa; Wikipedia said "no" to the fanatics and that was the end of the matter.

Related: It is fatwas all round as Blazing Cat Fur celebrates Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!

And then: Mark Steyn explains why despite first mixed feelings about Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! - "Provocation for its own sake is one of the dreariest features of contemporary culture" - he has come round to the idea.

I'm bored with death threats. And, as far as I'm concerned, if that's your opening conversational gambit, then any obligation on my part to "cultural sensitivity" and "mutual respect" is over. The only way to stop this madness destroying our liberties is (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali puts it) to spread the risk. Everybody Draws Mohammed Day does just that.

Update: Zombie takes issue with conservatives objecting to the provocation that is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!. After all, who decides what is provocative?

This is not an argument over the right to be “provocative” or “offensive”; rather, it is something much more significant — an argument over who gets to determine what counts as provocative or offensive in the first place. The Western world dragged itself out of the church-dominated Dark Ages and into the Enlightenment in part over this precise issue: the freedom to engage in speech and actions which formerly had been classified as the crime known as “blasphemy.” It seems such a trivial and quaint issue in retrospect, and hardly worthy of note from our hyper-secularized 21st-century perspective, but tell that to the millions of people who for centuries lived under the yoke of governments which used accusations of blasphemy and other religious misbehaviors as a primary tool of tyranny and oppression. The modern world dawned with the American and French Revolutions and the emergence of the explicitly secular state — the Americans rejecting the Church of England as Britain’s legally enforced national religion, and the French shrugging off centuries of acquiescence to domination by the Catholic Church in civil affairs. In both cases, new governmental paradigms were established in which there was an inviolable separation of church and state, which in practice meant no civil laws enforcing religious doctrines and (most importantly for our discussion) no laws against blasphemy.

Quite right and much more at the link. Hat tip to Jody.

Update: Vlad Tepes points out another reasons for Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!: The criminalization of truth in Sweden.

What was the crime in question? A poster depicting Mohammed and Aisha, accompanied by these words:

He is 53, she is 9. Is that the kind of marriage we want to see in Skåne?

This information is straight out of the sunna, and is considered an unquestionable truth in Islam. Yet a Swede is being prosecuted for saying it.

The the Establishment Left, Muslims are a prop in a pantomime play of reality and little else. Small wonder anyone taking the views of actual Muslims at face value is guilty of thoughtcrime.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at May 20, 2010 10:07 AM

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