The Death Penalty – What’s All the Fuzz About?

[Mr. Tea]

I think it's more valuable to examine why this situation is playing out in this way instead of smugly looking at another country as inferior.

Well yes, it's valuable to examine the situation - bear in mind it's equally possible to knee-jerk one way ("Giving this case any attention whatsoever is just buying into anti-Muslim propaganda whipped up by the racist media!") as the other (savages, etc.). So maybe I did knee-jerk, but for all that, I can't think of a better word than 'savage' for a legal system that demands someone be imprisoned and/or publicly flogged for a (perceived) religious slight. And in the context of European history, this is something we associate with the middle ages, is it not?
As for calling another country inferior, I'm afraid I have total contempt for po-mo moral relativism (which trumps all other ethical positions for sheer smugness by disdaining the very concept of an ethical position) and hold the view that tolerance and secularism are inherently inferior (EDIT: gah, I mean superior, of course! ) to fundamentalism and theocracy. I'm tolerant about lots of things, but intolerance isn't one of them, if you see what I mean. And it's not about thinking there's anything inherently wrong with the Sudanese, because that would be to confuse ethnicity/nationality with culture/politics.

 

[zhao]

I'm afraid I have total contempt for po-mo moral relativism (which trumps all other ethical positions for sheer smugness by disdaining the very concept of an ethical position) and hold the view that tolerance and secularism are inherently inferior to fundamentalism and theocracy. I'm tolerant about lots of things, but intolerance isn't one of them, if you see what I mean.

sorry but i don't see what you mean... who holds "the view that tolerance and secularism are inherently inferior to fundamentalism and theocracy"? you do? or "po-mo moral relativists?

 

[Mr. Tea]

sorry but i don't see what you mean... who holds "the view that tolerance and secularism are inherently inferior to fundamentalism and theocracy"? you do? or "po-mo moral relativists?

Oh bollocks, now I really am being a moron - that should of course be the other way round!

 

[Gavin]

Events in Sudan, the reaction to the Danish cartoons and comments by the Pope, to Salman Rushdie, to Theo Van Gogh and many, many more I could dredge up if I was inclined to search those right-wing sites you bang on about.

This doesn't make Muslims a homogenous group.

It does mean you should be able to state that criticising Islam/taking the piss out of Muhammad is far more likely to provoke a violent reaction than criticising christianity/Jesus without being accused of racism.

I don't know how you get "more likely" -- these examples are just like the Sudan situation, which is why you have to go to right wing sites to find them: they are further examples of the need each side has for each other, the way reactionaries on one side need the ones on the other so they can polarize the situation and cause gullible people to pick a side. What is the goal of this "piss-taking" art? Is it to pose questions, instill debate, generate new ideas, or is just racist crap designed to play to racist prejudices and simultaneously incite the Other you require to matter (which is why van Gogh went from deliberately offending Christians to deliberately offending Jews and finally to deliberately offending Muslims). What of the Mohammed-bomb cartoon? Is this something you support? It's not valuable art, it's racist garbage -- sure, it should be allowed, but not endorsed or supported as some pinnacle of "Enlightenment values"; anyway was it not meant to generate the exact reaction that it got?

What's your solution? Further domestic crackdowns and international wars that only fan the flames?

Muslims aren't a race, Arabs are. Did Tea say Arabs are less capable of reason?

Thank you for your pedantry. I suppose you have a better term for the discrimination Muslims of many ethnicities face?

 

[Gavin]

Well yes, it's valuable to examine the situation - bear in mind it's equally possible to knee-jerk one way ("Giving this case any attention whatsoever is just buying into anti-Muslim propaganda whipped up by the racist media!") as the other (savages, etc.). So maybe I did knee-jerk, but for all that, I can't think of a better word than 'savage' for a legal system that demands someone be imprisoned and/or publicly flogged for a (perceived) religious slight. And in the context of European history, this is something we associate with the middle ages, is it not?
As for calling another country inferior, I'm afraid I have total contempt for po-mo moral relativism (which trumps all other ethical positions for sheer smugness by disdaining the very concept of an ethical position) and hold the view that tolerance and secularism are inherently inferior (EDIT: gah, I mean superior, of course! ) to fundamentalism and theocracy. I'm tolerant about lots of things, but intolerance isn't one of them, if you see what I mean. And it's not about thinking there's anything inherently wrong with the Sudanese, because that would be to confuse ethnicity/nationality with culture/politics.

I am not opposed to giving this case attention (who is?), but the kind of attention that is given is the issue, which smacks of anti-Muslim propaganda that serves only the people you continually claim to be against. This is not moral relativism, this is taking an ethical position against bigotry. What do we gain by establishing the UK or the US as "superior"? Smug satisfaction with the status quo, a lack of critical thinking, a blinkered view of the whole situation. I am specifically calling for the Sudan situation to NOT be read in this way.

 

[mistersloane]

To me this is working to bolster the rationale for a "humanitarian" invasion of Sudan. The corporate media clearly support this.

I really like this thread, it's been making me read alot and gain information about stuff I think I'm pretty ignorant about, so thanks! I'd much rather that there were more 'humanitarian' aid in Sudan than say Afghanistan though.

And Gavin wasn't saying 'don't' just putting in a little chill message for people to explain a little rather than fan the flames, I prefer this place cos it's got less flame wars than other sites, y'know? I's just so easy to misread type sometimes, especially in Mr Tea's case I think who has a particularly blithe sense of humour that I think often gets pulled up as other stuff, it's about differing styles of writing sometimes. Lol not all the time though.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I suppose you have a better term for the discrimination Muslims of many ethnicities face?

Discrimination isn't something perpetrated solely by white non-Muslims against non-white Muslims, you know. In this particular case I'd say the teacher woman is being rather harshly discriminated against, wouldn't you? And in the wider Sudanese context, aren't the Janjaweed and the state military 'discriminating' pretty badly against the people of Darfur? By, you know, killing hundreds of thousands of them and driving millions from their homes? :slanted:

 

[Mr. Tea]

I's just so easy to misread type sometimes, especially in Mr Tea's case I think who has a particularly blithe sense of humour that I think often gets pulled up as other stuff, it's about differing styles of writing sometimes. Lol not all the time though.

lol yeah probably.....

 

[Gavin]

Discrimination isn't something perpetrated solely by white non-Muslims against non-white Muslims, you know.

Thank you for this information.

I was responding to crackerjack's assertion that calling anti-Muslim discrimination "racism" is inaccurate, which was an entirely pedantic point.

I use discrimination when referring to inequality practiced through the organs of civil society and administration. Massacres and violence are something quite different.

And I don't think this woman is being discriminated against, since Sharia law applies to the Sudanese as well. Although I have no idea what the enforcement of sharia is like in the Sudan -- it's possible that a native Sudanese would have gotten more leniency. Or maybe not. That's why I'm curious about the deal with this woman -- She doesn't seem to know much about the local culture (so it is claimed), and she's only been in the country a few months -- did she just hear about Darfur and pick up stakes to move to the Sudan? Is she working for an NGO? It seems like she made some enemies at the school she taught at, and they snitched on her to the authorities who saw an opportunity here.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I would guess that a native Sudanese would probably not have made the mistake she did (which, in itself, is an understandable mistake: after all, she did not name the teddy bear herself, she allowed one of the kids to do it, and must have assumed that his suggestion was OK) and secondly, that's she's almost certainly 'being made an example of' because she's a white, Western, non-Muslim woman.

 

[Guybrush]

Is it to pose questions, instill debate, generate new ideas, or is just racist crap designed to play to racist prejudices and simultaneously incite the Other you require to matter (which is why van Gogh went from deliberately offending Christians to deliberately offending Jews and finally to deliberately offending Muslims). What of the Mohammed-bomb cartoon? Is this something you support? It's not valuable art, it's racist garbage -- sure, it should be allowed, but not endorsed or supported as some pinnacle of "Enlightenment values"; anyway was it not meant to generate the exact reaction that it got?

Yes, the pictures were not particularly funny, but the decision to publish them had nothing to do with their possible artistic qualities and everything to do with their being a means for examining the frontier of free speech. They were meant to provoke, obviously, but more than anything they were seen as a contribution to the Danish public discourse, aimed not specifically at Muslims but at Denmark’s political and cultural establishment. Providence had other plans, of course, but that’s a valuable lession in itself. And a very illuminating one. By contrast, I find something like Lars Vilks’ Muhammad-as-a-roundabout-dog ploy much harder to defend, mostly because the example has already been set.

/\/\/\ Still OTM.

 

[Gavin]

Guybrush, could you explain this further? There is a substantial Muslim minority in Denmark, right?

Edit: reading the wikipedia article now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_cartoon

 

[Mr. Tea]

This is only going to reinforce mistersloane's point about the kind of things I find funny, but at the time this was all kicking off I had a good chuckle over the idea of Danes saying to themselves Oh no, how terrible! over a widespread Muslim boycott of their two most well-known exports...

 

[crackerjack]

I don't know how you get "more likely" -- these examples are just like the Sudan situation, which is why you have to go to right wing sites to find them:


What's your solution? Further domestic crackdowns and international wars that only fan the flames?

Gavin, you're fucking incorrigible. You can't deny the point so you reply by moving the goalposts. I don't have to defend the danish cartoons, f'rinstance, to assert that some Muslims - y'know, the ones calling for decapitation, the others burning foreign embassies - have overreacted just a teensy bit.

My solution to what? Nutters carrying placards threatening another 7/7? Simple, arrest them, charge them with incitement and sling them in jail. Like what happened.

Thank you for your pedantry. I suppose you have a better term for the discrimination Muslims of many ethnicities face?

It is entirely relevant. If you're accusing someone of racism it helps if his comments are based on race, not religion.

 

[gek-opel]

Gavin, you're fucking incorrigible. You can't deny the point so you reply by moving the goalposts. I don't have to defend the danish cartoons, f'rinstance, to assert that some Muslims - y'know, the ones calling for decapitation, the others burning foreign embassies - have overreacted just a teensy bit.

My solution to what? Nutters carrying placards threatening another 7/7? Simple, arrest them, charge them with incitement and sling them in jail. Like what happened.



It is entirely relevant. If you're accusing someone of racism it helps if his comments are based on race, not religion.

But its anti religious discrimination that is based within the categories of race and culture from which the religion emanates. Hence whilst legally it has been a problem that anti-Muslim discrimination was not covered by anti-racism laws, I think it is fairly clear from whence the prejudice begins.

 

[crackerjack]

But its anti religious discrimination that is based within the categories of race and culture from which the religion emanates. Hence whilst legally it has been a problem that anti-Muslim discrimination was not covered by anti-racism laws, I think it is fairly clear from whence the prejudice begins.

But people like Gavin want to shut down all criticism of Islam as racist. It should be subjected to the same scrutiny and criticism as any other faith, and it is simply uncontestable that criticism of Islam is more likely to be met with violent reaction than, say, Christianity, which is why Gavin has to go on about anonymous threats made on blogs, as if that's in any comparable to the very real - and in some cases state-sanctioned - violence threatened against and meted out to some who've offended Islam.

 

[crackerjack]

I think it is fairly clear from whence the prejudice begins.

Their (mostly) brown skin? Oh, give it a rest. I expect more from you than this intellectual cowardice.

 

[gek-opel]

Not just the brown skin. But do you seriously think that most people convicted of anti-Muslim hate crimes have committed such acts on the basis of their religion? Not at all, it is on the Muslim as Other, which is labelled in religious terms but could equally be labelled in ethnic or cultural terms.

The real issue is not religious but political. Islam per se is certainly no worse than Christianity, it all depends on the political institutions and forces at work within it, its basis within the third world rather than first world etc. As ever religion is merely a fig leaf covering over the political, which is convenient for ourselves as it in turn relates back to our own complicity in many of the political situations which give rise to less tolerant and more pernicious versions of Islam.

 

[crackerjack]

Not just the brown skin. But do you seriously think that most people convicted of anti-Muslim hate crimes have committed such acts on the basis of their religion? Not at all, it is on the Muslim as Other, which is labelled in religious terms but could equally be labelled in ethnic or cultural terms.

Fair enough, but it doesn't help when people making legitmate criticism (and Tea's was) are lumped in with thugs beating people up in the streeet.

The real issue is not religious but political. Islam per se is certainly no worse than Christianity, it all depends on the political institutions and forces at work within it, its basis within the third world rather than first world etc.

Depends what you mean by 'no worse'. I'm not qualified to debate the finer points of the theology, but I would say majority Muslim countries are far worse than Christian (and others too - see India compared to Pakistan) ones on freedom of speech issues. I'm not blind to the west's part in propping up or installing authoritarian regimes, but you kid yourself if you believe the Islamic world's current poor record on liberty is all our fault. (In the oft-cited case of Turkey, its record on human rights has almost certainly been improved by its wish to join the EU).

 

[Gavin]

Depends what you mean by 'no worse'. I'm not qualified to debate the finer points of the theology, but I would say majority Muslim countries are far worse than Christian (and others too - see India compared to Pakistan) ones on freedom of speech issues. I'm not blind to the west's part in propping up or installing authoritarian regimes, but you kid yourself if you believe the Islamic world's current poor record on liberty is all our fault. (In the oft-cited case of Turkey, its record on human rights has almost certainly been improved by its wish to join the EU).

For the most part these are secular dictatorships (as you point out, installed and propped up by the U.S.), not theocratic regimes. They are actually opposed to radical Islam and often punish "incitement" with imprisonment, torture, and death. Yet you imply it is the fault of a specific religion, although plenty of Latin American countries have abysmal records on human rights and freedom of speech for largely the same reason.