Another quote from the BlackFive piece:
But rational, tolerant people do live in Muslim countries. I know they do. I have friends in Turkey, Jordan, India, and Indonesia (and here in the States) that are socially liberal moderates who are devoutly Muslim. Not to mention muslim soldiers of countries that I've served with and trained with...And they are terrified of both the extremists in their lands and our deaf ears here in the States.Today, Wretchard of the Belmont Club puts together a few stories that show a Left-Right unity in Europe on that Tipping Point:
How in the hell did we get here?
You can blame our media for displaying the worst of the Islamic extremists daily (and for bowing to the pressure of the worst of them - they're cartoons for crying out loud), and you can also blame the theocracies for feeding the blood lust and keeping their followers uneducated and duped in order to retain or build power. You can blame their governments for not protecting the moderates and the socially liberal among their societies. You can blame the rich oil sheiks for playing geopolitical games with their billions. And you can blame the moderates themselves for being cowards, much like the cowards in our own country who acquiesce at the first sign of a fight - whether that fight is taking down a murdering tyrant or cow-towing to the Politically Correct Police.
Glenn Reynolds wrote an excellent short piece on Sunday about the Tipping Point where Americans just don't trust (all) Muslims anymore. Apparently, we've had enough.
Have we?
Have we had enough BS from the extremists to taint our feelings towards every Muslim in the world? Have we let the media influence us so?
twelve public figures have issued a Manifesto calling "Islamism" the new totalitarian threat of our time. Atlas Shrugs has the text of the declaration.... [which] has been signed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq....This morning I see a story from the University of California, Irvine:
Gateway Pundit points to a new ad campaign being undertaken in Poland by an organization called the "Foundation of St. Benedictus" which calls attention to ordinary men and women being killed for religious reasons all over the world by a militant Islam. They are plastering posters on Polish public transportation. Some examples are shown below.
Tensions quickly escalated when the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the conservative Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, said that Islam was an "evil religion" and that all Muslims hate America.Concern over this schism is not limited to the Western world. In Malaysia last month, there was a conference called "Who Speaks for Islam? Who Speaks for the West?" Some disagreeable characters showed up to speak there, too, but also some genuine moderates, such as Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi. Badawi proposed the building of bridges between Muslim and Westerner, with the hope that we might speak up for one another:
People repeatedly interrupted the talk and, at one point, campus police removed two men, one of them a Muslim, after they nearly came to blows.
Later, panelists were cheered when they referred to Muslims as fascists and accused mainstream Muslim-American civil rights groups of being "cheerleaders for terror."
"[W]hen the bridge-builders reign supreme, the people of the West will speak for Islam and the Muslims will speak for the West."I have tried to do so, below. But we cannot stop at just saying nice things, and trying to pretend the differences do not exist. Abdullah Badawi is a moderate, certainly: he has gone far and wide preaching for what he calls "Civilizational Islam," an Islam that devotes itself to technology and education and rejects violence.
Yet he has also closed newspapers in Malaysia that have printed the Danish cartoons, stories about the Danish cartoons, or even cartoons about the cartoons. His government has asserted that it means to be equal-opportunity about this: it will close newspapers that say bad things about Jesus, too. That is a moderate position, but it is not a position consistent with liberty, or likely to lead us to mutual understanding. It attempts to avoid flashpoints, by silencing anyone who would explore the underlying problems.
On what foundations, then, are these bridges to be built? If what underlies them is not solid -- if people have reservations they have not been allowed to voice and have answered, or even considered -- how will such bridges bear any weight?
Badawi himself invokes a long set of complaints against the West, both past and present, in his speech. Perhaps he was playing to the crowd, which included a number of what pass for "dignitaries" these days, including figures from Zimbabwe and Iran. Some of these complaints are ritual (as the Malaysians themselves are aware), rituals that have to be performed so that you can get to the business at hand -- not only in the Muslim world, but closer to home as well. In Mexico, for example, the government has so long encouraged anti-Americanism in state education that it now has to frame issues as 'shoving our independence in the eye of evil America' even when what it desires to do is move into closer cooperation with America. Americans by and large don't notice, and so the anti-American rhetoric functions as a lubricant. It makes it easier for the Mexican government to do what it wants, but what it has taught its people to suspect as servile submission to a domineering neighbor. They still cooperate, but they have made their prominent display of independence, so their people don't notice so much that they're doing just what America would want.
By the same token, we don't really notice in America when even genuine moderates like Abdullah invoke "global hegemony" and accuse us of "systematically caus[ing] innocent children, women and men to be killed[.]" It is only grease for the wheel, which allows his audience to be receptive when he says that "I hold the strong view that in the case of Islam, those who deliberately kill non-combatants and the innocent; those who oppress and exploit others; those who are corrupt and greedy; those who are chauvinistic and communal, do not speak on behalf of Islam."
He has established his independence with the posturing display of rhetoric, and now can move them closer to us. So long as we do not notice the display, it will not push us further away.
Yet now we have noticed, this and other similar things. We have to make a choice about them. We can choose to be pushed away, which will keep the chasm open between Islam and the West. Or, we can choose to take the blow for what it is worth: to "turn the other cheek," that is to say, and pursue the good that these moderates are trying to create in spite of the ritual insults.
As this is the West, we cannot do that through silence and pretending not to notice. That is not our way. But we can do it by saying, "I feel those charges are unfair (for these reasons); but I understand you are attempting to lay the foundation for furthering good will, and so I will not respond with attacks of my own." We can point to the genuine concerns we have -- free expression and inquiry are our right and heritage, and we both can and should speak plainly -- without using language like "evil religion."
When others who do feel that they can only speak plainly by saying such things, Westerners should not silence them. Instead, we reply, and try to say -- as BlackFive and I have tried to say -- that it is not a fair, nor a complete picture.
None of this is easy, but many things that are best in life are not easy. I mentioned Richard and Saladin before, but let me try another one closer to home. In the South we tell our children that the great Robert E. Lee went about before war became certain, arguing against it and trying to keep it from breaking into ruinous conflict. He did, and many others did also; and when they failed, at last, the South found in them its staunchest defenders.
BlackFive, likewise, is a warrior who should be heeded. He does not say these things out of fear of Islam, or ignorance of it. If Richard and Saladin failed to make their peace, and General Lee could make his only after terrible war, let us learn instead, and show our strength by honesty and forgiveness in the hope of avoiding a greater, wider war. There may still be time.
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