[Four years ago]The latter quote is from an article about the "Draw Mohammed Day," which was the event she started. This year it was shut down by Toronto police.
You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.
On the advice of the FBI, she's been forced to go into hiding. If you want to measure the decline in western civilization's sense of self-preservation, go back to Valentine's Day 1989, get out the Fleet Street reports on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and read the outrage of his fellow London literati at what was being done to one of the mainstays of the Hampstead dinner-party circuit. Then compare it with the feeble passivity of Molly Norris' own colleagues at an American cartoonist being forced to abandon her life: "There is no more Molly"?
[Today]
Because of the Muslim death threats, Molly Norris, who started the event, had to go into hiding and change her name. She disappeared completely and nobody knows whether she is dead or alive.
"There Is No More Molly"
Mark Steyn remarks on the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of cartoonist Molly Norris:
The whole meme about drawing Mohammad is a gross parody of the one unequivocally good act by Mohammad that has come down to us. It is a vivid illustration of what evil minds can do to pervert anything.
ReplyDeleteMohammad refused to have his portrait made, saying that he was just a man, and he did not want to be confused with a god. To me, amid all the blather that has been written about him since, this is a clear indication of good faith and good will and foresight on his part. From this, I abstract that there had to be something good about him.
And what have his followers done with this decent action? They have exaggerated it, and distorted it beyond all recognition. They have used it as an excuse to murder.
I am not sure that Islam is a gutter religion. I am sure that it has followers who use their version of Islam to justify any and all crimes.
Islam may not be a gutter religion, but it has gutter followers.
Valerie
...this is a clear indication of good faith and good will and foresight on his part. From this, I abstract that there had to be something good about him.
ReplyDeleteThat is strictly logical: if one good thing exists, then something good exists.
I have very little bad to say about Islam per se. I don't think it's true, but I'm not required to believe it (not yet), and I'm still permitted to say that I think it's false (so far, though maybe not still in Canada).
Still, I'm attached to the idea of being able to say that; and to the idea of not being bound by Islamic law strictures when I am no Muslim.
If you start reading the Koran, it gets difficult to think Islam has value- at least from a modern Western perspective. I think the best argument is that the passages oft criticized (like the limits on how and why one may beat their wife) are like the Old Testament admonishment against escalating retribution- "an eye for an eye...". To the modern first-worlder, it sounds brutal and primitive, but in the era of it's writing, it limited a man's desire to be punitive rather than just in punishments for crimes or accidents.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I fear that it will come down to a larger confrontation a some point, as Islam seems incapable of growing- largely because of the requisite literalism demanded by the Koran itself.
Mohammed may have had quite good intentions, but you know what they say about good intentions and paving.
It has value, at least from my perspective -- practical value, in any case. In tribal wars we could appeal to it as an overarching system of belief that could cause warring factions to come together. Contrariwise, when overarching entities like states were tyrannical, it provided a system of protections from at least some of their abuses. In Afghanistan, where Islam is far from its most nuanced or progressive, it provided a less corrupt system of conflict resolution than either the Taliban government or the one we've tried to impose.
ReplyDeleteDo we need it in the West? Well, we need something. There are serious perils that attend a state like the modern state, which recognizes no law higher than its own.