Joe Sacco never ceases to amaze me. It was my privilege to get my copy of “Footnotes from Gaza” signed by him.
To extend the metaphor: Giving a cancer patient painkillers is all well and good, but it won’t control or cure the cancer. Terrorism is a cancer. But yelling about free speech and pushing back on the violence of Abrahamic religions only addresses the symptoms, not the cancer.
So long as the Mideast is in the thrall of despotic, anti-democratic, and quasi-theocratic governments…governments that we continue to bankroll through our tax dollars and military support (e.g. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, etc etc etc)…these horrific massacres will continue. 9/11 was just the opening act.
That’s my interpretation of Sacco’s work here. And it makes sense to me. I propose no solutions, but I will say this much. It took centuries of warfare and painfully incremental progress to the rise of the secular state to finally cow the ravenous beast of violent Christianity. How many witches were burned, how many One Hundred Years’ Wars and Crusades did it take for Europeans to finally say “Y’know, this fusion of church and state ain’t such a hot idea”? And even that wasn’t enough. The apocalypse of World War II was driven by the economic destitution of a ruined Germany, coupled by yet another messiah, albeit one whose theology was blaming the Jews for all the world’s ills. Nazism was nothing if not another organized religion.
The complete clusterf*ck that is the Mideast won’t get solved overnight, even if suddenly everyone in the region embraced secular democracy. Even if they did…and Lord knows they attempted it last Spring…our tax money will continue to prop up the rotting corpses of the aforementioned governments.
Something to think about the next time a TSA agent hassles you because you didn’t take your shoes off. We have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us, them, and the generations that will come after us.
In a closed, controlled society, the people have no influence.
exactly, hence my call for reform. we’re not in disagreement here.
So the idea of changing the nature of the governing authority in each of these societies is a very bifurcated idea. You can appeal for change in one, and in the other, simply be eliminated.
at no point did I say it was going to be easy, or in every case even possible, just that it was desirable, and could be an effective means of combatting extremism if achieved.
The House of Saud uses the enormous wealth that your constant use of petroleum grants them to support those factions within Islam that actively, violently oppose the education of common people. They have a great number of solid reasons for doing this… for instance, Mohammed gave the guardianship of the Ka’aba (the object of holy pilgrimage in Mecca) to the Hashemites, and the Saudis kicked them out of that role by military force, so it’s best that Muslims are not exposed to any history or they’d recognize the government of Saudi Arabia as great apostates and heretics. For another example, it’s important that people don’t recognize that we could stop burning petroleum worldwide with less investment than the total cost of the USA’s useless Iraq and Afghan wars; brown energy dollars are the wellspring of Saudi legitimacy.
Modern education is the worst enemy of Wahhabism and Salafism, and the imams know it even if Joe Sixpack doesn’t.
Others have tried to say this in far less elegant ways over the last couple of days. If they’ve failed is because they tried to make a point, but I’m with you on pondering how pointless this is anyway you look at it.
Dead cartoonists and paper thin skinned killers.
I guess we’ll leave making sense of things for another day.
I agree that a lot of that is crass. The thing is, Charlie Hebdo didn’t start doing it until after the episode in Denmark. Once someone is using violence to try to stifle free speech, the impulse to fuck with them just for the sake of it becomes a lot more justifiable and understandable, because failure to do so is letting them win through violence. I also see exactly why they felt they had to double down after the firebombing, for exactly the same reason.
The idea that just because the population of a repressive regime doesn’t rise up against their oppressors is proof of same population concurring with the ideology of those very same oppressor can only come from people who have never had the privilege of experiencing life under a repressive regime.
Luckily it seems the so called free world is catching up fast and in no time the people of the US & Western Europe will know exactly how self-censorship and watching your back to protect yourself and the family from harm and trouble works. Slowly US Americans will remember the chilling effect of McCarthyism, except of course that this time around Big Brother is watching everyone.
At any one time there are very few people prepared to stand up and speak their mind and most of us are not prepared to accept hardship or even small discomforts for the privilege of speaking our minds. Been there, done that & wish it were different.
The idea that just because the population of a repressive regime doesn’t rise up against their oppressors is proof of same population concurring with the ideology of those very same oppressor
what day is it today, argue-against-points-never-made-by-caze-day?
Or is it the other way around? Is there wasn’t the underlying conditions for a certain amount of political/religious extremism, would this aspect of the religion be as emphasized? There are plenty of tenets and images of bloodshed and self-sacrifice in christianity…
It’s impossible to say for certain of course, but I would think it unlikely that it’s the other way around. Suicide bombers are not unique to the Muslim world, but there’s been no other group that have embraced the concept quite like the Islamic extremists. There could certainly still be plenty of terrorism without the influence of Islamic doctrine, but I don’t think it would quite have the same iron-age brutality to it. Not that we’re doomed to suffer this bullshit eternally, religions are capable of reforming themselves (hopefully eventually out of existence), Islam hasn’t done a particularly good job of it up until this point unfortunately.
Why don’t we hear more “liberal” support of the KKK?
Should we try to be understanding of their actions because they’re offended about an attack on their way of life? Right? Should we try to assimilate the KKK into sensitivity about different cultures?
Sure the KKK was born from a culture that bought and sold humans for profit…but why is that bad when it’s about protecting their culture and tradition from a government that thinks slavery and integration of races is a bad thing?
Even historically the KKK was formed to prevent abuses of an occupying army and to retaliate as a ‘terrorist group’.
It was a pretty mainstream reaction to carpetbaggers and Yankee forces putting in their government.
(IE: The “Meeting” Ashly went to at Stone Mt Ga…was a KKK meeting).
Now, why don’t we hear more of the media calling for understanding of the KKK.?
Because They Are a Bunch of Racist ASSHOLES that Use Violence, INTIMIDATION and MURDER to make their point that they are trying to protect their Culture. THAT’S WAY.
And any group with that attitude should be shown the door.
If you’re specifically asking about the portrayal of muslims in Charlie Hebdo, it’s because a large number of their images are simultaneously racially and religiously insensitive.
They use a shorthand for “muslim” that involves brown skin and an exaggerated hooked nose.
I don’t believe that most religious promote that violent response. I believe that the people who take that violent action are looking for an excuse that justifies their desire for violence.
Do some of them believe their religion is commanding they do these things? Surely. But people believe a great many things that are objectively false.
It’s estimated that there are 1.3 billion muslims in the world. If their religion actually told them to kill every non-believer? there would be bloodshed on a level we’ve never seen on this planet. It seems far more likely (to me anyway) that there are people who have twisted the religion to meet their goals of violence. Those are the people we need to worry about, just as we need to worry about people who twist nationalism and racism to their purpose.
I’d also like to point out the thread there. My response was to this:
There is no text that justifies this that I am aware of in the muslim faith. The texts that I am aware of prohibit imagery of any prophet in order to prevent idolatry of that image. Several judea/christian sects have similar prohibitions. Those texts say nothing about killing.
These things being said, I am not a religious scholar and would bow to further interpretation, but I’d like to see citations
It doesn’t matter if you are aware of such a text or if it exists. You don’t define the religion, the belief and behaviors of it’s professed adherents do. And, no, you don’t get to define who a “True Muslim” is, either. Nor is there a central authority, as with some christian sects such as Catholicism or Mormonism, to do so. A Muslim is someone who says they are Muslim.
