NYT Op-Ed: The ISLAM the Riots Drowned Out

[liberalpragmatist]

By EMRAN QURESHI
Published: February 12, 2006

Cambridge, Mass.

IN a world of wrenching change, the Danish cartoon affair has widened a growing fissure between Islam and the West. The controversy comes at a time when many in the Islamic world view the war on terrorism as a war on Islam. They draw on memories of colonization and of the Crusades, when Western invaders ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad as an imposter.

Sadly, the recent polarization obscures a rich humanistic tradition within Islam — one in which cosmopolitanism, pluralism and a spirit of open-minded inquiry once constituted a dominant ethos.

European Muslims for the most part have protested the Danish cartoons but kept their protests peaceful. That is good. Stigmatized European Muslims are often the targets of right-wing attacks and feel increasingly beleaguered. But the lesson many have learned from this affair has not been the utility of freedom of speech so much as that their continued presence is an affront to European identity.

Within the Muslim world, the cartoon imbroglio has given ammunition to the two entrenched forces for censorship — namely, authoritarian regimes and their Islamic fundamentalist opposition. Both would prefer to silence their critics. By evincing outrage over the Danish cartoons, authoritarian regimes seek to divert attention from their own manifold failures and to bolster their religious credentials against the Islamists who seek to unseat them.

(more...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/opinion/12qureshi.html

***

Just wanted to post this as yet another answer to those who keep asking "where are the moderate Muslims?" and "where are the Muslim condemnations?"

[Harper_is_Bush]

1. "often the targets of right-wing attacks".

What is interesting in this article is the point about the authoritarian regimes looking to increase the outrage over these Mohammed depictions to bolster thier cred against Islamists.

It's like George Bush going to CS Kings funeral.

[Oversea Visitor]

2. And the winner is the extremist.

I guess the path and course already set.
Hatred for America already too high.
Stupid to target religion
No boundary no country only faith.

Nutcase wins the day.

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. K & R -- RW fundamentalist extremists on all sides are using religion

as a demagogic tool. The whole world suffers from the result and the chasms of distrust and hatred just keep getting deeper. That, of course, is a useful development to these conscienceless demagogues - they can whip up their followers into that much more of a frenzy and their power grows.

“The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some superpersonal force: the Race, the Party, History, the proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.”
-- Lloyd Billingsley, "Religion's Rebel Son: Fanaticism in Our Time", Multnomah Publishers (1986)

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
--Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Welsh philosopher and reformer