The
case for mocking religion.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Saturday, Feb. 4, 2006, at 4:31 PM ET
As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and
self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this
week's international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also
accidentally accurate.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as
anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was
reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the
country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an
administration. What does he mean "unacceptable"? That it should be
forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish
between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people.
However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing
racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the
Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of
the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is
hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where
the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims
republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story
of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies
of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance)
and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the
second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as
snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a
rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful
Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most
of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same
coin, and it still shows.
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Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of
solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but
religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all
expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is
constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be
sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their
share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli
settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this
would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.
Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself.
In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at
all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male
mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol
or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a
good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the
right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible
warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy
coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all
I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute
immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and
you will do it on pain of death.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I
chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive"
become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against
desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful
expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization.
I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or
mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. But I will not be told I
can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a
regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value
the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It
is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the
exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the
suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger.
But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random
violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and
holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the
embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or
making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to
faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish
rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the
Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and
selfish childhood of our species.
As it happens, the cartoons themselves are not very brilliant, or very
mordant, either. But if Muslims do not want their alleged prophet
identified with barbaric acts or adolescent fantasies, they should say
publicly that random murder for virgins is not in their religion. And
here one runs up against a curious reluctance. … In fact, Sunni Muslim
leaders can't even seem to condemn the blowing-up of Shiite mosques and
funeral processions, which even I would describe as sacrilege. Of
course there are many millions of Muslims who do worry about this, and
another reason for condemning the idiots at Foggy Bottom is their
assumption, dangerous in many ways, that the first lynch mob on the
scene is actually the genuine voice of the people. There's an insult to
Islam, if you like.
The question of "offensiveness" is easy to decide. First: Suppose that
we all agreed to comport ourselves in order to avoid offending the
believers? How could we ever be sure that we had taken enough
precautions? On Saturday, I appeared on CNN, which was so terrified of
reprisal that it "pixilated" the very cartoons that its viewers needed
to see. And this ignoble fear in Atlanta, Ga., arose because of an
illustration in a small Scandinavian newspaper of which nobody had ever
heard before! Is it not clear, then, that those who are determined to
be "offended" will discover a provocation somewhere? We cannot possibly
adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the
attempt.
Second (and important enough to be insisted upon): Can the discussion
be carried on without the threat of violence, or the automatic resort
to it? When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, he did
so in the hope of forwarding a discussion that was already opening in
the Muslim world, between extreme Quranic literalists and those who
hoped that the text could be interpreted. We know what his own reward
was, and we sometimes forget that the fatwa was directed not just
against him but against "all those involved in its publication," which
led to the murder of the book's Japanese translator and the near-deaths
of another translator and one publisher. I went on Crossfire at one
point, to debate some spokesman for outraged faith, and said that we on
our side would happily debate the propriety of using holy writ for
literary and artistic purposes. But that we would not exchange a word
until the person on the other side of the podium had put away his gun.
(The menacing Muslim bigmouth on the other side refused to forswear
state-sponsored suborning of assassination, and was of course backed up
by the Catholic bigot Pat Buchanan.) The same point holds for
international relations: There can be no negotiation under duress or
under the threat of blackmail and assassination. And civil society
means that free expression trumps the emotions of anyone to whom free
expression might be inconvenient. It is depressing to have to restate
these obvious precepts, and it is positively outrageous that the
administration should have discarded them at the very first sign of a
fight.