Pharyngula

You can find 2% of any group who will react in inappropriate ways to provocation. The cartoons (which I saw a couple of months ago) were designed to provoke such a reaction. The newspaper acted completely irresponsibly.

The other 98% of Muslims deserve as much respect as we would offer any person - especially as they try to rebuild their region after 50 years of bloody Western interference and brigandage.

Posted by: Toby | February 5, 2006 10:13 AM

But think of the cephalopods!

http://www.frangipani.info/gallery/manholes_of_japan/keitai_004

Posted by: hexatron | February 5, 2006 10:46 AM

If you're going to start giving people free passes because they're human and humans have a hard time thinking rationally or consistently, you might as well shut down this blog, give up your job, and join a monastery to meditate upon the fragility of the human spirit.

Holding people to unnaturally strict standards of behavior and reason is what science is all about. Being honest is hard. Being systematic is hard. Not becoming attached to your own pet theories is hard, and producing alternate hypotheses is hard.

So is tolerating the free expression of ideas that you think are hateful, grossly wrong, and generally unfit to exist.

There is ultimately no difference between 'attacking' (by which I mean accurately describing) people who reject most science because it conflicts with their belief that the universe is the product of a benevolent and all-powerful intelligence, and 'attacking' people who feel it necessary to execute those who violate a religious prohibition that's not even from their own religion.

If you're not here to make a standard for logic, sanity, and rational thought, why the hell are you here?

Posted by: Caledonian | February 5, 2006 11:03 AM

In spite of all overt racism in the US, an immigrant can hope to realize professional and social ambitions in the US - not in Europe.

False.
Danes of Pakistani descent are better educated than ethnic Danes. They are hugely overrepresented in medicine, for example. Education is free, also at university level, and everybody gets stipends that you can actually live on.

Mr. Lund would argue that the Scandinavian countries were not involved in either colonization or warfare. True.

False.
Where did the US get the US Virgin Islands from? They bought them from Denmark (long after Denmark had abolished slavery -- in other words, my country used to be in the slave trade, too). Denmark was also involved in a Northern Crusade in the Baltics. Part of the conquered and christened territory was later sold to German warrior knights and later become known as East Prussia. The main reason why Denmark is so small these days is that an incompetent king involved the country in too many wars -- which he lost. Denmark is currently at war, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

his "secular" countrymen are much less likely to date a Parsi, a Hindu, a Buddhist and god forbid a Muslim than the average "religious" American.

Yep, they are by and large secular, I am happy to report. As to dating Muslims, I don't know. I think the racism and resistance is more from the other side. There aren't very many of the other religious/ethnic minorities here so it's hard for me to say. By the way, you forgot Sikhs ;)

'Nuff said.

Apparently. Nice rant.

Posted by: Peter Lund | February 5, 2006 11:32 AM

Caledonian,
There's no point fighting religious extremism with rationalist extremism. Stop ranting and use your head. You need to actually BE rational not just promulgate rationalism. It IS rational to respect human rights, it IS rational to try not to offend people, people DO have emotions. We aren't about to turn into a planet full of Vulcann's anytime soon, and thats a good thing I think. The emotional capacity to take offense, as well as mob mentality has evolved in us for a reason.

For those of you who think this is about religion, you need to read Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. Take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations You guys should know that religious people don't actually follow their religious codes, hell half the time their religious codes aren't even followable, they just use the religious codes as common grounds for defending arguments they wish to push. That's why you rarely find a holy book with one unambigious message, where's the fun in that?

It's also important to realize that it is only because of pure chance that gobs of easily extracted oil happens to exist under the muslim world's feet. All this free money accounts for the ignorance of that part of the world. Why bother to educate your people when you've got a big fat money-tree in the backyard? And without education they have little chance of understanding and getting along with the modern world. There are only two solutions for the west. Limit all contact with the muslim world, or educate them. Bush has clearly set us down the education path, albeit clumsily.

This means we have to put up with these people. We're going to have to educate them. What do you do to children when they misbehave? You don't condemn them, call them religious ignoramuses, you know they have potential and you respect that potential. You try to show them a better way.

There is a BIG difference between the two situations you cite, the ID people here in the US on the one hand, and the Islamic people calling for the execution of newspaper publishers. First of all, it's safe to say there is a good 15 pt IQ gap. Secondly, ID people here in the US mantain their ridiculous beliefs despite living in a vitual wonderland of scientific bounty, liberal education, colorful museum's, free time for philsophy, etc. The muslim world has very little of these things. They live under oppressive regimes that hoard all the oil money for a few and leave the rest of their people to rot.

I agree with your argument as far as muslims living in western or otherwise developed countries goes. But remember that even many of these people have not had time to assimilate.

Posted by: James Gambrell | February 5, 2006 11:43 AM

but I suspect, optimistically, that most of the Muslims in Denmark aren't quite that far gone; are there any constructive ideas to weaken the grip of religious foolishness on immigrant populations?

They certainly aren't. Only a very small minority is, most of whom couldn't organize any form of violence except scattered beatings of other young men in and around night clubs if it hadn't been for the rallying from a few dangerous imams.

The current crisis has caused a realization amongst the sensible ones that they should stand up to the religious leaders and they are organizing even as we speak.

As I wrote previously, we have been extremely tolerant of those Dark Age imams, just like we tolerate a tiny and totally insignificant Nazi party (with their own radio station). That's because we do take freedom of speech quite seriously. There is a section in the Penal Code against racism and it is in active use. Some of the recently convicted were Danish far-right racists, others were young immigrants from the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization (for being racist against Jews).

(is convicted too strong a word? I hope it doesn't imply incarceration, because that has not been the case)

There is even a section against blasphemy but it is not in active use and we are considering removing it.

Posted by: Peter Lund | February 5, 2006 11:45 AM

Mr. Lund:
Thanks for correcting historical inaccuracies in my "rant" (uncivilized, was it?) - going back to the crusades. I was speaking mostly about 20th century warfare.

Those Pakistani doctors notwithstanding, you still have not answered my question about European racism (not just Danish)and noblesse oblige. About the urgency to fight religious fundamentalism of all stripes - you and I agree, although we may disagree on what the methodology ought to be.

And oh the Sikhs! How could I forget them? Especially when my own husband's grandmother was one.

Posted by: Ruchira Paul | February 5, 2006 11:48 AM

PZ:
"I say the same thing about our American creationists. They're clowns who ought not to be privileged to teach kids or manage government, but they're also human beings who should be allowed to live their lives with as much happiness as they can muster, and given all the freedom to believe in whatever private delusions they want.

I really don't know why this is so hard for so many to comprehend. It's like that bozo who posted here a while back, saying that my goal was to burn Christians at the stake -- you're making the same error. I can be simultaneously ruthless in my assessment of ideas, while recognizing that people have a right to live their lives as they want."

I agree--this probably is very easy for people who agree with your views on religion to understand what you are saying.

However, those of us in the camp of the "deluded", whose faith you dismiss as "a case of casual excess, bad habits, and the easy availability of the empty calories of superstitious nonsense," and who you claim don't "advocat(e) healthy intellectual nutrition," see your comments a little differently.

No, I don't think you are out to burn Christians at the stake. But your comments haven't been directed at creationists only. You paint Christianity with a broad brush, and I see little acknowledgment that Christians are a highly diverse group of people who range across the political, economic, cultural, and social spectrum (even though the fundamentalists are sadly the most dominant group, to my great and utter chagrin). But when you insult, trivialize, denigrate, and stereotype, and then turn around and say, "Oh, but it's OK for you to live your lives as you wish," it's hard to see the sincerity in that statement, no matter how much you try to explain it.

Posted by: Squeaky | February 5, 2006 12:12 PM

I think your wacked out muslim/sanctimonious christian dichotomy is perhaps a bit simplistic. The cartoons came out in September. The riots started when the cartoons were reprinted in Norwegian fundamentalist christian newspapers in late December.

In the interim, the Prime Minister refused to acknowledge that they were offensive and refused, despite the urgings of their own diplomats, to so much as speak to the ambassadors to his country of islamic nations about it.

That there are fringe religious who are funded with a great deal of money by people who want the country distracted from politics to use their angry marginalized followers as a weapon against their political opponents in Islam strikes me as being very little different than, say, the place Pat Robertson or Ralph Reed use in our society.

Wahhabi teachings are about as mainstream as millennialist evangelicalism. They just both have an awful lot of financial and political support from right wing governments who find them useful behind them.

Posted by: julia | February 5, 2006 12:16 PM

"There's no point fighting religious extremism with rationalist extremism."

Oh no, not... extremism! After all, extremes are always wrong - and only Sith deal in absolutes.

Idiot.

"It IS rational to try not to offend people"

It is NOT rational with treat public opinion as if it were God. It is NOT rational to withhold the truth because people might be offended. It is NOT rational to attempt seducing people to the side of rationality with illogic that bypasses their rational faculties.

Posted by: Caledonian | February 5, 2006 12:18 PM

Sorry, don't know how many % in the working class. But I'd suspect not too much difference.

Posted by: windy | February 5, 2006 12:34 PM

Thank you, Peter Lund, for all your posts.

Professor, I cannot get your harping on the deprived state of the Danish Muslims. If they don't like it there, they can always go back to the Islamic paradises that they came from, no?

And, of course, they do not want to become an undeprived minority by adopting Danish values. They wish to drag Danes down to their own level.

This is not a matter that reasonable people can compromise about. If you do not win everything, you lose everything. Islam cannot be titrated with civilization.

One thing I did like to hear you say was what I have said for years: Christianity has been tamed. Not permanently, and we have to remain vigilant to prevent its reverting to its atavistic murderous tendencies. But it has been tamed over the past 400 years.

Islam has not. As the Islam-lovers never fail to remind us, Islam was a sophisticated, powerful social institution when my ancestors were -- in the memorable words of Henry Treece -- 'eating ditch frogs.'

To some, this might suggest that Islam is not tameable by secularism.

You ask what might be done in Europe. There, and anywhere else, the only way to start to tame a religion is the bonifacian solution.

Boniface chopped down the sacred grove of the Saxons, and when the Saxon gods did not chop him down, Saxon religion began to crumble. (The situation was rather more complex than I can go into in a blog post, see Peter Brown's 'Rise of Western Christendom.') The bonifacian solution also destroyed Hawaiian religion (as bloody an affair as Islam) when Keopuolani defied the kapu agaisnt free eating.

If you want to tame Islam, first you must destroy the authority and prestige of Allah/Mohammed. Jyllens-Posten took a small step in that direction.

One thing we can be sure of, whether Muslims are humans or not: Their religion has not advanced away from its medieval savagery on its own -- or even by rubbing shoulders with modernism for the past 300 years -- so it never will. It won't jump. It will have to be pushed.

Posted by: Harry Eagar | February 5, 2006 12:46 PM

This is absurd! Freedom of speech is important; pouring banana oil on the exquisite sensibilities of the bumptious and ignorant is not. Or, to put it more simply, "F**k 'em if they can't take a joke."

You can't pacify the self-righteous; their ability to up the ante is transcendental. And, it is simply racist to argue that we need to kiss the ass of third world fundamentalist prejudice while kicking the ass (metaphorically) of our own fundamentalist self-anointed.

The threat, or actuality, of religious violence needs to be countered by the same methods civilised countries use to control any other form of marching moron, and that does not include either self censorship, or any form of judicial prior restraint.

Posted by: David Tisdale | February 5, 2006 12:53 PM

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/03/news/denmark.php

your readers might want to have a look at this article, an interview with a muslim stand-up comic who lives in denmark.

i'm all for freedom of speech. but you know, it's awfully easy for all the white, middle-class, american people on this board to shake their head and be like 'oh those backwards muslims who can't take the heat'. PZ, you hit it right on the money, it's about racism and society as much as it is about the cartoon itself.

i lived overseas in several countries in europe, as a foreigner, and it is no picnic over there, trust me. those of you who want to get all self-righteous now should walk a mile in a european immigrant's shoes first. a comic like that, in that context, is just more insult to injury.

it's unfortunate that unrelated people in the middle-east are trying to turn this incident to political advantage, and their reaction does nothing to help their case, or the case of those muslims in europe who are trying to find middle ground.

Posted by: justanothergal | February 5, 2006 1:03 PM

Another thing we are doing: we are trying to close down extremist religious schools. We have a few of those, both of the Christian (using American teaching materials) and the Muslim flavour (using Arab teaching materials).

The trouble is that those schools exploit a law that was originally meant for religious and pedagogical freedom, a law that is much cherished by most of the parties and most of the population :(

Posted by: Peter Lund | February 5, 2006 1:06 PM

Is the website broken? It says my comment has been submitted for moderation... If that's not an error, I think once free speech is gone, so am I...

Posted by: Federico Contreras | February 5, 2006 1:19 PM

I think we need to make a multi-million dollar religious film depicting Jesus and Mohammed, in brokeback mount ararat.

Here's the post that got lost in case it gets swallowed into the luminiferous ether:

http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula1.gif
http://www.20mm.net/images/for_pharyngula2.gif

It's from the book: "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, he's a really good writer and also a great speaker. If you want to listen to a talk he gave at the Longnow Foundation entitled "The View from the End of the World" here:

http://longnow.chubbo.net/salt-0200512-harris/salt-0200512-harris.mp3

The longnow foundation is a think tank dedicated to long-term thinking (longer than anyone would consider long-term, like REALLY long term, if humanity lives to be 1 million years old, it'll be because of people like this)

http://www.longnow.org

Posted by: Federico Contreras | February 5, 2006 1:25 PM

Jeez, I'm sorry PZ, but I made some dupe posts on this thread, feel free to remove the dupes if you want.

Posted by: Federico Contreras | February 5, 2006 1:46 PM

I'd be curious to know what solutions are being planned in Europe. Maybe someone who thinks a sign that says "Butcher those who mock Islam" is irredeemable and ought to be kicked out of the country, but I suspect, optimistically, that most of the Muslims in Denmark aren't quite that far gone; are there any constructive ideas to weaken the grip of religious foolishness on immigrant populations? Or is it all going to be a process of clumsily beating them down with simple force? Maybe some of the Danish readers here can tell us what is going to be done (oh, and if the solution is to prohibit the mockery of religion by newspapers, I'm doubly against that: it violates free speech, and it doesn't address the real source of the conflict at all.)

To be frank, I know less about Denmark and more about France, Britain, and Germany, but if these three countries are any indication, the answer is, "All solutions that are known not to work." Peter Lund mentions busing, a policy that failed in the US and got black leaders asking for more funding for inner-city schools instead. In France the idea of solving racial tension involves beating the national chest and deporting immigrants, an oh-so-useful policy considering that their descendants are citizens who face the same discrimination. In Germany citizenship is still strictly by ancestry, a situation that reminds me of German citizenship law as passed in 1935.

It is perhaps worthwhile for most Americans to recognize the prevalent zeitgeist in Europe. Mr. Lund's erudite sophistry notwithstanding, Europeans as a whole, are much more racist and xenophobic than the average American. I say this as a brown skinned person (not Muslim, not uneducated) who has lived in both continents. European secularism and pacifism are results of exhaustion from four hundred years of oppressive colonialism (the Bible in one hand and a riding crop or gun in the other) and two great wars which nearly annihiliated the continent. All the calls for assimilation - "you are here - you must be like us" is BS. The non-Europeans are marginalized, ghettoized and the implicit message to them is "stay in your place."

I've been saying this for three months on the blogosphere; thank you. In addition to what you say, Continental Europe (not so much Britain, I think) has a problem with the idea of cultural diversity: non-European immigrants are mostly welcome if they try to act exactly like Europeans, but the moment they try to practice a different religion or speak another language or even eat another type of food, they're excluded.

For those of you who think this is about religion, you need to read Huntington's Clash of Civilizations.

The book is wrong on so many levels. For a start, its predictions about alignment of global blocs have largely been false, especially with respect to Japan and Eastern Europe. Further, his stance that the West and Islam are single units is just plain wrong; in fact both of these regions are divided against themselves, the West between the US and the EU and Islam among many countries. What's likely to happen in the 21st century is a reemergence of the multi-power system, but with the main actors being economic and not cultural. Krugman's prediction that the major powers will be the US, the EU, China, and India is far more consistent with current trends than Huntington's predictions.

To others, it might suggest that fundamentalist Islam is being fueled by massive poverty and lack of opportunity for the majority of the people in most Middle Eastern countries, or the lack of political power against the kings, mullahs, and dictators that run those countries. It might suggest that poorly educated Muslims who move to European countries feel the effects of casual racism and react by sticking even more closely to the customs of the old country.

That by itself is not enough, although it's certainly necessary. Historical accidents are an important part of this trend: for example, liberalism is far stronger in India than in Islam because British colonialism left India mostly unified, so its liberals could concentrate on gender equality, secularism, democracy, and a bureaucratic public administration, without having to fight local warlords to unite 15-odd countries populated by one nation speaking more or less one language.

Alternatively, Muslim immigrants to Europe are more violent than East Asian ones because Islamic tradition happens to be one of violently changing things you don't like, whereas East Asian one is of being a doormat and acquiescing to the Emperor. Note that in the one democratic Muslim country, Turkey, there indeed is a civic tradition, so the reaction to the cartoons involved egging the Danish embassy, which is a legitimate form of nonviolent protest, rather than setting it on fire.

Posted by: Alon Levy | February 5, 2006 2:20 PM

I seem to remember hearing Naser Khader (one of the sanest voices in this whole debacle - I wonder what the hell he's doing with the Centrists?) saying that not a single one of the fifth column Imams spreading lies in Egypt was actually from Egypt. I might have been wrong, but I don't think so.

Abu Laban didn't go, he stayed here.

And, yes, Naser Khader is fantastic.

Posted by: Peter Lund | February 5, 2006 3:08 PM

A number of comments here fall into a common error of the present day right: conflating actions that proclaim moral rights and strategic pursuit of those moral rights.

Brimming with moral indignation over the burning of embassies in reaction to a cartoon, people here want to---what? punish Muslim societies somehow? Scream back as loudly as possible?

I'm morally indignant too; do is PZ Myers, so is everyone else on this blog. But have some strategic sense. If you want a world with tolerance and rights for all, think about how to get there. Christian and Muslim extremists both benefit from keeping this story burning. They have an agenda, and to advance it they need their supporters mobilized around perceived offenses by the other side. If you want liberal societies to reign in the Middle East, then you have a *different* agenda. And it doesn't involve shouting at Muslim societies that they are inferior or barbaric, because whether you have a moral right to do so or not, that doesn't help you or liberalism, it just helps extremists in those societies keep their supporters angry and distracted from the low quality of life that authoritarianism and religious fanaticism have delivered.

If I were a fanatical Muslim cleric, I'd probably be willing to pay Westerners to bash Muslim societies as medieval, backwards, intolerant, and inferior. Just like in sports, that kind of locker-room talk isn't going to cause self-doubt among my rank-and-file fanatics---it's just going to fire them up.

The entire strategy of radical Islam with respect to the West is provocation---they are too weak to do anything else. Congratulations on falling for it again. For the love of Jeebus, stop taking the bait. Condemn the rioters, protect the cartoonists and their rights, and get on with your lives. Or, if you really care about this, think about ways you could strengthen the hands of moderates and reformers in the Middle East. That would involve a lot more economic aid and diplomacy, and many fewer holier-than-thou rants, even if you really are holier than them.

Posted by: mss | February 5, 2006 4:05 PM

It's true that America has a handful of home-grown religious terrorists, but they are few and far between, and they get tossed in jail and even executed when captured if they don't cop a plea. Eric Robert Rudolph cheated the hangman, Timothy McVeigh didn't.

Most of America's rag heads are of the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell ilk: they'll talk trash, but we really don't expect them to go torch an embassy. They just make obnoxious proclaimations about how God is punishing people they don't like, we call them assholes, and we move on. Business as usual.

The difference between American society and the dictatorships of the middle east, is that we hold liberty to be our ideal, while they elevate obedience as the paramount virtue. Now, obedience can be benign, if the leader is a decent human being. The Ottomans did just fine under Suleyman, for example. The problem with obedience is that if a large group of people obey a shithead like Hitler, Mao, or Bin Laden, the casualties are enormous.

As it happens, the people who stand in the greatest peril from Muslim fundamentalism are the Muslims themselves. Religious nutjobs are always far more vicious to the heretic than to the infidel: just look at the slaughter of the Shi'a and Sufi over the centuries at the hands of the Wahabbis. What the nutjobs don't understand (or don't care about) is the grave danger they face, if they ever succeed in fully provoking the west into war against Islam. The Hajj could very well become a fatal endeavor for anyone not wearing a radiation suit.

The west is fully capable of wiping out other cultures. There isn't a lot of emperor-worship in Japan these days, and it's been a pretty long time since any enemy of the Aztecs had his heart cut out in the temple at teotihuacan. Unless the Islamic world gets a lid on their nutjobs, they're in for a tragedy of biblical proportions.

-jcr

Posted by: John C. Randolph | February 5, 2006 4:10 PM

The difference between American society and the dictatorships of the middle east, is that we hold liberty to be our ideal, while they elevate obedience as the paramount virtue.

They elevate obedience as a paramount virtue in East Asia, too. Do you see people from Japan fly planes into chimney-like skycrapers in New York?

The west is fully capable of wiping out other cultures. There isn't a lot of emperor-worship in Japan these days, and it's been a pretty long time since any enemy of the Aztecs had his heart cut out in the temple at teotihuacan. Unless the Islamic world gets a lid on their nutjobs, they're in for a tragedy of biblical proportions.

It takes a total war the other side realizes it started for that to happen. If the US drafts 3 million men and marches on the Middle East, there will be a terror campaign ending in either a Holocaust-like extermination of all Arabs, or an American defeat. The same thing would have happened in Japan if it hadn't a) realized it had started the war, and b) had a bandwagon political culture that made it side with the victors.

The problem with obedience is that if a large group of people obey a shithead like Hitler, Mao, or Bin Laden, the casualties are enormous.

Hitler and Mao are ideological clones, but very different from Bin Laden. Hitler and Mao were populists who connected to the people and could build an effective cult of personality around themselves. Bin Laden is an upper class elitist leading a ragtag group of upper class elitist; he can excite some people about his cause, but very rarely about himself. Even Saddam, who is far more charismatic than Bin Laden can hope to be, is three leagues below Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

Posted by: Alon Levy | February 5, 2006 6:21 PM

James Gambrell: Please consider the implications of explicitly comparing Muslims to children.

Peter Lund: Few if any nations seem to do large-scale immigration right. As a literally insular and peninsular society, has Denmark ever had to deal with incorporating a significant number of truly exotic outsiders before? (And - pls consider the implications of any statements which bring Harry Eagar to applaud your ideology!)

Fwiw: US hyperchristians are strutting their stuff:

Religious Press Release Distributor Publishes Controversial Muhammad Cartoon
"Count us among those who act on our belief in freedom of the press." -- Gary McCullough, director, Christian Newswire
... "I for one am not willing to go one inch down the road that ends with the media publishing only that which Muhammad would approve."

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | February 5, 2006 7:26 PM

Actually its not all that hard to imagine Japanese terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers. Certainly Shoko Asahara could have convinced his Aum Shinrikyo dupes to do so, and given Asahara's apocolyptic beliefs he might have sent them against American targets. The Japanese Red Army could probably have produced suicide agents if they had managed to recruit more members. (FYI Yu Kikumura of the Red Army is currently in jail in the US after his 1988 arrest and conviction for planning an attack on a military recruiting office in Manhattan.)

Posted by: tim gueguen | February 5, 2006 8:48 PM