Still Disagreeing with Myers

PZ Myers has posted a follow up to his post on the Muslim caricatures, and while I think he's correct to say that some have caricatured his own position, I still think the uncaricatured position is problematic. Clearly, he is not arguing for Islamic radicalism, nor is he arguing that religion should never be satirized, nor is he arguing that the Danish newspaper should be forbidden from publishing such satire. To suggest otherwise is to argue against a straw man. But at the same time, it's a little difficult to flesh out exactly what his real position is.

He clearly has a very distinct reaction to such satire when it is aimed at a minority religious viewpoint rather than at a majority viewpoint. That seems to be the key distinction in his mind. When satire is aimed at the majority viewpoint, say Christianity in the United States, he is gleefully in favor of mockery and ridicule to the very limits of decency, and perhaps well beyond those limits. That's why on January 24th, he linked to this collection of cartoons about Jesus, some of which are extremely tasteless (and some of which were quite funny as well). But when aimed at what he perceives to be a "poor minority", his attitude changes considerably:

But here's the thing, that liberal-lefty perspective: those Muslims are people. You know, human beings with needs and desires and families and aspirations, etc. We have to live with them, unless you're calling for their extermination or banishment (and no, we aren't. I hope.) They've got this horrible, evil idea of religion stuck in their heads, and the long-term solution is to educate them and imbed more secular ideals in their communitiesâmy objection is that I don't see that the Danish newspaper was trying to do that. A majority poking a minority with a sharp stick is not a confrontation or an argument. It's just being mean and petty. It's yet another kick when they're down to a group of people who are already marginalized.

But I don't remember hearing any concern that Christians are people, and we of course have to live with them too. I certainly agree that the solution is education and the influence of secular ideas (the same things that have worked to reduce such radicalism in the Christian world since the Enlightenment, I might add). The other problem here, of course, is that while Muslims may be a minority in some countries, they are a dominant majority in others. In many nations, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Islamic radicals are in control (though in Saudi Arabia, frighteningly, the royal family isn't as bad as some of the loonies who oppose them, the Bin Laden followers). But still, in many places Islamic fundamentalists are the oppressor, not the oppressed.

And even where they are a minority, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are poor and oppressed. Muslim immigrants in Europe may be huddled into poor communities, but in the United States Muslim immigrants tend to be highly educated, particularly in the sciences, and be a much stronger presence in academic communities than anywhere else. Consequently, they tend to have above average incomes. That is also, of course, a reason why American Muslims tend not to be of the reactionary fundamentalist variety.

I suppose he could respond that because Muslim immigrants in Denmark tend to be a poor minority (if indeed they do, I really don't know), and the newspaper was in Denmark, the situation therefore constituted a "majority poking a minority with a sharp stick", but I still don't think the facts support that charge. Again, remember the context in which they were published. And remember that the newspaper published as many cartoons critical of themselves as the ones that were critical of Islam. They were not engaging in mockery of a poor minority, they were making a very legitimate point about the degree to which violent thugs had managed to impose de facto censorship on artists and writers in that country.

In the end, I agree completely with Christopher Hitchens' closing remarks in an article in Slate on this subject:

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.

Hear, hear.