Sir Salman Rushdie

[Walsingham]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6766569.stm

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_V...ption:_Timeline

 

HM Liz has just recently knighted Salman Rushdie. It seems this has annoyed people abroad who feel this is the British Government insulting Islam. My own feeing is that

1. Salman Rushdie exercised his democratic right to free speech in a country which guaranteed him that right in 1988.

2. The Ayatollah Khomeini picked on this poor hapless fool to whip up a storm of controversy in 1989 to cement his hold on power after admitting to a humiliating peace with Iraq in 1988.

3. Rushdie's status in the Uk has been borne solely from his reasonably brave reaction to that death threat.

4. Rushdie's knighthood is recognition of his status in the UK.

 

 

I see no reason why aa man who stands up to extremist intimidation should not be honoured.

 

However, I do think the Palace dropped the ball slightly by letting this go through at such a delicate time in negotiations with Iran.

 

Thoughts?

[Gorgon]

I'm of the opinion that Muslims in general need to develop tougher skin when someone insults their religion. In Europe, with the notable exception of Italy, we can generally be depended on not to freak out beyond measure when an artist of provocateur insults Christianity.

 

The more insults the quicker we can toughen them up and bring them into the 21st century, with the understanding that racism can sometimes go hand in hand with these insults, and that we must recognise and distance ourselves from it.

[taks]

i agree, sticks and stones and all that. why people always feel a need to get offended at every perceived slight is beyond me. why care what other people think or do if it does not directly affect you personally (insults certainly don't "affect" anyone)?

 

taks

[Volourn]

Game over, EXTREMISTS, game over.

[Walsingham]

So you don't have any time for the notion that people with very little tend to value pride more than others? It's a very serious thing for some people.

[Pop]

Tell you what, I'll be concerned over Salman Rushdie being knighted when families stop getting cash settlements for suicide bombers.

 

Just saying. Somebody important said something about logs in eyes.

Edited June 19, 2007 by Pop

[Gfted1]

So you don't have any time for the notion that people with very little tend to value pride more than others? It's a very serious thing for some people.

 

 

Are you attempting to forward the notion that people that have "very little" should be give free rein to run amok whenever their "pride" gets dinged? How would you explain this mentality? These are not poor, downtrodden, disenfrachised people. They represent educated, employed, middle class families the majority of have not even experienced discrimination.

[Sand]

Sorry, Walsh, I have to disagree. Everyone makes there own way in life, each eprson has their own choices to make. Those who seek the death of others for mere words, or willing to kill themselves and innocents in suicide bombings I have no respect for. If Mr. Rushdie is deserving to be knighted then he should be knighted.

[metadigital]

I'll end this chapter with a particular case study, which tellingly illuminates society's exaggerated respect for religion, over and above ordinary human respect. The case flared up in February 2006 -- a ludicrous episode, which veered wildly between the extremes of comedy and tragedy. The previous September, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Over the next three months, indignation was carefully and systematically nurtured throughout the Islamic world by a small group of Muslims living in Denmark, led by two imams who had been granted sanctuary there.* In late 2005 these malevolent exiles travelled from Denmark to Egypt bearing a dossier, copied and circulated from there to the whole Islamic world, including, importantly, Indonesia. The dossier contained falsehoods about alleged maltreatment of Muslims in Denmark, and the tendentious lie that Jyllands-Posten was a government-run newspaper. It also contained the twelve cartoons which, crucially, the imams had supplemented with three additional images whose origin was mysterious but which certainly had no connection with Denmark. Unlike the original twelve, these three add-on were genuinely offensive -- or would have been if they had, as the zealous propagandists alleged, depicted Muhammad. A particularly damaging one of these three was not a cartoon at all but a faxed photograph of a bearded man wearing a fake pig's snout held on with elastic. It has subsequently turned out that this was an Associated Press photograph of a Frenchman entered for a pig-squealing contest at a country fair in France.** The photograph had no connection at all with Muhammad, no connection with Islam, and no connection with Denmark. But the Muslim activists, on their mischief-stirring hike to Cairo, implied all three connections ... with predictable results.

 

...

 

A bounty of $1 million was placed on the head of 'the Danish cartoonist' by a Pakistani imam -- who was apparently unaware that there were twelve different Danish cartoonists, and almost certainly unaware that the three most offensive pictures had never appeared in Denmark at all ... In nigeria, Muslim protesters against the Danish cartoons burned down several Christian churches, and used machetes to attack and kill (black Nigerian) Christians in the streets. ... Demonstrators were photographed in Britain bearing banners saying 'Slay those who insult Islam', 'Butcher those who mock Islam', 'Europe you will pay: Demolition is on its way' and 'Behead those who insult Islam'. ...

 

In the aftermath of all this, the journalist Andrew Mueller interviewed Britain's leading 'moderate' Muslim, Sir Iqbal Sacranie.*** Moderate he may be by today's Islamic standards, but in Andrew Mueller's account he still stands by the remark he made when Salmon Rushdie was condemned to death for writing a novel: 'Death is perhaps too easy for him' -- a remark that sets him in ignominious contrast to his courageous predecessor as Britain's most influential Muslim, the late Dr Zaki Badawi, who offered Salmon Rushdie sanctuary in his own home.

* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4686536.stm

** Independent, 5 Feb. 2006

*** Andrew Mueller, 'An argument with Sir Iqbal', Independent on Sunday, 2 April 2006, Sunday Review section, 12-16.

[Walsingham]

Oh absolutely! :0 I'm known far and wide as an apologist for extremist Islam!

 

Frankly I did feel there was something in my earlier comment. While you know I hold each man accountable, at the same time I accept the principle that we should accept the results of our actions. If I stand up at a Spurs Match at the Arsenal end and start singing I may get hit by a bottle. The guy who threw it should not have done so. But equally am I not partly responsible? I knew it would happen, after all.

[Tale]

Oh absolutely! :0 I'm known far and wide as an apologist for extremist Islam!

 

Frankly I did feel there was something in my earlier comment. While you know I hold each man accountable, at the same time I accept the principle that we should accept the results of our actions. If I stand up at a Spurs Match at the Arsenal end and start singing I may get hit by a bottle. The guy who threw it should not have done so. But equally am I not partly responsible? I knew it would happen, after all.

Depends, who was funnier, you or the other guy?

[Walsingham]

Oh absolutely! :0 I'm known far and wide as an apologist for extremist Islam!

 

Frankly I did feel there was something in my earlier comment. While you know I hold each man accountable, at the same time I accept the principle that we should accept the results of our actions. If I stand up at a Spurs Match at the Arsenal end and start singing I may get hit by a bottle. The guy who threw it should not have done so. But equally am I not partly responsible? I knew it would happen, after all.

Depends, who was funnier, you or the other guy?

 

Well, I was naked.

[Tale]

Oh absolutely! :0 I'm known far and wide as an apologist for extremist Islam!

 

Frankly I did feel there was something in my earlier comment. While you know I hold each man accountable, at the same time I accept the principle that we should accept the results of our actions. If I stand up at a Spurs Match at the Arsenal end and start singing I may get hit by a bottle. The guy who threw it should not have done so. But equally am I not partly responsible? I knew it would happen, after all.

Depends, who was funnier, you or the other guy?

 

Well, I was naked.

The other guy. Violence against naked people is hilarious.

[Fenghuang]

He's had a Fatwah on him for how many years now?

 

I don't see as how he would care much.

[Gorgon]

I imagine it's not fun to live with a price on your head. There have been several offered over the years

[Walsingham]

He's had a Fatwah on him for how many years now?

 

I don't see as how he would care much.

 

I read that the Iranians send him a sort of deathmas greeting card every year just to remind him it's still extant. I think the archbishop of Canterbury should call down a fatwah on one of their guys heads. Actually, of course I don't. They do have the lamest excuse though "Oh, I'm sorry the system won't let us rescind that. Only the Ayatollah can do it and he's dead." Makes them sound like BT customer services.

[SteveThaiBinh]

It was absolutely the right thing to do to honour Salman Rushdie, and I don't see any reason to withhold a knighthood just because it might upset some others. He either deserves it, or he doesn't.

 

That's not to say I'm exactly thrilled every time Britain manages to upset the Muslim world (or a vocal section of it).

[Walsingham]

It was absolutely the right thing to do to honour Salman Rushdie, and I don't see any reason to withhold a knighthood just because it might upset some others. He either deserves it, or he doesn't.

 

That's not to say I'm exactly thrilled every time Britain manages to upset the Muslim world (or a vocal section of it).

 

Indeed, it does have to be pointed out that Steve is living in a region where such annoyance could be lethally conveyed.

[Sand]

The Muslim world needs a thicker skin.

[Walsingham]

I've been thinking again about my earlier comment about the pride issue, and the comments about thick skin. I've been thinking, based on my own direct experience of rural tribal-style cultures, with their typical emphasis on manliness and self-reliance, and pride. Pride in oneself, and pride in one's ideology is not an optional extra. It sustains you when times are hard and bread and water are scarce. In fact I've seen similar phenomena in poorer folks all over, from miners to farmers to cops and soldiers.

 

If I may say so we're all intellectuals who have a pretty soft time of it. It's easy for us to talk about being more cerebral and not taking offence. But the people we are talking about here are relying on that prickly ironclad attitude to get them through the day. Indeed, to go further, in cultures where justice has to be DIY at best, you need to react violently to any slight to survive. Rather the same way it is in prison.

 

My conclusion, therefore, is that we should neither retract the knighthood, nor dismiss the reaction. We should state, as we are now doing, that the knighthood was to reward bravery in the face of death threats, not about insulting Islam. This would be an intelligible response on their own terms.

[Pop]

You can't really expect to openly say that you're rewarding a man for weathering death threats and not have it cross the people making the death threats. If they want Salman Rushdie dead, any official action in regard to him short of handing him over to Tehran would be construed as some kind of affront, because the Ayatollah decreed that he must die, no? Their beef is with Rushdie, and the friend of an enemy is an enemy. And considering the level of education in Iran it seems peculiar to assert that this kind of thing can't be dealt with on account of simplistic Iranian reactionism.

[Walsingham]

You can't really expect to openly say that you're rewarding a man for weathering death threats and not have it cross the people making the death threats. If they want Salman Rushdie dead, any official action in regard to him short of handing him over to Tehran would be construed as some kind of affront, because the Ayatollah decreed that he must die, no? Their beef is with Rushdie, and the friend of an enemy is an enemy. And considering the level of education in Iran it seems peculiar to assert that this kind of thing can't be dealt with on account of simplistic Iranian reactionism.

 

 

I think you may be doing the great many educated Iranians a disservice. The most large scale violent reactions seem to be coming from Pakistan.

[metadigital]

I thought Pop was suggesting that they were educated, but now I'm not so sure.

 

Anyway, (groups of) people can have any feelings. Any. Hurt. Pride. Whatever. Actions, however, need to demonstrate civilized behaviour ... I may think that twit with the loud music siting next to me is making an egregious cultural affront to me, but that doesn't give me the right to smack him around the head. (Pre-emptive strike! Sorry, back to the topic.)

 

How we deal with our needs/requirements/troubles/issues is at least as important as having them.

[Gfted1]

I've been thinking again about my earlier comment about the pride issue, and the comments about thick skin. I've been thinking, based on my own direct experience of rural tribal-style cultures, with their typical emphasis on manliness and self-reliance, and pride. Pride in oneself, and pride in one's ideology is not an optional extra. It sustains you when times are hard and bread and water are scarce. In fact I've seen similar phenomena in poorer folks all over, from miners to farmers to cops and soldiers.

 

If I may say so we're all intellectuals who have a pretty soft time of it. It's easy for us to talk about being more cerebral and not taking offence. But the people we are talking about here are relying on that prickly ironclad attitude to get them through the day. Indeed, to go further, in cultures where justice has to be DIY at best, you need to react violently to any slight to survive. Rather the same way it is in prison.

 

 

This mentality is fine as long as its confined to the location that requires it. Its when you start exporting it ACROSS THE GLOBE, for real or perceived slights, that I have a problem with it.

 

I thought Pop was suggesting that they were educated...

 

Thats how I took it too.

[Pop]

That's what I was saying.