It's interesting to look at the comments to Nick Cohen's piece at CiF on the shoddy reaction by so many (Shirley Williams, we're looking at you) to the latest Rushdie affair. Amazingly for CiF, most are supportive of Cohen. This, for instance:
I think the phenomenon of leftists siding with murdering theocrats can be easily explained under the rubric of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". As long as the Islamic world continues to hate and oppose Bush and right-wing America, then the leftists will continue to support these murdering loons, because they hate Bush and American autocracy more than they hate theocratic book-burners who incite hatred and murder. Their self-flagellation for the "crime" of being born in the affluent West leads them to exalt anything that is counter-Western, no matter how disgusting an ideology. And, yes, it really is that simple.
Last week I wrote:
At least the latest tantrums from the Muslim world about Salman Rushdie's knighthood should demonstrate to those who persist in thinking that all the suicide bombings, 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, are understandable reactions to Western provocation that, really, no, we're dealing with a violent pathology here which feeds off a childish sense of grievance, and any controversy, no matter how petty, from Danish cartoons to this latest farce, will be milked for maximum effect.
Maybe the message is getting through.
Just read the news from Pakistan:
In the southern city of Karachi some 300 Islamic party supporters again torched an effigy of Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses earned him a death sentence from Iran's clerical leadership in 1989.They chanted "Death to Rushdie" and "Down with the Queen, down with Britain" and demanded that Pakistan sever diplomatic ties with London.
Two other smaller protests were held in the city at which they also burned dummies representing the Indian-born writer.
Earlier more than 150 traders gathered in the city's busy commercial district where they burned a British flag in protest against the award to the "hated" Rushdie.
"Britain has tried to ignite the controversy of the cursed author Rushdie after more than a decade," said the leader of a local traders' body, Akhtar Butt. "It's a deliberate attempt to provoke Muslims."
Another rally attended by more than 100 students from religious schools in Multan condemned the award and torched an effigy of Rushdie in protest.
"By giving the title of 'Sir' to Rushdie, Britain has put the award into disrepute," said Hidayatullah Pasroori, a local leader of the moderate Islamic party Jamiat Ulema Pakistan.
The hardline Jamiat Ulema Islam party staged a separate rally in the city against the award.
"We condemn the British government for awarding the title to a blasphemer. They have tried to deliberately hurt our feelings," local party leader Maulana Abdul Rauf said.
They have tried to deliberately hurt our feelings. This is so obviously pathetic, not to say deranged, that even the most ardent multiculturalist would be struggling to find anything worthy of respect here. As Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times, quoting the late Richard Rorty, ""some ideas, like some people, are just no damn good" .... no amount of faux tolerance or misplaced fellow feeling excuses the rest of us from our obligation to oppose such ideas and such people."
Back in 1988 it was just about possible for some well-meaning but misguided liberals to argue that if we were serious about building a multicultural society we had to take account of the feelings of others from different backgrounds. If they were so offended by the publication of a book - and obviously they were deeply offended if they went so far as threatening to kill Rushdie - then we had to rethink our priorities, and reconsider the whole notion of free expression in this new multi-ethnic Britain. Now, 19 years and innumerable threats, bombings and riots later, we know different. Any appeasement of Islamist sensibilities is a one-way street. The Muslim world is awash with the most vicious anti-semitism. Still, in Britain, you can find literature arguing that it's the moral duty of Muslims to kill infidels. For years such sentiments were a regular feature of the preachings of radical imams across the country, most of whom were living on state benefits and were protected by that same belief in multiculturalism - admirable in many ways but now exposed as hopelessly naive - that allowed them to get away with it. Any perceived slight to Islam, meanwhile, has to be countered with violent threats.
The original Rushdie affair is now looked back on as a pivotal moment in the development of the current stand-off between Western liberalism and radical Islam. Maybe this latest twist will come to be seen as equally significant, in that, finally, we can shed any illusions about the respect that should be given to their hurt feelings.
Comments