I’ll keep this brief. Maybe. We’ll see.
Our ambassador to Libya has been killed in an assault on the consulate in Benghazi. The attack was in response to a video that aired throughout northern Africa, a satire (I use the term loosely, as apparently it does not deserve so elevated a label) by an amateur filmmaker in California that allegedly mocks Mohammed. A similar attack occurred in Cairo, but no deaths resulted as security there proved more effective.
This is my opinion. This kind of crap is a consequence of a profound lack of maturity on the part of religious extremists. Of all denominations and philosophies. I do not here single out any one religion or culture. The idiot who gunned down the people at the Sikh temple here is of the same infantile level of literal-minded incapacity to see past the end of a wrongheaded embrace of religion-as-substitute-for-mature-thought.
Partly this the result of a peculiar kind of insularity that does not allow for exposure to diverse ideas. Like disease, you cannot develop tolerance if you keep those things to which you are susceptible always at bay. Information, the daily encounter with differences, with ideas, with modes of thinking, all these things act like vaccines and you learn over time to put matters in context and acquire perspective. Religious extremism relies on the absence of such exposure, the cordoning-off of experience. People overreact to that which seems threatening of which they have little direct experience.
Poking fun at things, mocking things—I don’t care what they are—do not justify killing. If you insult or mock the things I hold important, I might get a bit testy, but ultimately I know you speak from lack of knowledge, from prejudice, and from a similar dearth of maturity. More importantly, I have to consider that you might have a point, that what you say may demand some consideration on my part. At the end of the day, my discomfort over your words, however intended, that have no merit leaves no scars; what you say does not hurt me.
Until this becomes internalized, misunderstanding across cultural lines is inevitable. Tragic, stupid, and an impediment to any future rapprochement.
Besides—idiots—someone in California made that video, not the people in our embassy, and it did not represent anything more than the views of one person, not the official position of the United States. Maybe you pretend to be a monolith and if one speaks you are all represented, but not here, and you should know that. You should know by now that we value the individual right to self-expression. Just as some believe they have a right to issue blanket condemnations of America and the values we embody, we likewise have a right to express our opinions. On anything.
All such violence does is provide further evidence of a thin-skinned immaturity, the kind of adolescent pique that is only important to the one indulging what is essentially a feckless hissy-fit. It is my fervent hope that one day we will all grow up and get over ourselves.
Thank you for your patience.
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As an addendum, apparently a serious look at Islam by Tom Holland has been pulled from screenings by the BBC because of a wave of protest. The film that prompted the assaults that resulted in the death of our ambassador, as it turns out, involves Terry Jones, the infamous pastor who made news burning Qu’rans in Florida and is a piece of execrable slander. Comparing the treatment of the two events, however, points up my thesis—the Holland film is supposed to be a serious historical look at Islam, an objective analysis and this is viewed as unacceptable by a segment of the Muslim community. While no deaths resulted from the BBC boycott, intellectually and morally they are on par. We’ve been seeing this since at least the unsupportable treatment of Salman Rushdie (and I have spoken to Muslims who thought he should be condemned verbally if not killed who never read the book) and to my mind is part and parcel of the same cultural pathology.
In general, I agree with your comments, but the public statements by the “Israeli-American” who made the film clearly indicate that he intended the film to be insulting (which is not the same as satirical), and the he know perfectly well that the violent results would probably occur–he was told he might be the next Theo van Gogh and he apparently enjoyed the prospect. The descriptions of the actual film make it sound much more like scribblings on a restroom stall wall than a serious satire. NO, I don’t agree with nor endorse the violent responses–those actions disgust me, though I fail to see how, except as a matter of degree, they differ from the Tea Party disruptions of town hall meetings or the other efforts in this country to shout down discourse that someone finds disagreeable. Even so, I hate to dignify this guy’s crude propaganda with the term “satire”–it’s the same claim that Limbaughistas make about his speech–but Limbaugh would not recognize satire if it smacked him in the face. Invective, slander, deceit are not satire. Satire may be offensive (many are offended by Swift and by Twain), but that is not the same as crude bullying insults. Just imho.
I have to admit to being unaware of the crapulous nature of the video, but in the context of my comments I don’t think it matters—the Danish cartoons that drew death threats and violent reactions a few years ago were satirical. Distinctions don’t matter—the attitude seems to be “if you’re not going to say wonderful things about our iconic personage then say absolutely nothing.”
My comment that I single out no religion for this was intended to include our own homegrown idiots, especially the Tea Party, which seems to lack all perspective, a sense of humor, and fails to see how its positions exacerbate these sorts of things.