On the Toons Madness

Much has been made of the recent reaction to the Danish cartoons in the Muslim world, almost as much as was made of the Danish cartoons in the Muslim world. The reaction to the cartoons is, of course, insane. First, because the issue lay dormant for four months until certain imams went on tour to promote the issue. Secondly because images of the prophet have circulated at various times and places since time immemorial without raising this kind of stink. Did the Muslim world riot when historical books in the west depicted the prophet? Did the Muslim world come unglued when an image of Mohammed was put on the U. S. Supreme Court building? Did the Muslim world spontaneously combust when images Mohammed were printed in Time magazine? Not that anybody noticed. Of course, at those times there don't seem to have had government sponsored organizers egging the mobs on. And of course, the mobs are happy to go nuts on command, beats watching the flies buzz around, I guess.

Note to self on a business opportunity: manufacture, import and sell the national flags of Western countries anywhere with a Muslim majority. Just for laughs, soak one in every 72 with fire retardants.

Why now? Why the four month long Silence of the Imams? It seems to me, to promote the agenda of the Islamists. It has been said by many that what Islam needs now is a good, old fashioned Reformation. Others have suggested that they had one, and that Wahabiist Islamism are the results. As a Johnny come lately, Islamism needs to demonstrate it's power and dominance in the Muslim religious world. What better way than by defining themselves as the most righteous of all believers? And who wants to lose that righteousness contest? Of course it is also possible that those other purveyors of Islamic righteousness are using this as cover to distract the West from the development of nuclear arms.

As all this gets commented on there is a curious division of opinion developing. On the one hand are those who say, "Will you look at that! Those folks are nuts, and they are even more nuts if they think that they are going to tell us what we can and cannot say and publish!" On the other are those who say, "Well, we know that this stuff upsets them, so we ought not to do that. We know they are nuts so we have to be sensitive."

Among those leading the "Sensitivists" is Hugh Hewitt, who asks a very interesting question in his blog (http://hughhewitt.com/archives/2006/02/05-week/index.php#a001261): "Are we at war with Islam? Do you want a war with Islam?" I agree with him that the sane answer is, and ought to be "No, and No." Unfortunately this tends to lead to a kind of self censorship imposed not by a genuine adherence to our own principles, but a pandering to the overwrought hypersensitivities of those who exploit their capacity for infantile histrionics to accomplish just exactly that end. War is a terrible thing, I know, I've been to war. Worse than war is to have succumbed to the dictates of foreigners without having done battle for one's own interests and one's own integrity.

But the question is ill posed. In 1941 America did not want the US to go to war with Japan. But that is just exactly what happened. Since most folks didn't want war with Japan (Hugh does not allow mention of the struggle with the Teutonic side of that affair, so I will omit it for his sake), why then did that war come about?

It came about because certain ideologies took hold in Japan (and in that other place) which were inimical to the United States and the Western Democracies. People espousing those ideologies rose to positions of such prominence and power and so as to dominated the culture at the time that they hijacked entire nations, reshaping them to mirror those ideologies. Those ideologies, Militarism in Japan (some other ism in Northern Europe at that time), rose up on the strength of their representative nations to pose a mortal threat to the United States and the world. American reluctance to confront those ideologies was laid aside and we defeated those nations, put an end to the ideologies and then helped those nations restore their own native national identities in peace.

I suggest to you, gentle reader, that Islamism, a pernicious totalitarian ideology, is attempting to capture the religion of Islam. I do not think it has entirely succeeded as yet, may yet fail to do so, or it may succeed. The Islamists have brought war to us, and would have both Islam and us believe that they are the true face of Islam. That is why they must be faced and fought, or they surely will be the face, the voice and the bloody hand of Islam. I do not for a moment believe that we can influence that struggle within Islam (weak and dislocated as it may be) by pandering to Islam as a whole or to the Islamists in particular. Doing so will no more achieve peace in our time than Chamberlain did at Mun . . a certain city in Europe.

Antagonizing the Muslim peoples of the world will surely not help either. The Danish cartoons were not antagonistic, but were seized upon by Islamists and used as propaganda. The West is very vulnerable to this kind of thing as so much of our open societies can be used as agitprop. If we censor ourselves, imposing a virtual sharia on ourselves out of fear of causing offense, we are self betrayed, self defeated.

We must hold to our own values with integrity and courage. If wicked men hate us for them, well, that is their affair. If they will not grant us the same tolerance we not only grant them, but which they demand that we grant them, so be it. If it they choose war and start it, they will have it, rue it, and die for it.

We'd rather not have war. We've done it before. We'll do it again if we have to.