Had there been a Rushdie Embassy in Syria, it surely would have been burned too.
You simply fail to understand (it seems to me) that to many, this is primarily a fight between progress and stagnation, enlightenment and obscurantism, a fight which truly is occurring within the Muslim world - westerns cartoons, mores (porn, etc.) and science are just a flashpoint.
Therew ewil be far mire flashpoints as the Muslim world is unavoidablt dragged, against the will of some, as the saying goes: kicking and screamning, into the 21st century.
If the Muslim world evolves, it will be Muslims who will bring that about, not you and me. And the current drawing up of battle lines does absolutely nothing to help evolving, progressive Muslims, and everything to throw red meat to the traditionalist extremists.
This is really the expression of an internecine Muslim fracture. The cartoons are only the flashpoint.
We might, indeed, be in a clash of civilizations.
This is why I'm reluctant to so strongly champion Jyllons-Posten, even though ultimately I know I have to. Because to do so acknowledges the unbridgability of the divide. Acknowledges that I am in the west and values its traditions, and have to defend them when push comes to shove. And recognizes that real understanding is just not possible right now.
The same freedom does not apply in the Middle East. The divide will be closed in the (probably distant) future, but, in large part, it's not our divide to close, in my opinion. Religious intolerance, backed by the power of the state, is not an idea that will spread very far. The right to say and do what you like, however, is such an idea. I don't accept criticism on this topic from the thugs in the Saudi royal family, or from any other repressive regime based on centuries-old religious law. Laws that treat all people as equals are superior.
I think we in the West also, especially on the left, tend to talk about racism in a way that gives the other side a great deal of room to argue and restricts our side. (It's a principle that professors teach in debate. Always show your opponent's side in the best possible light.) We can, and should, talk about racism, and fight it constantly, but let's also remember that bigotry is not a Westerners-Only Club. Quite the contrary. The West, though guilty of disgusting behavior such as the slave trade, has fought bigotry. We don't tell people how to live their lives, so long as they respect the rights of others.
The reaction from the Muslim world has been one of intolerance towards our values. It has been loaded with bigotry. And that is why, I think, we needed to draw a line in the sand on this issue. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
As to your point about authoritarianism and religion, I think this relationship is being exploded right now. Not by the protests, but by the fact that democratic elections right now in the middle east favor more illiberal and more theocratic forces than the authoritarian/tyrannical forces which grew out of originally idealistic premises of anti-colonialism, third world autonomy, pan-Arabism, and socialism, which they are replacing. Mubarak, the successor to Nasser, being slowly replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The relatively (and originally quite) secular Fatah being replaced by Hamas. Saddam Hussein, legacy of the pan-Arabist Baath Party being replaced by Shi'ite (and now) Sunni Islamists. And so on. I don't think the dynamic will be and is any different in Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Finally, I think your assumption that somehow the Arab or even the broader Islamic World is destined to adopt western values or even enlightenment values, I'm not at all sure. Little in history suggests this inevitable. Its a conceit of a particular moment in history of a particular group of people. This isn't to say that they won't in some way adopt such values, but I don't think it is all clear they will either.
I don't really think China, or Russia, or Africa, or even Japan have really done so. They just don't have an immediate beef with us, or at least a beef that manifested itself so clearly. But they, I do, think represent this potential.
Finally, this means that I think it is foolish and counterproductive for us to expect or demand that they do adopt Western values. The kind of thinking many here are exhibiting making this assumption is what led us into the Iraqi train wreck.
Of course, this means that they can't expect we will cater to what they want either, especially not within sovereign states. But its up to them what they want to do "at home," frankly. They have to sort their affairs out for themselves, which I'm sure, they can do over time.
It is certainly of our interest that any kind of consensus that emerges from the Islamic world is willing to peacefully and respectfully interact with others. This is an important point.
Well, certainly not adopting Sharia law or even anything approaching it within, say, Denmark.
But to say we shouldn't know or try to understand the sensibilites and cultural traditions (in a broad anthropological sense) in the Islamic world is silly. There is - although I think it is changing somewhat - very little understanding of what the Islamic and/or Arabic world are actually like and what people there think, how they subjectively understand there world.
The fracture "explodes" when the past-lovers feel (rightly so) threatened that their world is crumbling, is being eroded by the contagion of the forces of modernity. They then lash back.
It happened before and it will surely happen again, repeatedly, as the Musalim world grows increasingly connected with the rest of the planet.
(I'm not entirely without first-hand knowledge, through friends from North Africa and having written a series of stories featuring the Ottoman hero Dragut.)
But I think, also, it is important to remember that this kind of tension takes a long time to resolve and will have to occur from Islamic folks arguing it out amongst themselves and reaching some new kind of consensus that makes sense with them their cultural traditions. I don't think you'd disagree.
Change often leads to reaction, which I think the rise of the Chrisitan right and political conservatism, more generally, is as well. In many ways, I see this trend as a similar - albeit much milder - result of increased globalization, mediatization (?), "connectedness," erosion of community autonomy and isolation, etc..
Still, I know in doing this, I am taking a side in a conflict which is civilizational in nature. And that is not something I do with pleasure.
Also, I don't think this is quite the same as the Rushdie story, for reasons I suggest above. That Rushdie's book was a legitimate and very sophisticated attempt to reimagine Islam from someone from within the Islamic tradition. These cartoons - at least some of them - were half-assed attempts that were designed to offend. They weren't designed to advance discourse or to challenge fundamental beliefs in a serious way, and they weren't drawn by people who know much about Islam. While I stand with Denmark and free speech, I also don't think we should thus elevate these cartoons to the level of the Satanic Versus either.
Another thing I would point out is that the kind of Christianity that is ascendant in much of the world is also in many ways fundamentally illiberal and anti-modern. Especially in places like Africa. With the collapse of Marxism and related third world liberation ideologies, fundamentalist religiousity has come to fill the void. Islam in some places, Christianity in others.
Indeed, I'm skeptical of the ability of Islam as it is understood by a majority in the Middle East and liberalism to be compatible. The recent elections throughout the Middle East have proven this. The fact - it seems to me - is that more democracy means less liberalism.
Liberalism - broadly understood - is not on the march. It is embattled throughout much of the world. And this understandable in a situation of high poverty, political instability, and its attendant problems. When the lights are off and the trash is piling up and you don't have a job, freedom of speech becomes a less important issue - people will trade these luxuries for belief systems that can provide any semblance of order.
None of this thus means that we in nations with strong liberal traditions should thus compromise these traditions. Absolutely not. But it is also useful to take a step back and think of the big picture as well.
For a really good post that sums up my feelings, see Josh Marshall's latest.
That is the best proof IMHO of the fact that, in the greatest scheme of history, this is not "our" problem but an internecine Muslim fracture between enlightenment/reformation forces (which probably think the whole thing is beneath notice in the case of the cartoons and praiseworthy in the case of Rushdie) and obscurantist/stagnation forces who desire a progress-less, static world.
The flashpoint is the casrtoons today, but it could have been anything, in arts of science. A Mahometan shroud of turin-like discovery, dead scrolls things, anything really.
My point has less to do with freedom of expression, liberalism, etc. than it has to do with evolution vs stagnation. One might argue that the West has gotten itself willingly dragged into an unstated Islamic Civil War for the last decade or so.
I think many in the West, especially since 9/11, have tried to reassure ourselves that there really is a silent majority that wants "modernity," "liberalism," etc. in the Islamic world, especially in the Middle East. Indeed, I think in some ways this is the assumption many who favored the Iraq War believed. I'm not at all sure this is the case, and the nature of this conflict right now demonstrates that we are two civilizations speaking from different assumptions. Certainly, there are liberals/"modernists" in the Islamic world, but if recent election results are any indication, they are a distinct minority. I mean: who are the big shots in Iraq right now: the Iraqi Muslim brotherhood, Ayatollah Sistani, Muqtada Al-Sadr. Islamists consitute a super majority in the Iraqi parliament. Same thing in Palestine. Same thing in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood would have won a strong majority if a fully free and legitimate election were held.
Really, if you allow me to use a perhaps stretched analogy, what you have in the Middle East vis-a-vis the West is a situation a bit like you had amongst whites in the Jim Crow South during, say the first half of the 20th century, vis-a-vis blacks. There is/was, in both cases, a group of citizens who are "liberals" but they are weak and marginalized minority. What you have is really have in both situations are groups that disagree on tactics, but not on basic ideology.
I think if we look back in time, throughout human history and across global societies, the story is of humanity is not necessarily one of progress or coalescence around a shared set of values. Case in point is Russia's slow slide back into authoritarianism. Or the "inexplicable" fact China is not democratic despite its tremendous economic progress. Or the fact that the ascendant ideology in the Middle East right now is islamism, not some kind of more secular alternative. Or the fact that there are 10s of millions of Americans who right now literally think Jesus Christ is going to return to earth in their life time after a battle of armageddon - not to mention the 100s of millions globally who think this. We only worry about the "inexplicablitiy" of the Islamic situation right now, because it is challenging are values directly. But all these others - and many other situations I could mention - fundamentally challenge what I would argue is a concept of world development distinct to late 19th through 1960s western thought that enlightenment values are inevitably the end point of history at which all will arrive. That science will triumph over superstition, that secularism will triumph over reason, etc.. These things aren't going away, though.
