Morning Coffee (73)

Certain events have necessitated a weekend edition of the Coffee; something so absurd, yet half-expected. So here we are on a Sunday. If someone wants to pay me, I’ll gladly brew up weekend editions until the cows come home, and we know that might be a while because cows like to wander the open range.

Mighty Mo’(hammad) Revisited:

Yesterday, I told you of Gillian Gibbons’ personal nightmare, in which she is accused of denigrating Islam because her students named a teddy bear Muhammad, and was at risk of being punished by death, or 40 lashes and a year in prison. After I related to you that bit of madness, and informed you Coffee-holics of the court’s decision to punish her with 15 days in prison and deportation, the Associated Press reported that “thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied…and demanded the execution of [Gillian Gibbons]…”

Before the sentence, I was right in that no unruly mob had demanded her death. But the situation sure changed quickly. I’m guessing that the masses didn’t think that the punishment even remotely fit the crime, especially considering some did indeed call for her death before hand. So, they gathered in the city center to make sure the world knew where they stood on the issue of Ms. Gibbons’ lax sentence. Some protesters carried green signs with the name “Society for Support for the Prophet Muhammad.” Other protesters chanted, “No tolerance: Execution,” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad.”

We have really no basis for comparison in the US, so it’s hard to understand, even a little, what goes on in the minds of some of these Muslims who to us appear to grossly exaggerate their response to perceived slights. Even having a “society” dedicated to giving support to a long-dead prophet (who according to their religion is likely sitting at the right hand of God, or for us, is God) is completely alien to most of us. Nevertheless, I sat here trying to think about how I would feel if someone were to name a stuffed animal Jesus or Joseph Smith or Eddie Vedder or something, and I could only chuckle because I wouldn’t care; usually that’s seen as a sign of respect and admiration. But I then tried to get into the fame of mind that this naming of an inanimate object after a holy man was an egregious sacrilege, and that I should presently be in a murderous rage. I simply couldn’t do it. I can think of nothing so sacred that the mere naming of something after it would elicit such a response from me or from, I dare say, most Americans. Some, yes, perhaps those members of the Westboro Baptist Church, but not most.

The Clash of Civilizations:

The situation is really quite interesting, and it provides us insight into the minds of many practitioners of this peaceful religion. Some of you (hopefully most) will remember the outrage over the Muhammad cartoons. Maybe you remember the fatwa demanding the death of author Salmon Rushdie, or the actual murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. What strikes me is the insistence on toleration and acceptance of Muslim beliefs by Muslim leaders, yet the perceived majority, or at least a very vocal minority, of Islam’s practitioners in Third World countries (and other countries) rally around cries like, “No tolerance!” You have Muslim clerics lamenting about the West’s lack of acceptance of Islam, insisting that the West is out to get them and is fearful and repressive of Muslims in Western countries, yet these same clerics encourage riots over cartoons, issue orders to kill authors over books, and suggest the killing of a woman who went to Sudan to help them over a perceived slight. They see oppression everywhere except in their own backyards. Are they all this way? No, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are enough of them are to hold large rallies and conduct large riots – and kill people.

I am of the opinion that the world is in the throes of a Clash of Civilizations, which has been described by a number of authors and thinkers such as Samuel Huntington and Mahdi Elmandjra. The Clash of Civilizations theory is one that states that cultural and religious identities will be one of the main sources of conflict in the future. I think what we are seeing now is contact between skirmishers, which precedes major battle between the main lines. These two civilizations, the West and Islam, simply cannot understand each other, no matter how hard they try, which neither do with regularity. I’m beginning to think that the two are wholly incompatible, and cannot live together in peace and harmony. Each civilization has portions of its system that cannot be accepted by the other; at least not while maintaining the status quo in each civilization. This means that one civilization has to abandon certain tenats of its system in order to appease the other; otherwise, conflict is inevitable. Or vice versa.

But is it possible to abandon an aspect of your culture? I pose that it is probably possible, but that it is extremely unlikely to happen. Cultural identity is a strong force. Already we’re seeing the backlash of abandoning or modifying one’s system, albeit unconsciously, in Western Europe. In the Netherlands there is a fair amount of discussion of the loss of Dutch culture; they are beginning to feel the pressure after trying to accommodate Muslim immigrants. So too are the British, who have to contend with sharia superseding British law in some areas. It is happening in Sweden. It has been happening in the Balkans for hundreds of years. We are even seeing it in the Southwest of our own country, albeit with a different culture than Islam. Tensions will inevitably arise when a culture is forced to abandon their traditions, language for example, in order to accommodate others.

The reaction is worse when a people wake up one day and find that their ideals have been subverted and used against them, like acceptance in the West. Perhaps “forced to abandon” is too strong a phrase. “Encouraged” makes it seem like there is active erosion by some force or group, although as a cultural group gains more power, through concessions or otherwise, they gain the ability to lobby for exactly this. I would say that a driving force behind this is apathy. However, people only seem to be apathetic (and thus accepting) until they start to see the disappearance, the erosion if you will, of their cultural identity. That is when you have hate crimes committed by ignorant red necks and soccer hooligans. Telling these people to be accepting of others is not enough. Even basing your culture around acceptance only goes so far.

Perhaps there are some evolutionary benefits to protecting and preserving a society’s cultural identity. When conflict arises, it’s surely useful to be able to say, “our culture is valuable; perhaps more valuable to us than it is to them; thus to us, our culture is better than theirs.” But it seems that we, in the West, have lost our ability to say anything like that. To insinuate, even obliquely, that our culture is, to us, more valuable than, say, Islamic culture, is met with ridicule and scorn; you would be decried as an intolerant racist.

You may wonder, dear reader, why I insist on using the phrase “to us” when I discuss this. It’s simple: intrinsically, no culture or way of life is really better than another. Instead, it is the member of a culture that perceives his group’s way of life as better than another. To illustrate this concept, I once again point you to the Roman Republic/Empire. Romans believed that their way of life was simply better than that of the barbarians. Much Roman philosophy and scholarship was dedicated to examining the differences, and it was beneficial from the standpoint of survival that this scholarship inconclusively point to the supremacy of Roman culture. This conclusion justified the Roman expansion, and greatly influenced the future. Even now, one can easily see where the “civilization” of Rome ended, and the barbarian frontiers began; just look at the languages of Europe.

Today we are able to examine Rome’s views with relative objectivity, and we know that barbarian culture was not worth less, intrinsically, than that of Rome. We know that many groups of barbarians, for example the La Tene culture along the Rhine, were quite civilized by Roman standards. But the Roman view that barbarian culture was of less value, nay, that Roman culture was a gift to other peoples, was beneficial to Rome’s survival. This wouldn’t always be the case; as Rome’s cultural identity was eroded, so too was the Roman ability, and cultural fortitude, to survive.

I wish to make clear that what I am NOT saying is that we “wipe out” any other group of people or culture. What I AM saying is that there is nothing wrong with saying, “our culture is valuable to us, and is thus worth defending from erosion.” There is nothing wrong with expecting a certain amount of conformity to our culture by people who wish to be a member of our society. There is nothing wrong with, for example, expecting Muslim women to remove their face coverings in order to take their pictures for drivers’ licenses and photo IDs. There is nothing wrong with expecting Muslim Somali cab drivers at the Minneapolis airport to transport individuals who happened to purchase a bottle of Jim Beam in the duty free store.

There is, of course, a bit of hypocrisy in this idea: if it is okay for us to be somewhat “intolerant” of others, it is thus acceptable that they in turn be “intolerant” of us. Yes, that is a flaw in the system. But I would not say it’s a flaw, necessarily. It simply is what it is. I do not expect to go to Saudi Arabia, or China, or Iran, and continue to live life as a free American/Westerner. But I also do not expect a Saudi Arabian or Iranian to come here and live as a hard-line Islamist. Perhaps this answer is the most respective of tolerance and acceptance. Simply knowing what you’re getting. But that’s not to say that I don’t view my culture as more valuable to me than theirs. It is also not to say that I don’t desire that they adopt my culture; it is only natural to wish that. Christians wish I believed in god and fans of Harry Potter wish I liked those books.

I too have been conditioned to feel creepy and slightly nauseated to entertain thoughts like this. Even right now, I question whether or not I want to post this blog at all; whether I should censure myself. Part of me feels it is utterly wrong to pose these ideas, because after all, we’re all (globally) equal, diversity is good, and we should be loving and accepting of others who are different from us. But I’m still torn, even knowing all these things, because I love our way of life. I see the world and come to a profound realization that virtually no other culture in the world feels of other cultures as we do. No other culture seems to welcome diversity so much that it suppresses its own ideals. Quite the contrary; these other cultures seem perfectly fine with exterminating interloping ideals.

If we do not value our system, or if we truly believe that our system is, to us, no better than any other system, we had best be prepared for the future. That future may entail speaking Chinese or Arabic, or praying to Mecca five times a day. Being woke by the call to prayer emanating from tall minarets. It may entail the honor killing of your daughter because she was gang raped. Your legal cases may be heard by religious scholars specializing in sharia rather than judges specializing in Constitutional law. Madrassas may be the new public schools, and in them, your son might be encouraged to blow himself up in the name of Allah. You may hate free speech and despise rogue authors enough to kill them. You may be incited to riot, incited to murder, over the naming of a teddy bear or a cartoon. I tell you, my dear readers, the 13^th century has never looked so terrifying to me.

Word of the Day: Vicissitude (vih-SIS-ih-tood) (noun): 1. regular change or succession from one thing to another; alteration; mutual succession; interchange. 2. irregular change; revolution. 3. a change in condition or fortune; an instance of mutability in life or nature (especially successive alteration from one condition to another).

On This Day in History: President James Polk announces that the US should aggressively expand into the West, formally establishing Manifest Destiny (1845). Riots break out in Jerusalem in response to the UN Partition Plan (1947). The Senate votes (65-22) to condemn Joseph McCarthy (1954). Castro announces that he is a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba will adopt Communism (1961).

“The idea that war should be conducted within a moral framework may seem like a quaint medieval practice, but as speech separates humans from the apes, so morality separates civilization from the barbarians” – Emmanuel Goldstein

“If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.” – Thomas Sowell