Let me take a moment to categorically refuse this totally false and transparently concocted dichotomy that has diabolical, murderous, reactionary zealots on one side, and shallow, flippant, annoying, offensive people on the other. I, like almost everyone else on the planet, like 99.999% of the worlds Muslims, am horrified by the attack on the publishing offices in Paris this morning. It is indefensible, anti-intellectual (and as such is diametrically opposed in its tone to all the most shining hours of the history of Islam,) and an irrational crime. This, however, does not make people who slander the religions of others my heroes. They werent yesterday, and theyre not now. I am saddened by their deaths as I am by the violent deaths of people who believe Im going to Hell. But I am not allied with those people. I am troubled by this polarizing trend that holds zealous secularists, some of whom are intentionally, scathingly, gratuitously irreverent and offensive to faiths that are precious to millions, as heroes or pioneers for practicing what often amounts to little more than faith-specific bathroom humor. I mourn them and I see no justification for targeting them with anything more than a boycott, and I believe the rights that allow them to ply their sophomoric trade to be sacrosanct and vital to modern civilization. But if Howard Stern is not my friend in his studio, he is hardly my advocate or my representative in his grave. Recently, Yazidi villagers died on hillsides, targeted for their faith. Were these held up as martyrs in the world press? As beacons of freedom for us to rally around? To stand with? Not really. How are these French cartoonists more martyr than a Yazidi peasant in the eyes of the world press? This pair of combatants, the wry, jaded horses ass who thinks he deserves a medal for his godlessness, and the indignant, clenched tooth, disaffected zealot, white knuckling his gun as he rides to the site of a terrible multimurder, is a duel image so abhorrant to me, for so many reasons. Not least because it is presented to me with some unspoken subtext that asks me to choose sides with one or the other of them. Let me tell you, the voice that asks us to choose between these two is not one to which we should listen.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 22:05:56 +0000
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