As Norway are moving ever closer to our first suicide bombing attack, I thought I'd share this:
Check original article (with links) at
http://have-a-rant.blogspot.com/About those pictures
Everyone is of course now aware of how the entire Muslim world are up in arms and burning our flag - ours, and the Danish one - because of those pictures of the Prophet Muhammed.
In our case, the printing of said pictures was a pure act of provocation from the editor of a miniscule magazine - emanating from a ridiculously small Pentecostal sect - called, imaginatively, Magazinet. Most people have never heard of the rag nor its editor (with an exceedingly bad haircut to boot) Mr. Vebjørn Selbekk.
Mr. Selbekk's act of knowingly provocating the world's Muslim community now has caused our embassies in Syria and Lebanon to be torched and the wrath of the entire Muslim world to be unleashed upon us. And the rest of Norway to be collectively embarrased, obviously.
As you might understand I, and many others, are more than a little pissed at Mr. Selbekk for putting us in this, uh, delicate position.
However:
I can accept that, according to their beliefs, visualisation of the Prophet Muhammed is a grave offence to Muslims and that it would be courteous, even expected, of anyone interested in showing the proper respect towards Muslim beliefs to not do such a thing.
But we do have freedom of expression, you know.
And the freedom to express exactly what I want to (stopping short of embracing nazism or paedophilia) without fear of repecussions, threats, violence or even being killed is one right I'm willing to go to some lengths to defend. It is the pinnacle of any democratic and modern society.
The freedom of speech allows me, for example, to write in public what I think of Mr. Selbekk. If I happen to think that he's a great big religious bigot and probably more than a little bit of a racist, for example, I'm free to write just that. Hey, I just did. What are you going to do about it, Mr. Selbekk? Nothing, of course. That's the whole point.
Piss Christ
Fair enough. This "editor" of a magazine that hardly anyone reads has insulted the Muslim faith. Well, it's not that I would've expect him to stand by and watch his own God being insulted. I doubt very much, for example, that he had gotten up on his big white moral horse and gotten up on his self-righteous barricade when the famous exhibit "Piss Christ" caused an uproar of some magnitude back in 1987. This picture features a crucifix in a large cylinder of urine and, predictably, made the American religious right go ballistic (I see that some clever soul over at Wikipedia also has seen the connection between Piss Christ and the Muhammed uproar).
Piss Christ is not very nice, nor is it terribly artistic, in my opinion, even if I do see the artist's point of view. I find the picture to be disrespectful to the Christian faith and an unneccessary piece of work, even though I'm not a believer. Obviously, Andres Serrano, caused a massive uproar with Piss Christ. But did you see him having to go into hiding to escape death threats resulting from it? Was the item burnt by furious demonstrators? No, it wasn't, and even in the religiously nutty US of A, the matter was debated on a reasonably civilised level, notwithstanding the odd wobbly lower lip.
Out of all proportions
All over the Middle East, however, we have seen Norwegian and Danish flags being burnt. Our embassies have been torched and burnt to the ground. In Denmark, violent demonstrations and overt threats of suicide bombings and killings from some Muslim communities. The latter is, of course, something we've grown used to over the last years.
On a more silly note, the Iraqi government has refused economic relief from Norway and Denmark (ouch, that hurts, man. What are we going to do with our money now? You bastards!).
But this piece of news topped it all (apologies, you must understand Danish to appreciate the article, but trust me): The Egyptian government (that is to say, on an official level) are trying to tell our Governments what to print and not in our newspapers!
Well piss off! Our Mr. Selbekk might be a stupid man. No, strike that; he might be a very, very stupid, ignorant, two-faced, bad-haired, small-minded, hypocritical, bigoted, narrow-minded, religiously cryptofascistic little worm of a man.
The editor of Jyllandsposten in Denmark might be a sensationalistic, short-sighted idiot who might be better off cleaning toilets. I accept that and it's true, those pictures should not have been published. It was unnecessary and disrespectful.
But the way in which the Muslim world is reacting to this whole débacle is taking things beyond any reasonable level. For all our faults, we live in a (reasonably) educated society where some rights are basic, unquestionable and self-evident. We have a lot of clever people living in my country and a lot of stupid people. The genial thing is that they are all entitled to state their opinions. The Muslim counterparts to Vebjørn Selbekk seem to have a problem with that.
Mr. Selbekk will never be my friend, but on pure and basic principle I'm willing to defend the stupid, ignorant, two-faced, hypocritical, bigoted, narrow-minded, religiously cryptofascistic little worm of a man's right to be just that until I draw my last breath.
So let me do a Mark Renton for the "conservative" Muslims that may or may not be reading this:
Choose education. Choose embracing the ideas of the Enlightenment. Choose accepting the fact that torching diplomatic missions is not likely to get you anywhere. Choose taking into consideration that the countries' flags that you are now burning most likely are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year in aid relief efforts to help your countries' economies. Choose to consider the thought that your ideas do not necessarily represent the Universal Truth. Choose to widen your perspective. Choose to spend half the energy you now use to hate Norway and Denmark on giving your women the same rights as men in your countries. Choose to wake up from your mideval point of view that anyone that offends you deserves to die or be mutilated.
Choose the understanding that torching embassies, wreacking havoc and making death threats when other people's opinions and actions go against what you believe yourself, is no way to behave in civilised fucking society.
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