Hang on for a minute let me get this straight. TV stations in your countries can show a video of a man getting his head cut of with a blunt knife (you show more respect to cattle when you slaughter them) blood splattering everywhere and yet you riot over a cartoon? Diplomatic action against Denmark by Saudi Arabia, Syria and Libya (yes those three bastions of free speech and democracy Saudi Arabia, Syria and Libya) is ridiculous and even comical. You couldn’t make this stuff up really! Saudi Arabia, Syria and Libya? If you ever needed some examples of how not to run a free media those joints would be pretty good examples. State-controlled newspapers in Arab countries regularly print anti-Semitic, not just anti-Israeli, cartoons and articles and you riot over a cartoon. Please. Spare me the drama.
Pamoja Tuangamize Ukimwi
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February 4, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Keguro
It’s not simply a cartoon, though, is it? It’s a violation of the sacred–we already saw some of this in the Rushdie case.
And, certainly, numerous Christian groups have boycotted or planned actions against what they perceive as anti-Christian bias. The rhetoric on the “war on Christmas” comes to mind.
I get the comparison with the beheadings, but I really don’t think it lives in the same conceptual universe.
Given the rise of anti-Islam sentiment over the past 5 years or so (and it had been tenuously accepted before then), this case has, to my mind, much less to do with freedom of speech, and more to do with really complex issues about the state of Muslims in the West, the notions we have of Islam, the inadvertent ways we link secularism to freedom (as though Christianity only manifests itself in the Smiling Texan’s world), and a general sense of European smugness: we’re secular thus more advanced and enlightened.
From reading articles and blogs, though, I suspect I’m in a minority.
February 4, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Mentalacrobatics
You are right. They do not live on the same universe. Beheadings are way more serious than a cartoon. They are not parallel. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that they accept one yet riot on the less serious one. It is one thing to plan a boycott as Christian groups do, but to storm a building emptying a clip of bullets into the ceiling, hijacking and threatening to kill tourists; these are not the actions of rational people. They can insult at will, deny the holocaust, and expect to hold the rest of the world to standards they can not uphold themselves, yet can not take satire. That is nonsense. We have to say it as it is. Forget Western attitudes to Islam, after all we are Kenyans from the depths of Africa, let’s talk common sense!
February 4, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Keguro
Given many of the debates over the constitution, and commentary on the constitution website from Islamic leaders (okay, yes, I’m a dork, I read it all), there is a perception that Muslims in Kenya are marginalized. (I have a long incomplete essay somewhere in the massive pile . . .)
When leaders claim, for example, that Kenya is a “Christian country,” does this not marginalize the many others who are not Christians? And they don’t say “majority Christian.” They say “Christian.”
We are yet to have a frank discussion on the status of Islam in Kenya, which is, I would claim, far different than in sections of North and West Africa with larger Muslim populations.
No one ever claimed any form of religion was rational: mungiki? And don’t get me started on the crusades and their more recent incarnation, the ostensily non-violent evangelical crusades. (Weber can #$*!#(&#$ #$ as far as I’m concerned. Protestant rationality my ass!)
Plus, I really do think it would be very difficult for us to elect a Muslim president, just as A.S. Adhiambo has argued it might be impossible for us to elect someone “uncircumcised,” given the ideas of masculinity and politics inherited from the Kenyatta era.
February 4, 2006 at 9:40 pm
acolyte
I guess the clash of civilisations is heating up faster then i thought that it would.Ant-Islam sentiment heats up in one part of the world and Militant Islam bears it’s ugly head in another. You must have heard that by now that some Embassies were set on fire in Islamic countries.Even if apologies are issued I think it is too late, the rift has already been widened.
ps:I did look at the cartoons and some of them were funny!
pps2:Do not declare a fatwa on me….