Stop the Presses…

You’re not going to believe this, but I actually think President Bush handled something reasonably well.

I’ll give you a moment to pick your jaws up off the floor.

He and King Abdullah of Jordan met today, and when asked about the cartoon kafuffle, Bush responded:

We believe in a free press, and also recognize that with freedom comes responsibilities. With freedom comes the responsibility to be thoughtful about others…

We reject violence as a way to express discontent with what may be printed in a free press…

I call upon the governments around the world to stop the violence, to be respectful, to protect property, to protect the lives of innocent diplomats who are serving their countries overseas.

Not too bad. Now, I’ll grant you, this is indeed a prime example of the soft bigotry of low expectations (not to mention a glaring example of hypocrisy, considering his administration’s resolute contempt for a free press), but as far Bush goes, that was pretty good.

Contrast it with King Abdullah’s statement:

With all respect to press freedoms, obviously anything that vilifies the Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, or attacks Muslim sensibilities I believe needs to be condemned.

I’d hardly say it’s obvious to most people, including many Muslims who also believe in freedom of speech and also criticize radical elements of Islam, that anything which attacks Muslim sensibilities needs to be condemned, for a whole slew of reasons, not the least of which is the lack of a singular Muslim sensibility on many issues—including, as it happens, depicting the prophet.

There was an interview with Professor Daniel Dennett in Salon today, who notes quite plainly that there are many people who view him “as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that -- that's what I am, and that's exactly what I am trying to do,” and something that he said seems to sum up my position on this whole issue pretty succinctly:

We cannot let any group, however devout, blackmail us into silence by their expressions of hurt feelings whenever they feel that we are getting close to the truth. That is what con artists do when their marks begin to get suspicious, and that is what children do when they can't have their way, and it should be beneath the dignity of any religious group to play that card. The responsibility of science is to safeguard the well-being of those it studies and to tell the truth. If people insist on taking themselves out of the arena of reasonable political discourse and mutual examination, they forfeit their right to be heard. There is no excuse for deliberately insulting anybody, but people who insist on putting their sensibilities on a hair trigger demonstrate that they prefer pity to respect.

That probably doesn’t sit well with those who feel the cartoons in question were comparable to racial stereotypes, but that happens to be an assessment to which I don’t subscribe. Quite simply, race is immutable; religion is not.

And while I think it’s absolutely and totally legitimate to question whether the publishers of the cartoons were simply being provocateurs, and whether such provocation was particularly wise, I also believe that, even if they acted foolishly, we can’t cast them to the wolves. There’s a significant difference between challenging or critiquing a religious view on its face and challenging or critiquing a religious view which has become law, and ergo political, thereby rendering it subject to wholly different parameters of analysis.

There are in existence as we speak theocratic governments who endorse the execution of homosexuals, the stoning of women alleged to be adulterers, and the disfigurement of womens’ bodies via clitoridectomies, and simply because they say it’s okay, and cite a religious belief as justification, doesn’t mean that it is, or that we should respect their right to do so. Nor would we indulge their demand that all American women suffer the procedure. Accommodating a demand that non-Muslims never portray the prophet or “attack Muslim sensibilities” is no different.

Perhaps the most dangerous inevitability of treating any religion, or religious tenet, as inherently untouchable, is giving fodder to those who wield religion as power. Why did Islamic leaders circulate the images to people who never would have seen them otherwise? Why did they include more inflammatory images that had not been published? Because they want power, and a good way to get it and keep it is to inflame their religion's practitioners' hatred of the West, which provides their biggest threat through its secularism. This is not simply about religion, but power. And giving in on our defense of free speech, even if it's odious, increases that power.

This should come as no surprise; we see evidence of it every day in the United States, as the Dobsons and Falwells and Wildmons who whip their parishioners into a frenzy to make sure shows like The Book of Daniel get taken off the air, and the GOP seeks to conquer and divide using “moral values” wedge issues like gay marriage to get conservative evangelicals out to the polls. Believing homosexuality is wrong may be a component of some Christian sensibilities, but as soon as it translates into legislation denying equality to gays, it's not just religious; it's political. It's about power. The mullahs who circulated the inflammatory images are no different than their American counterparts, and we shouldn’t pretend that they are.

If we do, it will have the eventual and inevitable affect of ceding much of the same ground we stand on when we decry the mistreatment of women and gays and ethnic minorities, groups for whose members membership is not a choice, done in the name of religion, which is.

And with our government increasingly willing to pull crap like this, we progressives need every inch of that ground, on which to stand while we fight on others’ behalf, we can manage to keep.