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| Illustration by Nick Nafta |
There is consternation among Conservative radio talk show hosts about the burning of the Koran two weeks ago by Florida pastor, Terry Jones. Reverend Jones burned the Koran following a mock trial of Islam. And while the Lame Stream Media largely ignored the event--in an inadvertent act of good editorial judgment--the event went viral on the Internet. During Monday's Sean Hannity Show broadcast, Hannity interviewed, or should we say, browbeat Reverend Jones by repeating over and over again that Reverend Jones' action put American troops in danger and that he (Hannity) would have done as Afghanistan Commander General David Petraeus requested and not have burned the Koran. Query: Is political correctness slowly seeping into the military and Conservative talk radio?
During the interview with Hannity, Reverend Jones stated that he had cancelled a scheduled Koran burning on the anniversary of 9/11 last year at the request of Defense Secretary Gates, but that this time he wanted to make a point that Islam is a violent religion. Point taken. However, General David Petraeus said Sunday that Jones' actions have compromised U.S. operations in Afghanistan. So is General Petraeus really saying that erstwhile peaceful Muslims suddenly became violent after the Koran burning? If so, we must have missed something since 9/11.
... His [Rushdie's] fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, drawing protests from Muslims in several countries. Some of the protests were violent, in which death threats were issued to Rushdie, including a fatwā against him by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on February 14, 1989...Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. [Citation omitted.] In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwā was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. [Citation omitted.] Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid.[Citation omitted.] Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwā on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, [Citation omitted.] and the person who issued it – Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini – has been dead since 1989...
If Christians reacted to every act of real or perceived sacrilege, violence would probably envelop and destroy the world. But with a few exceptions, this has not been the general nature of Christianity since bad old days before the Reformation and after the Spanish Inquisition. But Christians seem to be resigned to an irritated attitude of quasi-acceptance of the sacrilegious behavior directed against them and seem at times to go out of their way to avoid conflict with their detractors.
But there is a disparity between the treatment of Christian religious symbols and Muslim religious symbols. Sacrilege against Christianity is encouraged and even sanctioned by the American Left. For example, the Left vigorously defended Nigerian-born artist Chris Ofili's incorporation of elephant dung into his work, The Holy Virgin Mary. This begs the question as to what is sacrilegious if not this? The defenders of Ofili can make excuses such as Ofili's use of elephant dung as a reflection of its importance to his culture. Oh yes, I forgot the dung. By now we all should know that in Africa, where the dung idea came from, elephant droppings carry none of the horrible connotations that shit carries in New York. Before offending us all with his own bullshit, Giuliani might have troubled himself to learn about the sacred nature of pachyderms and their dung in other parts of the world.
Despite art critic Daniel Kunitz's above-cited artsy-fartsy defense of Ofili, it is intuitive that dung is dung in any culture no matter how "artistic" or "creative" it might seem in its application to a work of "fine art." There is a reason why people worldwide use the word "shit" as a pejorative adjective, e.g., "He got the shitty end of the paint brush." While dung has its practical uses as fuel or as fertilizer, it has a questionable use as a medium used in a sacred religious work of art.
As a practical matter, Christians have few free speech or religious rights. They only have the right to be ridiculed and abused because of a perverse activist legal and secular interpretation of the First Amendment. That perverse interpretation inspires atheists and leftists to disparage Christianity with impunity. Moreover, political correctness apparently does not apply to religions that the Islamo- and Liberal- Fascists don't like.
But as seen in the first article cited from Salon, any Christian indignation over Muslim acts of sacrilege is dismissed as "Islamaphobia." This dismissive attitude might take the form of what Barack Obama would describe as bitter Christians clinging to "guns and God." In a truly just world, wouldn't it be also fair to describe radical Muslims as "bitter" Islamo-Fascists clinging to "bombs and Allah"?
The danger to America is that our right to freedom of speech (and religion) might become a right for only those acceptable to an oppressive Liberal-Fascist regime. Free speech must be broadly construed to allow maximum freedom of speech for all. A full and fair intellectual dialectic between competing ideas is how great ideas emerge. Otherwise, the intellectually vacant political correctness model becomes a tool of oppression for the powerful and tyrannical few. When Senator Lindsay Graham states that...
Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy. So burning a Koran is a terrible thing, but it doesn't justify killing someone. Burning a Bible would be a terrible thing, but it wouldn't justify a murder. But having said that, any time we can push back here in America against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it.
... we're on shaky ground. So, Senator Graham, please define what endangerment of the troops is. Because in case I missed something, the Islamo-Fascists in Afghanistan don't need any further inspiration to commit extreme violence against American soldiers. It's doubtful that the stupid act of a two-bit Florida preacher in burning the Koran is the root cause of violence against American troops in Afghanistan.
Senator Graham and General Petraeus both believe that otherwise protected speech must limited if it endangers our troops. As a lawyer, Senator Graham should know better. And General Petraeus should stick to military matters and leave politics and legal interpretation of the US Constitution to civilians and the Courts. That is, unless he wants to run for President in 2012.
We all know that "free speech" has its limits, i.e., you can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater and that "fighting words" are not protected speech. But why should there be any extra special treatment for Islam? The Constitution says what it means and means what it says. All religions are up for scrutiny, ridicule, and criticism--no matter how lame or sacrilegious those actions or speech might be toward a given religion. That is, they are allowed to do so, so long as there is no direct violence against the religion's practitioners or suppression of the religion.
All religions are entitled to equal protection and treatment under the law. No more or no less is acceptable under our Constitution. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." It is long past due to end the tyranny of political correctness.
