Even when their skanky Christmas carols unleash violence... (Published at The Columbia Communique)
When the Ayatollah Khomeini placed a holy bounty on novelist Salman Rushdie’s head in 1989 for the crime of writing a novel, the Frenchman John le Carre was one of only a few prominent Westerners (including Yousef “Baby, it’s a wild world,” Islam) to publicly sympathize with the Ayatollah. So some years later when le Carre had to defend one of his own writings from anti-Semitism accusations, the late Christopher Hitchens said le Carre was like “a man who, having relieved himself in his own hat, makes haste to clamp the brimming chapeau on his head.”
If that is so, then perhaps Rushdie, who called the in-hiding director of a Life-of-Muhammad YouTube parody “disgusting” while in the same breath promoting a recently released memoir on his own days in hiding, is himself like a man who, having taken the liberty to relieve himself in the various hats and cupboards and wallets of international brothers and sisters for free speech (whether or not they shared Rushdie’s flare for characters who get shot in the genitals while taking dumps or get magical erections when politicians hum), makes haste to miss the outstretched hats all-together and aim straight for their heads.
“He's done something malicious, and that's a very different thing from writing a serious novel, you know,” said Rushdie. It’s even different from writing a serious song, for that matter: there’s a big difference, for example, between the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens singing his halal “Father and Son” duet – “I know, I have to go away” – and, say, Bette Midler singing a maliciously seductive and un-Islamic skanky Christmas classic: “I really can’t stay (Baby it’s cold outside), I’ve got to go away.” That was al Qaeda Godfather Sayid Qutb’s grievance, anyhow, after hearing Judy Garland's version at a Colorado Christmas party in 1949: “Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips,” as unserious Americans indulged in “the rhythms of this seductive song.”
Perhaps, then, it was with a guilty conscience that Midler tweeted, “Where are the idiots who made the video and put it on YouTube? When do we meet them? They should be charged with murder.” Never mind the actual murderers, Americans can sleep safely knowing that our military reacted swiftly by deploying the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to personally telephone a supporter of the trailer and request he withdraw his support. Of course, it’s now clear that if government officials had exercised the same restraint in “jumping to conclusions” as they had when Major Nidal Hassan yelled “Allah Akhbar” and shot down 29 Americans at Fort Hood, they would have never blamed one of the most sophisticated attacks on a US diplomatic mission in history on a supporter of an unserious YouTube trailer. But just to be sure, with Christmas sneaking up, it’s never too late to start dissuading supporters of Midler’s cheeky carol.
Because that’s where we arrive when we walk back the thresholds of provocation of religion. “The issue is one of genuine respect,” writes one Columbia student (Communique, “Video of a Dying Ambassador,” 10/25/2012). Time was when Columbia students demanded that religion respect us. Can this really be our limit of advance, 250 years after Voltaire’s malicious and disrespectful Candide? As the student concludes: “So the next time individuals in the West publically insult Islam’s most sacred prophet, what message will we take from the reaction?”… Pardon me, but is that a threat?
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” said President Obama in his UN speech last month. Why? What makes religious guys more worthy of immunity to slander than the guy who made the YouTube trailer? In other words, the future does not belong to you, Pussy Riot. Have you seen their unserious, malicious, anonymous, slip-shod, anti-religion “punk prayer” YouTube video, filmed at a Cathedral named for Jesus himself? The girls – whose past orgy-protests were disgusting in an actual, orgy kind-of-way – were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for their film. “It is simply impossible to imagine a more inane film—a handful of talentless mannequins hurdled in front of curiously incompetent cameras,” said Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi – except that was in reference to the Muhammad film. When it comes to any other prophet, the struggle carries on.
As the US Embassy in Cairo put it from under the shadow of an al Qaeda flag: “[The Embassy] condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” Indeed, Ebenezer Qutb would be pleased to know that the US government condemns holiday cheer too, to the extent that it enrages Muslims. Because as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan recently put it, “The rising number of attacks on U.S. troops by Afghan police and soldiers may be due in part to the stress on Afghan forces from fasting during the just-concluded Muslim holy month of Ramadan.”
So back to the question: what message will we take from the next reaction to religious heresy? The better question, perhaps, is what message will the religious take from our reaction to their reaction? What message will they take when American presidents praise “the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy,” as if blasphemy were a vice?
Blessed be the blasphemers: for little else stands between Midler’s brimming elf-hat and us.
If that is so, then perhaps Rushdie, who called the in-hiding director of a Life-of-Muhammad YouTube parody “disgusting” while in the same breath promoting a recently released memoir on his own days in hiding, is himself like a man who, having taken the liberty to relieve himself in the various hats and cupboards and wallets of international brothers and sisters for free speech (whether or not they shared Rushdie’s flare for characters who get shot in the genitals while taking dumps or get magical erections when politicians hum), makes haste to miss the outstretched hats all-together and aim straight for their heads.
“He's done something malicious, and that's a very different thing from writing a serious novel, you know,” said Rushdie. It’s even different from writing a serious song, for that matter: there’s a big difference, for example, between the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens singing his halal “Father and Son” duet – “I know, I have to go away” – and, say, Bette Midler singing a maliciously seductive and un-Islamic skanky Christmas classic: “I really can’t stay (Baby it’s cold outside), I’ve got to go away.” That was al Qaeda Godfather Sayid Qutb’s grievance, anyhow, after hearing Judy Garland's version at a Colorado Christmas party in 1949: “Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips,” as unserious Americans indulged in “the rhythms of this seductive song.”
Perhaps, then, it was with a guilty conscience that Midler tweeted, “Where are the idiots who made the video and put it on YouTube? When do we meet them? They should be charged with murder.” Never mind the actual murderers, Americans can sleep safely knowing that our military reacted swiftly by deploying the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to personally telephone a supporter of the trailer and request he withdraw his support. Of course, it’s now clear that if government officials had exercised the same restraint in “jumping to conclusions” as they had when Major Nidal Hassan yelled “Allah Akhbar” and shot down 29 Americans at Fort Hood, they would have never blamed one of the most sophisticated attacks on a US diplomatic mission in history on a supporter of an unserious YouTube trailer. But just to be sure, with Christmas sneaking up, it’s never too late to start dissuading supporters of Midler’s cheeky carol.
Because that’s where we arrive when we walk back the thresholds of provocation of religion. “The issue is one of genuine respect,” writes one Columbia student (Communique, “Video of a Dying Ambassador,” 10/25/2012). Time was when Columbia students demanded that religion respect us. Can this really be our limit of advance, 250 years after Voltaire’s malicious and disrespectful Candide? As the student concludes: “So the next time individuals in the West publically insult Islam’s most sacred prophet, what message will we take from the reaction?”… Pardon me, but is that a threat?
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” said President Obama in his UN speech last month. Why? What makes religious guys more worthy of immunity to slander than the guy who made the YouTube trailer? In other words, the future does not belong to you, Pussy Riot. Have you seen their unserious, malicious, anonymous, slip-shod, anti-religion “punk prayer” YouTube video, filmed at a Cathedral named for Jesus himself? The girls – whose past orgy-protests were disgusting in an actual, orgy kind-of-way – were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for their film. “It is simply impossible to imagine a more inane film—a handful of talentless mannequins hurdled in front of curiously incompetent cameras,” said Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi – except that was in reference to the Muhammad film. When it comes to any other prophet, the struggle carries on.
As the US Embassy in Cairo put it from under the shadow of an al Qaeda flag: “[The Embassy] condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” Indeed, Ebenezer Qutb would be pleased to know that the US government condemns holiday cheer too, to the extent that it enrages Muslims. Because as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan recently put it, “The rising number of attacks on U.S. troops by Afghan police and soldiers may be due in part to the stress on Afghan forces from fasting during the just-concluded Muslim holy month of Ramadan.”
So back to the question: what message will we take from the next reaction to religious heresy? The better question, perhaps, is what message will the religious take from our reaction to their reaction? What message will they take when American presidents praise “the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy,” as if blasphemy were a vice?
Blessed be the blasphemers: for little else stands between Midler’s brimming elf-hat and us.
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