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February 8, 2006

On Iconoclasts And Fanatics

Topics: Understanding Islam

Lee Harris gives us a brief history of iconoclasts in his TCS piece, "The New Iconoclasts," and says that the new iconoclasts are winning - "they are realizing that they have the power to make us suppress any image that they find disagreeable to their stern and mirthless fanaticism, even if it is just a funny cartoon in a paper published in a cold corner of Europe, far far from Mecca."

(...) the Danish cartoonist who drew the controversial caricatures of Mohammed was an iconoclast in our modern sense, and was simply doing what many cartoonists have done before him, using his gifts to poke fun at sacred cows. True, the sacred cow, in this case, was the Prophet Mohammed, revered by millions of Muslims across the globe. Yet the artists who created the popular TV series South Park routinely represent the figure of Jesus in all manner of mocking ways -- in one episode, Jesus was portrayed in boxing shorts, fighting a grudge match against Satan. No doubt many Southern Baptists were offended by such a caricature. Yet none of them rioted about it.

(...) Here in the contemporary West, for better or worse, there is no cow so sacred that it cannot be made sport of on national television, let alone in cartoons in small scale periodicals. We may regret this or we may rejoice over it, but in either case, we must recognize that the role of the court jester has been valuable in the West precisely because the court jester is permitted to remind the king that he is only human -- and what a useful function that can serve. Thus, parody is a prophylactic against pomposity -- though it is equally serviceable as a collective defense mechanism against fanaticism.

(...) The fanatic is the man who will not allow you to poke fun at his particular sacred cow. He takes his creed so seriously that he refuses to permit anyone else to treat it as a subject for humor or levity.

Harris closes his piece with a prophetic statement - "Either Muslims need to begin to get a sense of humor, or we need to became a great deal more serious." The West needs to treat the Muslim reaction to "just a funny cartoon in a paper published in a cold corner of Europe, far far from Mecca," as the ringing of a worldwide alarm clock - a wake-up call to save Western civilization from the fanaticism and barbarism of radical Islam. Two key steps in the right direction are for the world to learn how to distinquish REAL moderate Muslims from radical Muslims or those sympathetic to Islamist conventions, and for those Muslims that are truly moderate to wake-up and reform their faith from within. If the West is forced to fight Islamism tooth and nail in order to beat back the Islamic threat to it's civilization, it's entire culture and way of life, this War on Terror will last for generations to come. This war against Muslim fanatacism and all that it stands for - hate, intolerance, violence, terrorism, barbarism, and turmoil throughout the world that belongs more in the Middle Ages than in today's modern world.

Be sure to read all of Harris' piece. And as I keep reminding readers, this war is for real, it's the Wests last chance.

Posted by Richard at February 8, 2006 7:28 AM

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