In 2010 Nancy Graham Holm wrote on the Guardian Comment is Free website following the attempt on Kurt Westergaard's life on New Year's Day that year. Her views turn my stomach. Here are the points, as I understand them, belched out from her poisoned pen, and the points made by some commenters.
The cartoon by Westergaard is offensive to Muslims, who were/are unable to see it as satire.
This assumes that a Muslim’s beliefs are unalterably part of him/her, like skin colour or race. Rather, a person who subscribes to the belief system known as Islam is free to throw over that belief should they feel the need to do so. I know that many Muslims face peril if they declare their apostasy but the religious authorities cannot see into their minds. I suspect that many so-called Muslims are silent atheists. A few have spoken out but most do not, for genuine and respectable reasons of pragmatism. A vocal Muslim apostate in rural, ultra-fanatical Saudi Arabia would be of little help to his/her family dead.
How dare Holm claim to know what a Muslim – or anyone else – can do and cannot do. How does she know what it feels like to be them? All too often we see those like Holm who ‘believe in belief’ bestowing the gift of omniscience upon themselves. They can see the point of view of the believer, and that of the atheist, with crystal clarity against a backdrop of reality. How breathtakingly arrogant they are, as they point out the merits and demerits of each position before adopting a criticism-immune, cravenly politically correct middle ground.
And before anyone tries to conflate that conceit with the atheist’s position, let’s be clear that the atheist simply asks for evidence in support of assertions made about the world and those in it, especially those assertions that affect directly the lives of others. Scepticism is not arrogance. It is a necessary part of healthy and open discourse.
Muslims felt devastatingly humiliated by the cartoon and this feeling of humiliation is justified.
This is surely the weakest of Holm’s pathetic arguments. Why should a Muslim be humiliated by a cartoon? Humiliating someone means deliberately making them feel small and useless in a public situation. I have been humiliated; I know what it is like. I have been publicly and repeatedly ridiculed - several times in front of large audiences - by a grossly unprofessional former employer. I can still feel the outrage and injustice of each separate attack. But if my erstwhile boss had drawn a cartoon of someone important to me, and presented it as an object of amusement and derision, I am sure I would not have felt anything like the abject embarrassment or acute, severe depression that accompanied his direct personal campaign against me. For instance, I dearly love my wife and my daughter and would gladly defend them to the last of my strength against any form of attack, be it physical or verbal. However, if someone were to draw a cartoon of them wielding sticks of fizzing dynamite, I don’t think I’d feel any response at all. It would be utterly unimportant to me. I know them both intimately and they are not terrorists, so there would be no association. Moreover, if in my view the object of the cartoon was the immortal messenger of the omnipotent creator of the universe, what might I think he had to fear from such an ineptly humourless prank? If I believed (as a true Muslim surely does, according to the Qur’an) in judgment day and my ticket to paradise, together with the cartoonist’s assured eternal perdition, I think earthbound rage and violence would be very low on my list of priorities. There would be no point, for the matter would surely be settled, devastatingly and pyrotechnically, by the supreme authority.
Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act.
This is a true statement but it has little bearing on the cartoon, since the alleged link between it and humiliation is false.
An apology from the Danish prime minister would have defused the situation and prevented the recent attack on Westergaard and his granddaughter in their home.
This cannot be proven, and seems most unlikely. The actions of the imams who toured the Middle East whipping up mass religious fervour suggest to me that they welcomed the cartoons as a means of firing up the congregation and exerting powerful control over them. Could it be that this is a core part of the Islamic belief system? The powder-keg latency of pent-up rage, able to be triggered at the drop of a hat, constitutes a formidable arsenal in support of a jihadist agenda. All the more reason why this debate should go on and on, forcing the Islamic clergy to defend their beliefs by rational argument, or shut the hell up about them.
The lack of such an apology compounded the humiliation.
As there was no humiliation (see above) then there was nothing to be compounded.
Cartoons that mock Islam are cruel and in bad taste.
Cartoons are intended to mock. But what is so special about Islam? Nobody claims that cartoons mocking politicans are in bad taste. Jokes may be cruel but adults can shrug them off and move on. At the risk of repeating myself, if I believed in an all-powerful supernatural being, I’m sure I wouldn’t worry about people making fun of it. It could deploy its omnipotence in support of its own campaign.
The ‘free speech’ precept is no more than a cover for prejudice against, and suspicion of, religion.
The author of such corkscrew-twisted logic has a great deal of mental unscrambling to do. If religion is a set of unsupported beliefs that adversely affect the lives of those who don’t want to know about them, then it deserves prejudice against it. Most people today are prejudiced against racism, and that prejudice is not reckoned to be a bad thing. As for suspicion, when those who say their religion is peaceful turn around and blow up a crowd of people, we owe it to ourselves to be suspicious in the interests of self preservation. Airport security is all about suspicion, but who complains about security personnel being suspicious of air travellers? As Salman Rushdie says, making any set of ideas sacred is an abandoment of the right to free speech.
Muslims are in love with their faith.
This debauchery of words is dishonest in the extreme. It is as though something precious and inseparably connected were being wrenched from a victim’s arms by the publication of a cartoon. If a person’s faith is such a huge part of their world view, involving as it does an all-powerful father figure, what harm can possibly be done by ink on paper? Let them love their faith if it makes them feel better, but let them do so quietly and privately, and let them respond to newspaper articles that they don’t like either by ignoring them or by writing letters of protest to the editor.
Another attacker lurks somewhere out there, waiting to attack Westergaard again.
This is tantamount to a threat. It is certainly intended to foment anxiety and foreboding, and I sense a streak of smug relish in the delivery of such a vile payload. Ms Holm, I feel physically sick, and your words have caused my nausea. Were it not for my genuine wish to retain and digest my wife’s excellent cooking, I would gladly send you a greaseproof bag of vomit in tomorrow’s mail.
Points made by commenters at RD.net
The cartoon was insulting to Muslims, and those who think it is fun to insult others should not be excused.
The cartoon insulted a set of beliefs – namely that it is acceptable to murder people over theological differences – not a person or persons. Thus the second clause falls, bereft of the supporting crutch of the false main clause.
There is a false dichotomy between not caring about being savagely rude and holding ideas sacred.
It is savagely, horribly, bloodily, bone-crunchingly, agonizingly, tragically, murderously rude to detonate explosive belts amid crowds while screaming of the glory of one’s favourite sky god. A belief system that condones – or fails to condemn, to a man – such disgusting barbarism deserves to be outlawed, let alone ridiculed. Savage rudeness toward baseless, dangerous assertions is commonplace and frequently justifiable. Moreover, the holders of such beliefs deserve absolutely no respect for failing to examine and question their beliefs sceptically. In fact they deserve contempt for such abnegation of their responsibilities as sentient humans. And that goes for the imams most of all, as they are the authority figures to whom the masses will surely flock.
The cartoon is a form of bullying.
Rubbish. Bullying is direct, cynical victimisation within an asymmetric power relationship. If Islam is true, then the power is all within the hands of Allah and his Muslim followers. They have nothing to fear from puny man and his insignificant works.
