We live in a time when when the barbarians are presumed correct. If the Sudan regime chooses to attack a western teacher, who tries to educate the children, the slightest deviation from Islamic ideology is subject to extreme punishment.
ANOTHER UPDATE: While skimming NRO’s Media Blog, I came across this. I was born in Sudan. I moved to the UK two years ago. The teacher went to Sudan and she should have learnt the laws of that country. Here in England people think that what she did was an innocent mistake, but I don’t think that. She was very wrong to make fun of the Prophet Muhammad. Boys are called Muhammad and that’s alright because mothers are proud to name their sons after the Prophet. But to name a teddy bear after him is wrong. The teacher should be punished because she has insulted Islam and Muslim people.
Meizu, UK
This person, and some of the others commenting, are living in Britain !
UPDATE: There is a useful online seminar at NRO on the Mohammed teddy bear controversy. Among other things, it points out that these are not spontaneous demonstrations. The signs are pre-printed and the mob (all men, of course) is produced by the government, as necessary. This does not excuse the absurd reaction of western elites, the subject of this post. It makes it all the more inexplicable.
Our elites then excuse this reaction to modest attempts at modernism as unacceptable in the world of Islam. We are disarmed. “it is clear that Gillian Gibbons did not intend to malign the Prophet Muhammad and that the children in her class had chosen the name Muhammad for their class teddy-bear, some might still question why she was not more culturally sensitive to a potential backlash.” Thus, it is our fault that we did not anticipate the mindless reaction to innocent attempts to bring children into the modern world. This teacher was trying to educate children. That is unacceptable. She did not know that she was entering a world in which education is only a threat to their anti-modern frenzy of rage at the world that has passed them by. “At a time when Islam is under siege from Muslim extremists and extremists from the Far Right in Europe and America, the judiciaries of Sudan and Saudi Arabia have managed to reinforce the vilification of Islam and used Islamic law as a weapon rather than a yardstick for justice. All our futures depend upon an ability to agree upon a global ethic, based upon mutual understanding and respect, that transcends our religious and cultural differences. Whatever our differences, there can never be an acceptable excuse for injustice and intolerance in the name of our religions.” So our prohibitions on torture and rape are culturally insensitive. We must accept medieval concepts of behavior since those societies are unable to accept our values. It does not matter that abuse of woman and children is morally repugnant to us. We should allow such behavor in the name of multicultural dogma. This is simply unacceptable. These societies are sick and must change or we will be unable to share the planet with them. The fact that some scholars, and I use the term with irony, cannot see this is only another example of why the academic elites are outside the mainstream of modern western thought. They are of a piece wth the Duke “group of 88.” I will not subject my daughter to this influence voluntarily. I would rather she learn to flip hamburgers. At least that is an honorable trade. The academic elites are not the only ones. The civic authorities seem determined to surrender the ground to the barbarians.
Depressing and true post, Dr. K. Just two things:
1. There is some poem I have been looking for, for some time. It has a great line that describes Western Civilization these days very well: “…I hunger for your blame…” I haven’t found the poem yet, but I will. And it is true—we seem ashamed of all things we have done, equating the bad with the good. At the same time, the same self-haters seem to ignore or minimize any bad thing another culture has done (it’s usually our fault, in fact), and trumpet any good thing done by that culture (while ignoring that same Western influence decried earlier). It’s like a cultural death wish—especially given that non-Western cultures generally don’t share our mania for self criticism!
2. The problem in a nutshell is in this month’s “Seattle Metropolitan” magazine. The cover story is how to pick out the best (and priciest) private school. On page 23 is an advertisement for “Butch Blue,” a clothing store. The advertisement describes universal health care as an issue (as it is). Yet the same advertisement hawks clothing for hundreds of dollars a piece, including a weird little cape or raincoat for men costing literally over 1400 dollars.
I read that advertisement, and I thought “Well, we can start to address the health care problem by *not* buying this crap and donating the money to poor people to buy health insurance.”
So despite all of our cultural navel gazing, it is clear that the well to do compartmentalize themselves pretty well. Western Civ sucks, but our iPhones rule. Especially the iPhones with our initials in diamonds on the back.
Oh well.
The elites embracing of moral relativism has made them vulnerable to what I call the “candy bar fallacy”: one kid has a candy bar, a second child comes up to him and grabs it, demanding the whole thing. An adult comes along in the middle of this tussle and says, “let’s be fair: split the candy bar between you two.”
Now we have been weighed and measured by the Muslim community, so they make utterly outrageous demands, such as all infidels should be killed, and our leaders come along and say, “let’s compromise. Don’t kill us, and we will implement sharia law.” QED.
Doombuggy, weighed and measured is exactly right. It’s not only the Muslims, it’s the resurgent communist threat. My brother told me with a straight face the other day that state controlled news isn’t so bad. What!!!!???!!!!
But, I suppose it all depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.
Dear Vivian Louise…
That was an amazing statement from your brother. I don’t know his politics, but he surely wouldn’t approve of the State controlling the news—when the State disagrees with his political POV. If he is of the Left, he probably dislikes Fox News as an “organ of the Republican Party.”
Maybe another example of a lack of self-observation?
My in-laws are all pretty Left of center. Over the years, they have decided that I am merely misguided, not evil.
Yep, EB, he totally believes that FN is an arm of the ‘evil and greedy’ Republican Party.
What I don’t get is that he’s visited Lithuania, seen the scars of the oppression, heard the stories of how it was much MUCH better under the Nazi’s than the Soviets and still he clings to the Reds. He’s heard of all it in first hand tales of rape, theft, wanton destruction and brutality. Nope, he’s pro-communist all the way. I’m baffled by it. His defense is that health care was better under the Soviets than it is here and there now.
Well, Vivian Louise, it looks like your brother *doesn’t* believe in government control of the media right now. He just wants it when he approves of the government. Scary.
I know from experience that there is no good arguing with family members on this sort of thing. My father, bless his soul, spouts all kinds of racist nonsense. I *know* he knows better, but he is the product of his time and upbringing, I guess.
Anyway, the best “cure” for how wonderful the Soviet medical system is, is to have that person speak to someone who was actually there. As I say, there is this weird cognitive dissonance: ignore the good here, emphasize the bad there…and the reverse for other nations. Maybe it is a “dad hatred” thing.
But it sure is common. There is a reason that Lenin called us “useful idiots.”
“Yep, EB, he totally believes that FN is an arm of the ‘evil and greedy’ Republican Party”
Unfortunately, he and his kind (no offense VL) will be screaming the loudest when they realize they’ve been boiling in the pot of water all along and find out too late to do anything about it.
How easily freedom is allowed to ebb and flow between our fingers. Surely, the founding fathers and all who fought so long and hard for this pirvilege are screaming in their graves.
Frankly, I wouldn’t even name a dog, a big ugly fat dumb dog Mohammed.
Dana, you put that well. I think that the big difference here is that I believe that laws are not inherently good. They can do good things…and can also do bad things.
So I would say that the best rule of thumb is to imagine the law you like in the hands of your bitterest enemy.
What the heck do I know? Just my opinion. But the flexible yardstick on our modern society drives me crazy.
Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so! really nice post.