Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publication: Slate.com
Date: July 30, 2007
URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2171371/fr/flyout
Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?
During the greater part of last week, Slate's
sister site On Faith (it is jointly produced by Newsweek and washingtonpost.com,
both owned by the Washington Post Co., which also owns Slate) gave itself
over to a discussion about the religion of Islam. As usual in such cases,
the search for "moderate" versions of this faith was under way before
the true argument had even begun. If I were a Muslim myself, I think that
this search would be the most "offensive" part of the business.
Why must I prove that my deepest belief is compatible with moderation?
Unless I am wrong, a sincere Muslim need only
affirm that there is one god, and only one, and that the Prophet Mohammed
was his messenger, bringing thereby the final words of God to humanity. Certain
practices are supposed to follow this affirmation, including a commitment
to pray five times a day, a promise to pay a visit to Mecca if such a trip
should be possible, fasting during Ramadan, and a pious vow to give alms to
the needy. The existence of djinns, or devils, is hard to disavow because
it was affirmed by the prophet. An obligation of jihad is sometimes mentioned,
and some quite intelligent people argue about whether "holy war"
is meant to mean a personal struggle or a political one. No real Islamic authority
exists to decide this question, and those for whom the personal is highly
political have recently become rather notorious.
Thus, Islamic belief, however simply or modestly
it may be stated, is an extreme position to begin with. No human being can
possibly claim to know that there is a God at all, or that there are, or were,
any other gods to be repudiated. And when these ontological claims have collided,
as they must, with their logical limits, it is even further beyond the cognitive
capacity of any person to claim without embarrassment that the lord of creation
spoke his ultimate words to an unlettered merchant in seventh-century Arabia.
Those who utter such fantastic braggings, however many times a day they do
so, can by definition have no idea what they are talking about. (I hasten
to add that those who boast of knowing about Moses parting the Red Sea, or
about a virgin with a huge tummy, are in exactly the same position.) Finally,
it turns out to be impossible to determine whether jihad means more alms-giving
or yet more zealous massacre of, say, Shiite Muslims.
Why, then, should we be commanded to "respect"
those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and
unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a
license for murder and rape? As one who has occasionally challenged Islamic
propaganda in public and been told that I have thereby "insulted 1.5
billion Muslims," I can say what I suspect-which is that there is an
unmistakable note of menace behind that claim. No, I do not think for a moment
that Mohammed took a "night journey" to Jerusalem on a winged horse.
And I do not care if 10 billion people intone the contrary. Nor should I have
to. But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds
the Muslim demand for "respect."
Before me is a recent report that a student
at Pace University in New York City has been arrested for a hate crime in
consequence of an alleged dumping of the Quran. Nothing repels me more than
the burning or desecration of books, and if, for example, this was a volume
from a public or university library, I would hope that its mistreatment would
constitute a misdemeanor at the very least. But if I choose to spit on a copy
of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely
my business. When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited
copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window,
I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter. Why do we not
make this distinction in the case of the Quran? We do so simply out of fear,
and because the fanatical believers in that particular holy book have proved
time and again that they mean business when it comes to intimidation. Surely
that should be to their discredit rather than their credit. Should not the
"moderate" imams of On Faith have been asked in direct terms whether
they are, or are not, negotiating with a gun on the table?
The Pace University incident becomes even
more ludicrous and sinister when it is recalled that Islamists are the current
leaders in the global book-burning competition. After the rumor of a Quran
down the toilet in Guantanamo was irresponsibly spread, a mob in Afghanistan
burned down an ancient library that (as President Hamid Karzai pointed out
dryly) contained several ancient copies of the same book. Not content with
igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the
burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim,
are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning
the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution
and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression,
however vulgar, of an opinion.
This has to stop, and it has to stop right
now. There can be no concession to sharia in the United States. When will
we see someone detained, or even cautioned, for advocating the burning of
books in the name of God? If the police are honestly interested in this sort
of "hate crime," I can help them identify those who spent much of
last year uttering physical threats against the republication in this country
of some Danish cartoons. In default of impartial prosecution, we have to insist
that Muslims take their chance of being upset, just as we who do not subscribe
to their arrogant certainties are revolted every day by the hideous behavior
of the parties of God.
It is often said that resistance to jihadism
only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation
could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the
Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made
deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre
of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will
cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be
said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The
enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their
own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and
suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under
the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.
