From: Douglas Brooker (d.brooker@laposte.net)
Date: Sat 11 Feb 2006 - 14:36:41 GMT
Wade Allsopp wrote:
>
> On 2/11/06, *Kate Distin* wrote
>
>
>
> Your analysis strikes me as having hit the nail on the head. I've had
> conversations with very moderate, culturally English, not particularly
> religiously observant Muslims in the UK, who feel very strongly that
> although they condemn violence and terrorism they can nonetheless
> understand the feelings behind the violence and terrorism. As you
> say,
> there is a perception of being marginalised and not having their needs
> met within Western society. And another part of the problem is of
> course the entanglement of any encounter between Islam and the
> West with
> the situation in Israel/Palestine. All of this creates a strong
> feeling
> of identity with fellow Muslims, whatever their behaviour, and a
> consequent reluctance to condemn even very extreme behaviour by others
> within that brotherhood. Heightened in this case by identifying with
> the feelings of outrage about the prophet being ridiculed and
> denigrated. Then we as non-Muslims hear even our very moderate
> friends
> expressing sympathy with the feelings underlying terrorism - and the
> alienation is exacerbated.
>
>
>
> I agree, this is the point I was trying to make when I said that the
> main losers of all this
> have been the moderate Muslims living in the west whose main goals are
> not jihad
> but simply to get on well with their lives and live peacefully with
> their neighbours.
>
> My sense is that many moderate British Muslims and those such as Jack
> Straw who
> strive to represent their views, were wrong footed by the cartoons.
> The initial reaction was:
> "this is outrageous, people are linking Islam with terrorism, this is
> yet another example of the
> prejudices we face, these publications should not be allowed."
>
> We then saw maybe 50-100 radical Islamists (representing about 0.007%
> of the British Muslim population) outside parliament screaming "behead
> the cartoonists, let's have another 7/7, go go Bin Laden etc etc"
>
> In an important sense it was these people who the REAL cartoons.
> Remember the idea behind a cartoon
> is to exaggerate real features of the subject to comic effect.
>
> Whereas the original cartoons were pretty weak images published in a
> Danish newspaper months previously and would have had approximately
> zero impact on British people's perception of Muslims, these real live
> cartoons got headline coverage on every TV news channel and just about
> every serious newspaper in the UK for 2 or 3 days. They will have had
> a material effect on reinforcing the prejudice against Muslims in the
> UK. It was only a day or two later that moderate Muslim opinion
> seemed to wake up to this and begin a largely ineffectual counter
> offensive.
>
> What I think moderate Muslims have not woken up to is that successful
> cartoon images "work" because they magnify aspects of the subject that
> are really there. Think of the domineering, handbag bashing Spitting
> Image puppet of Margaret Thatcher or the grey, mousy puppet of John
> Major.
>
> I think the comedy side of this whole story has not received much
> attention to date. The Muslim reaction to the cartoons
> has generally been that because they are cartoons they are there to
> "ridicule" and perhaps humiliate Muslims. In fact I would say that
> this is to mistake the nature of comedy and cartoons, at least in
> British society. Comedy is there to bring us down to earth in a non
> violent, non threatening way, to prevent us from taking ourselves too
> seriously. When successful it is perhaps the most effective form of
> criticism, which is presumably why in just about all of the major
> world dictatorships, from Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein
> to the current Islamic theocracies, making fun of the leader and
> regime in public was something that could rapidly lead to prison or in
> many cases death.
>
> Most discussion of the cartoons has centred on the one with Muhammad
> with a bomb in his turban, which is really just making the point of
> the link between Islam and terrorism. I think most people have said
> that the only one of the cartoons which is actually funny is the one
> with Muhammad sitting on a cloud being approached by a line of suicide
> bombers saying "sorry we've run out of virgins". This is the one (or
> something like it) which should be on posters all over Gaza, Baghdad,
> Kabul and Bradford, because there is a very dangerous meme out there
> which needs to be doused and the traditional forms of argument simply
> don't work against it.
What is the very dangerous meme out there that needs to be doused?
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