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Washington Post: Why I Published Those Cartoons

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Jim Rutt

Washington Post: Why I Published Those Cartoons

>for a great many people on this planet; religion
>is a crucially important activity. It is something that defines them and
>defines their sense of humanity, it is their sole source of strength and
>moral sustenance in what is a very cruel and unjust world

That was true in the West, as well, up to say 1750. And then we had an Enlightenment where at first just a small vanguard (interestingly including some of America's Founding Fathers: Franklin, Jefferson, and Payne amongst them) began defining society and human life such that religion had a smaller place in them.

By today, perhaps 25% of Americans, and less than 10% of Western Europeans feel that religion "defines them and their sense of humanity", while the majority believe that religion can be one source of moral ideas and direction in life, but not a totalitarian one.

It seems there hasn't been the equivilent of an Enlightenment in the Muslim world yet, or if there was one, it has failed.

Since it's almost certainly true that any given "revealed religion" is false on an objective basis (there have been 10,000 mutually contridictory revealed religions in recorded history, so at best any given one has .01% probability of being true) a society that is completely dedicated to such a false system is not likely to compete successfully with other systems such as The West and East Asia where something like an open search for the truth often overwhelms the legacy religious tendencies.

Until there is a Muslim Enlightenment, the Muslin world is likely to remain an intellectual, economic, and scientific backwater with the resultant resentment of Muslim peoples. Thus we are likely in for a long period of conflict between Islam, the last Closed Society, and the rest of the world which operates more on an Open Society model. (I am using Open Society here in Popperian sense).

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mohammed El-Beltagy" <mohammed at computer.org>
> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <Friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Washington Post: Why I Published Those Cartoons
> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 02:05:47 +0200
>
>
> Of course the media is important, however I was pointing to something
> different here. I do not think what is at issue is how religions distort of
> our view of reality.the culture you live in and its value does a pretty good
> job at that anyways. I even shy from referring to any religion as a singular
> monolithic entity that can be easily dissected by our intellectual scalpels.
> What I was trying to demonstrate (albeit unsuccessfully) is that-ridiculous
> as it may sound for some- for a great many people on this planet; religion
> is a crucially important activity. It is something that defines them and
> defines their sense of humanity, it is their sole source of strength and
> moral sustenance in what is a very cruel and unjust world. Insult their
> religion and its symbols and you injure them at a very personal level. It is
> not what religion allows or disallows, it how people feel about it and
> relate to it. Egyptians are naturally outraged by what goes on at Guantanamo
> and Abu-Gharib, yet mocking revered symbols of their religion hurts them far
> more. I know that this might not make a great deal of sense; it may be
> difficult to grasp or understand, but you are in danger of trying to impose
> your own priorities on degrees of moral outrage on others.
>
>
>
> Now with regards to holocaust in Egyptian media (Arab media is too broad and
> diverse), Schindler's list was out in the movie theaters when it was
> released, even more touching was Benigni's brilliant La Vita e Bella.
> However, the holocaust is not part of our immediate historic experience, it
> does not and never will define a very proximate human tragedy the way is
> does for Europeans. Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinian people
> is the proximate human tragedy for Arabs in general. They sympathize with
> them; they feel the pain of the dispossession of their land, the cruelty of
> the occupation, their daily humiliation at checkpoints. This suffering is
> felt much less by Europeans and most Americans are oblivious to it. the
> media plays an important role here. The sorry situation of Iraq is now a
> fresh wound. It serves to distance Arabs from the west in general. Many feel
> a great deal of disillusionment with some of the west's defining values that
> were once admired, further fueling proponents of a religious state.
>
>
>
> This cartoon episode goes to further illustrate the growing cultural divide
> between the Muslim world and the west. It is a gulf that is growing at an
> exponential rate. I fear that there might come a point where we lose our
> ability to communicate as all thought will be framed in opposing and
> hermetically sealed sets of values.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [...]The public opinion is very strongly
> > influenced by the media. I wonder if they have ever shown pictures
> > of the holocaust or films like Schindler's List in the Arab media?
> >
> > The problems with religions is that they are all nearly 2000 years
> > old. They distort your point of view just as good as the modern
> > mass media. No religion allows the criticism of sacred symbols,
> > because it would endanger the integrity of the group, and religions
> > are like gods fundamentally related to social groups (in ancient
> > Egypt for example every city was the city of a certain god, the
> > temple was the house of the god and at the same time the center
> > of the city). An additional problem in many muslim states is that
> > there is no clear distinction between state, politics and religion,
> > the Sharia for example covers both secular and religious life.
> > A "religious" cartoon is therefore automatically a political issue.
> >
> > It is thought-provoking that the protests now are much stronger
> > than the protests against the ongoing war (against what?) of America's
> > Rancher-In-Chief who obviously lied about the true causes. I also
> > wonder why there are nearly no protests against the camp in
> > Guantanamo Bay, which is much worse than any cartoon.
> >
>
>
> ============================================================
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Douglas Roberts-2

Washington Post: Why I Published Those Cartoons

I've been thinking about this since I read it. During my mountain bike ride
this afternoon, even. I believe this is one of the more enlightened
statements on the subject of fundamentalist religion, especially Islamic
fundamentalism, that I have seen in quite some while.

Until the fundamentalists change, the global situation will remain exactly
as it is.

--Doug

On 2/24/06, jim at jimrutt.com <jim at jimrutt.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> Until there is a Muslim Enlightenment, the Muslin world is likely to
> remain an intellectual, economic, and scientific backwater with the
> resultant resentment of Muslim peoples. Thus we are likely in for a long
> period of conflict between Islam, the last Closed Society, and the rest of
> the world which operates more on an Open Society model. (I am using Open
> Society here in Popperian sense).
>
>
>

--
Doug Roberts, RTI
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell
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Douglas Roberts-2

Washington Post: Why I Published Those Cartoons

Sorry for the reply to my own post, but as it turns out, my stream of
consciousness hadn't finished dribbling out on this particular subject (see
below):

On 2/24/06, Douglas Roberts <doug at parrot-farm.net> wrote:
>
> I've been thinking about this since I read it. During my mountain bike
> ride this afternoon, even. I believe this is one of the more enlightened
> statements on the subject of fundamentalist religion, especially Islamic
> fundamentalism, that I have seen in quite some while.
>
> Until the fundamentalists change, the global situation will remain exactly
> as it is.

And, you should probably not hold your breath in anticipation of this
monumental change, IMO. We are talking about evolutionary time scales for
changes of this type to occur. Eons. The requisite improvement in the
aggregate level of human intelligence, social maturity, etc. required to
place us all collectively in a position where we might be able to develop
rational solutions to the types of problems we now see with respect to
fundamentalist Muslims, Rednecks, Republicans, agent-based modeling
proponents, etc. is a long way off.

--Doug

> On 2/24/06, jim at jimrutt.com <jim at jimrutt.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Until there is a Muslim Enlightenment, the Muslin world is likely to
> > remain an intellectual, economic, and scientific backwater with the
> > resultant resentment of Muslim peoples. Thus we are likely in for a long
> > period of conflict between Islam, the last Closed Society, and the rest of
> > the world which operates more on an Open Society model. (I am using Open
> > Society here in Popperian sense).
> >
> >
> >
> --
> Doug Roberts, RTI
> 505-455-7333 - Office
> 505-670-8195 - Cell
>

Owen Densmore

Washington Post: Why I Published Those Cartoons

Administrator

In reply to this post by Jim Rutt

> Until there is a Muslim Enlightenment, the Muslin world is likely
> to remain an intellectual, economic, and scientific backwater with
> the resultant resentment of Muslim peoples. Thus we are likely in
> for a long period of conflict between Islam, the last Closed
> Society, and the rest of the world which operates more on an Open
> Society model. (I am using Open Society here in Popperian sense).

Fine point: I'd suggest a slight modification: Middle-East (or
possibly Arab?) Islam vs World Wide Islam (Indonesia, India, etc).
They apparently are considerably different.

Tom Friedman had this to say a few days ago. Rather negative, but
for what its worth, here's a copy. If you have the NYTimes Select,
you can click through from here:
http://tinyurl.com/94x78
Tom avoids the religious dimension, generally, and keeps to a
somewhat Pollyanna new-market-economy view.

I prefer Reza Aslan's view that Islam is undergoing its Reformation.
(Ours had a follow-on civil war or two.) His argument that every
fatwa against "terrorism" is immediately followed by further bombings
against Islamic institutions rather than "the west" is compelling. He
argues that the fatwa are as meaningless to the Islamic
fundamentalists as excommunication against, say, a Baptist. If we
look closely, it does seem far more an Islam-against-Islam conflict
than an Islam-against-Modernism one.

Unfortunately, we're making it worse.

I wonder if there are conversations like ours on a middle-eastern
mail group?

-- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

Copyright New York Times Company Feb 22, 2006
Empty Pockets, Angry Minds
Thomas L. Friedman

I have no doubt that the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad
have caused real offense to many Muslims. I'm glad my newspaper
didn't publish them. But there is something in the worldwide Muslim
reaction to these cartoons that is excessive, and suggests that
something else is at work in this story. It's time we talked about it.

To understand this Danish affair, you can't just read Samuel
Huntington's classic, ''The Clash of Civilizations.'' You also need
to read Karl Marx, because this explosion of Muslim rage is not just
about some Western insult. It's also about an Eastern failure. It is
about the failure of many Muslim countries to build economies that
prepare young people for modernity -- and all the insult, humiliation
and frustration that has produced.

Today's world has become so wired together, so flattened, that you
can't avoid seeing just where you stand on the planet -- just where
the caravan is and just how far ahead or behind you are. In this flat
world you get your humiliation fiber-optically, at 56K or via
broadband, whether you're in the Muslim suburbs of Paris or Kabul.
Today, Muslim youth are enraged by cartoons in Denmark. Earlier, it
was a Newsweek story about a desecrated Koran. Why? When you're
already feeling left behind, even the tiniest insult from afar goes
to the very core of your being -- because your skin is so thin.

India is the second-largest Muslim country in the world, but the
cartoon protests here, unlike those in Pakistan, have been largely
peaceful. One reason for the difference is surely that Indian Muslims
are empowered and live in a flourishing democracy. India's richest
man is a Muslim software entrepreneur. But so many young Arabs and
Muslims live in nations that have deprived them of any chance to
realize their full potential.

The Middle East Media Research Institute, called Memri, just
published an analysis of the latest employment figures issued by the
U.N.'s International Labor Office. The I.L.O. study, Memri reported,
found that ''the Middle East and North Africa stand out as the region
with the highest rate of unemployment in the world'': 13.2 percent.
That is worse than in sub-Saharan Africa.

While G.D.P. in the Middle East-North Africa region registered an
annual increase of 5.5 percent from 1993 to 2003, productivity, the
measure of how efficiently these resources were used, increased by
only about 0.1 percent annually -- better than only one region, sub-
Saharan Africa.

The Arab world is the only area in the world where productivity did
not increase with G.D.P. growth. That's because so much of the G.D.P.
growth in this region was driven by oil revenues, not by educating
workers to do new things with new technologies.

Nearly 60 percent of the Arab world is under the age of 25. With
limited job growth to absorb them, the I.L.O. estimates, the region
is spinning out about 500,000 more unemployed people each year. At a
time when India and China are focused on getting their children to be
more scientific, innovative thinkers, educational standards in much
of the Muslim world -- particularly when it comes to science and
critical inquiry -- are not keeping pace.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-i-Azam
University in Islamabad, Pakistan, bluntly wrote the following in
Global Agenda 2006, the journal of the recent Davos World Economic
Forum:

''Pakistan's public (and all but a handful of private) universities
are intellectual rubble, their degrees of little consequence.
According to the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology,
Pakistanis have succeeded in registering only eight patents
internationally in 57 years.

''[Today] you seldom encounter a Muslim name in scientific journals.
Muslim contributions to pure and applied science -- measured in terms
of discoveries, publications, patents and processes -- are marginal.
The harsh truth is that science and Islam parted ways many centuries
ago. In a nutshell, the Muslim experience consists of a golden age of
science from the ninth to the 14th centuries, subsequent collapse,
modest rebirth in the 19th century, and a profound reversal from
science and modernity, beginning in the last decades of the 20th
century. This reversal appears, if anything, to be gaining speed.''

No wonder so many young people in this part of the world are
unprepared, and therefore easily enraged, as they encounter
modernity. And no wonder backward religious leaders and dictators in
places like Syria and Iran -- who have miserably failed their youth
-- are so quick to turn their young people's anger against an
insulting cartoon and away from themselves and the rot they have
wrought.