The End of Moderation

So this is where we're at in the world; a cartoon can cause violence, boycotts, mass protests, and calls for beheadings.

No cartoon should ever cause such a thing... unless it's Cathy.

Thank you for indulging me my joke. Now I'll get somewhat more serious.

The current outrage in the Muslim world over a cartoon that first ran in September of 2005 should provoke some skepticism. We have a war in the Islamic community, a war between the moderates and the Islamists, and the current global political climate has given the Islamists the upper hand. This is not only distressing to the West but to the leaders of many Muslim nations, who do not want to upset the status quo. Sure, it's good to throw out a little anti-American rhetoric every once in a while, but they don't want these angry youths to figure out who's REALLY suppressing them. So they need to distract, deflect, focus the fundamentalist's attention on something else to take the heat off of them.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It's basically the thesis statement of What's the Matter With Kansas. In this case, rather than Republicans fanning the flames of gay marriage to get their fundamentalists to vote against their economic interests, leaders in various Islamic countries are fanning the flames of cartoon depictions of Mohammed to get their fundamentalists to ignore the fact that their leadership is as much to blame for their desperate existences as the West.

There are other issues at play here, including (as Juan Cole points old) familiar ones of first world vs. third world, and real concerns about differences of interpretation in Muslim societies. And while in Western democracies you have the right to say anything you want, including the right to be an asshole, it's probably good to be attuned to certain sensitivities. But this is a classic deflection move by countries like Saudi Arabia, who want to keep these Islamic interests on their side.

What we've seen over the last several years, for reasons on all sides of the equation, is the end of moderation in our time. In such a climate the tiniest grievances become enormous affronts. Add to this the cynical exploitation of extremism by committed interests and these affronts grow ever larger. I fear we are losing the world I once knew: even in the 1980s, when Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by mullahs in Iran for writing The Satanic Verses, I don't remember this kind of explosion of violence, or holding states responsible for the actions of their subjects. I don't think a giant "LIGHTEN UP, EVERYBODY!" will work anymore, though it may have in the past.

Incidentally Iran's largest paper is having a Holocaust cartoon contest. I think Andy Kindler could win it if he puts his mind to it. But they're probably not going for "funny" in that contest.