Tactical Outrage
Jonah Goldberg has a post up about the Muslim "outrage" that most recently popped up over the remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI in Germany. But said "outrage" is spun up more and more frequently and for ever more trivial reasons, it seems. There is a reason for that, Goldberg explains:
But let us not dare suggest that even a whiff of intolerance can be detected in the Islamic world. If you say otherwise, I will cut off your head.
It may be amusing to note how so many Muslims are eager to confirm a stereotype in the process of denouncing that very stereotype, but it's not so funny when they put their jihad where the mouth is. Churches were attacked in the West Bank and a nun in Somalia was murdered, allegedly in reaction to the pope's comments. Al-Qaida's franchise in Iraq announced "We shall break the cross and spill the wine. … God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. … (May) God enable us to slit their throats."
But this isn't primarily about al-Qaida or even the war on terror. Note that the parliaments and governments of Islamic nations - our allies in the war on terror - have been at the forefront of the anti-pope backlash.
The many learned disquisitions on the pope's speech notwithstanding, this isn't about theology either. After all, no serious person can take lectures on religious tolerance from the Muslim world very seriously. Spare me tales of Jewish accommodation in the 15th century. Today, throughout the Muslim world, Jew-hatred and Christian-bashing are commonplace, state-sanctioned and fashionable.
No, this is about us. The best book for illuminating what's going on in the Muslim "street" isn't some weighty treatise on Islam; it's a short little tract called "White Guilt" by Shelby Steele. The book isn't even about Islam. Steele focuses on white liberals and the black radicals who've been gaming them ever since the 1960s. Whites, he argues, have internalized their own demonization. Deep down they fear that maybe they are imperialistic, racist bastards, and they are desperate to prove otherwise. In America, black radicals figured this out a while ago and have been dunning liberal whites ever since.
The West is caught in a similarly dysfunctional cycle of extortion and intimidation with Islam, but on a grander and far more violent scale. Whether it's the pope's comments or some Danish cartoons, self-appointed spokesmen for the Islamic street say, "You have offended a billion Muslims," which really means, "There are so many of us, you should watch out." And if you didn't get the message, just look around for the burning embassies and murdered infidels. They're not hard to find.
Which is right in line with my opinions on this subject, as I have noted before. More and more outrage, escalated with each apology issued. The "clerics" who flog their people into frothing rage at the slightest excuse know now that there will be no repercussions for their barbarism. Instead, the more outrageous their "outrage" the more apologies they can squeeze out of the West. And elderly nuns are shot down in cold blood. In the back.
The problem with tolerating outrageous behavior is that the act of tolerance encourages greater and greater excesses of bad behavior.
Blogosphere, World news | Gaius Wednesday, 20 September , 2006
