Intolerance simply cannot be tolerated. And if you think that’s a contradiction, look closer at the logic. The premise of democracy is necessarily that of radically free speech, that all voices must be tolerated, and while that includes the voices of intolerance (pick your hate group of choice), it doesn’t include any action that would threaten the premise. And it’s pretty hard to argue with the premise of Democracy if you are one that enjoys free speech and especially if you are not (one would think.) Once the proponents of intolerance begin any attempt at censoring the tolerant ones, you have that initial premise of democracy threatened, and that group has forfeited their right to protection under democracy. Therefore the radical religious fascists that are burning embassies over some cartoons that dare insult Islam, should be squashed like the little hate bugs they are. Simple as that.

While it’s silly to think that a cartoon could cause so much distress worldwide, it is important to notice as Reason points out, that compared to previous radical Muslim witch-hunts this one isn’t having the same effect, with fewer politically correct apologists surfacing in the western world.

Anybody who can recall the atmosphere in 1989—when religious rage seemed unstoppable and there was always some crank or contrarian around to point out that Rushdie really brought the trouble on himself—will notice the difference. European opinion polls and the mood of the media today indicate a different attitude, more confident and determined, more ready to admit the obvious point that civilized people don’t go to the gun over an insulting picture.

The problem I have with this is that it’s not simply that today’s collective attitude has evolved towards embracing freedom more than it has evolved towards taking a firm stance against religious fascism, particularly that of the Islamist persuasion. Simply put, I think that the world has had it with these folks. Except the US, who in a bizarre move has sided with the muslims, citing that the cartoons are offensive, blah blah. Even the “liberal” media won’t reprint the cartoons, in an act of pathetic self-censorship. Free speech? Well, only if it doesn’t offend a fascist…

I am not a fan of organized religions. In my opinion, they are rarely more than ideological cartels, often in direct defiance of state authority, liberty and democracy. Not that opposing state authority is necessarily bad, but when one cites a “higher authority” than the state, what in god’s name (no pun) will ever limit that imagined authority? So I’m not a fan of where the philosophy of religion meets it’s practice in the everyday world, where the rubber meets the road. Religion becomes and excuse to exacerbate the violent territorialism that is the cause of most of the worlds conflicts. Of course, it could be said that anything exacerbates cultural difference, when two opposing groups are looking for differences to begin with, and “territorial” conflicts are every bit social and ethnic conflicts as well. But religion, or rather, the misuse of religion, is always right up front, offering any radical group carte blanc justification for whatever barbaric violence they commit.

The cartoon controversy also illustrates the very serious problem of organized religion being able to reign in it’s extremist variants. For example, it’s too bad for Islam that there are so many radical sects making it look so bad these days. And it’s too bad they can’t take care of it, because it’s only going to continue to sully the reputation of their religion until the patience of every peaceful person on the planet is exhausted. Whether they are responsible of taking care of it or not isn’t the question really, because if they don’t who the hell will?

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2006 at 4:55 pm and is filed under happenings, musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.