Merry-go-Round

Then, depicting Jews as Satan

Tried and true technique, new target

Western culture prizes learning through experience, no matter how bruising that may be, & innocence is something tossed lightly aside as something with little value & much harm. After all, the heart must be hardened! Some experiences are well worth having but the incessant hurt people inflict on themselves in order to “grow” often seems psychotic. Experience then seems an end in itself rather than a means to one’s own becoming.

The current controversy over the cartoons seems to me to be deeply rooted in this idea of experiential learning with one essential piece missing: experiential retention. It's as if we are hamsters on a wheel, turning it yet again because we cannot remember what the last time felt like, or because we delude ourselves into thinking it might now be an utterly new feeling.

There is no doubt that the general tolerance with which immigrants/minorities have lately been treated in the West has enabled them to live lives that may not have been possible elsewhere. But it's also important to recognize that tolerance without real empathy has always the potential to turn rancid. We think that human rights, the rule of law, or civilization will protect us. But they won't, not without constant vigilance & realism regarding human frailties.

Europe considers itself the center of civilization, progress, wisdom, modernity, secularism - all of which are held up as the pinnacles of achievement of the human race. But an entrenched idea of superiority can blind us to how easily we can be exploited. The actions of nations are not linear. They loop and run ragged, making the same mistakes repeatedly. And the veneer of civilization can be easily broken by carefully manipulated fear, anger, racism, hunger, or desperation.

My question is: how many times must hatred erupt or genocide occur before we recognize the familiarity of the logs carried to stoke the fire or understand that with rights come great responsibilities?

Does Nazi Germany seem too long ago or a horrifying game of moral equivalence that one must not play? Do rape camps in Bosnia ring a bell? Don't we understand where they spring from? When the radio, TV, newspapers & prominent leaders or parties of a nation converge upon a minority to dehumanize them, to whisper of their sinister power, to present them as threats to our civilization or our superior selves, that is the beginning. It will not necessarily lead to the same end, but the memory of those ends should make us hesitate before rushing in to defend hatred in the guise of free speech.

This is not a war between Islamic taboos & Western values. This is an opportunity to see if Europe's experiential retention exists. As it is, we are already witness to the growth of overt governmental/police hostility in France, radio calls for their extermination or expulsion in Denmark, & the incorrect assumptions of Muslim power, which apparently must be fought with the valiant republication of the cartoons across Europe.

Frankly, Europe needs to deal with its millenia-old lies & suspicion regarding the Jews and Muslims which continue to deeply affect it, to scrutinize its legacy of pogroms, genocide, colonialism, & world wars, and to recognize its difficulties in integrating & fully accepting citizens who differ religiously, racially, or ethnically. Implementing laws against anti-Semitism means little if one then simply turns the same rhetoric & techniques on another group.

These are difficult conversations for any nation to have, but they are necessary. Otherwise we can always look forward to good people everywhere wringing their hands helplessly & Amnesty International and the United Nations impeccably documenting how an atrocity took place - without being able to prevent it from happening, or to stop it once it began.

I'm tired of that particular merry-go-round.

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Before any one says that the US or Muslims need a few history lessons themselves, let me say - thank you, I agree. This piece, however, is focused on Europe.

Excellent reads on the cartoon issue: Akram's Razor very insightfully points out the context which lit the fuse, Rachard Itani on the hypocrisies which arise from sticking to the letter of the law but not its spirit, & Thabit collates views from all over.

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13:11 Truly, God will never change the condition of a people until they change it themselves (with their own souls).