For those of you who don’t listen to the SNN podcast every week, this is my contribution from Sunday:
I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase, “tyranny of the majorityâ€. My topic today is the tyranny of the minority—specifically of the Muslim variety.
Consider what has happened over the past several weeks in Europe and America, and for longer than that in Australia.
In Britain, a police officer asked not to be assigned to the Israeli Embassy. The first reasons given in news articles were a refusal on “moral groundsâ€. He objected to the war with Hizbullah.
Scotland Yard is now saying the first story isn’t true, and that it’sa safety issue—the police officer, who has family in Lebanon, was afraid for his family in Lebanon if he should be spotted guarding the Israeli embassy.
I don’t know what the truth is; this story will doubtless play out further, but the point is this: Events in Lebanon are affecting actions in London, and they are driven by Muslims—who are in the minority in Britain.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, home to a large Somali immigrant population, Muslim cab drivers are refusing to pick up certain passengers at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport—the ones carrying alcohol. The airport says that about three people per day are turned down by Muslim cabbies, and they are trying to figure out some kind of signal so that passengers will know which cabbies will take them if they have a bottle of beer in their hand, and which will not. Granted, three times a day at an airport is not a lot, but stay with me on this one, it’s going to work into the tyranny theme.
In London, a blind woman was refused service by a Muslim cab driver because he said her dog was unclean and refused to have it in his cab. The driver was ultimately fined 1,400 pounds. This did not dissuade him. He said he would again refuse to allow any dogs in his cab, even guide dogs for the blind. This is also, by the way, not the first complaint of its kind in London.
Apparently, this is common practice in Melbourne, Australia, where at least 20 blind people have complained that Muslim cabbies wouldn’t take them as fares because they had guide dogs.
Also in London, an art gallery removed paintings by surrealist Hans Bellmer the day before an exhibition was due to open, for fear of—you guessed it—giving offense to Muslims.
Let’s go back a week or so, to Berlin, where an opera house pulled a Mozart production because it included a scene featuring the severed heads of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and Poseidon. The opera house administration weren’t afraid of offended Greeks wielding pitchforks. They were afraid of—say it with me, folks—offending Muslims.
I sense my listeners have picked up on the pattern here. And you’ve also picked up on the name I am giving this habit of Muslims taking offense at everything remotely offensive to their religion: It is the tyranny of the minority. The minority, in this case Muslims, are trying to force the majority, in this case non-Muslims, to adhere to the restrictions of the minority’s religion. This is, strangely, the exact opposite of the usual kind of religious discrimination. Muslim cab drivers feel completely entitled to not allowing dogs or alcohol into their cabs. We non-Muslims are supposed to just suck it up and accept this.
I don’t accept this. If you allow a religious exception for alcohol and dogs, you head down a slippery slope. What’s next, refusing to take women passengers in short skirts?
It isn’t the Muslim cab driver who gets to say who and what gets into his cab. His job is to pick up fares, not to pick and choose them. If it is illegal in America for a cab driver to refuse to pick up a black man, then it should be illegal in America for a cab driver to refuse to pick up that same man because he’s holding a can of beer. Or because he has a bottle of wine in his luggage.
By the same token, canceling an opera, or an art display, or refusing to publish cartoons of Mohammed—or to portray him on a South Park episode, for that matter—are all part of the new wave of catering to the tyranny of the minority. And that is simply unacceptable.
It’s time to stop catering to a narrow-minded few who think the world should bend its rules to fit them. This isn’t about respecting their religion. It’s about someone who has chosen a profession in public service refusing to serve the public.
You don’t want to take the chance of encountering dogs or alcohol in your cab? Simple solution: Don’t drive a cab.
is not spontaneous and is all part of the intimidation being used against the ‘infidel’ and to incite to violence, albeit rather far away from Americans, but effectively intimidating.
Have people forgotten that the original Danish toons were spiced up with 3 offensive ‘false’ ones which only gave rise to the violence months later.
There was an interesting interview in Der Spiegel recently with a former Syrian about this.
Have found the link to Der Spiegel article:
INTERVIEW WITH GERMAN ISLAM EXPERT BASSAM TIBI
Yea, it was a good essay, Meryl.
Someday, a Muslim delivery driver is going to file a lawsuit. It will require women to “dress modestly” (i.e., wear the burqa) at all times. Women dressing immodestly creates a hostile work environment for him.
He will have a lawyer provided by the ACLU.
A law that would require Muslim cabbies to take passengers carrying alcohol could set a precedent we don’t want. There’s already a lawsuit to force a Jewish-owned medical clinic to open on Saturday.
Excellent piece tying together many threads. Thank you.
If I were a cab driver I would also refuse to carry dogs. I am Jewish but if the dog decides to take a crap in my cab I am capable of punching the owner in the mouth, only that it was me who was wrong because I risked it.
I love dogs. But not in my car nor in my house. I totally agree with the Muslim cab drivers. I still don’t understand what makes a person share his/her life with a smelly thing that is not human and transmit diseases.
Fabian, they’re guide dogs for the blind. They’re completely trained and not likely to make a mess in a cab. They’re allowed in all places dogs aren’t normally allowed in America, and the law requires restaurants to make exceptions for guide dogs. The exceptions include cabs.
This is kinda interesting, because if you read the article, we learn that the director “has refused to remove the severed heads scene, which was meant as a statement against organized religion.” In other words, he is trying to offend people. So, mission accomplished. Why is anyone taken aback by people having the very reaction the director was going for?
Joseph T Major Says: He will have a lawyer provided by the ACLU.
And now I’m offended — by, once again, a person with clearly no concept of civil liberties, slandering the ACLU.
You may rest assured, that if such a case were ever brought, it would be the woman who was defended by the ACLU.
(For those that need the law subtitled for them, a customer is not an employer; my house is not your office; and seeing people in their natural state in their home is an necessary element of the job — e.g., a secretary may complain if her boss comes to work shirtless, but a barmaid at a go-go bar cannot complain that the dancers are topless)
A law that would require Muslim cabbies to take passengers carrying alcohol could set a precedent we don’t want. There’s already a lawsuit to force a Jewish-owned medical clinic to open on Saturday.
There’s an important difference here. In the case of the medical clinic, that should be handled strictly by the law of supply & demand — if the community needs medical services on Saturday, then a clinic run by someone with no such religious limitations will open to fill the need.
However, in NYC, and I assume, other places, the number of taxi cabs is strictly limited. If one group of cabbies refuse to accept some passengers, a new class of cabbie cannot be added to take up the slack. This make driving a cab (operating a livery service) a previledge that must be earned — by following set rules about accepting any passenger.
ooops… Sorry about doing four comments in a row, but I wanted to put this at the end of my last one, and forgot….
The jewish-run clinic being closed on Saturday reminded me of a boss I had a few years ago. When the project fell behind, he would always ask of I could work “over the weekend”, because, I assume, as an orthodox Jew, he could not ask me to work on Saturday, so he would always leave the choice up to me — His sabbath or mine.
Being a little disingenuous here, aren’t we? Typical shows of Muslim “offense” include rioting, murder (including shooting a nun in the back), and death threats.
And saying you’re making a statement against organized religion is not the same as saying you’re deliberately setting out to offend organized religion.
Anything else you need cleared up?
Being a little disingenuous here, aren’t we?
Yes, but then there’s a lot of that to go around. Let’s start with the director.
saying you’re making a statement against organized religion is not the same as saying you’re deliberately setting out to offend organized religion.
True, one could do that. But that’s not the case here, where clearly his “statement against” organized religion is to offend believers. (In fact, I’d argue that the same scene would be less offensive if it were not intended as a statement about religion).
Then there’s the basic disingenuous-ness of your article itself. Your premise in that paragraph is “I should be able to see this work of art, but I can’t because the producers didn’t want to offend some people” — in other words, they were just being too PC.
No, you can’t see it because it inspired some people to violence. Now, you can argue (and I’d agree) that such violence is wrong, but that’s a wholly different matter than “political correctness” (*) and “tyrany of the minority”.
(*) That two linquistically questionable “-ness” words in one message — I’m so ashamed…. ;-)
You know, Jamie, you can say a lot of things about my essay, but one thing you cannot say is that it is disingenuous.
Show me where that is disingenuous. I point out that the administration isn’t afraid of the reaction from Christians, Buddhists, or polytheists who worship Poseidon. My “premise” in that paragraph is that the opera house was afraid of the Muslim reaction—not that the producers were afraid of offending people.
Don’t put words into my posts that aren’t there. I’m not the one pretending that this has anything to do with being PC. It has everything to do with the culture of fear that some Muslims are trying to engender. What part of this sentence
do you not get? Where are you reading anything to do with political correctness in my piece?
Kindly respond to the post that I wrote, rather than the post in your head. I don’t do disingenuous. I say exactly what I mean. The words “political correctness” don’t exist in my post. That’s because it isn’t the issue at all.
If I wanted to, I should be able to stand out in the street in Dearborn the middle of Ramadan eating a ham sandwich and drinking a beer, wearing a sandwich board that says “Mohammed Has Sex With Pigs In Hell” and I should be secure in the knowledge that if anyone should raise their hand against me they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The last time I checked this is still the US of A. People are supposed to be free to say what they want without fear of violent retaliation.
Meryl is right. The only religious group people are afraid of is the Muslims. “Piss Christ” didn’t cause riots, murders and fatwas. It is the Muslims and the Muslims ONLY who seem to feel it is their right to be offended at anything a kuffar does and to therefore be within their rights to kill him for it.
This has to stop, and people should stop kowtowing to “Muslim sensibilities”. Every single newspaper in the free world should have printed the Mohammed Cartoons, and when the Muslims rioted, they should have been arrested and prosecuted like any other common criminals. They have no right to impose their views on us.
Jews and the Jewish religion are insulted and humiliated at every turn, everywhere you look. Do we riot? No. We shrug, say “Nu, goyish kop” and get on with our lives. Or we start blogs. But we do not kill people because we think they’re “uppity”. That is for Ku Kluxers (and Muslims, apparently).
An artist should have every right to produce a work of art that insults organized religion or anything he wants to insult. We have the right to ignore him. That is what being civilized means. It’s time the Muslims learned it.
Slinging around egregious insults is not nice, and all things being equal, I would not support it. But when a Muslim says I should shut up because he has the right to physically attack me if I say something he doesn’t like, then the society as a whole must stand up against this kind of fascism and bring it to a screeching halt. If that means forcing the Muslims’ hand by insulting them on purpose, so be it.
No, you didn’t say “Politically correct”. However, neither did you say “violence”. But, what you DID say was “They were afraid of…offending Muslims.” Being afraid of “offending” someone sounds to me (and, I think, most other people) more like being politically correct, than worrying about inciting violence. This is further evidenced by the fact that as the object of this offense you lump all Muslims, without limiting it to just the tiny portion of them that spring to violence. So, if not disengenious, we’d have to say at least “meaning garbled in flowery prose”.
Ephraim : I should be able to stand out in the street in Dearborn the middle of Ramadan eating a ham sandwich and drinking a beer, wearing a sandwich board that says “Mohammed Has Sex With Pigs In Hell†and I should be secure in the knowledge that if anyone should raise their hand against me they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
You can, and they would — with the only problem being that the prosecution would come only after they raised a hand to you — by which time your skull is probably cracked open.
Which bring us to the biggest fallacy of the 1st Amendment — “Freedom of Speech” means only that no one can stop you from saying something; It does not relieve you from the consequences of saying it. For example, your sandwich board is slandering Mohammed, and therefore leaves you open to a lawsuit (granted, a very difficult case to prosecute, but let’s skip that for now).
Whcih brings us back to my original point about the opera’s director being disingenious. He basically want to committ a “drive-by slander” and then deny responsibility as it’s “just art”.
ooops.. Forgot about this part…
“Piss Christ†didn’t cause riots…It is … the Muslims ONLY who seem to feel it is their right to be offended at anything a kuffar does and to therefore be within their rights to kill him for it.
First of all, it’s not “The Muslims”, but “certain (so-called) Muslims” who feel that way, as it is “certain (so-called) Christians ” who bomb abortion clinics and blow-up Okalhoman federal buildings, and “certain straight men” who kill gay men who make a pass at them. And “certain Germans” who felt it right to sent Jews to concentration camps.
The only problem with the “some Muslims” argument is that no one’s protesting against the violence/intimidation. We keep hearing that the majority of Muslims are peaceful people, yet we have to worry about displaying piggy banks, or Muhammad cartoons, because there’s liable to be a huge amount of destruction afterwords, maybe even death. It’s very easy for someone to notice that someone who kills gays, or bombs abortion clinics isn’t Christian, but the line gets really blurry when it comes to the Muslims because no one’s coming out and saying “They’re not Muslims”, especially not clerics.
Jamie, please explain to me how one can slander the dead. No, first go look up the legal definition of slander, THEN explain to me how one can slander the dead. I would venture to say that your grasp of both the law, and the First Amendment, are tenuous at best. I can say anything I damned well please about Mohammed, and I am not “slandering” him in any legal sense of the word, nor can anyone bring a lawsuit against me in these United States. Oh, wait. They can, but then, you can sue anyone for pretty much anything. Doesn’t mean you’re going to progress past the first judge, but still.
Now go back and look up the meaning of “disingenuous.” Here, let me save you the trouble: “lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere.”
The director said he was making a statement against religion. He did not say he was setting out to offend the religious, and then act surprised when they took offense. Your interpretation is the only one I’ve seen to suggest that. I didn’t suggest it. The director didn’t suggest it. It’s just little old you.
Generally, when one says one is making a statement against something, it’s called “protesting.” When people say they’re making a statement against the war in Iraq, they pretty much mean they’re protesting it. Not that they want to offend everyone who disagrees with them.
And now to the issue of disingenuousness:
Then you are a naif. Muslims were offended by the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed; Muslims the world over rioted. Muslims are offended by the false story that a Koran was thrown in a toilet; Muslim the world over rioted. Muslims in the terrortories[sic] hear a rumor that Jews are going to pray on the Temple Mount; Muslims in the terrortories riot. The Pope quotes a centuries-old argument that says Islam is a violent religion; Muslims the world over riot.
The people reading this weblog—except for you, apparently—know that when Muslims take offense, violence follows. However, even that was not the premise of my post. The premise of my post was that they are trying to force non-Muslims to respect their “prophet.”
I don’t give a rat’s ass about Mohammed. He’s nothing to do with my religion. I am not required to respect him, nor cease from ridiculing him, nor am I required to forego carrying a bottle of wine into a cab because the driver is Muslim.
Cafeterias and restaurants in the U.K. and Britain never pulled pork products for Jews. They’re suddenly pulling them for Muslims. Why is that? Why do Muslim religious customs suddenly supercede everyone else’s?
That would be the tyranny of the minority that they are attempting to impose on us.
And Jamie, before you ever call me a liar again, you’d better count to a thousand. Make it two thousand. Then turn off your computer and think really heard about posting that I am being “disingenuous.”
If you were anyone else, instead of someone I knew in college, I’d have banned your ass for that comment alone.
first go look up the legal definition of slander, THEN explain to me how one can slander the dead.
OK, here it is: slan·der (slăn’dÉ™r)
n. 1. Law. Oral communication of false statements injurious to a person’s reputation. (From: http://www.answers.com/topic/slander?method=26&initiator=answertip:continue)
Note that the injury is to the person’s “reputation”, which I think you’d agree lives on past the person’s death. Further, as a religious leader, his reputation is probably the most valuable asset of his estate, which in this case would be the Church of Islam. As for the rest of your objections in this matter, I did say it would be difficult to prosecute, but that doesn’t change the nature of the act. (The only change I’d make to my original statement is that, as wearing a signboard is techincally publication, it would be libel, not slander.)
The director said he was making a statement against religion. He did not say he was setting out to offend the religious, and then act surprised when they took offense.
OK, If he’s only trying to make a point, and not trying to offend anyone, then please explain this — What exactly is the cold, logical argument he is making by showing beheaded religious leaders? The only rational explanation is that he’s trying to offend people. If he wants to offend people and call it a protest, or even art, I say “Fine”. But don’t try to deny the fact that your art offends people.
Which is exactly why I say he’s being disingenuous…
Your interpretation is the only one I’ve seen to suggest that. I didn’t suggest it.
Precisely- You ignored it. Which is exactly why I said your were being disingenuous. If you wish to dispute that, answer the question posed above.
Then you are a naif. Muslims were offended by the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed; Muslims the world over rioted. Muslims are offended by the false story that a Koran was thrown in a toilet; Muslim the world over rioted.
And you’re being suckered… In both those cases (and possibly the other two you cited; I don’t know the details there), it was a few radical Moslem clerics who were offended, who incited their (small) group of followers to riot, in hopes of raising their profile among the Islam community. You’ll note that much was Muslim-on-Muslim violence — That way the cleric gets “credit” leading two people to “battle” even though one was only defending himself. Actually it was more like 10 people stirred up trouble, and 90 people defended themselves, to which the media reports as “100 people rioted”.
In your rush to judge Muslims as animals to leap to violence, you are missing what is actually a well-plotted political campaign.
Much of Mideast politics in the 80’s & 90’s was a struggle for control of the Arab world between the secluar (Saddam Hussein was the leading candidate) and the religious (largely centering around Osama bin Laden) (Qaddiffi was also trying for control, first as a secularist, then switching to religious when he saw how the tide was turning). With those men largely out of the picture, dozens of other are now springing up, trying to show that they are the dominate voice of the Arab people. Having your supporters forcefully “defending the faith” looks good in the newspapers, and make you look powerful.
It not looney Muslins taking offense to everything — It’s all about politics…
Cafeterias and restaurants in the U.K. and Britain never pulled pork products for Jews. They’re suddenly pulling them for Muslims. Why is that? Why do Muslim religious customs suddenly supercede everyone else’s?
So, are you offended by the political power of the Muslims? Or the lack of political power of the Jews? Muslims are 6X the population of Jew in the UK are growing (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=954), and with the oil name, are probably an even larger economic force. I doubt the thread of violence has anything to do with this. It sounds more like the Brits trying to accommidate their new neighbors, which one would normally consider a good thing.
I said LEGAL definition of slander. You cannot slander the dead. Mohammed isn’t around to get pissed off about his reputation and bring a lawsuit.
As to the rest, I’m done. You insist on putting words in my mouth that I never said, and then want to argue those words.
It’s the words in bold that concern me. I never said them. Not here, not anywhere. If you want to argue that way, my only possible response will be: Fuck off.
Oh, brother! Jamie, you really need quit while you’re behind. You’re making a fool of yourself. Guess what?
1. There’s no such thing as the “Church of Islam” and even if there was, it would in no way represent the “estate” of anyone. Do you honestly believe that if I say something nasty about Joseph Smith I could be sued by a Mormon for slander? Or that if I say something horrible about Jesus I’m fair game for a lawsuit by any Christian? These aren’t “hard case[s] to prosecute,” Jamie. They’re not “cases” at all.
2. You continue to fail to perceive the difference between making an artistic statment that happens to offend people and deliberately setting out to cause offense? And you’re falsely imputing the latter motive to Mr. Neuenfels. Perhaps he should sue you?
3. Your misperception that “a few radical Moslem clerics who were offended, who incited their (small) group of followers to riot, in hopes of raising their profile among the Islam community,” doesn’t hold water, and Meryl has shot it down pretty effectively. For further evidence to the contrary: try reading the news.
4. Political power and riot power are not the same thing, Jamie, though you seem to believe they are. And you fail to recognize that pulling pork is only the beginning and that if at any time resistance to the imposition of Sharia in England is met with resistance, the riot option will be threatened.
Enjoy your trolling privileges while they last. Something tells me Meryl’s running out of patience.