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Democracy in a Cartoon
By Ibn Warraq
Best-selling author and Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq argues that freedom
of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it against attacks
from totalitarian societies. If the west does not stand in solidarity with
the Danish, he argues, then the Islamization of Europe will have begun in
earnest.
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AP
Ibn Warraq: "How can we expect immigrants to
integrate into western society when they are at the same
time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of
iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to
be despised?"
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The great British
philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "Strange it is,
that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but
object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the
reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case."
The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most
important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west
going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are
we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a
freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?
A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom
to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely
lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in
its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and
intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle
thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.
Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with
the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the
Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe
will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.
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IBN WARRAQ
Born in 1946 in India and raised in
Pakistan, Ibn Warraq was educated in Koran schools in
Pakistan and later in England. He currently lives in the
United States and writes under the pseudonym Ibn Warraq,
a pen name traditionally used by dissidents in Islam. He
is the author of the best-
seller "Why I am Not a Muslim" and the editor of "The
Origins of the Koran" and "The Quest for the Historical
Muhammad."
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This raises
another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself
intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go
on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for
example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in
India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways,
roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the
establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before,
the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What
of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave
back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology
and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British
government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a
witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier
Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.
On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and
Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel,
Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and
Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human
rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating
ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human
rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of
women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and
conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of
societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises,
stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny
the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.
How can we expect
immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time
being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all
evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? Why should they, in the words
of the African-American writer James Baldwin, want to integrate into a
sinking ship? Why do they all want to immigrate to the west and not Saudi
Arabia? They should be taught about the centuries of struggle that resulted
in the freedoms that they and everyone else for that matter, cherish, enjoy,
and avail themselves of; of the individuals and groups who fought for these
freedoms and who are despised and forgotten today; the freedoms that the
much of the rest of world envies, admires and tries to emulate." When the
Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square (in 1989)
, they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a
model of the Statue of Liberty."
Freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it or it
will die from totalitarian attacks. It is also much needed in the Islamic
world. By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic world a valuable
lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished traditions to
Enlightenment values.
Source:
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/2006/02/democracy_in_a.php
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398853,00.html
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