Havarti Cheese vs. Millions of Fanatics

Recently, Muslim communities in many nations have been boycotting Danish products and calling for attacks on Danish soldiers in response to a Danish newspaper that depicted caricatures of Muhammad, a strict no-no in the Muslim religion. Now a French newspaper has pugnaciously reprinted the cartoons, asserting that "no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society." A German newspaper has done the same.

Three cheers for the newspapers (and in this case, boo for Bill Clinton)! The right to religious expression - including caricature, ridicule, and criticism - is one of the most basic elements of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. And as for the boycott, well, it's anyone's right to boycott, but I say Buy Danish and support free speech (and delicious Havarti cheese)!

Ominously, this situation is one more indicator of the growing unity and hard-line radicalism of much of the Muslim community. Although I think we're far from seeing the emergence of a global caliphate, I am worried whenever millions of people in dozens of countries unite to push hard for the supremacy of their religion. Anyone who thinks that Spanish Inquisition-era religious aggression is a dead letter is in for a rude awakening.

Religions have incredible power, as philosophies, as ways of uniting vast numbers of people, and as guides for how people live their lives. In the past, religious fundamentalism has led to massive wars, displacement of peoples, and atrocities, and the present is shaping up to be no exception. Only when nation-states began to take power were people's rights protected. Our nation's founders, realizing this, set up a separation of church and state.

That separation has worked wonders. When Andres Serrano came out with the "Piss Christ" a few years ago, Christian groups complained, but there were no attacks, no firings. Even the Southern Baptist Convention's ridiculous boycott against Disney fizzled and died. The United States remains one of the world's most religious nations, and yet the government is free to protect human rights and ensure a peaceful, stable society. What's more, our economy is free to grow, since science is respected (usually) and material wealth is accepted as a legitimate personal goal.

Modern Islam has not experienced such a revelation. Muslim nation-states, with the notable exceptions of Turkey and Malaysia, have mostly been failures (often due to the presence of large amounts of cheap oil). When hard-line politicized Islam poured in to fill the breach, it replaced the nation-state as the entity to which millions of people feel like they owe their political allegiance.

This is what I feel like many Westerners don't understand. To us, the roles of government and religion are (mostly) pretty clear - the government controls the army, protects rights, and manages the economy, while religions tell individuals how to live their lives. But to millions upon millions of people in the Muslim world, Islam makes the laws (sharia), Islam maintains the army (militias), and Islam determines what rights people have and don't have. To those individuals, Muslims in Britain are part of the same "nation" as Muslims in Yemen, and should therefore be subject to the same laws, fight in the same army (not the British army!) against the same enemies (guess who), and have the same set of rights.

This is not necessarily something that the West can "fix". Of course we should try to support strong secular Muslim states as examples of what separation of church and state can accomplish. Of course we should ally with moderate Muslims throughout the world to make people aware of the alternatives to radicalism. But our first priority is to keep religious radicalism from hijacking the system of separation of church and state that we've worked so hard to establish in the West. Let's reaffirm that no religion, no matter how numerous its followers, how fervent its beliefs, or how violent its adherents, can tell us what we are and are not allowed to say.

In other words, Buy Danish.


BONUS READING GUIDE
This article in the NYT about the "American Competitiveness Initiative" oulined in Bush's State of the Union Speech is entitled "Behind Bush's New Stress on Science, Lobbying by Republican Executives". Sounds like an article exposing Bush's commitment to science as simply being an example of Bush being the tool of big business, right? But those "Republican executives" turn out to be the executives of Intel and Cisco, hardly robber barons. The article then goes on to mention that similar initiatives have been supported by a large number of Democratic lawmakers; that the cooperation on the issue is "'very bipartisan,'" and that everyone from National Science Foundation officials to Berkeley professors is in love with the idea. Come on, NYT, let's give Bush his due when he actually gets something right for once.