Ophelia linked this — Howard Jacobson at Index on Censorship — over at Butterflies and Wheels. Note particularly the reference to Nietzsche about certainty and pathology. If you haven’t seen it (it’s only 8 minutes and 18 seconds lonog) it’s worth it. This story, in today’s Independent, puts Jacobson’s words in context.
And, in case you have never heard or read Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” (I hadn’t), here it is:
Anthem
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I seem to hear them say
Do not dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.We asked for signs
and the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every single government –
signs for all to see.I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.Ring the bells that still can ring …
You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
on your little broken drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
Listen to Cohen sing “Anthem” at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e39UmEnqY8
A stanza from Cohen’s “In My Secret Life”:
Looked through the paper.
Makes you want to cry.
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die.
And the dealer wants you thinking
That it’s either black or white.
Thank G-d it’s not that simple
In My Secret Life.
The dash between G and d is Cohen’s.
The identity of “the dealer” gives rise to endless speculation.
Thanks for sharing Jacobson’s wise ‘speech’ ! And thanks to Veronica for sharing this beautiful performance of Leonard Cohen!
One is inevitably lead to contrast Jacobson’s and Cohen’s words with the news of the day: the religious madness of Terry Jones and his murderous soulmates in Afghanistan.
While I might think Pastor Jones is religiously mad, I would not put him in the same category as the murderous mobs in Afghanistan who are murdering people who had nothing to do with Pastor Jones’ actions. Indeed, there is a deep pathology of a religion which sends people out after “prayers” lusting for blood. This seems to be the kind of murderousness that is common to Islam, and it is probably this that Jones was protesting against. There has to come a time when the destruction of a holy book, or offence against someone’s religious sensibilities does not lead to murderous rampages, and until Islam is able to take these things in its stride, it is not to be trusted. In this respect Pastor Jones, a Christian crank if there ever was one, is right, sadly, and he has been shown to be right. Don’t we have to do something about this?
Jones has been shown to be right – but at what cost? Nobody can say that Jones’s action was necessary to prove something we did not know already. And it was also known – or at least very probable – that this would whip up other cranks into murderous frenzy – with predictable consequences (the loss of human lives). So what are we now wiser or richer or better? Nothing is gained, but a lot is lost: in the first place human lives. Moreover, the power of religious zealots has grown.
Sometimes it is wiser not to tell fools what fools they are – especially if telling them put lives in danger.
I would compare Reverend Jones and his followers to people who push bystanders in front of a car just to prove that cars can be dangerous.
I was quite impressed by Jacobson’s speech. Jacobson quoted Graham Greene: there are circumstances when ‘kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.’
My question is this. Once you give in to thugs — and that, Ludo, is what, I think, you are proposing — how do you get your freedom back? Muslims are coming, in fairly large numbers, to settle amongst us. Fine. Let them. But if they are not prepared to come out and say that this kind of murderous madness is unacceptable in Islam, and if they are not able to make this stick, they are a continuing danger to us and to our freedoms. I do not think we want to surrender to them, but, if we cannot do simple things, like draw cartoons of Muhammed, or burn the Qu’ran, or criticise the Prophet, without endangering lives, then it is Islam, not people like Jones, that is the danger, and we need to put the blame squarely where it truly lies.
If a crime syndicate runs a protection racket — which is what Islam essentially is — and we call them on it, and people get killed and buildings get burned as a consequence, who is to blame? The whistle blower? No, the crime family. And in this case who is to blame. Crackpot Jones? No, the crime family of Islam. It’s simple and straightforward. Of course, it is terrible that people died. This just means that we have to provide protection for such people until Islam has learned that they cannot go off in mobs just because they are displeased. This is hooliganism and terrorism of the worst sort, and it’s time it came to an end. Getting rid of religion altogether would be a good first step.
I think the poison of appeasement has crept insidiously deep into the psyche of western liberals to the point that I doubt there would be any limit to how far backwards people would bend to accommodate the sensitivity of Islam.
I say enough is enough. Call it a further realisation if you must. I see now how weak we’ve become in the west. How morally relative and bankrupt our society must be, if people no longer understand the difference between burning a book and a beheading.
Dear Eric, it is my conviction that more pragmatism, self-restraint and common sense would help us better than such pathological self-righteousness as displayed by Reverend Jones. Our common goal is, I think, a society free of religious (and analogous) fanaticism, bigotry and despotism. As I see it, pleading for a (more) pragmatic stance in achieving this goal is really quite different from giving in to thugs. In my opinion there simply is too much at stake to permit crackpots like Reverend Jones to give all other religious crackpots around the world such perfect opportunities to strengthen their positions. Therefore I think it would have been wiser when this nonsensical book-execution had been prevented by a timely admission of Reverend Jones in a lunatic asylum.
No, Ludo, that just won’t scan. After all, just naming a Teddy Bear “Muhammed” had Muslims in a whirl. A simple Christian woman in Pakistan was threatened with death (perhaps by now she has been killed, I don’t know) for saying something marginally blasphemous, though no one seems quite sure what. Cartoons of Muhammed have led to deaths and to the cartoonist being threatened with death several times. Theo van Gogh was killed for producing a film with Ayan Hirsi Ali, and Pym Fortune was killed for his criticism of Islam. The burning of the Qu’ran is just one more in a long series of incidents which have aroused murderous rage amongst Muslims. If we can’t criticise them, and criticise them openly, then we are in very very seriou trouble. Islam is obviously a very violent and dangerous religion, and there are very few Muslim moderates to come forward and condemn the violence and the rage. Jones may be a crackpot, but he’s doing more than most people to say that this religion needs to be criticised. That he is a crackpot there is no doubt, but if burning a book can cause this kind of murderous rage, then Islam shows itself to be a problem in need of a solution. It won’t help locking Jones away.
Yes, indeed. Enough is enough. Time to be outwardly and bluntly critical of Islam. It Islam can’t take it, then it only shows what a great danger Islam is to all of us. And if that is so — as I believe it is — then we have to start treating Islam as the problem.
“…then Islam shows itself to be a problem in need of a solution”.
Pardon me for putting this so bluntly, but I think that this statement is rather simplistic. (I won’t add that is is one with bitter connotations and memories – I am sure that nothing like that was intended.)
Islam certainly hás a big problem, but arguing that it ís a problem (‘is’ instead of ‘has’) obscures the whole situation. Such holistic assumptions do not really work, because problems like this are not monolithic or monofactorial, but have many aspects and facets. And these aspects are not only religious or cultural, but also social, socio-biological, economic and political. Analyzing what factors are involved and how they act together to produce murderous (and other undesirable) effects would yield more and better results than burning books. One can expect that ‘the Islam-problem’ will prove to consist of numerous specific sub-problems which hopefully can be addressed individually.
I didn’t use “Islam is a problem” in the sense of “das Problem der Judenfrage”. Claiming that Jews were their misfortune didn’t work, because the Jews were, in fact, peaceful, productive members of society.
My sense of “Islam is a problem” is that, if religious offence can set off these completely irrational outbursts of violence and revenge, then that is a problem for us. If we cannot criticise Islam without this kind of thing happening — and that seems to be the case — just consider the number of ex-Muslims or even Muslim reformers who need body guards — then Islam is a problem for us.
That’s not simplistic, and it doesn’t lump all Muslims in the same box, but it does say what seems to be true, that Islam is unpredictable, and will take offence easily, and will do harm to people when it does. It’s not Islam that has the problem. It’s those who don’t want to be governed by the limits of the Muslim imagination, the limit of its tolerance for offence. This is our problem, and its a problem with Islam.
If it is a matter of sub-problems which can be dealt with individually, then I’d like to have some suggestion as to how that is to be done. Do we see the widespread example of moderates standing up and condemning this kind of madness in the name of Islam? So far, no sign of it. We can complexify this as much as we like, and by that means draw the sting of the problem, but unless this suggests means of dealing with the problem of Muslim offence, then it won’t work.
So far as I can tell, this is an aspect of Muslim history, which was militantly imperial from the very start. It has a universal claim and Muslims are expected to participate in extending that claim to everyone. A challenge to that claim results in the kind of madness in evidence in Afghanistan. It has happened again and again, in lands included in the growing Muslim empire. Small offences led to massacres of minority religious groups, the enslavement or coversion of many, and heavier taxes on those who remain obdurate. It’s a problem deeply embedded in the religious texts. Read them.
Burning the Koran has more of a self-fulfilling prophecy (bloodshed guaranteed) than of a critique of the Islam. It does not open any new perspectives, nor does it offer anything like a ‘solution’. Are we supposed to see this weird, medieval auto-da-fé as a wake-up call? I am very skeptical about that. Okay, Reverend Jones can be seen as a citizen exercising his right to freely express his feelings. My point is that this is only one aspect – and a minor one – of the Reverend Jones-case. What is more important, I think, is the aspect of one (Christian) hatemonger interacting with other (Islamic) hatemongers. If their DNA-fingerprints would be taken (metaphorically speaking), one would find great similarities: they are kindred souls. Reverend Jones is not a Harry Potter fighting a Voldemort. No, this is one Voldemort-clone helping other Voldemort-clones to thrive and prosper.
“If it is a matter of sub-problems which can be dealt with individually, then I’d like to have some suggestion as to how that is to be done”.
For a proper answer more knowledge and skill is needed than I possess. But let me give it a try.
First an example of what I call a ‘sub-problem’: Poverty. Nobody will deny that poverty – the economy, career opportunities, governance, education, health – can play a significant role in empowering Islamic extremists. So fighting poverty might be a pragmatic line of action.
Another pragmatic line of action is the advancement of scientific research aimed at these religion-associated problems. Western society has for many centuries experienced a vast array of problems with religion (I suppose I do not need to elaborate), and it has succeeded in domesticating religion, at least to a certain – or uncertain – extend. One would suppose that after this there would exist by now a vast array of comprehensive knowledge on religion and its malignant aspects. But as far as I know, that is not the case. So there is a lot of work ahead.
One example of a biological concept that throws some light on the recent murderous fury in Afghanistan is the concept of emotional contagion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion).
Another helpful concept coming from evolutionary biology is the meme-concept. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme).
Modern science – behavioral biology, cognitive science, sociobiology, evolutionary biology, sociology, and other scientific disciplines – can, I think, provide much more tools and models to comprehend religion and contain religious fury – much better tools than medieval autos-da-fé.