The Response Options

Yesterday, I quoted extensively from Andrew Sullivan’s blog on the “religious roots of today’s era of terrorism”. Today, he had a follow-up with many good points. He seems to feel that many flinch at the prospect of calling Islamic terrorism what it is because they fear the world may go Nazi on the Muslims. Actually a fear of the world going all George W. Bush on the Muslims is a more valid fear:
“I think it’s perfectly possible to agree with that analysis of what is going on, while disagreeing on what to actually do about it. There’s this tendency to conflate a willingness to recognize some core illiberal parts of Islam as the problem with an invade-occupy-and-torture strategy of the last administration. But the two are easily separable.”

An all-military approach won’t work: it’s been tried and not only did it not work; it also added fuel to the terrorist recruiting fire. Reforming them from outside is not possible (how can the hated, lowly kafir point out anything to improve in the perfect religion?). So what can we then do? Sullivan says we need to stop giving in all the time within our own borders:
“We must not give an inch on freedom of expression, especially blasphemy. We need to drop the double standards and not self-censor with some religions, while ripping on others. We should have the right to rip on them all. If you’re going to publish photos of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, you sure can publish the rather innocuous cover of Charlie now at large.”
(As an aside, remember how Charlie’s artist, Bernard Holtrop, said, “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends”? Well the Pope, a so-called supporter of Charlie, just showed his true colors on freedom of speech:
“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”
Sir, yes, sir. We know how the Church deals with criticism: burning at the stake, Galileo, it’s a long list. I can almost see the Pope salivating over the good old days…)

Now back to how we should respond to the religious terrorists. Sullivan says we need to start accepting the lesser of the two evils: eternal surveillance even though it seems to border on eavesdropping:
“Do I prefer that kind of surveillance to drone wars that seem to be fomenting more Jihadism than they eliminate? I’d say so. I’d rather not do either, but it’s clear we have a real problem, and that terror directed at basic freedoms of travel and expression requires vigilance. If that means a retreat on privacy, that’s a trade-off I’m prepared to make.”
I don’t like that part anymore than Sullivan does. Then again, we don’t live in a vacuum. Also, kind of puts all that Facebook and Google bashing on privacy grounds seem so, well, secondary and unimportant, right?

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 16, 2015 at 7:37 PM

    Your blog quotes, "He seems to feel that many flinch at the prospect of calling Islamic terrorism what it is because they fear the world may go Nazi on the Muslims". Such thoughts might have crossed me in earlier times. From what we see today in the world as the outcome of jihad and Islamic terrorism, it appears the truth may be the other way about. The chance of the next holocaust namely that of others exterminating the Muslims doesn't look all that real. On the contrary, the many dictators of now-aspired-then-emergent Caliphates may not feel shy of or guilty about exterminating the qua-firs. [Qua-fir is the derogatory and often hate-filled term used by Muslims to refer to non-Muslims.]

    Even after granting that the Muslims may have some valid demands, the heinous crimes committed by their extremists to make their points is only adding (figuratively speaking) an enemy a minute against them. The Muslim community has to blame itself as responsible for losing the sympathy of their well wishers, who have the tolerance and understanding. For now, the Muslim community seems to be doing nothing of worthwhile magnitude to check their own thing going headlong into the abyss. Who can win a war if everyone else is looked upon or made into an enemy?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more