| Sunday, December 22, 2002 |
17:25 - The Missing Voices
http://unmedia.blogspot.com/2002_12_21_unmedia_archive.html#90080219
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Aziz Poonawalla took exception to my uncharitable reaction to the PBS documentary on Muhammad.
I can understand why he's upset and frustrated at my lack of ability to see Islam for the peaceful and tolerant religion that it is. It's a thankless struggle, trying to convince people like me, one by one, that the voices of the imams of Mecca, Riyadh, and Baghdad-- who every Friday call for Allah to shake the earth under the Americans' and Jews' feet and freeze the blood in their veins-- are the freakish statistical outliers and that the vast majority of Muslims are nothing like that at all. Because even when it seems the convincing is done and won, along comes another terrorist attack or another fresh wave of al-Qaeda rhetoric, and then we're back to square one.
I wish it weren't like that. I wish I could simply shut my ears to those imams' threats, and in so doing, cause them to cease to exist. But you know-- even if the American media is biased toward them for shock value, and even if we see more of it than is reflected by reality just because LGF gets crosslinked more than places like Aziz' site do, the unfortunate fact is that for those same reasons, more Muslims are going to hear that rhetoric than would have been the case if people just followed the numbers and percentages. The media isn't the only entity lured by shock value.
In the comments on the post in question, I gave my responses to its charges; I think it's just as tasteless and tactically unsound to have a show on Muhammad on PBS during Christmas as it was for the NRA to go and hold rallies in Littleton and Flint after the shootings that took place there. (I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that Islam had at least as much to do with 9/11 as the NRA had to do with Columbine, which is why I'm comfortable so far with that analogy.) And while I'm all for seeing a more widespread acceptance of peaceful, coexistent Islam shoving the rhetoric of al Qaeda and the Wahhabist imams aside into the shadows, that's not what this PBS show is about: it's not a distant, respectful historical account of Muhammad, with opposing viewpoints and evidence at odds, as are most PBS shows that focus on religious figures. It's also not a "fireside chat" from prominent Muslim leaders driving home the point, to an audience of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that they condemn the terrorist attacks of al Qaeda and the Palestinians, in clear and honest terms and not followed by any "but..." that renders the condemnation toothless. What it is, instead, is about the equivalent of PBS running a breathlessly positive series on Marxism, in 1962. How well would that have gone over?
I'd love to believe that Islam poses no threat to my life and my way of living it. Nothing would make me happier. But closing my eyes and going "la-la-la-la" doesn't make al Qaeda go away, and we learned last September the price of thinking it would. And much as I wish this weren't the case, to attack the extremists on the far side of Islam from where we stand right now is going to mean causing some incidental damage to the moderate middle ground. There's no way for that region of thought to remain an innocent bystander, to borrow another set of metaphors from Jeffrey.
It's no more than I would be prepared to have expected of me if, for instance, fanatical Mac users started blowing up Redmond city buses and issuing anti-Windows diatribes. I would bear some responsibility for such a thing, for helping bring it under control, and for absorbing some suspicion and loss of my own freedom due to my incidental association with the same kinds of values. I would reject those acts outright, without attaching a "But these guys do have a point" rider. And I wouldn't post sycophantic articles about Steve Jobs while the victims' families were still mourning.
We have a responsibility to preserve the freedoms of everybody in this country, whether Mayflower-derived WASP or recent immigrant. We must remain vigilant that we're not causing any more dishonor or pain to innocent citizens than we absolutely have to, even under the most extreme circumstances. But just as they say on one side of the debate that "9/11 did not occur in a vacuum", neither was it perpetrated by skateboarder kids or little old ladies, by Buddhists or Christians or Jews. It was done by a specific group of people from a particular region, defined by a certain religious fervor fomented by a particular brand of Islam. We can either accept the damage to American freedom caused by keeping a suspicious eyeball peeled in the general direction of Islam, if just to reassure ourselves that those South-Park-watching Muslims we all know personally aren't going to turn out to be Mohammad Attas; or we can dismiss all these very real terrorist attacks and social trends as so much regrettable noise on the fringes, and do nothing to prevent more of them lest we offend somebody.
No, I don't like what bin Laden has made of me. I don't like having to think in these terms. But just knowing the psychology of my own mind under these circumstances isn't enough to make me undo those changes. Things will have to happen in the world before everything can go back to the way it was before the towers fell. If I were a Muslim, I wouldn't like this situation any more than Aziz does, and I hope he can forgive me what my mind considers its rational need to keep an eye out in the direction from which danger has proven likely to come.
If my facial expression Islam-ward is an ugly one, it's because it's focused on what's in the distance, not on what's close to me.
Anyway, Aziz has four articles in a series which are worth reading on this subject, especially for the comments on each one, which address many of my concerns:
http://unmedia.blogspot.com/2002_11_27_unmedia_archive.html#85723644
http://unmedia.blogspot.com/2002_11_28_unmedia_archive.html#85726154
http://unmedia.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_unmedia_archive.html#90000506
http://unmedia.blogspot.com/2002_12_07_unmedia_archive.html#90022546
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