perfidy

I'm not a high-flying American, but I didn't fully grasp the second paragraph at all.

I think there was something in there about hating freedom.

What if something like an offensive constitution united Europe?

That should have read cartoon, not constitution, but even the notion of an offensive constitution is amusing.

Heh. Either way, cartoon or constitution, I'm a big fan of perverse outcomes.

What you said on your site, about this incident sparking some rarely done deep thought about exactly what Western ideals are and how they interact with challenges from outside, is true. Since the Cold War abated, there hasn't been much call for introspection or any real challenges to some of the basic assumptions that underpin Western democracies, especially America's. Notwithstanding socialist economic schemes or the odd harrassment from right-wing or left-wing gadflies, it's been a fairly serene time for our civilizational state of mind.

Anyway, I'm typing this while watching Firefly on DVD so I'm a bit out of my depth here. That is all.

On the other hand Johno, no one has really stood up to say, "The West really is intolerant of religion," even though there are people in this country who claim that religious people (at least Christians) are persecuted. I think that the point could be made, although it is debatable.

Debatable it is. But the fact is, the West is intolerant of religion, insofar as religious impulses come into conflict with the more universal secular ideals our political system and jurisprudence derive from.

But intolerance of that, what we might call meddlesomeness, is different from intolerance of religion in general.

And that is where, I think, the communication breaks down between, say, a cartoonist's pen and the streets of Samarra. Parts of the Islamic world have always conflated religious authority with political authority. The last supreme leader of Islam (what's the title?) in the Ottoman Empire, I believe, outlasted the last Emperor by a few days. And that was the twentieth century. The West has had hundreds of years to get over having a universal religious leader whose power was concomitant with a universal temporal leader, hundreds of years in which religious leaders have had to adjust to living in a world in which theirs is not only voice of authority.

I really think our entire way of life is an accident of history, a few luckily timed blows to the edifice of Catholicism splintered the messy whole into a messy many and over time allowed universal secular values (though based on moralities derived from religion) to replace universal spiritual values. It was merely lucky for us that around the time that Luther, Zwingli, and Henry VIII were attacking the unity of the Catholic faith, the ideals of the Enlightenment were reaching maturity. (Without Hobbes, Locke, and the rest of 'em, where would we be today?)

Moreover, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular had until the last century a vibrant intellectual life of its own not limited strictly to expounding on religious matters. Christian religious though isn't just limited to interpreting "what this here book says."

The various strains of Islam, whatever their many virtues, have not overall had that same advantage. Besides, if I understand correctly the prevailing wisdom in Islam is that the Q'uran is the infallible word of God as set down by his Prophet. Since (unlike the Bible) there was no vetting of canon and no need for translation/interpretation of source materials, I'd imagine that means that it's probably harder to get away from "what this here book says" and address matters of praxis.

And without a vibrant tradition of questioning, in a situation where religion has largely remained above reproach and sacrosanct, where the book is the word, intolerance of meddlesome religion looks exactly the same as intolerance of all religion, because there's no tradition in which the two become distinct. And I don't know how we're going to get around that.