The Newsstand Sophisticate

Christopher Hitchens lays the smackdown on Baroness Shirley Williams on British television program “Question Time” after she regrets the knighting of Salman Rushdie, a man who, in her words, “deeply offended Muslims in a very powerful way.” Some of the audience is also on the receiving end of the smackdown as well for applauding her “contemptible” statement:

One of the oddest things about Western leftists defending illiberal but non-Western groups and movements is that though they are obsessed with diversity and dissent within the U.S. and U.K., they absolutely ignore diversity and dissent that exists within countries like Iran or in the Palestinian territories. Why are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hamas taken to be legitimate spokesmen for Muslims, but not Muslims who disagree with the fatwa against Rushdie or who don’t want an Islamic state?

Hitchens points out this contradiction toward the end of the video: “If you say that Muslims are offended by this, and you lump them all together, you immediately grant that they are in fact represented by the most extreme, homicidal, fanatical, illiterate, intolerant people.” When looked at this way, it’s hard to see how Baroness Williams can believe she’s actually defending Muslims at all.

(Via DSTPFW and David Thompson)

Salman Rushdie has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. “Sir Salman” has a delightfully odd but mellifluous ring.

Of course, some are not happy. David Thompson and Norman Geras examine the ugly reaction and a particularly egregious example of condescending leftist vitriol about what the knighting “really” means.

It all adds up to depressing reading, and I worry that Sir Salman, who has recently been able to live relatively free of worry about the 1989 fatwa calling for his death, will face renewed threats. It’s a good time to remember Hitoshi Igarati, Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, who was murdered in 1991 for his services to literature. And to remember that defending liberal principles is not some decadent concern of overprivileged Westerners, but a matter of life and death.

The new issue of Democratiya has been posted, and it looks like a corker. It contains an excerpt from Andrei Markovits’s new book on anti-Americanism in Europe, a Nick Cohen review of a George Orwell collection, and the inimitable Norm on “Deficits of International Law” (and in a Thelonious Sphere Monk T-shirt). And that’s just the beginning. There are also articles on feminism in India, gay rights in Moscow, and an interview with Ladan Boroumand, research director at The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran. Start reading now and you won’t have to stare at your feet the next time somebody asks you about genocide, international law, or anti-Americanism at a cocktail party, beer bust, or while you’re standing in line at the bank.

The editor’s letter for the new issue, in discussing Markovits’s book, “Uncouth Nation,” quotes Immanuel Kant, who, though he never traveled 100 miles from Königsberg, apparently disliked Americans. According to the great philosopher, Americans “had no passion, hardly speak at all, never caress one another, care about nothing, and are lazy.” It’s funny: Though the animus some European intellectuals feel for Americans has not lessened—and has probably increased—since Kant’s time, the usual criticisms (or stereotypes) now are almost exactly the opposite of Kant’s characterization. We have too much passion, speak too loudly and too often, are too open with our shows of affection and emotion, care too much about money and religion, and work too hard. I wonder if Kant would like us better now.

Paul Berman has written a long, very interesting article (registration required) on Swiss Islamic “philosopher” Tariq Ramadan and the way some Western journalists, especially Ian Buruma, have downplayed the more retrograde aspects of his thought and failed to press him for specific answers on how he envisions Islam operating within European democracies. Berman also examines Buruma’s tiresome assertion that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an “enlightenment fundamentalist.”

Hirsi Ali is in Sydney now, spreading her fundamentalist belief that everybody should be free to make his or her own choices so long as they don’t directly harm anybody else. (Shocking, aren’t they, the things these fundamentalists try to shove down everybody’s throats?) In an article on her visit, one Nada Roude, of the New South Wales Islamic Council, is quoted offering a statement worthy of Mr. Ramadan in its vague authoritarianism: “Anyone who causes harm to our society because they have the right to express their opinion is not welcome.” The use of the words “anyone who causes harm to our society” is of course misleading and irresponsible. “Anyone who hurts our feelings” would be much more accurate. Peoples’ right to believe whatever they want should be respected, and protected by the state. No state or religion has the right to curtail others’ movement or speech to protect someone’s feelings.

What with Christopher Hitchens all over the airwaves and the Internet and the boom in atheist books, I felt I needed a break from relentless criticism of religion. So, last night I sat down to read George MacDonald Fraser’s “Flashman and the Mountain of Light”—and what did I find at the beginning of the chapter I was on? This:

“If there was one thing worse than Jawaheer’s murder it was his funeral, when his wives and slavegirls were roasted alive along with his corpse, according to custom. Like much beastliness in the world, suttee is inspired by religion, which means there’s no sense or reason to it . . . “

And then a bit later:

” . . . why, Alick Gardner told me of one funeral in Lahore where some poor little lass of nine was excused burning as being too young, and the silly chit threw herself off a high building. They burned her corpse anyway. That’s what comes of religion and keeping women in ignorance.”