Cartoons and Intolerance: a mid-flow discussion

The following is an email I sent a collegue on the intolerance debate surrounding the Danish cartoons

In our multi-layered argument and going back to an earlier thread, my point was that Muslims feel that they were attacked by the West purely because they are Muslims. If you take the point that we didn’t carpet-bomb the Falls Road to wipe out the IRA, but did so at Falluja in an attempt to wipe out the insurgency, then, quod erat demonstrandum, we attacked them because they were Muslims, and they are right to so think.

I disagree with your last conclusion too. With the possible discounting of self-professed believers who belong to no organization apart from the Church of Dr. Feelgood, I have not found any serious church-goers who do not exhibit intolerance in some fairly fundamental ways. The whole act of belonging to a Church or religion inevitably predicates that one believes that that Church or religion is the “correct” path, and that therefore people who are not part of the club are necessarily following an “incorrect” path. To be sure, I have met devout persons who I have found to be warm and admirable people (I’m thinking right now of a born-again woman from Oklahoma City I sat next to on a plane), but that alone does not discount my premise.

Of course I find it absurd that people, many who do not have a pot to piss in, are demonstrating against some cartoons, but it fits my premise about the distorting emphases of faith. I would much rather they turn their ire against a target that has more real impact on their lives: the corrupt, brutal and inefficient regimes that are in charge of their countries would be a good start. But I would also prefer that our home-grown hero, Rudolph Guiliani, had not vented his ire against the Brooklyn Museum for exhibiting Chris Ofili’s portrait of the Madonna (because it was made in part out of elephant dung and pornographic pictures from magazines). He tried to shut the exhibition down, and threatened to withdraw city funding from the Museum.