Mrs.Lucysnow
Valued Senior Member
Dutch PM on trial for hate speech
- Thread starter Mrs.Lucysnow
- Start date
The Shia of Iran, and their fellow sectarians worldwide.SAM said:
Cool. Then we can ignore al-Sadr in Iraq, pay no attention to anything Khamanei says in Iran, and so forth.SAM said:
Because since as clerics they have no authority, and their fatwas etc are not a matter of religion that would motivate believers, what they say just isn't very important.
Now you're getting it. Thats usually how it goes. I mean, can you think of a single fatwa which every one [or even any one] has followed?
Er...this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/14/newsid_2541000/2541149.stm
Kinda called on people to kill him there, apparently. Khomeni claimed that it was an important book nine days after the fatwa. It's possible to want two things related to the same topic simultaneously, you know.
Nope: just the author. BWI.
The fatwa, I would have said.
I don't think the situation has ever been a mystery, SAM.SAM said:
And if the highest ranking cleric in a large and widespread Muslim sect called on his followers and all true Muslims to kill you, my guess is you would consider hiding for a while.
It would not be an empty threat. I can't recall how many people were killed by some of those clerics followers, in the days and weeks after the fatwa, but apparently some people took that one seriously.
Were they Shias? Did they indicate that the fatwa was a reason for their actions? The problem with assigning cause to consequences arbitrarily is that, on closer examination, it falls apart.
You know, India banned the book well before the Iranian mullahs even opened it and found the mad imam. And yet no one, but NO ONE, even questioned that decision. Even though Iran never banned the book.
Of course, we could still buy it off the street hawkers for 5 rupees. But no one even wanted to know why the Indians banned it.
Just as no one ever questioned why Pakistan banned the Da Vinci Code in their country.
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They were Starbucks employees. They just couldn't get over the excellent latté and had to do something serious so people would notice.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
You directed this at Bells who has not yet had the opportunity to reply.Lucysnow said:
The two forms of violence are comparable in that they both reflect a belief that men have 'ownership' of 'their' women. It is only in the last two or three decades in the UK that domestic violence has been properly acknowledged (many would argue we are not there yet). In the 1950s and 1960s neighbours and relatives would turn a blind eye to what was going on.
Are honour killings a more severe form of this phenomenon? Of course they are, but they lie on the same spectrum and have the same source. It is not religion, but an expression of innate human qualities.
The underlying attitude has changed for 'native' Britons. It can be changed for the immigrant population also. That will take the combined efforts of sincere people in bot communities. Such efforts are not encouraged by the posturing of the likes of Wilders.
(By the way, would you stop referring to him as a PM (Prime Minister) when he is an MP (Member of Parliament). I don't call you JanetSlush.)
iceaura said:
And if said cleric were the head of state in a country of tens of millions, and so had at his disposal not only a military but an international intelligence apparatus with a track record of assassinations, then doubly so.
Oh? Then perhaps you should present such an examination, and illustrate the problems.
Untrue.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/190588.stm
India took plenty of criticism for banning The Satanic Verses, although it was overshadowed by the controversy in other places, and anyway more-or-less expected after the reception Midnight's Children received there.
The issue was not banning of books, but demanding the deaths of their authors. It should come as little surprise that censorship results in fewer, and less publicized, criticisms than the public issuance of death threats.
India did not attempt to ban the book from the US.SAM said:
That top Shia cleric put out a contract on Rushdie in other countries, and fellow Iranian officials targeted with violence everyone "knowingly" associated with the book world wide - so that in the subsequent years, for example, dozens of people were killed by Muslims in attacks on translators, something not associated with other controversial and banned books whose authors did not receive that special attention.
The protests and demonstrations against the book started way before the fatwa. Can you show me any evidence that what happened after the fatwa was connected to it? The vast majority of the Muslim world is not Shia. Were any of the attackers Iranians or Iraqis or even Indian?
But not the murders of and threats towards translators, publishers, bookstores, etc.
As you say, it happened after - and not before - the fatwa, and corresponded directly with specific details of the fatwa: the targetting of translators, publishers, distributors, etc. The bookstore bombing campaigns in the US and UK began a few weeks after the fatwa was issued.
And let's also recall that the Iranian government literally put a price on Rushdie's head: if that's not an explicit inducement for followers to kill him, I don't know what is.
Moreover: what difference does it really make whether the violence is directly instigated by Khomeini, or is a larger phenomenon that he sought to position himself at the forefront of? Either way you have religion being used for violent, political purposes, willfully and in public. And effectively. Absent the ideological dimension, there's no reason for anyone to want to kill Rushdie over a work of fiction, let alone masses of people on opposite ends of the world who've never read the book in question.
Hard to do that when the book is banned, but otherwise, its not only common, its also ignored when it happens in your own vicinity
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0603-08.htm
Do you think we'll see newspapers publishing the paintings to show solidarity?
Most of the perpetrators were never caught, so we can't say.
All of the ones who were identified have been Muslims.
Given the long-standing contest between Iran and various Sunni movements for the mantle of revolutionary Islam, it is likely that Khomeini's fatwa directly induced Sunnis to target him, since it made him a valuable political football in that contest.
The book wasn't banned in the countries where the author, translators, publishers and distributors were being targetted.
Not in my vicinity.
So you agree that your point about it being difficult to target such in countries where the book is banned is irrelevant?
I meant that it isn't ignored, not that SF isn't in my vicinity. As your excerpt describes, a hundred of the exact same types that displayed solidarity with Rushdie showed up to support the gallery.
Yeah I see how it isn't ignored. In fact, I see how its a major issue as well.
Censorship happens everywhere, because there are always ideas about what is "right" and "wrong" but only when its Muslims does it become a global issue that is all one big conspiracy against freedom. We're supposed to simultaneously believe that Sunnis are killing Shias and following their leader.
The specific religion is incidental: it's only when a group wages a violent global campaign against speech they object to that it is a big conspiracy against freedom.
If Netanyahu teamed up with a senior Rabbi to put a price on the head of, say, Norman Finkelstein, or the Pope on that of Christopher Hitchens, you can expect a similar response.
Not "following." Attempting to deny him - and the Shia more broadly - a victory by claiming it for themselves.