ISLAM, THE POPE & THE OPERA

MOST EURO MUSLIMS SICK OF EXTREMISTS MICHAEL MEYER

By MICHAEL MEYER

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Benedict: If he listened, he’d find surprising agreement.

October 2, 2006 — ONCE again, Europe is grappling with explosive questions. How to deal with the religious sensitivities of Islam? Where does free speech and open debate leave off, and offense begin?

Consider the controversies of recent days. In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI apologized to those who may have “misunderstood” a speech he recently gave during a visit to his native Germany, where he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor condemning Muhammad for the “evil he spread by the sword.” Violence, Benedict insisted, “is incompatible with the nature of God and soul.” Days later, in Berlin, the venerable Deutsche Oper opted not to stage a production of Mozart’s “Idomeno” – featuring a scene with the severed heads of Jesus, Buddha and the Prophet – for fear of inflaming Muslim sensibilities.

Angry fingers quickly pointed. “Appeasement,” the pope’s critics howled – the pontiff was merely stating an obvious truth, they argued, and shouldn’t retreat in the face of political correctness. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said much the same on the opera affair: “Self-censorship out of fear is intolerable,” she declared. “Violent radicals” must be confronted, not coddled.

Two important points were all but lost in the uproar. First: Benedict’s “apology” was, in fact, not one at all. Muslim leaders from across Europe were summoned to the Vatican for a “summit,” only to hear the pope read a prepared statement affirming his respect for Islam. Photos of the event told the real story. There sat the leader of Christendom, resplendent on a golden throne and separated from the assembled dignitaries by a vast expanse of polished white-and-black marble floor. He did not take questions.

If this was hardly appeasement, neither was it the “dialogue” the pope had promised. If he had invited conversation (or, better, simply listened), he’d have heard something other than criticism – for the majority of the Muslim leaders gathered there agreed with him, al most entirely. (As, for the record, did Merkel.) They, too, decry extremism. There is no place in civilized life for violence, they would have said, let alone terrorism.

The pope can be forgiven his reticence. After all, “Cartoon-gate” – the bloody riots that erupted last spring after a Danish magazine published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad – was fresh in his mind. So it was as well for the Berlin opera producers, who cancelled their performance after receiving an anonymous bomb threat. (They’re now reconsidering, depending on whether sufficient security arrangements are practical.)

This raises the second neglected point: Yes, Germany’s more radical Islamic activists welcomed the opera company’s move (suggesting it had headed off potentially ugly protests) – but a vastly larger number of moderates took a different view.

The day after the opera announced the scrubbing of its production, a conference of German Muslims happened to convene in Berlin. Rather than spouting condemnations, they called on Deutsche Oper to restore its program. Some even suggested the entire group attend, en masse.

Kenan Kolat, leader of the country’s 2.1-million Turkish community, spoke for most when he declared that it was high time for Muslims of all ethnic stripes to accept principles of free speech and other tenets of European democracy. “This is about art, not politics,” he told Bavarian radio, adding that anything else represented a retreat to “the Middle Ages.” Shades of Pope Benedict?

The lesson in both incidents, perhaps, is to recognize that Islam is no monolith, in Europe or anywhere else. What’s more, moderates represent an overwhelming majority of Muslims living in Europe – a majority that’s increasingly unhappy with the radicals in their midst.

So, if the pope could be faulted, it had little to do with anything he said: The mistake was his failure to engage with Muslims who would otherwise be allies.

The Berlin opera erred, too – by playing to the wrong audience. The anonymous hot-head who called in his terror threat was an enemy not only of the West but also the multitude of fellow Muslims who largely embrace a German way of life.

Merkel and the pope are right. We should not coddle extremists, let alone kowtow to them.

Michael Meyer is Europe/Middle East editor for Newsweek International and a member of Benador Associates.

Has the West been silenced by Islam?

In an age scarred by flashpoints between cultures and religions, it is easy to make accusations of prejudice or bigotry. But, argues Paul Vallely, we have all got something to gain from developing new sensitivities

Published: 04 October 2006

A cartoon in Private Eye neatly summarised one side of the argument. First Muslim: “The Pope says Islam is a violent religion.”Second Muslim: “Let’s kill him then.”

Cartoons, as we have come to learn, can be dodgy guides through the minefield in which European and Islamic cultures meet. But there are fears of a clash of civilisations in which Europe’s enlightenment values are under attack from religious obscurantism. Cherished traditions, such as freedom of speech, the alarmists complain, are being surrendered out of political correctness and appeasement.

Thus we see this week that Spanish villagers who have for centuries donned medieval costumes to re-enact battles between Moors and Christians are now abandoning the custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to celebrate the end of 800 years of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula.

Meanwhile, in France a philosophy teacher is in hiding after publishing a newspaper article critical of Islam. In Germany a production of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo has been cancelled for fear of angering Muslims. And in Rome, Benedict XVI continues to issue apologies – he’s done four so far – for his ill-judged quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who had called Islam “evil and inhuman”. The Pope clearly still isn’t sorry enough in the view of the two hijackers.

By contrast, in the West, even those who judged that the Pontiff, and others, may have gone too far have been rushing for their dictionaries of quotations to find the exact words of Voltaire about disapproving of what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. (They were actually written by one Evelyn Beatrice Hall, a biographer of that icon of the European Enlightenment). Everywhere have sprung up champions of freedom of expression and crusaders against religious darkness in the name of Western values. Yet the truth is somewhat different. This is not so much a clash of civilisations as one between religious and secular fundamentalists. For our world is very different from even that of our fathers, let alone that of Voltaire, In his day, religion was the dominant oppressive culture against which emerging rationalism struggled. Today, by contrast, Islam embodies the identity of one of the most vulnerable, and alienated, minorities in Europe.

That is not all. The reality of a multi-faith multicultural Europe, in which many feel threatened by the fear of new and growing waves of immigration, is provoking a crisis of identity characterised by increasing insularity and fear. It is in that context that the simplistic polarisation between “the inalienable principle of freedom of speech” and “the sphere of divine duty” is taking place. The result is all too often a dialogue of the deaf.

Take the article in Le Figaro written by the French high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker. In it he complained that France was “more or less consciously submitting itself to the dictates of Islam” by banning string bikinis during this summer’s annual beach party in Paris, setting up times when only women can visit public swimming pools and allowing Muslim schoolchildren – horror of horrors – to get halal food in school cafeterias.

These are all reasonable issues for debate. The problem was that, for good rhetorical measure, he also added that the Koran was “a book of extraordinary violence”. And that the Prophet Mohamed was “a pitiless warlord”, a “murderer of Jews” and “a master of hate”. His vocabulary was not quite as vile as that of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who routinely described Muslims as “goatfuckers” before one of them murdered him. Nonetheless Redeker, who immediately began to receive e-mail death threats, feared that some Islamic zealot might try to carry them out.

The trouble with debate carried out in this adolescent fashion is that it obscures rather than enlightens. Though it purports to open a dialogue with Muslims about the values of a pluralist society, in reality it is simply gratuitously offensive. And it merely reinforces the prejudices of the fundamentalists on both sides. See, say the Islamists, the West is inherently anti-Muslim. See, say the Enlightenmentists, Islam has an intrinsic propensity for violence.

The Pope has not helped here. Though he has apologised for not distancing himself from the “evil and inhuman” quote he has not resiled from the substance of his Regensburg address. In it he insisted that, thanks to the influence of Greek philosophy, there was no conflict between faith and reason at the core of Christianity. The Christian God is incapable of actions which are not good: hence He could never endorse the use of violence to spread religion. In Islam, by contrast, he said, God is not bound by any human categories, even that of reason, which is why Islam sees no contradiction on spreading religion by the sword.

To back his argument he selectively drew on Christian theologians who endorsed his view, niftily omitting those like Tertullian or Calvin who leaned towards the “God beyond reason” view. And he cited a marginal medieval Muslim theologian, Ibn Hazn, who said that God is not bound even by his own word, ignoring the many Muslims, such as the Mu’tazilite school, who have said God must act in accordance with reason.

This is all high-brow stuff but it boils down to the same kind of triumphalism, without the gross insults. Both say that Islam is alien and can never be truly European.

Others are less narrow-minded. The decision in Spain to scrap the burning of effigies of Mohamed reveals that a new sensitivity is developing in many quarters. It was evident in the cancellation of the production of Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Deutsche Oper. The Hans Neuenfels production, which inserts a scene not in Mozart’s score – in which the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed are pulled from a bloody sack – may have been unexceptional when it opened in 2003 but that was before the riots that erupted around the world after a Danish magazine last year published a series of puerile cartoons of Mohamed, including one in which the prophet’s turban contained a bomb. Not everyone is so convinced. Wolfgang Boersen, the German government’s culture spokesman, accused the opera house of “falling on its knees before the terrorists”. One Austrian newspaper spoke of the “high point of self-censorship”. But in many places there is a growing realisation that freedom of expression is not absolute but needs to be governed by a sense of social responsibility. To elevate one right above all others is the hallmark of the single-issue fanatic. Sometimes it is wise to choose not to exercise a right.

There are signs too of a growing maturity among the Muslim community. The wild men have been in evidence – and much quoted by a confrontation-hungry media – but many Muslims are coming to see that they must respect the traditions of the culture into which they and their fathers have immigrated. And if cynicism, irony and indeed blasphemy are – going back to Voltaire – part of the culture they have decided they must observe it with detachment. A group of German Islamic leaders, meeting in Berlin for a routine forum with the government, called unanimously for Idomeneo to be performed as scheduled next month. One imam even said they would all attend the performance.

That was a refreshing contrast to the hyperbole about art and free speech being “the elixirs of an enlightened society”. Instead of a power struggle, or a test of wills, it opens the way to a more mature approach. Instead of an emotional debate which closes down rational discourse, it is the way to build common values – ones which recognise the inalienable right to freedom of expression but which, at the same time, demand it be exercised in a measured way.

Voltaire, the great deist, had something to offer here too. Calling out to God, he wrote, “you did not give us hearts to hate nor did you give us hands to kill. May our differences in attire, our ridiculous customs, our imperfect laws and our nonsensical opinions, may all these nuances not be interpreted as signs of hatred and persecution”.

Now there is a European inheritance which perhaps all might embrace.

The festival

This year villages around Valencia have dropped the ancient custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to mark the reconquest of Spain from the Moors. Mayors in a number of villages near Valencia said they did not want to offend Muslim sensibilities. “It wasn’t necessary and, as it could hurt some people’s feelings, we decided not to do it,” Antonio Valdes, the mayor of Bocairent, said.

Majed Kadem, the president of the Islamic Community of Alicante, said the tradition was viewed by most Muslims as a “healthy diversion”. But Asid Farrod, the Imam of Barcelona, said the fiestas were offensive and should have been stopped years ago. “That they have gone on so long is a disgrace. We are living in a country where hatred of our Prophet is everywhere,” he said.

The Reconquista (Reconquest) holiday in February celebrates the victory of the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over the Muslims in 1492 and the expulsion of the Moors after seven centuries of Muslim domination of Spain.

The Pope

Pope Benedict XVI astonished moderate Muslims, and infuriated extremists, when he used a learned address to a German university to quote a Byzantine emperor describing Islam as “inhuman and evil”. The Pope characterised the quotation as “brusque”, but did not otherwise suggest that he disagreed with it, provoking protests across the Muslim world from Turkey to Pakistan to Turkey to Jakarta in Indonesia, left.

The Vatican moved into withdrawal mode, with the Pope’s spokesman, then the Pope himself, on two separate public occasions, saying he did not endorse the emperor’s words, and that he was “very sorry” for the misunderstanding.

Such corrections were damaging to the Pope’s image among Catholics of infallibility.

After the Pope summoned ambassadors to his residence and pledged himself to peaceful dialogue, the row finally died down. But the central paradox remained: if Muslims react so violently when their religion is identified with violence, doesn’t it prove the accusation right?

The politician

John Reid, the Home Secretary, was heckled by protesters as he gave a speech in east London last month urging Muslim parents to watch their children for signs of extremism.

Abu Izzadeen called Mr Reid an “enemy of Islam” and asked how he could “dare” come to a Muslim area after so many had been arrested under the terror legislation. “Shame on all of us for … listening to him,” he said.

It later transpired that Mr Izzadeen has been investigated over comments about the London suicide bombings, after describing the attacks as “mujahedin activity” which would make people “wake up and smell the coffee”, during an interview on the BBC’s Newsnight last year.

Mr Izzadeen’s actions were regarded with contempt by moderate Muslims. Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Perry Barr, condemned a planned visit to Birmingham this month by Mr Izzadeen and his followers for an Islamic rally. He said: “The people who follow Izzadeen are idiots and he should be banned from ever entering Birmingham.”

The opera

Germany’s first case of self-censorship in the face of a perceived Islamic terrorist threat provoked uproar last week when one of Berlin’s opera houses banned a production of the Mozart opera Idomeneo, which depicted the beheading of the world’s spiritual leaders, including Mohamed. (The head of Jesus is pictured left). The scene does not appear in the original plot.

Kirsten Harms, the director of the city’s Deutsche Oper, quit because she had been warned by police that the work would pose an “incalculable security risk” if it was shown, provoking criticism from politicians, theatre directors and the majority of Muslim community leaders. Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany’s Turkish community, said: “The opera should be shown. Art must be free.” Ali Kizilkaya, the head of the Islamic Council, disagreed. “The ban is right because the scene offends the feelings of Muslims,” he said. “Whether it’s an opera or a cartoon, it makes no difference.”

The radio show

Being funny about fatwas on the radio has not got down well with defenders of Muslim civil rights in the United States. In recent weeks the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has taken action twice to chide those it believes have crossed the line from humour to abuse.

First to be reprimanded was a Minnesota radio station which aired a skit called “Muslim Jeopardy” hosted by DJ Dave Ryan (left). With a mangled South Asian accent, an anonymous announcer named three categories of questions: “infamous infidels”, “smells like Shia” and “potent portables”. A female host was threatened with beheading if she got an answer wrong. After a letter of complaint from CAIR, the station apologised.

Then came a radio commercial from an Ohio car dealership which was withdrawn after complaints. It declared a “a jihad on the automotive industry” and said sales representatives would be wearing burqas.

The intellectual

Robert Redeker, a French philosophy teacher, and his family have been living in hiding under police protection since he wrote a newspaper article critical of Islam in mid-September. He has received death threats, and Islamist websites have carried his description and directions to his home.

In his article – inspired by Muslim reaction to the Pope’s comments in Germany – he complained that Islam was trying to destroy the West by attacking its liberties.

Soheib Bencheikh, the director of the Institute of Islamic sciences in Paris, said: “Anyone should have the right to criticise Islam, just as Christianity was attacked during the enlightenment in the 18th century… Not to criticise Islam would be a form of segregation.”

But Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a member of the French Council of Imams, said: “The liberty of expression is invoked every time someone wants to stigmatise Islam. There is a climate of Islamophobia in France.”

A cartoon in Private Eye neatly summarised one side of the argument. First Muslim: “The Pope says Islam is a violent religion.”Second Muslim: “Let’s kill him then.”

Cartoons, as we have come to learn, can be dodgy guides through the minefield in which European and Islamic cultures meet. But there are fears of a clash of civilisations in which Europe’s enlightenment values are under attack from religious obscurantism. Cherished traditions, such as freedom of speech, the alarmists complain, are being surrendered out of political correctness and appeasement.

Thus we see this week that Spanish villagers who have for centuries donned medieval costumes to re-enact battles between Moors and Christians are now abandoning the custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to celebrate the end of 800 years of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula.

Meanwhile, in France a philosophy teacher is in hiding after publishing a newspaper article critical of Islam. In Germany a production of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo has been cancelled for fear of angering Muslims. And in Rome, Benedict XVI continues to issue apologies – he’s done four so far – for his ill-judged quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who had called Islam “evil and inhuman”. The Pope clearly still isn’t sorry enough in the view of the two hijackers.

By contrast, in the West, even those who judged that the Pontiff, and others, may have gone too far have been rushing for their dictionaries of quotations to find the exact words of Voltaire about disapproving of what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. (They were actually written by one Evelyn Beatrice Hall, a biographer of that icon of the European Enlightenment). Everywhere have sprung up champions of freedom of expression and crusaders against religious darkness in the name of Western values. Yet the truth is somewhat different. This is not so much a clash of civilisations as one between religious and secular fundamentalists. For our world is very different from even that of our fathers, let alone that of Voltaire, In his day, religion was the dominant oppressive culture against which emerging rationalism struggled. Today, by contrast, Islam embodies the identity of one of the most vulnerable, and alienated, minorities in Europe.

That is not all. The reality of a multi-faith multicultural Europe, in which many feel threatened by the fear of new and growing waves of immigration, is provoking a crisis of identity characterised by increasing insularity and fear. It is in that context that the simplistic polarisation between “the inalienable principle of freedom of speech” and “the sphere of divine duty” is taking place. The result is all too often a dialogue of the deaf.

Take the article in Le Figaro written by the French high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker. In it he complained that France was “more or less consciously submitting itself to the dictates of Islam” by banning string bikinis during this summer’s annual beach party in Paris, setting up times when only women can visit public swimming pools and allowing Muslim schoolchildren – horror of horrors – to get halal food in school cafeterias.

These are all reasonable issues for debate. The problem was that, for good rhetorical measure, he also added that the Koran was “a book of extraordinary violence”. And that the Prophet Mohamed was “a pitiless warlord”, a “murderer of Jews” and “a master of hate”. His vocabulary was not quite as vile as that of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who routinely described Muslims as “goatfuckers” before one of them murdered him. Nonetheless Redeker, who immediately began to receive e-mail death threats, feared that some Islamic zealot might try to carry them out.

The trouble with debate carried out in this adolescent fashion is that it obscures rather than enlightens. Though it purports to open a dialogue with Muslims about the values of a pluralist society, in reality it is simply gratuitously offensive. And it merely reinforces the prejudices of the fundamentalists on both sides. See, say the Islamists, the West is inherently anti-Muslim. See, say the Enlightenmentists, Islam has an intrinsic propensity for violence.

The Pope has not helped here. Though he has apologised for not distancing himself from the “evil and inhuman” quote he has not resiled from the substance of his Regensburg address. In it he insisted that, thanks to the influence of Greek philosophy, there was no conflict between faith and reason at the core of Christianity. The Christian God is incapable of actions which are not good: hence He could never endorse the use of violence to spread religion. In Islam, by contrast, he said, God is not bound by any human categories, even that of reason, which is why Islam sees no contradiction on spreading religion by the sword.

To back his argument he selectively drew on Christian theologians who endorsed his view, niftily omitting those like Tertullian or Calvin who leaned towards the “God beyond reason” view. And he cited a marginal medieval Muslim theologian, Ibn Hazn, who said that God is not bound even by his own word, ignoring the many Muslims, such as the Mu’tazilite school, who have said God must act in accordance with reason.

This is all high-brow stuff but it boils down to the same kind of triumphalism, without the gross insults. Both say that Islam is alien and can never be truly European.

Others are less narrow-minded. The decision in Spain to scrap the burning of effigies of Mohamed reveals that a new sensitivity is developing in many quarters. It was evident in the cancellation of the production of Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Deutsche Oper. The Hans Neuenfels production, which inserts a scene not in Mozart’s score – in which the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed are pulled from a bloody sack – may have been unexceptional when it opened in 2003 but that was before the riots that erupted around the world after a Danish magazine last year published a series of puerile cartoons of Mohamed, including one in which the prophet’s turban contained a bomb. Not everyone is so convinced. Wolfgang Boersen, the German government’s culture spokesman, accused the opera house of “falling on its knees before the terrorists”. One Austrian newspaper spoke of the “high point of self-censorship”. But in many places there is a growing realisation that freedom of expression is not absolute but needs to be governed by a sense of social responsibility. To elevate one right above all others is the hallmark of the single-issue fanatic. Sometimes it is wise to choose not to exercise a right.

There are signs too of a growing maturity among the Muslim community. The wild men have been in evidence – and much quoted by a confrontation-hungry media – but many Muslims are coming to see that they must respect the traditions of the culture into which they and their fathers have immigrated. And if cynicism, irony and indeed blasphemy are – going back to Voltaire – part of the culture they have decided they must observe it with detachment. A group of German Islamic leaders, meeting in Berlin for a routine forum with the government, called unanimously for Idomeneo to be performed as scheduled next month. One imam even said they would all attend the performance.

That was a refreshing contrast to the hyperbole about art and free speech being “the elixirs of an enlightened society”. Instead of a power struggle, or a test of wills, it opens the way to a more mature approach. Instead of an emotional debate which closes down rational discourse, it is the way to build common values – ones which recognise the inalienable right to freedom of expression but which, at the same time, demand it be exercised in a measured way.

Voltaire, the great deist, had something to offer here too. Calling out to God, he wrote, “you did not give us hearts to hate nor did you give us hands to kill. May our differences in attire, our ridiculous customs, our imperfect laws and our nonsensical opinions, may all these nuances not be interpreted as signs of hatred and persecution”.

Now there is a European inheritance which perhaps all might embrace.

The festival

This year villages around Valencia have dropped the ancient custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to mark the reconquest of Spain from the Moors. Mayors in a number of villages near Valencia said they did not want to offend Muslim sensibilities. “It wasn’t necessary and, as it could hurt some people’s feelings, we decided not to do it,” Antonio Valdes, the mayor of Bocairent, said.

Majed Kadem, the president of the Islamic Community of Alicante, said the tradition was viewed by most Muslims as a “healthy diversion”. But Asid Farrod, the Imam of Barcelona, said the fiestas were offensive and should have been stopped years ago. “That they have gone on so long is a disgrace. We are living in a country where hatred of our Prophet is everywhere,” he said.

The Reconquista (Reconquest) holiday in February celebrates the victory of the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over the Muslims in 1492 and the expulsion of the Moors after seven centuries of Muslim domination of Spain.

The Pope

Pope Benedict XVI astonished moderate Muslims, and infuriated extremists, when he used a learned address to a German university to quote a Byzantine emperor describing Islam as “inhuman and evil”. The Pope characterised the quotation as “brusque”, but did not otherwise suggest that he disagreed with it, provoking protests across the Muslim world from Turkey to Pakistan to Turkey to Jakarta in Indonesia, left.

The Vatican moved into withdrawal mode, with the Pope’s spokesman, then the Pope himself, on two separate public occasions, saying he did not endorse the emperor’s words, and that he was “very sorry” for the misunderstanding.

Such corrections were damaging to the Pope’s image among Catholics of infallibility.

After the Pope summoned ambassadors to his residence and pledged himself to peaceful dialogue, the row finally died down. But the central paradox remained: if Muslims react so violently when their religion is identified with violence, doesn’t it prove the accusation right?

The politician

John Reid, the Home Secretary, was heckled by protesters as he gave a speech in east London last month urging Muslim parents to watch their children for signs of extremism.

Abu Izzadeen called Mr Reid an “enemy of Islam” and asked how he could “dare” come to a Muslim area after so many had been arrested under the terror legislation. “Shame on all of us for … listening to him,” he said.

It later transpired that Mr Izzadeen has been investigated over comments about the London suicide bombings, after describing the attacks as “mujahedin activity” which would make people “wake up and smell the coffee”, during an interview on the BBC’s Newsnight last year.

Mr Izzadeen’s actions were regarded with contempt by moderate Muslims. Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Perry Barr, condemned a planned visit to Birmingham this month by Mr Izzadeen and his followers for an Islamic rally. He said: “The people who follow Izzadeen are idiots and he should be banned from ever entering Birmingham.”

The opera

Germany’s first case of self-censorship in the face of a perceived Islamic terrorist threat provoked uproar last week when one of Berlin’s opera houses banned a production of the Mozart opera Idomeneo, which depicted the beheading of the world’s spiritual leaders, including Mohamed. (The head of Jesus is pictured left). The scene does not appear in the original plot.

Kirsten Harms, the director of the city’s Deutsche Oper, quit because she had been warned by police that the work would pose an “incalculable security risk” if it was shown, provoking criticism from politicians, theatre directors and the majority of Muslim community leaders. Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany’s Turkish community, said: “The opera should be shown. Art must be free.” Ali Kizilkaya, the head of the Islamic Council, disagreed. “The ban is right because the scene offends the feelings of Muslims,” he said. “Whether it’s an opera or a cartoon, it makes no difference.”

The radio show

Being funny about fatwas on the radio has not got down well with defenders of Muslim civil rights in the United States. In recent weeks the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has taken action twice to chide those it believes have crossed the line from humour to abuse.

First to be reprimanded was a Minnesota radio station which aired a skit called “Muslim Jeopardy” hosted by DJ Dave Ryan (left). With a mangled South Asian accent, an anonymous announcer named three categories of questions: “infamous infidels”, “smells like Shia” and “potent portables”. A female host was threatened with beheading if she got an answer wrong. After a letter of complaint from CAIR, the station apologised.

Then came a radio commercial from an Ohio car dealership which was withdrawn after complaints. It declared a “a jihad on the automotive industry” and said sales representatives would be wearing burqas.

The intellectual

Robert Redeker, a French philosophy teacher, and his family have been living in hiding under police protection since he wrote a newspaper article critical of Islam in mid-September. He has received death threats, and Islamist websites have carried his description and directions to his home.

In his article – inspired by Muslim reaction to the Pope’s comments in Germany – he complained that Islam was trying to destroy the West by attacking its liberties.

Soheib Bencheikh, the director of the Institute of Islamic sciences in Paris, said: “Anyone should have the right to criticise Islam, just as Christianity was attacked during the enlightenment in the 18th century… Not to criticise Islam would be a form of segregation.”

But Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a member of the French Council of Imams, said: “The liberty of expression is invoked every time someone wants to stigmatise Islam. There is a climate of Islamophobia in France.”

http://ndtv.com/debate/showdebate.asp?show=1&story_id=213&template=&category=International

What can I say? Things like this happen in India too, in the remote villages where the word of the Upper Caste is the law. Women are taken advantage of just as easily as it is being done in Pakistan. US citizens express shock at the lack of human rights in India while we dont much give a damn about it. We express our righteous indignation about the state of affairs in words but we do not have the balls to do anything about it.

But yes as much as I have said, if what Mr. Vikram Johri has written is true  and I see evidence, there is a chance I might vomit right now.

Comment:
Philanthropy and Movements

By Robert Kuttner
Issue Date: 7.15.02Print Friendly | Email Article

Recently I was invited to be the token liberal at a major national conference of conservative foundations. The invitation was to debate Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard editor, TV pundit, and conservative grand strategist, as the after-dinner entertainment. Presumably, conservative donors wished to view the face of the enemy, close up. The better I did, the deeper they would dig into their ample pockets. The dinner was held at one of New York’s most elegant hotels, the Pierre. The sponsors put me up at the nearby Hotel Roosevelt, a spartan midtown hostelry one cut above fleabag. I gamely accepted this lesser billeting not as demeaning confirmation of the right’s two-class vision for society, but as recognition of my esteem for FDR. But I digress.

The debate itself was good fun, but the real treat was the before-dinner event: a panel discussion of four presidents of major right-wing research factories, titled, “Philanthropy, Think Tanks, and the Importance of Ideas.” The heads of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato, Manhattan, and American Enterprise institutes were there to tell their patrons what political gains a billion dollars had bought. This session I would have paid to attend.

The panel was chaired by none other than Roger Hertog, a mega-rich center-right philanthropist and new part-owner of The New Republic recently profiled in these pages as exemplar of a new kind of “velvet conservatism.” But there was nothing velvet about the discussion that followed. Most foundations, Hertog began, spend their money on brick-and-mortar institutions — museums, hospitals, symphonies, universities. These are all fine, Hertog continued, but the four panelists have achieved something far more consequential. They have changed the course of American politics, and they “only” cost, collectively, $70 million dollars a year. “You get huge leverage for your dollars,” Hertog affirmed. The panelists smiled.

The first to present was Ed Crane, head of the Cato Institute. Crane complimented his patrons in the audience for recognizing that these battles of ideas take two or three decades. Cato has been pushing Social Security privatization since 1979, Crane noted. Cato allies such as the Federalist Society labored long years in the wilderness before they became powerful enough to literally pick the Bush’s administration’s federal judges.

Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation emphasized his institution’s strategic planning in building a conservative movement. He emphasized “the four M’s”: mission, money, management, and marketing. Heritage places hundreds of op-eds, all devoted to reinforcing the conservative message. On the money front, Feulner raises millions not just from conservative foundations, but from corporations and individuals. Like the Republican Party, the conservative think tanks use big money to raise small money. Heritage, for instance, gets contributions from 200,000 small donors.

Christopher DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, spoke of how the right-wing think tanks had reframed national debate by investing in and then promoting idea-mongers for the long term. The right has been investing in Robert Bork’s challenge to antitrust since the 1970s. By the 1990s, his contention that antitrust enforcement often backfires had become conventional wisdom. Charles Murray’s claim that welfare actually caused poverty was widely viewed as an outrage when Murray’s 1985 book, Losing Ground, was first published. Though Murray’s arithmetic was dubious and his timing backward (poverty came first), the message had a willing audience. The right-wing publicity machine turned the obscure Murray into a policy celebrity. Soon, said DeMuth, Democrats as well as Republicans were saying that Murray was right. Investment in ideas and ideological marketing changed the course of politics.

“There are three lessons,” DeMuth told the conservative benefactors in the audience. “First, things take time. It takes at least 10 years for a radical new idea to emerge from obscurity.” DeMuth pointed to school vouchers and Social Security privatization as still incomplete revolutions. But his funders got it, and were with him for the long haul.

“Second,” DeMuth added. “Unintended consequences are not enough.” For years, a staple of conservative ideology has been the claim that liberal social engineering backfires: Welfare makes people poorer, antitrust enforcement retards competition, safety regulations make people behave more carelessly, etc. “But nobody claims EPA makes the environment worse,” DeMuth cautioned. So the conservative movement also needs affirmative ideas. It needs better ways, conservative ways, to achieve popular social goals.

“Third, all fundamental changes are bipartisan when they happen,” DeMuth concluded. So the right makes great efforts to co-opt New Democrats. Right-wing think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies make sure their ventures include (safely conservative) Democrats. The bipartisan CSIS National Commission on Social Security Reform had no official standing, but with high-profile Democrats as well as Republicans it successfully masqueraded as a bona fide national commission, and received extensive press coverage.

The final panelist, Larry Mone of the Manhattan Institute, spoke of the importance of targeting opinion-elites. The Manhattan Institute underwrote Charles Murray’s work, but the institute focuses mainly on New York City, as a lab to advance policies such as school vouchers and getting tough on crime. Mone claims credit for Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s embrace of the George Kelling-James Q. Wilson “Broken Windows” thesis — that a crackdown on minor lifestyle crimes would also reduce major crimes.

The Manhattan Institute is especially nimble at co-opting liberals, who are regularly invited to its events both as foils and potential converts. How much money, Mone pressed me, would conservatives need to put into city schools for liberals to support vouchers?

The Philanthropy Roundtable, which sponsored the conference, also likes to include a few token liberals. One observed that liberal funders would never speak a language of movement building. “We promote policies piecemeal,” he said, “but we don’t think of it as building a progressive movement.”

What was impressively revealed here was precisely the right’s movement consciousness. When I was young, the people who spoke of “the movement” and who used “radical” as an affirmative word were progressive. The movement, at first, referred to the civil-rights movement; by the mid-1960s, it referred to a generalized movement for social justice. “Movement people” boycotted nonunion grapes, worked on voter registration, opposed the war in Vietnam.

Today, one hears the phrase “movement conservatism.” The right’s think tanks and philanthropists alike understand that the enterprise is — above all — political. IRS rules for foundations and research institutes don’t allow them to be partisan or primarily legislative, but don’t mind if they are ideological or politically strategic. Heritage, which pushed the envelope about as far as one prudently can, got an extensive IRS audit in the 1990s, which Heritage claimed was politically motivated. Eventually, the IRS relented. The nonprofit right is also perfectly willing to use the Republican party as its vehicle, and let the lawyers worry about how to do it legally.

By contrast, mainstream foundations have a tradition of emphasizing research and reform. Often, the social-change goals are impeccably liberal — empower the poor, clean up the environment, improve the welfare of children — but the political dimension leaves many senior foundation executives uneasy. My tablemate was right: You would never hear senior officers of big mainstream foundations talking about building a movement. The enterprise is rather understood as philanthropic. If you research and model good policy, social change will somehow occur. This tradition harkens back to the Progressive Era conceit that social problems have technical solutions. By some alchemy, the research findings will lead to policy reforms through a messy political process whose ignition is somebody else’s affair.

This propensity is also reinforced by the composition of mainstream foundation boards, which tend to be patrician and corporate. Activist grantees need to shade their purpose to reassure even liberal program officers, who find themselves looking over their shoulders at their presidents, who in turn must answer to their boards. It is anomalous, after all, that large private fortunes should be looked upon to underwrite progressive politics. On the right, by contrast, the advocates, strategists, and funders march to the same tune.

Lately, liberal funders have been more willing to acknowledge that their enterprise is necessarily political, and to underwrite core progressive infrastructure for the long term. The progressive counterparts of the big right-wing strategy groups — such as the Economic Policy Institute, the Center for Law and Social Policy, or the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — no longer have to justify their existence de novo each time they apply for a grant. But the gold standard of grants — long-term general-operating support — is still hard to find on the liberal side, and the institutions that the big foundations support are far smaller and less numerous than their conservative counterparts to begin with.

Of course, intellectual energy and political energy feed on each other. And it has been a while since a progressive idea, per se, transformed politics. A generation ago, activists in the streets were energized by books such as Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, and Mike Harrington’s The Other America. These in turn transformed national policy. Earlier in the century, progressive foundation-sponsored reports, from the Flexner Report on medical education to Gunnar Myrdal’s groundbreaking work on racial relations, An American Dilemma, led to changes in the national discussion and, eventually, policy.

Still, it was breathtaking to see the policy strategists of the other side preen for the edification of their steadfast funders — the culmination of a 25-year strategic alliance between organized business, ideological conservatism, advocacy research, and the Republican Party. Hertog was right: $70 million a year is chump change to the American elite, but invested strategically in the battle of ideas, it yields a bountiful political harvest. On our side, though strategic foundation support would be most welcome, it may be that we need to rekindle the politics first.

Robert Kuttner

Copyright © 2002 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Robert Kuttner, “Philanthropy and Movements,” The American Prospect vol. 13 no. 13, July 15, 2002 . This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

India: Suicide and the ‘Art of Living’

Third World Report (Asia) by Vidya Sagar, July 2006

Death is stalking the farmers of the Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, where more than 14,000 people have committed suicide between 2001 and 2006.

The Congress Party government in Andhra Pradesh claim that they have contained the crisis by initiating a number of ad hoc measures like debt moratoriums and cheaper credit, yet to this day farmer suicides continue in the Telangana and Rayalaseema regions of the state.

Between three and five suicides are being reported there every week, and in the two years since Congress was elected in Andhra, official figures put the number of suicides in the state at 1,261. The largest number of farmer suicides have occurred in Karnataka — the state that encompasses Bangalore, India’s information technology capital.

Under the strict rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the farming community in India is exposed to the volatility of the international market. Abhijit Sen, a member of the Indian government’s planning commission, explains, “The highest number of suicides are in the regions with the highest debt. Most of them are also in cotton belts in the case of Maharashtra, Andhra and even Karnataka, while in Kerala it’s spices like black pepper.

These are cash crops which suffer from highly volatile prices and need superior market and technical knowledge. When the unaware farmer diversifies into a cash crop, lured by high prices in a particular year, it’s like entering the stockmarket when the prices are unrealistic — you can face a crash the next year.”

In the Vidarbha region, the cotton belt of Maharashtra, over 980 cotton farmers committed suicide between 2001 and 2006. Of the 3.4 million cotton farmers in this region, 95 percent are believed to be struggling with heavy debt.

Another contributing factor to the crisis has been the pressure to adopt the latest – agribusiness products. The newly introduced, genetically modified seed, Bt Cotton, was enthusiastically endorsed by the government but has wreaked havoc on cotton farmers’ lives. Its manufacturer, Monsanto, said it was resistant to the boll weevil beetle — the main cotton pest — and required just two sprays of insecticide for every crop, instead of the usual eight. This seed sold for about four and a half times the cost of a normal seed, but many farmers opted to buy it because they believed it was indestructible. They were devastated when many of the plants were afflicted with a reddening that destroyed much of the crop, leaving them with unusually high debts.

Restrictions

The government has been promoting multi-national giants such as Monsanto, while at the same time withdrawing market controls and subsidies for agriculture under the diktats of the World Bank. Indian farmers are pushed to compete with farmers in the US and the European Union, who are protected by trade restrictions and provided with billions of dollars of subsidies. In the US alone, the 2002 Farm Bill gave $190 billion to large companies growing cotton, wheat, corn, soybean, rice, barley, oats and sorghum.

Ten years ago the international price of cotton lint was $1.10 a pound. Today it is just 52 cents. Then the retail price of ten metres of cotton was four rupees. Today it is eight rupees. So while retail prices have doubled, farmers are forced to sell their produce at half the price. As the costs of production rise above prices, most farmers are running up huge losses and have to borrow heavily. Since most of them have already defaulted on loan repayments, the only recourse is to borrow from the trader-moneylenders who charge interest at rates as high as 120 percent.

Alarmed at the phenomenal scale of farmers’ suicides, and the poor publicity that they bring, the chief minister of Maharashtra started offering farm loans at 6 percent interest rates — 1 percent cheaper than the previous rate. He also announced that, “if a farmer repays the loan on time, he will get an additional subsidy of 2 percent in the interest rate, and the state will bear the cost of giving loans to farmers at a subsidised rate”. The announcement of the “generous offer” was farcical. In the absence of crop prices that allow farmers to make a living, how will the farmers repay these new loans?

In addition to “financial relief”, the state government is trying to do something to lift the morale of farmers. It is organising social events like prayer meetings, plays, and interesting talks by experts. Instead of addressing the root causes of poverty, our rulers are to start counselling camps for the farmers called “art of living” classes. Surely, a cruel joke is being played on India’s dying farmers.