In the aftermath of the horror yesterday in Paris, I noticed that Mr Obama gave a speech, as many other national leaders did, expressing solidarity with France at this time and supporting free speech. I am sure I am not the only person to note how hollow Mr Obama’s comments sound in the light of how his administration conducted itself around the time of the attack in Benghazi when a film about Islam had been released. This isn’t narrow political point-scoring – Republicans and others are just as capable of getting themselves wrong on this issue. The point, rather, is that Western leaders need to be as ruthlessly consistent as possible. When the Obama administration was tested on this sort of issue, it wobbled. Islamist fanatics notice – it creates incentives among those who calculate that if they create enough hysteria, are sufficiently “offended” by something, that people will cave in. The most powerful country on the planet caved.
Another point worth making, particularly as people across the political spectrum seem to be genuinely shocked and appalled by this attack, is that far too many attacks on free speech these days are justified in the name of banning “hate speech”, and so on. Certain forms of expression may indeed be hateful and unpleasant but the best defence against that is indifference, contempt, or ridicule. And another point, particularly for the more anarchist-minded out there, especially those of a leftist bent, is this: if you want to vent, do so on private property, in a consensual way. The producers of the French magazine did that: no-one was forced to buy their product or forced to read it. It is not as if they sprayed their cartoons in public streets outside a mosque.
It’s curious how many sacred cows of the left were also slaughtered yesterday.
1. France opposed the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
2. France is pretty squarely anti-American.
3. France has very strict gun-control laws.
4. France has a leftist socialist government.
5. Those specifically targeted were even more left wing.
They’re running out of excuses as to why Muslims are doing this stuff.
Do Islamist fanatics want people to cave in? Or do they want to get more Muslims on their side?
You can’t control every crazy young man with a gun (I mean the murderers), and, on the other hand – you can’t blame the whole Muslim community for what some crazy individuals did.
But, I think there is no doubt that the murderers were incited by the preaching of the imams in the mosques. So, the hard question is: to what extent (if any) should the secret security services monitor the religious preaching of extremist imams in the mosques, and arrest or deport extremist preachers. That is a delicate question, involving free speech and religious freedom, but it must be remembered that incitement to murder isn’t protected free speech.
@Jacob,
A Syrian colleague – a moderate Muslim – made that very same point in my office about 20 minutes ago.
One of the truly shocking realisations is that yesterday murderers wouldn’t have needed their guns to achieve their aims in London. They could simply have complained about Charlie Hebdo to the police under our religious offence law. The police would have then shut Hebdo down for them.
A point lost amongst todays MSM/political ‘All stand together’ hypocrisy.
You’re right there Jacob but, as far as I know, being an Imam in Islam is quite a competative business. You set yourself up as an Imam and look around for a mosque to give you a gig. But when you get one, especially a Friday one, if the crowd don’t like you you get hooked. It would seem that in this particular market of ideas the ‘kill the infidel’ preachers are winning out over the ‘peace and love’ types, particularly with the young.
Of course there are plenty of mosques in the west where they preach, if not peace and love then at least ‘get along with thy neighbour even if he is a dirty infidel’ message but I would say that the revealed preferences of the faithful are pointing in the direction of the fire-breathers.
(It’s probably not quite a free market since the Saudis export their wahabist rabble-rousers to preach around the world, but I reckon there is something in the theory.)
The Magazine lampooned across a wide spectrum of perps.
Quite correct “Stuck Record” – France does all the leftist Progressive things, opposed the Iraq war, attacks Israel (all the time) and on and on……
And they have got hit anyway – and this attack is just one of many recently.
Sadly some of our libertarian brothers and sisters, the Rothbardians, are saying it is “blow back” (they have got poor old Ron Paul as their Aunt Sally puppet – saying whatever the Rothbardians tell him to say). This really is vile – this “blowback” theory is both false and obscene.
J.P. – you mention President Barack Obama. Whenever I hear him speak now I hear what he said in relation to Bengazi….
“The future must not belong to the slanderers of the Prophet Mohammed” said Mr Obama to the United Nations – almost as the bodies of Americans were being dragged through the streets by people who had never heard of any Youtube film.
Mr Obama is not a Muslim (as some people mistakenly claim) he is just a horrible, disgusting, person.
Obama is a Extreme Leftist, a Racialist and hates the limited power of the Republic. You just have to see him talk to perceive where he is invested. In that sense he is a very limited person.
Really? imans in the mosques? that is so passé.
“you can’t blame the whole Muslim community for what some crazy individuals did.”
They are not crazy individuals, they follow the Islamic ideology. We are not fighting individuals we are fighting a totalitarian ideology.
Yes i can blame the whole Muslim community because that community is specialist in expelling those that get out of order. Somehow they are always unable to expell this kind of guys.
Do not forget that the Guardians, Independent et al. always carried the water of Islamic radicals, everything that they did was caused by : capitalism, exploration, poverty(caused by us), America, Israel, Reagan, Bush, Republicans etc…
So why not drop a Paveway Prince Andrew on the King of Shoddy Absurdia? (First official LGB guest in that Kingdom!) France is my backyard so I am apo-fucking-plectic. Not with the perps (though I would boil them alive slowly – and their children) as much as the twats who don’t get it. This is all in the Qu’ran. I am sick to the back teeth of wankers who have never bothered to read the book (it is quite short and widely, freely available online) and very clear. This is the difference between it and, say, the Bible. Biblical loons tend (there are exceptions) to work on a smaller canvas but the Islamist loons saw the whole of the Moon. They don’t just lock their daughters up in some shittery in Kansas. Hell, no! They maim everyone elses. They take their religion seriously. The flaw is we haven’t for so long that by and large we don’t understand religion. We think it is chucking a 50p in the pot for the Sally Army whilst Crimble shopping. We see it as a nice, happy thing. We have lost the understanding that it is an existential thing because we don’t really believe. I don’t but I am aware how important it is to so many. I mean really important.
God help me! I was all set to post an amusing story on Counting Cats about rural lesbians on a quiz show but it seems wrong now.
Vive Le France et suis Viz!
Well, I am a Geordie.
I hope everyone associated is shot in the rectum and dies slowly.
Sorry, but Islam is a religion of intolerance and hate. It says it quite clearly in the Quran, time and again. Kill the Infidel.
The fact that so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims do not go around hacking the heads off non-believers is irrelevant.
What to do about it is another matter entirely as the “Barbarians are within the gates”.
Ban Islam? Forced conversions? Forced expulsions?
It all sounds a bit 10th Century, but then when your dealing with a 7th Century ideology that is implacable to change (as the Quran is meant to be the irrefutable and unchangeable words of Allah via the Prophet), then you end up being a bit stuck.
Tensions will continue to rise and unless the powers that be do something people will start taking matters into their own hands.
Do we want to see a 1930’s style holocaust against Islam? Because that is where this road of violence and denial ends.
In saying that the Obama administration “wobbled”, JP seems to me to be rather overestimating Obama’s commitment to the 1st amendment in the first place. I don’t think Obama is committed to any of the constitution – when it helps him he’s for it, when it gets in the way he’s against it. He’ll happily (OK grudgingly) give it a nod of approval in a speech, but wholly for political purposes, not out of respect. I don’t say he’ the only politician like that, but amongst recent American presidents he stands out as the one with the smallest attachment to traditional liberal principles. Indeed one might say that his contempt for those principles is usually more evident than his attachment to them.
However, it was another JP remark that piqued my interest more :
“And another point, particularly for the more anarchist-minded out there, especially those of a leftist bent, is this: if you want to vent, do so on private property, in a consensual way.”
I find this to be an underexplored area in libertarian thought – or libertarian thought that I have glanced at – ie where does the freedom not to listen come in ? Obviously consensual speech and consensual listening on private property presents no difficulty at all. But where you have actual, or potential, unwilling listeners, where does the line get drawn ? Obviously some reasonable restrictions have to do with speech as mere noise – ie loudspeakering your views into someone’s living room is a form of assault, just as much as loudspeakers Black Sabbath into someone’s living room.
But what about tagging along with someone as they walk down the street, and insisting that they find God, or eschew homosexuality, or whatever ? Once the target says “bugger off I’m not interested” does the speaker’s right to bug him come to an end ? And then of course there’s crowds in public spaces. Some listeners may be willing, some not so much. Some unwilling listeners can walk away, but some may want to use the public space for their own purposes. No doubt there’s a lot of 1st amendment law dealing with this sort of thing. But are there any libertarian principles that have been brought to bear on the question of the speaker’s right to speak v the listener’s right not to listen ?
Clearly there are pragmatic considerations – ie a strong prejudice in the law in favour of the former as against the latter is likely to help inhibit C from preventing A speaking to willing B, by claiming that he ( C) doesn’t want to listen. But that’s not really a principle.
There’s an interesting side bar in Wealth of Nations where Smith mentions in passing that the Scots tried selecting priests democratically but the Church had to stop it as everyone tried to go ‘more pious than thou’ and vote for the most extreme candidate. I’ve often wondered if the same effect applies to imams.
Lee Moore, thanks for the comments, particularly on my point about consent and property. Why not flesh out a longer argument on this point, email the editors, and we can bung it on the site.
I think you can summarise the explanation of why Obama makes a speech supporting France when Islam attacks France, but not when Islam attacks America, by saying that Obama likes France as it is, but not America as it is.
All societies/religious groups have nutters, but unfortunately within the global Muslim community religiously motivated violence is approved of by a sufficient number of people to give the nutters all the justification they need to engage in said violence. Could you find passages in the Bible that could be used to justify violence? Sure, but you won’t find many people agreeing with you that it is acceptable. And so you just keep muttering into your breakfast.
Ultimately these nutters do not constitute an existential threat to the UK or France in the short term; although, particularly in France, a more general increase in the political power of the muslim population potentially does. I guess we could always issue passports to 10m Chinese if the size of the muslim population gets a bit too high for comfort. The eastern Europeans are already doing their part.
The street is ‘public’, but is, in English common law the highway is to be used for ‘passing and re-passing’, not for bugging people. If you bug someone on the highway, you may be obstructing it or committing a nuisance. You do so at your peril. The property angle is hardly relevant, it is obvious to a reasonable person if what they are doing is welcome or not.
As for use of public spaces, they are owned by the state in some form or other. The problem is the politicisation of use of public space, with laws allowing e.g. demonstrations as ‘freedom of expression’ clogging up the highway with interference with freedom of passage. Or else laws limiting activities that the state disapproves of.
“We have lost the understanding that it is an existential thing because we don’t really believe.”
Spot-on, Nick. There’s a faint echo of that mindset in Ireland and the west of Scotland – and it’s faded greatly even in the last generation or so – but it’s nothing to the muslims.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t muslims who view their religion in the Western manner. I know some. But the question is how far they’ve really distanced themselves from the existentialism. Because the Irish/Scottish experience – not to mention, for example, the Bosnian; Bosnia was a model of “secular” Islam – would suggest that it’s not hard to draw them back in when it comes to the crunch. If it’s us-or-them, the tipping-point can be very fine.
Dear Stuck
One quick factoid, France did send troops to Afghanistan. They didn’t do too much compared with the Anglospherians, but they did at least show up.
Otherwise I fully concur with your points.
Bosnia still is mostly secular. Unfortunately a contingent of ex jihadists settled there after the war. I understand they are not very popular with the native Bosnians.
I had a colleague once that decided to fast during Eid, but only on Saturday. I made the point that that was probably not a great sacrifice as she did not get up until mid day having been out drinking the night before. ‘So!’ came the answer…that is what we are aiming for.
I agree with luckylucky: you can blame the whole Muslim community, and I do. They don’t merely tolerate these “radical” Imams, they encourage them. And the “moderate” ones don’t do anything to stop it. The best you can say about them is that they’re enablers. Sorry, but in an existential conflict you don’t get to vote “present”. No one in the West will admit this, but we are engaged in a religious war. As an atheist I would prefer not to be involved in such, but unfortunately there is no alternative to choosing a side (I’ll be collateral damage either way) so I take the one which is more likely to leave me in peace. And religious wars are necessarily fought in a medieval way. Forced expulsion is only a starting point.
France has the highest percentage Muslim population in Europe. As I understand it there are whole areas in the suburbs of Paris where non-Muslims simply cannot go. This includes police and even firefighters. It’s essentially an autonomous enclave within the country, and a hotbed of radicalism, extremism and hate. There is something seriously wrong with a nation which tolerates this. Perhaps this murderous rampage is the wake-up call France needs.
One comment on Johnathan’s “private property” remark (and obviously this is not intended as any sort of justification for the murders): Yes, the magazine was private property which no one was forced to buy or read. But I do note that it insisted on publishing these mocking cartoons on the cover, which is on full display in newsstands. In that sense it could be seen as being as assault on all passersby, even those who would prefer not to be exposed to the ideas there expressed. It’s much like shouting in the public square. In a very real sense they did “spray their cartoons in public streets”. So this isn’t quite as cut and dried a “private property” case as is implied by the remark.
“…how hollow Mr. Obama’s comments sound in the light of how his (appointed)administration conducted itself around…” Um, each and every “issue” since immediately AFTER elections, concerning “We the People…”, or “authority to act…”?
OK, you can call me racist/homophobic/bigoted/sexist/Libertarian/Conservative/Obstructionist/Chauvinist/low information/science denial/anti “intellectual”/”elite” envyist/small white penis/greedy rich/”domestic (whatever)” now!
In terms of the holier than though thing, there is a clear incentive to be more holy (in islamic terms) if being Muslim is an identity with value. Considering the persistence of identity politics, and the Gulf funding of islamic mission and infrastructure (if it meets their definition of Muslim…) there is a clear value in being more Muslim than the next man, in that you can then use your Muslim identity to access funds. And that often requires being more extremist or intolerant to emphasise the differences. Muslim communities in the UK are not democratic – although some of the better and saner mosques actually are (but you need to be a well-established mosque to have enough income to resist the lure of state or Gulf funding) – so community leaders basically rely on the same thing as local strongmen throughout time, the ability to reward and attract loyal followers, who will mostly be young males (i.e. those able to act politically in the community, and able to effectively act as support). There is therefore a need to be attractive to a certain young male mentality, which is the rather immature and violent extreme view of Islam. Because being a community leader is not about having popular consent but rather local power, the fact that this power can be delivered by attracting a few (and oppressing many) of the percieved community means that there is a particular strand of immature masculine fantasy Islam being promoted by those who want to access the funds, with which to reward their followers.
There is some good news – the Gulf states cannot continue to fund this form of Islam (the same that propelled many of their rulers to power at the head of groups of young men) if they have not got the money, so oil prices falling mean there is less incentive to be Muslim as opposed to some other identity. But there are still plenty of councils and government departments that think giving money to Muslim groups is a good multicultural thing to do – and they also use community leaders who can reward people with votes from their followers.
What is needed is to stop the funding of Muslim identity, so there is no incentive to be more Muslim, and people can be who they want. Contrary to some commentators on this site’s beliefs, the Qu’ran is no more necessary violent than the Bible – it is like most religious texts in that it is entirely up to the reader what they take from it. Encouraging the development of non-Muslim identities means that those who wish to be Muslims (not a choice anyone can be denied as that is a personal matter) can at least do so without being forced into an escalating competition of radical and immature male fantasy interpretations of a text which can easily be read as promoting violence but need not be – it is possible to read a religious text allegorically. What is unhelpful is defining Islam as a whole as a violent religion – if one Muslim can live a peaceful life whilst claiming to follow the teachings of Islam (and many can) then that is clearly an unhelpful falsehood – because this just gives another incentive to Muslims to be more Muslim than you to counter the ignorance.
Ultimately Muslims are humans – and as humans we need to ensure their individuality is more valuable to them than some perceived Muslim identity.
I’ve been led to believe that apologist obstruction, and “unintended” consequences, from useful idiots fomented a poor “infrastructure” for U.S. response to (sorry) King George, Barbary Pirates,Nazi Germany, Japan, Benghazi,etc., etc….
And that’s just the Foreign “issues”. The domestic one’s have proved WORSE, as “…it just hasn’t been done RIGHT yet.. it’ll be different THIS time!…” or something.
The “extra” effort required ALWAYS seems to be paid in “other people’s” blood and treasure.
Freedom of speech.
Freedom of conscience.
Equality before the law.
These are the finest achievements of the evolution of western democracy.
Any politician unwilling to defend them robustly
Any citizen unwilling to abide by these principles
Any belief system in conflict with these values
..should fuck off to some hideous hellhole where they are not observed.
While poking fun at everyone, including Islam, Charlie Hebdo also saw the need to express sympathy to Hamas (more than once – I don’t want to pile up too many links in fear of the mighty smitebot). Not that it makes them in any way deserving of this massacre, but still worth noting.
>I am sure I am not the only person to note how hollow Mr Obama’s comments sound in the light of how his administration conducted itself around the time of the attack in Benghazi when a film about Islam had been released.
Yes, especially when he said ‘the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam’. Which is exactly what Charlie Hebdo did.
Stuck-Record above makes the most pertinent point, though, which I can only re-echo:
“One of the truly shocking realisations is that yesterday murderers wouldn’t have needed their guns to achieve their aims in London. They could simply have complained about Charlie Hebdo to the police under our religious offence law. The police would have then shut Hebdo down for them.”
Mr. Ed, public spaces do not belong to the state, they belong to the people who live in that state, and the state’s only legitimate role in this particular case is to administer those spaces for the people, make that for the good of the people. Yes, the state being the state, it often doesn’t work out that way, but the principle stands.
Much like the Falklands Islands, which belong to neither the UK nor to Argentina, but to the people who live there, and they have consistently chosen to be administered by the former.
Don’t see how the Holocaust is relevant to this, as it was committed against people who were absolutely peaceful and well-assimilated. Not being touchy or anything, just wondering what the better example would be – if any at all.
An interesting comment by Watchman with much food for thought, although I already see points that I’m at least no sure about before I outright disagree. For one thing – and this may be a useful reminder to the rest of the commentariat here – in Islam apostasy is punishable by death.
Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain in 1492 and their banishment decree of Jews springs to mind as an example of what is being referred to, with the subsequent expulsion all those of Abrahamic faith not being Christians. The Portuguese had a similar policy, and reportedly a Portuguese stew of clams and pork was invented, the cataplana, to test the dietary sensitivities of those who remained having converted to Christianity.
Or ask an Armenian, or a Greek or Turk post-1923. History is replete with examples of expulsions, and in the Republic of Ireland, the flight of a minority, the Protestants, a far softer, more subtle process, rather than a policy.
Sell your bit of a public space then :-). State ownership is very real. The State sometimes claims as public spaces private property, now that is sinister.
I know that much, Ed – but you seem to have missed the qualifier in my comment, as the examples you have given are also of expulsed populations having been peaceful and assimilated to a large degree. My point is that it is easy to pick on such populations, single them out as different and therefore dangerous, and to do away with them by using whatever force necessary – which is to say very little (see the peaceful bit).
Those were examples of populations that were ‘part of the scenery’, unlike, perhaps, the Palestinians in Kuwait when Mr Hussein came in, and then of course, his forces left as did many remaining Palestinians.
But the Muslim population in France is distinct but peaceful, bar perhaps a few thousand loser types who become jihadis, and amongst them there are also the Harki, the pro-French Algerians (and their descendants) who on Algerian independence fled the FLN (the local equivalent of the Ba’athists, murderous socialist thugs). The Harki were not a group as such, like Berbers, but are seen as a group by political affiliation, but that, of course, can change in individuals.
Well yes, Ed – that is precisely what I’m driving at: how does one deal with the situation as it presents itself now? Saying ‘its their fault’ (‘they’ being generations of politicians who implemented policies that brought us to this sorry state of affairs) is useful to understanding how we got here, but I – like most others, it seems – am still at a loss what to do about it. So I’m looking for historic precedents which may resemble the current situation as closely as possible, and I’m saying that neither the Holocaust, nor the expulsions you mentioned, resemble it closely enough. The reason being that either the problematic population in question was not really problematic, and therefore an easy target as a mere scape goat for other agendas, or they did not occur in the West, and as such may not serve as useful examples for someone who seeks a solution that is in broad agreement with Western values, however those may be defined.
Some have suggested that for a citizen of, say, the UK to enlist in or aid the IS army amounts to a form of treason against the UK (the problems with this being in legal terms that (i) IS is not a State recognised by the UK, (ii) there is no state of war between the UK and IS and (iii) in any event this might be retrospective legislation or a bill of attainder – neither of which are impermissible in the UK, hence the express prohibition of them in the US constitution as a marker).
However, it would seem to me that if it were made the law of a country X that to aid a terror campaign or enlist in a foreign army or to enlist in a terrorist organisation without permission would lead to loss of citizenship (provided a jury consents on a beyond reasonable doubt burden of proof), then any person from country X engaging in terror could be subject to the old punishment of exile or banishment. There are objections that international law does not permit this, but it cannot stop it either. Upon banishment, the exiled person would be required to leave the country of banishment and never return, presumably under capital threat. If no one will take the person, then presumably indefinite detention for illegally remaining in the country would ensue.
It would be preferable to wholesale expulsion of innocents on the basis of accident of birth and would at least throw out the bathwater rather than the baby. It would act purely on the basis of conduct, not belief or origin.
You might even be able to host those detained under it in a cheaper location, perhaps cut a deal with Belarus to host undeparted exiles?
Sounds like a good idea in principle, although the devil may appear in the details of determining the extent of the actual involvement by the suspect in whatever overseas conflict, if any at all. OTOH, you could just say that if one travels to this or that state (such as Syria or Iraq) unless you can show a good reason to do so, one need not bother coming back. Worded carefully enough, this could work.
…correction: unless one can show a good reason to do so.