Adopting the world view of the enemy. In "Cartoon Jihad Continues" in Human Events today, I explain how Yale University Press has unwittingly taken on the jihadist world view.
A much-needed new book is coming from Yale University Press: The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University. It discusses the cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad that were published in the largest newspaper in Denmark, Jyllands-Posten, late in 2005, touching off murderous rage from Muslims around the world.Such a book could be a useful exploration of the free speech issues that the cartoon controversy raised. And it has already shed new light on the Islamic challenge to free speech represented by the response to the cartoons, even before it has been published.
But it has done so in a way that neither Jytte Klausen nor Yale University Press intends.
For Yale University Press, according to the New York Times, checked with twenty-four “diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism,” as well as other authorities, and they all made the same recommendation: this book about the Muhammad cartoons should not actually include the Muhammad cartoons. John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, explained that “the cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words,” and thus “reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.” He said he had “never blinked” when publishing controversial material before, but “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”
Blood on his hands? Really? While it may seem laudable to want to protect Yale University Press staff and employees from violent reprisals by Islamic jihadists, in fact Yale University Press’s position represents a capitulation of astonishing proportions. He is demonstrating that threats of violence work, and that Western non-Muslims will not stand up and defend the principle of free speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation....
Even worse, when Donatich speaks of blood on his hands, he shows that he has, in a pathetic manifestation of intellectual Stockholm Syndrome, adopted the world view of the violent Muslim foes of free speech around the world. For what if the decision had been made that The Cartoons That Shook the World would reproduce the cartoons? Would that really have been “gratuitous”? Of course not. It would have been precisely appropriate to the book at hand. And what if Islamic supremacist thugs murdered more innocent people because of the book? Would that blood have been on the hands of John Donatich or Jytte Klausen? Only in the eyes of the Islamic supremacists themselves. But not in reality. For if someone flies into a murderous rage because of a perfectly reasonable action, the reasonable actor does not thereby become responsible.
If I meet someone who says that he will kill a person every time I step on a crack in the sidewalk, I do not thereby become responsible for the deaths of those people he murders as a result. And if I began to behave as if I were indeed responsible in such a case, I would only be feeding the psychosis of the killer....
I used to laugh at some Middle Eastern countries blacking out Piglet in Pooh Bear books as the pig is offensive to Muslims.
This is much more laughable, as it is happening in a "free country."
I will be sure to purchase at least one copy, show it to friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc. and as them why they think a book about cartoons doesn't have cartoons in it?
This is actually doing the Infidelic countries a favor in the long-term fight.
The world can now laugh at both Islam and Yale.
/I think Yale, being part of the Ivy League, has earned a well-deserved reputation as being poison ivy.
A cowardly act of useless publication furthering the demented demands of mutant misfits! If I'd gone to that university I'd pull any future
support.
O/T Police cover up unprovoked 'Asian' attack on families in Luton pub:
http://isupporttheresistance.blogspot.com/2009/08/police-cover-up-race-riot.html
Robert, hope you can visit Luton while you're here and see how bad it's become.
John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, explained that “the cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words...”
A mysterious smiling woman.
There. I just described the Mona Lisa in words. Now everyone knows what she looks like and no one will have to visit the Louvre anymore.
The intellectual gymnastics necessary for Yale University Press to come up with a decision not to include the cartoons in the publication are truly mind-boggling.
Let's recap the logic train:
A. The cartoons have been found to be offensive to Muslims.
B. Muslims have been known to commit mayhem and violence when things they find offensive are published.
C. If we publish and they hurt someone, its our fault.
Conclusion: Don't do anything that might get someone hurt.
Comparative logic train:
A. King George is applying taxation without representation to the colonies.
B. The English have been known to commit mayhem against those who seek self-determination.
C. If we sign the Declaration and someone gets hurt, its our fault.
Conclusion: Don't sign the Declaration of Independence
Sad how times have changed. When faced with a threatening and violent future, our founding fathers took the road of liberty; Yale University leaders might want to study US history 101.
In tribute to Yale's submission, my take on Mohammad.
No More Muslim Immigration Petition
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/no-more-Muslim-immigration
PLEASE SIGN
Intimidation by Islam...Lots of people seem to be infected...Maybe someone should write a book about 'how to overcome Islamic intimidation and regain your manhood'...
Brilliant analysis, it's indeed the Stockholm syndrome. To discuss certain objects while not showing them, although they're available, doesn't make sense to me, but I'm only a simple Westerner trained in rational thinking, and that's incompatible with Islam. Robert is right, the worst thing, we can do, is to adopt the Islamic way of thinking and bow to their stupid sentivities, that only feeds their psychosis, and the more we accomodate them, the more they want, give them an inch and they grab a mile.
These attempts to curtail our right to free speech have been going on for twenty years, now. In Bradford, in 1989 they rallied against Salman Rushie's "Satanic Verses", they even burnt copies of the book, just like the Nazis did in 1933. We all know what followed. I think someone should write a book about all the parralels between Islam and Nazism and draw the right conclusions, but that book would be banned in our dhimmi society, I'm afraid.
What was the role of the President's Office at Yale, including a certain administrator who has recently been travelling to Saudi Arabia and perhaps the smaller Gulf Arab states, the tiny sheikdoms who are now trying to rent Western culture (a little Louvre over here, and perhaps a little MIT Media Lab over there) without grasping the nature of the underlying civilisation that makes such things possible in the West, and impossible of creation -- though not of partial and most temporary rental -- in the Muslim Arab states (where Islam and 'Uruba, Arabness, are mutually reinforcing). Were those travels, possibly designed to result in that appetizing thing, a Big Donation, or some grand new "alliance" -- the kind of thing that John Sexton at NYU is, with obliviousness aforethought, so gung-ho about, as are any number of academic empire-builders, whose mental outlook was long ago dissected by Jacques Barzun in "The House of Intellect" and "Teacher in America" -- and Barzun wrote decades before the problem became a kind of sickness-unto-death.
What about the role of the Beating Heart of Yale University, its Development Office? (In this respect Yale is no different from Harvard or Princeton or any of the other educational corporations that now rule the roost, and call the tune, in what is still optimistically called -- both the adjective and the noun are optimistic, and not even cautiously -- "higher" "education."
And what was the role of Marcia Inhorn, a medical anthropologist who for some reason is now the head of the Middle Eastern Studies at Yale, who was at that famous two-hour lunch, with an administrator or two, where Jytte Klausen (good god, if anyone should be worried about Muslim attacks, surely it should be her, and she was steadfastly ready to take that risk, to stare them down)? Was she merely called in by the President's Office to help make the case for pusillanimity and self-censorship?
And what about the ghost of Alexander Bickel and others who once taught at a different Yale Law School? Or the tutelary spirits of Free Speech in the United States? Anyone on the Yale faculty mention Alexander Meiklejohn? Or Learned Hand, and "The Spirit of Liberty"? Or Holmes, or Brandeis? Anyone on the Yale Daily News write about this, and mention, oh, not only Milton's "Areopagitica," but our home-grown John Peter Zenger? Anyone remember John Peter Zenger? What about the slow development, over many centuries, in the advanced and liberal West, especially after the Enlightenment, of freedom of speech? Anyone care in New Haven or environs (say, a comfortable study, in a most comfortable house, in Woodbridge) to bethink himself, about the whole history of freedom of speech, and about the absurdity of a book on images of Muhammad that will not, because of censorship imposed by the very publishing house putting out the book, contain any images of Muhammad, including those of Dore for an edition of Dante?
How can these people face themselves? And how can The Times, so quick to pontificate about freedom of speech, not discuss and denounce this decision? How does the editorial board of The Times ever hope to be able to write, to lecture or hector, on free speech again, ever? How do those who in law schools all over this country go slowly through the development of free speech doctrine in this country, hope with straight faces to deal with this question, and even to point out that the greatest threat to free speech may not be the government, which is all the Constitution is concerned with, but private parties, just a bit too easily, I'm afraid, scared out of their wits into proleptic censorship?
How much of what is wrong and even rotten in American "higher" "education" and in many other parts of American life -- among the Smart Set, the set that is so very different from the cro-magnon men who make up, apparently, the little gang of "islamophobes" who are so unfairly making hay about this case -- the Set that is well-degreed but most unlettered, ill-read, and ignorant of the history of civilization, and not its discontents, but its contents, that can apparently be discarded whenever the primitives are deemed sufficiently violent, and a threat to the advanced.
This is what is known as 'the bold pre-eptive
strike' of cowardice. i.e. surrender before there's a war.
Oh well, maybe all the girlie magazines like Penthouse, Playboy, Hustler, etc. can now start doing the same to avoid offending those who find female nudity offensive. Simply describe the physical attributes of the models in their magazines and leave the rest to the imagination.
From post above: Simply describe the physical attributes of the models in their magazines and leave the rest to the imagination.
OT...
That always works for me...I save a lot of money on girlie magazine subscriptions that way...Who needs pictures when you have a good description...
John Donatich said “the cartoons are freely available on the Internet..." and claims that he removed the cartoons because did not want to have blood on his hands.
A moral problem here in Donatich's position is that he is on the one hand making free use of other peoples' postings of the cartoons as crucial material for the book, while claiming that his own refusal to publish the cartoons is out of concern for peoples' safety. What about the safety of the people who publish the cartoons on the internet? If he is concerned about their safety, he would not be recommending (indirectly or directly, implicitly or explicitly) that anyone look at the cartoons at any particular sources, because those sources are the people who bear the burden of the increased safety risk. Instead of acting (and thinking) cowardly as Donatich has done, he should publish the cartoons and thus shoulder some of the burden of safety risk that has thus far been taken on by others. This would probably reduce the overall safety risk for anyone who publishes the cartoons. The more people who publish the cartoons, the less risk there is for any one publisher.
If Donatich and Yale University Press are not willing to take on some of the costs of increased security for their own staff, perhaps they should donate some money for this purpose to those who are publishing the cartoons. After all, the cartoons "freely available on the internet" are, practically speaking, crucial supplementary material for the book that Yale is publishing. Another thing Yale could do is publish the cartoons on their own official website, and provide a url reference in the printed book--still a rather timid move, but better than just leaving all of that to what is freely available on the internet.
Donatich's position shows another major problem:
"the cartoons...can be accurately described in words,” [and thus do not need to be published]. This statement betrays an astounding level of ignorance in regard to the work of visual artists generally, and of cartoonists in particular, and an incredible lack of understanding of the important differences visually depictive media and text-based modes of communications. In any case, if he believes what he says, then why does he also recommend that people view the cartoons on the internet? This incoherence in Donatich's position suggests that he has not really thought this through, and is grasping at whatever rationalizations come to mind.
One thing I will not fault Donatich on is his frank admission that he is scared of the threat of violence. It is on this point where Yale's failure to publish the cartoons needs to be emphasized. By highlighting the threat of violence, attention is directed to where it ought to be, i.e., on those among the Muslims who will potentially carry out violence in order to strike more fear of, and therefore more conformity to, Islamic blasphemy law.
correction: "important differences between visually depictive media and text-based modes of communications."
"One thing I will not fault Donatich on is his frank admission that he is scared of the threat of violence."
I don't recall seeing any such frank admission -- only the vague and passive "blood on my hands", which could mean some people dying in a riot in Craptakistan.
Here's the repulsive "Islamic Awakening" on "Freedom of Expression And Islaam"--and the MoToons. See especially the comments section. It gives you a good sense of what we are up against.
http://www.islamicawakening.com/haveyoursay.php?hysid=61
Yale University Press and the rest of the world's media would not be in this mess if they told Muslims that they will no longer tolerate intimidation from Muslims. This message needs to be delivered to Muslims no matter what the cost of doing so will be.
Diana West astutely observes that Yale's pre-emptive capitulation likely had less to do with cowardice than cupidity -- to wit, its quest for the sort of Islamic boodle that Harvard and Georgetown got from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal:
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/984/More-Lux-et-Dhimmitude-Cherchez-La-Dough.aspx
Like the man says: Read it all!
Bosch Fawstin, thanks for reprinting the MoToons--and your own take on the false "prophet".
Certainly Kurt Westergaard's cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban is the most famous and strongest piece (I've used the image on signs myself)--but in many ways I think the most salient piece is the one by the cartoonist showing the nervous artist, with the blinds drawn, hunched over his drawing table, almost paralyzed with fear over the possibility that his work will be found "offensive"--and the likely bloody response to that "offense".
In many ways, this exemplifies the Western response, including that of Yale University Press.
But there are differences--the MoToon artist persevered, despite his fears--and moreover, did not pretend that his fears were really some sort of high-minded principle, as does the craven Yale University.
Moral responsibility.
One of the things that the mind uses to measure it's own status, is to measure how its actions stack up against its consciously acknowledged moral standards.
Feeling innocent and approved is pleasurable, feeling guilty and ashamed is painful.
It's just how we work.
So there is a big payoff for generating in oneself feelings of innocence and approval -- regardless of how those feelings are justified or generated or commensurate with observable objective fact.
Many moral systems are set up precisely to accommodate various forms of destructive self-indulgence, while still generating pleasurable moral emotions.
Thei logic is rotten, but the logic isn't the point, the emotional goodies are the point.
The mohammedans excel in this area.
And it seems that Donatich has fallen into this trap himself.
What is always amazing is the distortion in the prioritization of values that all this garbage produces.
Somebody better tip Donatich off to the fact that he is morally answerable for the moral standards he choses to adopt.
Donatich tries to hide pathetic cowardice behind a pretense of conscience: to avoid having blood on his hands.
How about if he tells people at Yale that this book is going to be published with the pictures, and if people at Yale don't want to take the risk that goes with freedom, they can pack up and go somewhere "safe." They don't belong at Yale. People who kill freedom for the sake of a little security are not worthy of either.
People in the publishing business should put themselves on notice: If you don't want to represent freedom, then get the hell out of the business. Put your employees on notice. If they don't want to be in a business that carries its responsibilities for freedom, then start looking for another job. From here on in, you will be expected, if you choose publishing or media, to stand up and have a spine. Otherwise get the hell out of the job. Having a family is no excuse. Get another job if your family's security is all that matters to you.
The Yale Press seems to have a website.. says this is their 100th year of publishing. That thing the mission statement says "By publishing serious works that contribute to a global understanding of human affairs, Yale University Press aids in the discovery and dissemination of light and truth, lux et veritas, which is a central purpose of Yale University."
Some guy, one of the founders said “The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.”
Yep, nothing about pictures, it's all good.
Ah, yes, Hugh unveils yet another "Arab Conspiracy Theory"
"Were those travels, possibly designed to result in that appetizing thing, a Big Donation, or some grand new "alliance" --"
...another plug about the mythical "Wahabbi Cash"
I was a little too quick to condemn Donatich's conscience as phony. I see that Hesperado has referred to the possibility of riots in "Craptakistan" as what Donatich was referring to in speaking of possible "blood" on his hands. I thought Donatich was referring to the blood of fellow Yale staff and/or students. People at Yale have a responsibility to freedom, and can choose to leave the institution. But when I think of the dozens of non-Muslims around the world who might die if Yale publication of the cartoons incites Muslims, I can also see how it might be a difficult decision to go ahead and publish. Doing so could mean the deaths of helpless innocents in revenge riots. To drop the spark that sets a monster rampaging could well weigh on the conscience. "Did I do the right thing? Was I right to go ahead, even though I knew it might lead to the deaths of many innocents? What if I was wrong? What if, through my insufficient grasp of the complexity of things, I was wrong to provoke that monster at that moment in that situation?"
GMcCal...and Duhswami and Shafee al-Zindig
Re replacing pictures by words.
You made me laugh.
Of course, trying to reverse the process and replace words by pictures might also be amusing, in the case of poetry such as one finds in the Song of Solomon:
viz., chapter 1: verses 9-14.
chapter 2: 3.
chapter 4. (description of the lady; male POV).
chapter 5: 10-15 (description of the gentleman; female POV - and *what* exactly *is* she comparing to a cedar of Lebanon?).
chapter 6: 4-7 (describing the lady, again: perhaps best not to turn the artists loose on this one).
chapter 7: 1-8 (more about the lady; take good care to note the sequence involved, starting with the description of the feet and proceeding toward the head; and does anyone *really* believe that verse 2 is talking about the lady's *navel*?)
Powerpoint presentation, anyone?
Sorry for the somewhat offtopic posting I just made. The temptation - given that that idiot editor at Yale has raised an important philosophical problem, the old 'words vs. pictures' argument and the use of comedy by other posters to expand upon it - was too much to resist.
Sorry for the somewhat offtopic posting I just made. The temptation - given that that idiot editor at Yale has raised an important philosophical problem, the old 'words vs. pictures' argument, and that other posters were already using comedy to explore that problem - was too much to resist.
One of the arguments of defenders of this decision is that the cartoons are already "on-line." That they are. But should not the publisher of the book make them easily on-line, included in the price of the book, by making sure the link to them is up at the website of Yale University Press -- or perhaps not a link at all, but the cartoons themselves, the ones that appeared in Jyllands-Posten and, of course, the other images, such as Dore's of Muhammad in Dante's Inferno, that appeared in the free Western world at a time when people in the West were not so fearfully solicitous of Muslim sensibilities (backed up by threats of mayhem and murder) as they are now, and as they must not, if they are to remain free and advanced, continue to be. And the best antidote is collective mass disobedience -- that is, everyone in the Western media, or a great many, simultaneously violating what Islam insists upon, striking a blow for their own freedom -- and possibly, for the mental freedom of those Muslims who are trapped and in thrall, and held by fear or filial piety, do not know what to do and would wish somehow to be rescued, from the outside, from the mind-forged manacles of Islam itself.
In the initial NY Times article Aug 12, Patricia Cohen quoted Donatich as saying that "the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.”"
Subsequently, I have read that at least two of the experts consulted by Yale say they recommended that the cartoons should be published in the book.
1.
From the article posted on Faithfreedom Aug 21:
"Professor Jonathan Laurence of Boston College said: “I was consulted by the press about the decision whether or not to publish.
“I suggested that they publish the newspaper page in its entirety as documentary evidence of the episode being discussed.”"
2. From the Boston Globe, Aug 23:
"But Boston College professor Sheila Blair, a specialist on Islamic art, asked, “Art history without pictures?’’
She was one specialist Yale consulted who favored publishing the images. Blair said omitting the historical art was reinforcing the mistaken notion that all Muslims object to depicting the Prophet, when some cultures have rich traditions of doing so, and her own previous book had contained such images without a word of protest."
End of Quotes
----------------
Other notes
In addition, Reza Aslan, a well-known Islamic scholar, also disagreed with Yale's decision not to publish the cartoons, and withdrew his statement of endorsement of the book. He characterized Yale's decision as ridiculous.
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, also strongly criticized Yale's decision.
The Boston Globe article (Aug 23) contains apparently more recent quotes from Klausen and Donatich. It seems to me from their quotes of Klausen that she did not argue strongly enough and did not do enough to press her case that the cartoons should be included. She could have warned them that if they did not publish the cartoons (either in the book itself or on Yale U Press's official website), she would take her book to another publisher. For me, Yale's refusal to publish the cartoons would have been a deal-breaker; I would have taken the manuscript elsewhere. Too bad Klausen did not feel the same way.
Other trivia:
The Boston Globe (Aug 23) article states that "Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek and a member of the Yale Corporation, said he advised Yale to drop the images."
Lastly, I think we (those of us who are critical of Islam) really need to press the point that Yale is making use of the cartoon images indirectly when they say these images are freely available on the internet. Again, this availability is not for "free"; it is costly in terms of time, money, and security expenses and risks for those who do publish the images, not to mention the original cartoonists.
Link to Boston Globe article (Aug 22):
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/08/22/mohammed_images_that_stirred_ire_omitted_from_book_by_brandeis_author/