A 1938 alert from Der Spiegel:
This essay is an excerpt of Henryk M. Broder’s book “Hurra, Wir Kapitulieren,” (“Hurray! We’re Capitulating”) published by Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag in 2006. The book spent a number of weeks atop the DER SPIEGEL bestseller list.
The controversy over the 12 Muhammad cartoons that were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 and led to worldwide protests and unrest among Muslims was merely a taste of what is to come, a dress rehearsal for the kinds of disputes Europe can expect to face in the future if it does not rethink its current policy of appeasement. As was the case in the 1930s, when Czechoslovakia was sacrificed in the interest of peace under the Munich Agreement — a move that ultimately did nothing to prevent World War II — Europeans today also believe that an adversary, seemingly invincible due to a preference for death over life, can be mollified by good behavior, concessions and submission.
If you have been wondering why we call them 1938 alerts, now you know.
“The West should desist from engaging in all provocations that produce feelings of debasement and humiliation,” says psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter. “We should show greater respect for the cultural identity of Muslim countries. … For Muslims, it is important to be recognized and respected as equals.” In Richter’s view, what the Muslims need is “a partnership of equals.”
But Richter neglects to describe what this partnership might look like. Does achieving such equality mean that we should set up separate sections for women on buses, as is the custom in Saudi Arabia? Should the marrying age for girls be reduced to 12, as is the case in Iran? And should death by stoning be our punishment for adultery, as Shariah law demands? What else could the West do to show its respect for the cultural identity of Islamic countries? Would it be sufficient to allow Horst-Eberhard Richter to decide whether, for example, a wet T-shirt contest in a German city rises to a level of criminal provocation that could cause the Muslim faithful in Hyderabad to feel debased and humiliated?
The discussion over which provocations WE should put an end to so that THEY do not feel upset inexorably leads to the realm of the absurd.
Should devout Jews be entitled to demand that non-Jews give up pork? And should they have the power to impose sanctions if their demands are not met? Can a Hindu in India run amok because the Dutch do not view cows as sacred beings?
And more to the point, why don’t they?
“Nowadays acts of terrorism are not committed for their own sake, but in the name of an ideology one could call Nazi-Islamism,” Romanian-American author Norman Manea told the German daily Die Welt in March 2004. The only difference, in Manea’s view, is “that this ideology invokes a religion, whereas the Nazis were mythical without being religious.” Manea believes that what he calls a “World War III” has already begun. “The Europeans are putting off the recognition — as they did in the 1930s — of the tremendous tragedy that awaits them and that has, in fact, already arrived.”