Now, while I'm loathe to agree with Christopher Hitchens on much of anything these days, I'm hesitant to say that civilizational barriers seem to be very much in play regarding this uncomfortable news emanating from Pakistan today:
Pakistani Islamic scholars honoured Osama Bin Laden on Thursday in response to Britain's knighthood for Salman Rushdie, as a senior ruling party member said he would not hesitate to kill the novelist.
Meanwhile the country's religious affairs minister, who caused outrage by remarking that the award given to the "Satanic Verses" author justified suicide attacks, announced that he may visit Britain next month.
The Pakistani Ulema Council, a private body that claims to be the biggest of its kind in the country with 2,000 scholars, said it had given Bin Laden the title "Saifullah", or Sword of Allah, its top accolade.
So what is it: crass political retaliation for the knighting of Rushdie, or heartfelt sympathy for an indiscriminate serial murderer? Probably a little bit of both. Regardless, we should at least acknowledge that in some quarters of the Islamic world, Western notions of free speech carry little or no currency, subsumed as there are under the theological categories of what is Islamic or non-Islamic.
Thus it seems that we do, in fact, have a cultural--perhaps even civilizational--difference: a writer who ostensibly disparages Islam, and is thus handed a death sentence (a death sentence, by the way endorsed by Pakistan's Religious Affairs minister who said, in the Pakistani Parliament no less, that "I am a Muslim and then a politician and it is ordained in Islam that the punishment for a blasphemer is death. If this man comes in front of me I will definitely kill him,"), versus a murderous terrorist Salafist. Both are are handed accolades from important institutions within their own socio-cultural milieu. One traffics in ideas, the other in dead bodies.
While it is important to not stereotype a class of people according to a minorities views or actions, it is equally important to not ignore the real cultural differences that exist between some (very powerful) elements within the Islamic world and the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy.
The Bush Administration has discredited nation-building on both the Left and Right, and while the Iraq war cannot be regarded as anything but a catastrophic failure, and one that never should have occurred in the first place, the cultural differences between "the West" and the "Islamic world", are very real. It would be a great tragedy if the sophomoric, base, and militaristic approach of the Bush administration veiled the West to the world outside it.
Thus it seems that we do, in fact, have a cultural--perhaps even civilizational--difference: a writer who ostensibly disparages Islam, and is thus handed a death sentence (a death sentence, by the way endorsed by Pakistan's Religious Affairs minister who said, in the Pakistani Parliament no less, that "I am a Muslim and then a politician and it is ordained in Islam that the punishment for a blasphemer is death. If this man comes in front of me I will definitely kill him,"), versus a murderous terrorist Salafist. Both are are handed accolades from important institutions within their own socio-cultural milieu. One traffics in ideas, the other in dead bodies.
While it is important to not stereotype a class of people according to a minorities views or actions, it is equally important to not ignore the real cultural differences that exist between some (very powerful) elements within the Islamic world and the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy.
The Bush Administration has discredited nation-building on both the Left and Right, and while the Iraq war cannot be regarded as anything but a catastrophic failure, and one that never should have occurred in the first place, the cultural differences between "the West" and the "Islamic world", are very real. It would be a great tragedy if the sophomoric, base, and militaristic approach of the Bush administration veiled the West to the world outside it.
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