UPDATE AND BUMP: Agora has several new posts related to the Danish cartoons and Islamism. This one points to a story from Germany where the Quran has come under legal indictment for being, “incompatible with the German constitution”.

In another post it is reported that the leader of the Danish People’s Party, Pia Kjærsgaard, has added her name to the Manifesto of Freedom.

Finally, something I had intended to reference earlier, Agora points us to an online version of the Manifesto that you can sign.

It’s target audience is the White House and the United Nations. I now ask all those bloggers who reposted this Manifesto to spread the news and sign the manifesto.

While some of the violence may have abated somewhat, the Islamist’s intolerance for tolerance has not.

End Update.

Via Agora

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Benjamin Franklin’s observation at the signing of our Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” is applicable here. Not that all countries and all peoples will have common plans and aspirations, but that all will have to either take a stand for freedom or become spectators as they are overtaken by Islamism and the other “ism’s” of our time.

Agora also has an extensive list of those posting on this subject.

Flemming Rose, the Cultural Editor of Jyllands-Posten, explains the reason for publishing the cartoons in a letter to the Washington Post.

I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn’t to provoke gratuitously — and we certainly didn’t intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.

This is the part of the story that needs to be clear. There is no place in a free society for demands, backed up with violence, dictating to the people what is acceptable.

Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn’t intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

[...]

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.

The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.

This is the point that has been made here, and by many of the bloggers who I have read on this topic. They note that those who are protesting are not asking for respect, but demanding that we obey and follow their strictures. Giving in a little can only lead to giving in more. This can not be done if we are to remain free.