Nov 4, 2011 | Politics
From Scott Holleran: CBS Fights FCC and Wins in Philadelphia
In a victory this Wednesday for freedom of speech, an appeals court rejected the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to punish CBS for airing an expressive portion of Janet Jackson’s broadcast performance during the 2004 Super Bowl. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled by 2-1 (CBS Corp et al v. FCC, 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 06-3575) that, by imposing a penalty, the FCC “arbitrarily and capriciously” departed from prior policy that exempted “fleeting” indecency from sanctions and that the FCC “improperly imposed a penalty on CBS for violating a previously unannounced policy”. The FCC released an antagonistic and harsh statement that says the federal agency is disappointed by the decision and intends to use “all the authority at its disposal” to force broadcasters to serve the public interest when they use the so-called public airwaves. A CBS spokeswoman said the network hopes the FCC will “return to the policy of restrained indecency enforcement it followed for decades.” The FCC fined CBS $27,500 for each of the 20 stations it owned when part of Janet Jackson’s anatomy was accidentally and briefly exposed during the halftime performance.
Nov 3, 2011 | Politics
Robert Spencer has some excellent commentary over at Jihad WatchIn my article at Front Page today I wrote this: "The worst aspect of this firebombing is that there are certain to be voices in the West over the next few days – some of them no doubt quite prominent and respected – who will call on Westerners to be more 'sensitive' toward Muslims, and to end this unacceptable hurting of Muslim feelings by drawing cartoons of him and making him the honorary editor-in-chief of a comedy magazine."
And here we are. The reason why this is the worst aspect of the firebombing is that these pleas to be more "sensitive" to Muslims amount essentially to calls for restrictions on the freedom of speech and the creation of a special, privileged class that is beyond criticism. That is the death of free society and the road to tyranny, for the class that is beyond criticism will have a free hand to do whatever it wants, and what will anyone be able to say?
But Bruce Crumley of Time Magazine, like so many other enlightened liberals, camouflages his slouch toward totalitarianism in the guise of "sensitivity" and resistance to "Islamophobia." The huge, gaping hole in his argument, however, is that he is making it after Muslims reacted violently to satire. Judaism and Christianity are lampooned on a regular basis, but Bruce Crumley never lifted a finger to call for "sensitivity" toward the religious feelings of others when Piss Christ was being displayed as a serious work of art. So Crumley's argument boils down to saying that we should capitulate in the face of violent intimidation. This is not really about being sensitive. It is about doing what the thugs want so they won't hurt us again.I'd rather die first."Firebombed French Paper Is No Free Speech Martyr," by Bruce Crumley for Time Magazine, November 2 (thanks to Anne Crockett):
Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and
destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait
Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren't
going to tell “us” what can and can't be done in free societies? Because
not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they
also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their
authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common
good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting
belligerent reaction?The difficulty in answering that question is also what's making it
hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed
this morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary
edition mocking Islam. The Wednesday morning arson attack destroyed the
Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo after the paper published an
issue certain to enrage hard-core Islamists (and offend average Muslims)
with articles and “funny” cartoons featuring the Prophet
Mohammed—depictions forbidden in Islam to boot. Predictably, the strike
unleashed a torrent of unqualified condemnation from French politicians,
many of whom called the burning of the notoriously impertinent paper as
“an attack on democracy by its enemies.”
We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for
your loss, Charlie, and there's no justification of such an illegitimate
response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you
paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient
parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good
luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring....
Read the rest of Time Magazine calls for censorship, blames victims of Islamic attack on French magazine that lampooned Muhammad.
Nov 2, 2011 | Philosophy, Politics
FrontPage Magazine has an excellent interview by Jamie Glazov with Robert R. Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind. Here are some choice excerpts:[...] FP: Why is the West, aside from some few and brave thinkers, so blind in confronting the Islamist crisis?Reilly: Self-delusion is one problem and ignorance is another. Many in the secular West find it hard to believe that anyone takes religion seriously anymore. Since they have lost their faith, they don’t have the ability to comprehend the terms of faith in anyone else’s life. In fact, their incomprehension, their obliviousness to the sacred, is one of the things that inflames Islam against the West. We are essentially facing a theological problem and a profound spiritual disorder. People ignorant of theology are unable to recognize the nature of the problem. They want to create another economic development program in the Middle East, as if that will solve it. This is delusional and a total waste. The problem needs to be addressed at the level at which it exists, not by sociologists or psychiatrists.FP: What hope is there that some kind of “moderate” Islam can ever emerge?Reilly: [...] At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century there was far more intellectual ferment for reconciling Islam and modern science, for finding ways to adopt the best of the West to the Muslim world. These efforts largely failed. Things are now likely to get worse, not better.The intellectual impetus in the Muslim world is not with those who see the need to reopen the foreclosed questions from the ninth century as to who God is and what his relationship to reason is. (There are such Muslim thinkers but they get no support from us.) It is with those who wish to return to the seventh century and replicate the feats of the Companions of the Prophet in creating the greatest empire the world had seen up to that point. The worse things get in the Muslim world, the more support these jihadists receive because they provide an explanation and a program that can be easily understood by those who deeply feel the grievances and humiliation of their situation.It is not inevitable that the Islamists should succeed, except in the absence of any strategy to counter them. Muslim leaders like the former president of Indonesia, the late Abdurrahman Wahid, the spiritual head of the largest Muslim organization in the world, Nahdlatul Ulama, have called for a counter-strategy that would include offering “a compelling alternative vision of Islam, one that banishes the fanatical ideology of hatred to the darkness from which it emerged.” Wahid advocated a partnership with the non-Muslim world in a massively resourced effort to uphold human dignity, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, and the benefits of modernity before the juggernaut of Islamist ideology swamps the Muslim world. It was a compelling summons. It has yet to be answered.There is another way to state this at its heart. The Arab Muslim world reached its apogee when it was at its most Hellenized, i.e. under the influence of Greek philosophy. It then underwent a process of dehellenization, a divorce from reason and the extirpation of philosophy. Its path to recovery must be in these same terms – a rehellenization, a restoration of the status or reason and a return to philosophy. Is that possible? As a twentieth century Moroccan Muslim thinker put it, either the future of Islam will be Aristotelian, or it will not be.
Read the rest of the interview.Related: Book Review: The Closing of the Muslim Mind by Robert R. Reilly
