http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35WIM28iIo
I often find myself in the awkward position of asking others to differentiate between the act of deprecating Islam and the act of impugning the humanity of Muslims. If I recall correctly, it was Louis Farrakhan (Actually Malcolm X) who originally taught a form of Islam that cast Caucasians as the devil, until he made his pilgrimage to
Over and again, anti-Muslims can’t seem to differentiate between allowing the religious freedoms of people who happen to be Muslim and paving the way for Sharia law. Over and again, allegedly, the only way to form a strong opposition to one tyrannical authority (Islamic theocracy) is by handing over our freedoms to another (anti-Muslim fascism). Over and again, the only way to defend democracy is by discarding it completely. Over and again, the arguments follow this pattern.
At the same time, time and again, the downtrodden masses in the Muslim world cry out for democracy, not theocracy. Time and again, Muslims have no difficulty understanding as well as anyone else that the freedom of religion must apply equally to those with any religion or those with none. Time and again, they demonstrate a comprehension of the fact that, the moment a society infringes on this right for any of its citizens, it infringes on it for all of them. Time and again, they have no difficulty understanding that in order for the Muslims in any given society to have complete religious freedom, so must the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and so on.
In a video he made a while ago, (I believe I’ll start calling him...) Underf00t cast Muslims in this false-dichotomy, us-versus-them framework with a picture of suicide bombers with whom he equated all Muslims on one side and a picture of a stealth bomber on the other, with which he equated all non-Muslims. But Underf00t is a resident of the
But I would hazard to say that not all of the blame for this falls on just the one side of this particular conflict. Over and again, there are Muslims who can’t seem to differentiate between times to protest injustices committed against Muslims and times to solicit conversion to Islam. Over and again, one cannot speak out against injustices committed in the name of Islam without opening the door for bigots to vehemently impugn the humanity of Muslims, but at the same time, over and again, one cannot take up for the rights and freedoms of Muslims without also opening the door for the solicitation of converts. One finds opportunists frothing at the mouth on both sides for the chance to usurp one’s call to justice for their own ends.
“All manner of injustice is committed in the name of Islam. Muslims, stop it.”
“Yeah! Muslims are scum who need to be wiped out!”
“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth. Most Muslims aren’t part of it. Most Muslims are good people. It’s the few who are involved in this sort of thing that I have a problem with.”
“Yes. You’re right. Islam is the most beautiful religion.”
“I didn’t say that either. What is with you people?”
When people are committing injustice against Muslims, the problem here is that they are infringing on the rights of human beings, not that they are not abiding whatever constitutes “true” Islam. This is a time to peddle the message that Muslims are human beings, and as such, they have basic human rights, not that all human beings should be Muslims. The first of these is a demonstrable fact (Muslims are human). The second is an opinion (everyone should be Muslim). Muslims who cannot take up for the rights of other Muslims without trying to pedal their own conversion shpiel to non-Muslims in the process only act to drive others straight into the arms of these extreme anti-Muslim organizations who do their best to equate all Muslims with terrorists. These recruiters make it worse. If you want to make the world a more peaceful, tolerant place, you will have to differentiate between demands for equal treatment and demands for superior treatment.
It seems to me, to this end, there are a few things the moderates on both sides can do to aid this differentiation. You see, in a recent video of mine in which I extended a few olive branches to believers, one of them was a Muslim. Before I began work on that particular video, I made it a point to contact each believer I intended to mention by PM to ask if he or she had any objection. The Muslim I contacted said in one message that she would have no objection as long as I didn’t say anything bad about Islam. I explained that I cannot promise that because that would mean giving Islam better treatment than I give other religions which would not be fair. I can promise absolutely not to impugn the rights and humanity of Muslims, as I’m pretty good at that with all believers, but I can’t and won’t promise to give one religion better treatment. What I’m taking up for here is the rights of Muslims, not the alleged veracity of Islam.
I believe in democracy. Democracy is a system of government predicated upon the recognition that authority can never be simply trusted. Under democracy, those who want authority must labor not only to earn trust and respect in the first place, but to keep them, and one thing they have to do to that end is to lend their activities, especially the activities that involve public funds, to public scrutiny. Taxpayers deserve to know how their tax dollars are being used. Those who are unwilling to do this don’t deserve trust, respect or authority and those who deserve trust, respect and authority will have no objection to this. They don’t get to just go on receiving these just because they are accustomed to receiving them. That’s a problem I have with religious authorities; they tend to have precisely this undemocratic expectation, especially those outside of the democratic world.
Most authority figures for other religions live in democratic nations with no established religion. For most Muslim authority figures, this is not the case. Most Muslim authority figures do their thing in nations in which Islam just happens to be the established religion. This being the case, Muslim authority figures have, for the most part, been able to go centuries without the higher degree or scrutiny that authority figures from other religions have had to undergo. So being accustomed to just receiving this trust, they expect to go on doing so. This attitude trickles down to Islamic followers. So with Islam continuously receiving different treatment, Muslims expect it to continue doing so.
Muslims, this drives a completely unnecessary wedge between you and most of the western world. You see, there are those one behaves respectfully toward and those one actually respects. They are not necessarily the same. People can be cajoled and trained to behave respectfully toward characteristics like power, majesty and eminence, but we don’t really respect them. We respect characteristics like courage and character. There is a difference between showing respect and actually having it.
We respect people who are willing to be a punchline, provided that the joke in question doesn’t impugn their humanity. This being the case, in the democratic world, we poke fun at ideologies and religions and the people who practice them. Consider for a moment, Judaism.
You see, at Jewish weddings, at least the more orthodox ones, it’s the custom to have all the men dancing in one place and all the women dancing in another, and not together. So there’s this Jewish couple engaged to be married and the date of their wedding is approaching, and they are meeting with their rabbi to discuss the kind of behavior that is appropriate for the wedding night (like it’s his business).
“Rabbi, can we have sex lying down?”
“Oh sure. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Can we have sex lying on our sides?”
“That’s fine, too.”
“Can we have sex this way?”
“Sure.”
“That way?”
“Sure.”
“The other way?”
“Why not?”
This goes on for about twenty minutes, and then one of them asks, “Rabbi, can we have sex standing up?”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”
“But Rabbi-“
“OUT OF THE QUESTION!”
“Well why?”
“Well... it could lead to dancing.”
<rimshot>
Or consider Catholicism.
Q: How do you get a nun pregnant?
A: By dressing her as an altar boy.
<rimshot>
There’s this small town in which most of the citizens are Catholics but there is one fellow who happens to be a Lutheran, and every Friday night, he’s out in his yard, running the grill, barbecuing venison. Well these Catholics are more traditional and so they observe the custom of having no meat on Fridays, so when they smell the scent of venison wafting over the town it really irritates a lot of them.
So they start trying to cajole this fellow into converting... since... for some reason... it’s not enough to just try asking him not to barbecue venison on Friday night. They keep after him and after him week after week, and finally, he agrees. So he goes to the local Catholic church and they go through the conversion ceremony, and at the end of it, the priest stands before him with a chalice of water in one hand and dips the fingers of his other hand in it and says, “You were born a Lutheran, you were raised a Lutheran, but now <splish, splish> you are a Catholic.”
And at first, everyone in town is happy about this, but then, the following Friday night, they all smell venison yet again, and someone goes to peer over this guy’s fence and there he is running his grill, and he has a cup of water in one hand and he dips into it the fingers of his other hand and says, “You were born a dear, you were raised a dear, but now <splish, splish>, you are a walleye.”
<rimshot>
Or how about Buddhism? Who hasn’t heard that one about the Buddhist who walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything,” <rimshot> and so he does and the Buddhist stands there holding the hot dog until the vendor says, “What are you waiting for?” and the Buddhist says, “My change,” and the vendor says, “Change must come from within?”
<rimshot>
Q: How come the Dalai Llama can’t vacuum out his house?
A: Because he has no attachments.
<rimshot>
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I must digress for just a moment.
Q: What did one drummer say to the other?
A: <rimshot>
Maz Jobrani is a Muslim comedian who chafes at suicide attacks, because after all, over and again, it’s Muslims carrying them out. He jokes that, just once, he wishes the suicide attacker could be a Buddhist or something. But then, he explains, he realizes that this could never happen, because Buddhists would never blow themselves up. Buddhists live in the moment, after all. A Buddhist would say, “Well, you know, I was going to blow myself up, but that moment has passed. I’m in a different moment now.”
<rimshot>
Now in this case, I’ve really got to hand it to the Buddhists. They’re real sports. I mean if there’s one religion we love to poke fun at in the western world, at least in the English-speaking world, it’s that one. But Buddhists take it all in stride. It runs off them like water off a duck. They laugh it off right along with the rest of us, because they know that, tomorrow, they will still be Buddhist and Buddhism will still be around. They don’t go around simply demanding and expecting respect, and for this, they become more respectable. They make no effort whatsoever to discourage laughter at their expense. Indeed, they welcome it because they know that their religion is strong enough to endure it, and I find it especially curious that Christianity and Islam each have so many especially outspoken proponents who find it so difficult to just borrow a page from Siddhartha. But I digress.
Observe the tendency among the jokes I just rattled off. In the western world, one finds jokes like these targeted at virtually every religion, except Islam. Each of these jokes engenders laughter at the expense of the religion and the people in question, but not derisive laugher. This is the kind of joke one would make at the expense of an old friend or a sibling because friends and siblings are people we respect for their willingness to be the occasional punchline. Each of these jokes is what could be called an affectionate elbow in the ribs; a pie in the face, not a slap in the face.
This presents something of a problem for Muslims living in the western world. In the western world, this is the treatment received by the followers of religions and ideologies of every sort, and our willingness to find the character to tolerate this treatment is what engenders the mutual respect that usually enables these practitioners to coexist. When Muslims in the west demonstrate an unwillingness to tolerate such treatment, an unwillingness to be the occasional punchline, this demand for superior treatment alienates them.
The people we get along with are the people with whom we can exchange jests and verbal barbs over coffee; or, perhaps, halal coffee as the case may be. So what we need here are such jokes for Muslims; jokes that engender laughter at the expense of Muslims and Islam, but not derisive laughter. I think, primarily, we have to make it a point to concentrate on jokes that poke fun at Muslims in such a way as to equate them with our goofy, quirky neighbors and co-workers, instead of terrorists and suicide bombers.
Coughlan, I think, came up with a pretty good one when he actually appeared in a video with a clean shave. I haven’t seen this in any of his videos before, or since. In this one, he had shaved off his beard, and of course, he knew that this would be the first thing we would notice, so he said, “Yes, my beard is gone. (It has) run away to join Islam.”
<rimshot>
Oh yes. If you’re a beard, Islam is just the place for you. Those Muslims give beards the royal treatment.
Desertphile recently had a video up announcing a contest he was hosting. He read to us this story about a doctor’s office that had a meteorite crash through its wall that happened to have a piece of paper attached to it. He told us that the piece of paper had a note on it that said something funny and invited us to speculate about what it said. He then appointed two judges to decide the two funniest comments and offered a first prize, a second prize, and a few honorable mentions, none of which, it saddens me to say, went to me.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not jealous of the guy—I think it was a guy—who came in first. My suggestion was funny, but his was side-splitting. I’m just annoyed that I didn’t even get an honorable mention. I mean come on!
I made several suggestions. One was, “Directions for use: build a giant cube around this and pray toward it five times a day.”
<rimshot>
Q: How come you can’t tell north from a Muslim compass?
A: Because they all point to
<rimshot>
I know. That one’s kind of lame, but it’s along the right lines.
So there’s this ship currently in the south Pacific and it has a few Muslims on board. These Muslims do their five daily prayers, of course, but oddly, anchor themselves to the walls first.
At first, everyone else on board is content to ignore this, but finally, one guy’s curiosity gets the better of him and he asks why they do this and they explain that, this being the south Pacific, the Kabba is clear on the other side of the world, so to face it, they have to face down.
<rimshot>
I know. That one is a little weird, but considering that I’m the one who came up with it, this is not surprising. So what do you guys think? Can you come up with more?
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