The Danish Dare
Maybe as long as 20 years ago I saw on TV a program that had to do with the prison system then in place in Denmark. I was struck by how liberal their policies were, compared to U.S. prisons, and I especially remember that wives were allowed to have quite free conjugal relationships with their husbands while the latter were incarcerated. I could hardly believe it.
On that program or maybe somewhere else at around the same time someone asked a Danish thinker why there was so much more free and forward thinking in his country than there is in the U.S. His answer was simple. He said that it was because in Denmark religion doesn't play nearly as much of a role.
That and other things, such as their attempts to protect their Jewish citizens when the country was occupied by the Germans in the Second World War, planted in me an extra high opinion of the Danes, and that was only dented by the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, a highly unjustified and destructive move in which the Danish leadership collaborated with the Bush forces.
I was startled. That seemed so uncharacteristic of the Danes. Surely whoever their buttonpushers were, they should have been able to calculate easily how far down in the toilet that was going to lead. Though Saddamn Hussein was well known for being a secularist, was it a religion thing again, but in a different direction?
Next, just a couple of years ago, a Danish newspaper published some cartoons depicting the founder of Islam in various warlike stances, including having missiles protruding from his head. This inflamed those Muslims who were most likely to react, and boycotts, demonstrations, and riots followed against embassies and other Danish interests in several Islamic countries. Eventually the flames of outrage seemed to die out ...but not completely.
A few days ago the Danes claimed to have uncovered a plot against the life of the man who had drawn the cartoons, and two Tunisians and a Danish citizen of Moroccan birth were detained.
And yesterday the same newspaper reprinted the same cartoons, as a demonstration of freedom of the press, and other Danish papers followed suit, in a spirit of solidarity and observing of a principle. The cartoons were also reprinted in several other European countries, in accounts of the alleged plot -- and now everybody is waiting to see what sort of shoe will drop this time, because that is a challenge of the barest kind.
When Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini put a proscription on Salman Rushdie's life after he published some verses that were supposed to insult Islam, forcing him to go into hiding for years, I thought that that was just the sort of intolerance and high-handedness that gives religion such a bad name, and the same could be said of the violent reactions against the cartoons the first time around.
That's because I believe deeply in the virtues of irreverence, while fundamentalism strait-jackets thought.
All the same I don't believe, either, in waving red flags in front of bulls if you don't have to. Or as a creative writing teacher liked to tell us, in regard to using phrases and such repetitively, "Once around is enough."
There's a big irony in all this for me, because I long ago marveled at how throughout my adult life, due to some unfortunate real estate "transactions" starting in 1948, more attention has been paid to the fortunes of Israel than to any other group of five million people in the world, by a factor of 20 or 30 or more. And the contrast with Denmark, a country of nearly the same size, came easily to mind. I wondered if the Israelis ever had occasion to envy Denmark's constant atmosphere of peace and accommodation with its neighbors, notwithstanding occasional painful episodes like that Nazi incursion.
Now the irony is that tiny, peaceful Denmark, the idyllic land of good pastry and good bacon, is under threat of finding itself locked in the same never-ending go-round of eye for an eye as the Israelis, and against the same adversaries, though of course on a far lower level of seriousness and deadly intent. Or will the would=be Muslim rioters let things slide this time and instead put their energies to more useful purposes -- such as finally chipping off a piece of that sacred black rock so carefully and illogically hidden away in Mecca, so that scientists can answer once and for all the burning question of whether, as a meteorite, the Kaaba is stone or metal?
On that program or maybe somewhere else at around the same time someone asked a Danish thinker why there was so much more free and forward thinking in his country than there is in the U.S. His answer was simple. He said that it was because in Denmark religion doesn't play nearly as much of a role.
That and other things, such as their attempts to protect their Jewish citizens when the country was occupied by the Germans in the Second World War, planted in me an extra high opinion of the Danes, and that was only dented by the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, a highly unjustified and destructive move in which the Danish leadership collaborated with the Bush forces.
I was startled. That seemed so uncharacteristic of the Danes. Surely whoever their buttonpushers were, they should have been able to calculate easily how far down in the toilet that was going to lead. Though Saddamn Hussein was well known for being a secularist, was it a religion thing again, but in a different direction?
Next, just a couple of years ago, a Danish newspaper published some cartoons depicting the founder of Islam in various warlike stances, including having missiles protruding from his head. This inflamed those Muslims who were most likely to react, and boycotts, demonstrations, and riots followed against embassies and other Danish interests in several Islamic countries. Eventually the flames of outrage seemed to die out ...but not completely.
A few days ago the Danes claimed to have uncovered a plot against the life of the man who had drawn the cartoons, and two Tunisians and a Danish citizen of Moroccan birth were detained.
And yesterday the same newspaper reprinted the same cartoons, as a demonstration of freedom of the press, and other Danish papers followed suit, in a spirit of solidarity and observing of a principle. The cartoons were also reprinted in several other European countries, in accounts of the alleged plot -- and now everybody is waiting to see what sort of shoe will drop this time, because that is a challenge of the barest kind.
When Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini put a proscription on Salman Rushdie's life after he published some verses that were supposed to insult Islam, forcing him to go into hiding for years, I thought that that was just the sort of intolerance and high-handedness that gives religion such a bad name, and the same could be said of the violent reactions against the cartoons the first time around.
That's because I believe deeply in the virtues of irreverence, while fundamentalism strait-jackets thought.
All the same I don't believe, either, in waving red flags in front of bulls if you don't have to. Or as a creative writing teacher liked to tell us, in regard to using phrases and such repetitively, "Once around is enough."
There's a big irony in all this for me, because I long ago marveled at how throughout my adult life, due to some unfortunate real estate "transactions" starting in 1948, more attention has been paid to the fortunes of Israel than to any other group of five million people in the world, by a factor of 20 or 30 or more. And the contrast with Denmark, a country of nearly the same size, came easily to mind. I wondered if the Israelis ever had occasion to envy Denmark's constant atmosphere of peace and accommodation with its neighbors, notwithstanding occasional painful episodes like that Nazi incursion.
Now the irony is that tiny, peaceful Denmark, the idyllic land of good pastry and good bacon, is under threat of finding itself locked in the same never-ending go-round of eye for an eye as the Israelis, and against the same adversaries, though of course on a far lower level of seriousness and deadly intent. Or will the would=be Muslim rioters let things slide this time and instead put their energies to more useful purposes -- such as finally chipping off a piece of that sacred black rock so carefully and illogically hidden away in Mecca, so that scientists can answer once and for all the burning question of whether, as a meteorite, the Kaaba is stone or metal?
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 10:48 PM
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