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This censorship, you might imagine, was imposed in a country in the Middle East, or perhaps Malaysia, or even Nigeria. But no, the redacting pen was applied at none other than Yale University, by those who saw fit to deny our First Amendment rights. I kid you not, at one of our bastions of higher learning, the director of Yale University Press decided that freedom of speech and a free press do not apply when it comes to controversial issues.
The author of “The Cartoons that Shook the World,” Jytte Klaussen, who teaches at Brandeis University, will be able to write about the cartoons and other artwork showing Muhammad, and she can discuss the social and political ramifications of these depictions, but to actually see them for yourself is a no-no. John Donatich, the Supreme Yale Censor, has made the absurd comment that omitting the pictures is acceptable because the reader can easily find them on the internet. So, let’s get this straight: it’s okay to see the pictures on the internet, but not in a book published by Yale University Press. I hope that the actual book is not similarly spineless, for it would come apart at the seams, just like Mr. Donatich’s feeble justification for capitulating to coercion.
When the Danish cartoons were published, they were the source of tremendous international controversy, with protests by Muslims who took to the streets, attacking and burning embassies, with a resultant violence that left at least 139 people dead and numerous deaths threats issued. The message given to the world was that you had better shape up and impose self-censorship when it comes to Islam, or else. No matter that your democratic countries have legal protection against suppression of speech; our threats will keep you in line. Fear of these radicals is what Mr. Donatich emphasized, for he does not want to “have blood on his hands.” As a result, self-censorship is what we will have at Yale, imposed in a democratic nation by dint of intimidation.
There are those who claim that because Muslims find the cartoons offensive, out of courtesy and respect to the Islamic religion, they should not be published. Given that the Muslim religion has been high-jacked by terrorists in many countries, I would maintain that it is fully deserving of satire, parody, criticism, and any other manner in which you choose to point out their immorality cloaked in religion. The First Amendment unequivocally gives us that right. The Danes have that same right, as well as many other democratic countries, and it is not to be surrendered. In addition, If we are to impose self-censorship in regard to Islam, then it is only fair that the exact same standard apply to any other religion, and there will be no criticism allowed on any subject that might be labeled blasphemous by whatever self-appointed religious authorities. Robert Mapplethorpe’s picture of the Virgin Mary, made partly from cow dung, will have to be banned. The Satanic Verses will have to be removed from the shelves of every library and bookstore. Comedy Central cannot show Jesus defecating on the American flag. Freedom of speech will be lost, and as Salman Rushdie has said, "Free speech is the whole thing. It's the whole ball-game."
It is instructive to realize that many thousands of images of Muhammad have been around for centuries. They are found in numersous museums:
 
There is one painted on a mural  on a modern building in Iran. He has even been seen on the website of an Iranian newspaper that in retaliation for the cartoons sponsored a contest of cartoons about the Holocaust. He appears in many books written and published by Muslims for Muslims. These images, for some reason, don't provoke the same murderous rage. Hypocrisy abounds.
 
 
Ponder the analysis provided by Ms. Klaussen as to what was actually the driving force behind the cartoon protests and violence. It was said that this was a spontaneous response from “the Muslim street,” a cultural anger at the alleged blasphemy of showing an image of Muhammad. The conclusion of the author, however, based on numerous interviews with Middle East politicians, Muslim leaders in Europe, and even the Muslim cleric in Denmark who stoked the controversy, indicated that the violence was planned in advance and coordinated by Islamic radicals for political ends. Regardless of what you may think triggered the firestorm, there is absolutely no justification for the mob violence and murderous rage.
But lo and behold, the First Amendment trumps all complaints from those who want to prohibit the free expression of ideas and opinions. When the turmoil broke out, there were very few newspapers in the U.S. that would print the cartoons, but fortunately a small number of them would not kowtow to the demand for self-censorship, and to them I think we owe a heap of gratitude for standing up for our Constitutional rights. I regret to say that neither my beloved Washington Post nor New York Times had the courage nor fortitude to publish the cartoons.
So you are forbidden to see the cartoons in the book “The Cartoons that Shook the World.” Neither will you able to see within its pages ANY pictures of Muhammad, even those found in museums and books.
But see them you may, all twelve Muhammad cartoons, as well as other depictions of The Messenger, right here on the internet pages of the Appalachian Independent, where a dialogue of democracy strives to exist, where the freedoms we so much cherish, but tend to take for granted, are given free rein to be irreverent when needed and always on the side of human rights.
  
  
  
  
As stated in previous columns, and shouted out again and again, may we forever be opposed to those who trample on human rights and threaten our constitutional freedoms. May there also be constant and unequivocal condemnation of the actions of all terrorist murders, no matter the source: no matter the tribe, the clan, the political group, the religious affiliation.
Your comments are welcomed; participate in the dialogue of democracy.
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The entire political establishment of the United States rests upon the very unChristian-like assumption that "we" represent pure and unadulterated GOODNESS in "our" national fight against unmitigated darkness and EVIL. This is right-wing fundamentalist thought writ large and translated directly into political policy, both foreign and domestic. This thinking is also rampant in apartheid and racist Israel, which bastardizes Judaic sacred texts for the purpose of encasing Palestinians in large concentration camps, denying them the essentials of life, and outright murdering them whenever the Zionists feel like it. You don't get this sense of right-wing terrorist extremist thinking among the general populations of the Muslim world, most of whom do not even support their entrenched political and religious leaders.
According to the central tenets of Christianity, we are ALL flawed beings. The very notion that the United States represents unambiguous moral goodness against all manner of moral turpitude elsewhere, violates the very core of Christian theology. In general, among practicing Muslims, you do not see this sort of betrayal of their central belief structure for the purpose of personal or national gain.
This national (and bogus) U.S. national myth of moral unambiguity seems to inform your comments, regardless of how you feel that you feel about Christianity and religion. The real national religion of the United States is an enforced and sacred belief in the innate goodness of Americans and their country. But if you were to query 1000 American citizens, how many have even bothered to learn the details of the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Iran in 1953? analysis that is constructed in a vacuum is not analysis. It is just more of the same--propaganda.
In regards to the Islamic faith, the world, I believe, is just trying to appease Muslims like what other countries in Europe did with Hitler before WW II. I think we all know how well that worked out. Instead, I would tell Muslims that if they don't like it, they don't have to read or look at it in regards to this book just as I don't read or look at things that offend me.
Mr. Tuckley--My only comment for you is, how many extremist christians or jews do you know of that purposefully blow themselves up or kill other people on a daily basis?
I am willing to put up with people marching with Nazi flags, people burning flags, authors poking fun at religions, artists being irreverent. It is one of our national treasures to have freedom of speech and a free press. As a result we get the good with the bad, but we all have our freedom. What you may disapprove of, I may find enlightening. To each his own in a democracy.
I agree with you completely that we appease radical Muslims when we cower to their censorship demands. You may have noticed that the Appalachian Independent is a paper that abides by the principles of a free press and freedom of speech.
Even though there is unfortunate self-censorship in this country, I don't think for a nanosecond that there will be any appeasement when it comes to the threat of attack by any radical group. Appeasement via censorship of pictures of Mohammad is far different than appeasement of religious zealots who murder.
As far as censorship and freedom of speech, do we not have a moral responsibility to make a distinction between what is acceptable and what is not? Examples would be the KKK, Aryan Nation, religious extremists, etc. Many, if not all of their speeches are hate and violence directed towards others. If we lived in a truly civilized world (which we don't), then this would not be an issue. Put in another light, its like the school yard bully. If you do nothing, they can become more aggressive with your being passive and offering no resistance. Do you nip the problem in the bud by standing up for yourself or do you stay a pacifist and do nothing risking possible bodily harm?
In closing, I apologize if I am rambling but it is late and I am tired. I look forward to your response.
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson090409B.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
See also: Trail of Tears, The Crusades, in fact, it's probably just as common as any other religion's followers killing people.
I think there is WAY too much emphasis on the extremes of ANY religion, when it comes to the public view.
"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace"
Consider the consequences of the Israeli PR blitz that is now blanketing the world as its defiant answer to the United Nations’ authorized investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity by the state of Israel, known as the Goldstone Report. Ironically, the existence of the United Nations as an internationally accepted body charged with protection of all world citizens through its Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the continued acceptance by its members of the Geneva Conventions, resulted in part from the actions of the Nazi state against the Jews. Now the Jewish state of Israel, in a manner analogous to their situation in occupied Europe, have been charged with crimes against a people who have no state and no defense except international law as incorporated by the UN through the International Court of Justice. Should the Israeli blitz effectively neutralize the actions of the 192 nations that constitute the UN by forcing the United States to veto any action that would result from the Goldstone Report, it will have removed the rule of law from the international arena. Israel will have made it clear that it is subject to no law but its own.
Consider the consequences of this act. The UN could not with any logic bring any nation into compliance with its Resolutions as George W. Bush did with Saddam’s Iraq. This fact makes graphic the hypocrisy of the US and Israel as they condemn North Korea, Syria, and Iran for defying the UN, while both of these nations defy the UN as a matter of course. The UN would lose all power and influence as an international congregation of equal states the purpose of which is rule by law where all member states are expected to abide by the same laws. Should the US cave to Israel’s demands, the nations of the world will understand that the UN, as currently constituted, with a General Assembly where all members have a vote and a Security Council where six nations have veto power to cancel action that the rest of the assemblage agrees upon, has one significant flaw—a nation that is one of the six or a nation that can control the votes of one of the six can corrupt the equitable action of the UN.
Consider the consequences to the rule of law if a drug cartel should command such overwhelming military force and command such wealth that it could defy the courts of a state and operate with impunity regardless of the death and destruction it inflicted. The consequences to the average citizen are incalculable: personal security vanishes, protection of property vanishes, individual rights vanish, hope, expectations, dreams vanish replaced by dejection, depression, and despair. If all citizens cannot depend on the rule of law, the value of human life ceases to exist. What is true for the citizen of a state applies equally to a nation in a world of nations where some are mighty and powerful and some are small and defenseless.
Consider the first action of the righteous person who is alleged to have committed a crime; demand justice before the courts to clear their name. If no guilt exists, present the truth to the world. If Israel has a right to the land of Palestine, prove it in the international courts. If Israel has a right to defend itself, provide the true legal borders of Israel so the international community can understand what it is defending. If the UN fact finding committee was not established in accordance with UN policies and procedures, if it did not demand equitable treatment of both parties, if any committee member had questionable motives or provable biases, appeal the committee’s report at the United Nations. If the parallel findings of B’Tselem, Amnesty International, the Red Cross and the Council of Human Rights are equally flawed and biased against Israel, take them to court and prove that fact.
If Hamas is a terrorist organization acting in defiance of international law, prove it by bringing Hamas before the courts, not declare it a terrorist organization because Israel and the United States say it is. If Hamas has hurled thousands of “rockets” at Israel, defend the right to hurl thousands of state of the art missiles in return and invade a people locked behind walls with tanks and armored ordinance while the sky above is filled with F-16s, armed helicopters and drones, and the sea churns with destroyers that shell Gaza and its people unable to escape the devastation and chaos, and present the logic of that action before the international courts.
If Hamas is guilty of causing the atrocities of the Christmas invasion of Gaza, present that argument to the courts and show how an imprisoned people can provide the necessary food, water, electricity, medicines, infrastructure and employment for the prisoners when they are surrounded by the Israeli IDF. If Israel is innocent, it has nothing to fear, after all, it is a member of an organization of its peers that accepted Israel as a member in 1949.
How horrible a thought that the Jews, who suffered so grievously at the hands of a ruthless and indifferent power, should have had no recourse to justice as determined by the Nuremberg Courts, the creation of a homeland in Palestine, and equal membership in the organization designed to maintain that justice for all, if that state, ruled by a ruthless and indifferent power, should through its insidious means make null and void that justice for all. The power of the United Nations rests on a simple premise, the rights of every nation and all people to equal treatment under the law. No military force answers to the UN; it can field no army, it can imprison no nation, it can destroy no member state. It exists by virtue of moral persuasion, by mutual trust, and acknowledged and defined respect and dignity of all life.
William Cook, a senior editor of MWC News, is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Deception: Bush's Mideast Policy, "The Rape of Palestine" and "The Chronicles of Nefaria."
Posted on Sep 28, 2009
By Chris Hedges
There is a scene in "Othello" when the Moor is so consumed by jealousy and rage
that he loses the eloquence and poetry that make him the most articulate man in
Venice. He turns to the audience, shortly before he murders Desdemona, and
sputters, "Goats and monkeys!" Othello fell prey to wild self-delusion and
unchecked rage, and his words became captive to hollow clichés. The debasement
of language, which Shakespeare understood was a prelude to violence, is the
curse of modernity. We have stopped communicating, even with ourselves. And the
consequences will be as extreme as in the Shakespearean tragedy.
Those who seek to dominate our behavior first seek to dominate our speech. They
seek to obscure meaning. They make war on language. And the English- and
Arabic-speaking worlds are each beset with a similar assault on language. The
graffiti on the mud walls of Gaza that calls for holy war or the crude rants of
Islamic militants are expressed in a simplified, impoverished form of Arabic.
This is not the classical language of 1,500 years of science, poetry and
philosophy. It is an argot of clichés, distorted Quranic verses and slogans.
This Arabic is no more comprehensible to the literate in the Arab world than the
carnival barking that pollutes our airwaves is comprehensible to our literate
classes. The reduction of popular discourse to banalities, exacerbated by the
elite's retreat into obscure, specialized jargon, creates internal walls that
thwart real communication. This breakdown in language makes reflection and
debate impossible. It transforms foreign cultures, which we lack the capacity to
investigate, into reversed images of ourselves. If we represent virtue, progress
and justice, as our clichés constantly assure us, then the Arabs, or the
Iranians, or anyone else we deem hostile, represent evil, backwardness and
injustice. An impoverished language solidifies a binary world and renders us
children with weapons.
How do you respond to "Islam is the solution" or "Jesus Christ is my Lord and
Savior"? How do you converse with someone who justifies the war in Iraq—as
Christopher Hitchens does—with the tautology that we have to "kill them over
there so they do not kill us over here"? Those who speak in these
thought-terminating clichés banish rational discussion. Their minds are shut.
They sputter and rant like a demented Othello. The paucity of public discourse
in our culture, even among those deemed to be public intellectuals, is matched
by the paucity of public discourse in the Arab world.
This emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that
saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idiom of mass culture.
Manufactured phrases inflame passions and distort reality. The collective
chants, jargon and epithets permit people to surrender their moral autonomy to
the heady excitement of the crowd. "The crowd doesn't have to know," Mussolini
often said. "It must believe. ... If only we can give them faith that mountains
can be moved, they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and
thus an illusion may become reality." Always, he said, be "electric and
explosive." Belief can triumph over knowledge. Emotion can vanquish thought. Our
demagogues distort the Bible and the Constitution, while their demagogues
distort the Quran, or any other foundational document deemed to be sacred,
fueling self-exaltation and hatred at the expense of understanding. The more
illiterate a society becomes, the more power those who speak in this corrupted
form of speech amass, the more music and images replace words and thought. We
are cursed not by a cultural divide but by mutual cultural self-destruction.
The educated elites in the Arab world are now as alienated as the educated
elites in the United States. To speak with a vocabulary that the illiterate or
semiliterate do not immediately grasp is to be ostracized, distrusted and often
ridiculed. It is to impart knowledge, which fosters doubt. And doubt in
calcified societies, which prefer to speak in the absolute metaphors of war and
science, is a form of heresy. It was not accidental that the founding biblical
myth saw the deliverer of knowledge as evil and the loss of innocence as a
catastrophe. "This probably had less to do with religion than with the standard
desire of those in authority to control those who are not," John Ralston Saul
wrote. "And control of the Western species of the human race seems to turn upon
language."
The infantile slogans that are used to make sense of the world express, whether
in tea party rallies or in Gaza street demonstrations, a very real alienation,
yearning and rage. These clichés, hollow to the literate, are electric with
power to those for whom these words are the only currency in which they can
express anguish and despair. And as the economy worsens, as war in the Middle
East and elsewhere continues, as our corporate state strips us of power and
reduces us to serfs, expect this rage, and the demented language used to give it
voice, to grow.
The Arabic of the Quran is as poetic as the intricate theology of Islam. It is
nuanced and difficult to master. But the language of the Quran has been debased
in the slums and poor villages across the Middle East by the words and phrases
of political Islam. This process is no different from what has taken place with
Christianity in the United States. Our mainstream churches have been as
complacent in fighting heretics as have the mainstream mosques and religious
scholars in the Middle East. Demented forms of Christianity and Islam have
largely supplanted genuine and more open forms of religious expression. And they
have done so because liberal elites were cowed into silence. Corruptions of
Islamic terms and passages are as numerous in the militants’ ideology as in the
ideology of the Christian right. The word jihad for the militants means the
impunity to kill, kidnap, hijack and bomb anyone they see as an infidel,
including children and other Muslims. Jihad, however, does not always mean holy
war, or even war, in the Quran. According to Islamic tradition, the “great
jihad” is the battle within one’s self to live in accord with God’s will. A
jihad, for the prophet Muhammad, is often the struggle to achieve inner-worldly
asceticism, in accord with his call “to command the good and forbid evil with
the heart, the tongue and the hand.” And the Quran condemns the use of violence
to propagate the faith. “There is no compulsion in religion,” it states. The
Quran also denounces forced piety and conversion as insincere. Calls to
martyrdom, presented by militants as a direct path toward eternal life,
conveniently eschew the Quran’s rigid ban on suicide. But theological nuance is
beside the point for zealots. The fantasies peddled by the Christian right, from
the Rapture, which is not in the Bible, to the belief that Jesus, who was a
pacifist, would bless wars in the Middle East, injects our own version of
sanctified slogans into the vernacular.
Our crisis is a crisis of language. Victor Klemperer in his book “Lingua Tertii
Imperii” noted that the distortion of language by the Nazis was vital in
creating fascist culture. He was repeatedly perplexed by how the masses, even
those who opposed the Nazis, willingly ingested the linguistic poison the Nazis
used to perpetuate collective self-delusion. “Words may be little doses of
arsenic,” he wrote. “They are consumed without being noticed; they seem at first
to have no effect, but after a while, indeed, the effect is there.”
Chris Hedges is the author of “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
Triumph of Spectacle.”
Ben--Thank you for responding with your opinion. As far as past history, you are correct. However, I do not know of any recent (in the last 200 years) on any extremist christians (or jews for that matter) that have resorted to such extreme violence and terroristic acts such as Islamic extremists. According to all published accounts, these extremists have but one purpose and that is to destroy America and its way of life. I think this alone should cause alarm for every person in America not matter how flawed they think our society is.
Mr. Tuckley--Before you make statements in regards to what the Israeli's did in Gaza, may I suggest that you do some reading on the background of how state of Israel was formed. Please look at both sides of the story first before you make judgement. I have recently read a book concerning this and would be glad to give you the name of it.
Regarding the UN--The article you posted failed to mention that many nations in the UN are some of the worst in regards to human rights violations. Just to name a few: Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, Libya, etc. Need I go on? As far as Israel bringing their case to the UN, they have on numerous occasions and the UN has done nothing. If the UN was truly interested in peoples rights, etc. it would do something meaningful and enforce such things. In a nutshell, the UN is worthless.
Language--"Those who seek to dominate our behavior first seek to dominate our speech. They seek to obscure meaning. They make war on language. And the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds are each beset with a similar assault on language". Kinda sounds like our government doesn't it? The answer is pretty simple really. See, I was raised in a family that had strong moral and ethical beliefs. They taught me right from wrong. They also taught me to stand up for my beliefs but to also be open to others and their beliefs. In addition, they taught me not to take anything on facevalue (except in my case christianity). Yes, I believe in God but I do not push it on people because I respect other peoples beliefs. Also, I do not believe that Jesus would condone wholesale slaughter of people. I do believe, however, that He would not want me to stand idley by while someone is killing, rapping, torturing, etc. a person without doing anything. In the end, it is up to each and everyone of us to make a decision as to whether or not we believe what someone else tells us. We then need to be ready for whatever consequences this decision entails.
You suggest that I am defending Israel, well, I believe that every nation has the right to defend itself from aggressors. This is the same thing for people in general as well. If someone breaks into your house with intent to do bodily harm, do you not have the right to defend yourself? Forget anything about politics, religion, etc. As I have said before, man has been fighting since the dawn of time over one thing or another. Remember the saying, survival of the fittest. That isn't something new.
BTW, what is the web address that you say that you moderate? I would be interested in viewing it. Thank you!