Mr. Bhuyian asks if I am “seriously accusing [him] of attributing more importance to those cartoons than genocide, honor-killings and suicide bombings?” I think it is plain from my Wespeak published next to his this past Tuesday that I am not just accusing him of that, or at least of being an apologist for those who believe that, but of complicity in the process of extortion and intimidation. Mr. Bhuyian thinks that the solution to the parade of contemporary Muslim horribles is for non-Muslims to subjugate their values to the sensitivities of Muslims, and he prefers to advocate for this cause rather than for an end to the parade. This is precisely the position he took on April 4 minus the gobbledygook about “bridges,” “understanding” and “ethnocentrism.”
While I hate getting bogged down, I must respond to Mr. Bhuyian’s screech that he didn’t say what he did and doesn’t think what he does. On April 4, Mr. Bhuyian wrote: “Also, the same Danish newspaper that first published these cartoons refused to publish cartoons that portrayed Jesus because it did not want to offend anyone. Why did they not follow the same guidelines when deciding to publish cartoons of Muhammad?” The point of Mr. Bhuyian’s statement, rather obviously, was to claim that Jyllens-Posten employed some sort of racist double-standard, respecting the religious sensibilities of Christians but not of Muslims. I then pointed out that, in fact, Jesus was portrayed in one of the same cartoons as Mohammed. Mr. Bhuyian now claims that his statement was true, because some three years ago Jyllens-Posten declined to publish an unsolicited cartoon that happened to include a depiction of Jesus. Rather obviously, there was no “guideline” at issue. In one case the newspaper did not think a cartoon it received in the mail was something its audience wanted to see, in another it published cartoons to illustrate an editorial. That doesn’t make Jyllens-Posten racist, it makes Mr. Bhuyian’s April 4 claim an intentional distortion at best, told for the purpose of attacking free speech.
Back to the point, the real shame here is that as a Muslim with a Wesleyan education, Mr. Bhuyian is in a privileged position that he is choosing to squander on ethnic solidarity in lieu of progress. He could be helping build a modern and moderate Islam. Instead, he advocates for Westerners to bow. He could be traveling to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and telling people that suicide bombing is wrong. Instead, he travels to Israel to exchange views about whether suicide bombing is wrong. (I don’t know why he thinks this earns him humanist points. Most of us don’t need to take a trip to understand that putting a bomb on a school bus is wrong). And, par for the course, he rejects free speech, that one precious right, so absent in Muslim countries because of the rioters and their ilk, that might lead to real reform. He thinks that riots are acts of speech, rather than the deafening silence of violence. He needs me to tell him “and is just shocked! Shocked!” to hear that willingness to tolerate the speech of others without resorting to violence is both a prerequisite of inter-cultural dialogue (really, of any conversation one might want to have with anyone) and a bedrock principle of contemporary Western political culture.
He is, simply put, complicit.
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