The Poet VS. The Prophet

Poet Versus The Prophet

On standing up to totalitarian Islam

Mark Goldblatt | May 14, 2010

I got to know the poet Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life. Not very well, just a nodding acquaintance, but after he died I attended a memorial in his honor at the City University Graduate School. At that service, his personal assistant related a story about Ginsberg’s reaction to the death sentence pronounced on the novelist Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Rushdie’s “crime,” you’ll recall, was writing a provocative, perhaps even blasphemous novel inspired by the life of Muhammad called The Satanic Verses.

...note: this article contains spicy language after this point....

This article tackles the question of whether to stand up to radicals and the various ways to do so. Should we run the risk of "offending" radical religious zealots or do we refuse because we fear a terrorist reaction?

[edit on 15-5-2010 by traditionaldrummer]

reply to post by traditionaldrummer
I'll happily sh** on anyone who endorses murder and violence as a form of censorship. If they claim religious beliefs to support murder and violence...then I'd happily sh** on their religion too.

At the same time, we are all aware that a Moslem extremist isn't representing Islam. Likewise, Catholic priests that like to screw boys aren't representing Catholicism. The European purges of Jews during the middle ages weren't representing Christianity. Bush didn't represent all Americans and Hitler didn't represent all Germans.

We need to isolate the assholes from religion, patriotism, nationalism or plain old bigotry and deal with them accordingly. The tragedy of all this conflict of values, politics and religion is that it has happened for centuries and seems to be a part of all of us.

It's hard to differentiate between plain racism or religious divisiveness and doing the right thing when standing up to assholes of any creed or colour. Totalitarianism uses religion and prejudice like the matador uses a red cape to distract the bulls. In that sense, we need to ignore the 'red capes' and stomp all matadors.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
At the same time, we are all aware that a Moslem extremist isn't representing Islam.

True enough. I have many muslim friends that are quite peaceful and they actually are some of the nicest people I know (more so due to their culture rather than their religion). But should someone tell me they'd endorse someone's murder due to a cartoon or book because their religion instructs it, then I too would have to openly s--t on their version of their religion.

Do you remember a few years back when someone took a wafer from the catholic church home with them and the catholics went ape squeeze over it and began calling for the guy's murder? I had a catholic friend claim that murdering him was actually okay because since people actually believe the wafer is the lord incarnate, that theft of their lord warranted murder. I took a big dump all over him for that one.

It seems the Abrahamic religions have a penchant for breeding an unhealthy notion of anti-humanity behavior it their followers.

reply to post by traditionaldrummer

It seems the Abrahamic religions have a penchant for breeding an unhealthy notion of anti-humanity behavior it their followers.

There does appear to be a tendency there. At the same time, we can see aspects of the same behaviour or thoughts in any distinct group of people. Rwanda in the 90s, to me, was a demonstration that humanity has a predisposition or potential to commit barbarity on its neighbours.

People shouldn't be afraid of 'stepping on toes' when it comes to condemning ignorance. It's the 21st century and we're way past the industrial age and the space age. It's kind of ridiculous that we're even discussing this in 2010.

Some of us have our feet planted in an age of reason and too many are still rooted in medieval concepts. I'd say f*** em, but it's never so simple.