There are a number of points on which Ali Eteraz and I agree. Despite my general hostility to organized religion, I too have little patience for Robert Spencer-type arguments that Islam is possessed with a preternatural desire to force unbelievers into a state of "dhimmitude," nor am I terribly concerned that the minarets of "Eurabia" will soon encircle the Islamisized capitals of Western Europe. As I noted in my Reason column, I have little interest --- and little academic qualification --- in such conversations, and will leave the discussions of Koranic interpretation to theologians and historians. But thankfully, for the sake of Jewcy's readers, there is much on which we disagree. But let me start be reiterating that I too was unimpressed by Wilders film, and his views of Islam still strike me as reductive and, to put it mildly, incomplete.

Prior to Geert Wilders' release of the film, Fitna, Reason Magazine's Michael Moynihan wrote a piece on the subject, which is worth reading as he and I are about to engage in a mini-dialogue on many of the questions it raises.

Michael argued that while Wilders was "something of an extremist" and whose views on Islam were "both reductive and puerile" his film, once released, needed to be engaged "on its intellectual merits." Further, he argued that "not to support Wilders" was tantamount to acquiescing to "bullying" by "religious crackpots."

At the broad level, Michael and I agree that Wilders' film should not have been banned and needed to be engaged on its merits.

In my review of the film, I did precisely that. So did numerous other people,Iranian Student Protestors: Far more deserving of our sympathy than an illiberal fraud like Wilders including Irshad Manji (in both English and Arabic), Sadegh Kabeer, (Iranian in the Middle East) and Mona Eltahawy (Egyptian in the US). Not one of these three Muslim dissenters -- each with a long history of disavowing Muslim extremism -- found Wilders' film interesting or coherent. The film is intellectually lacking.

Where I particularly disagree with Michael -- and why I maintain that we owe nothing to Wilders -- is over the fact that Wilders is a threat to liberal society. I do not believe that Wilders' views must be criminalized by the state, but they should be deemed out of the bounds of liberal society much the same way that we consider discrimination on the basis of gender unacceptable. Further, the threat of a civil and democratic discussion --- yes, the threat of a discussion --- about the criminality of his views should be left on the table as a deterrent. Our aim should be to rid liberal society of people like Wilders. This can only start if we ignore Michael’s exhortation about looking out for Wilders’ rights, and spend our time either ignoring or mocking him.

Wilders' obfuscations are pernicious. He conceals his xenophobic nativism by waving (incorrectly translated and randomly picked) verses of the Quran. Sprinkled in the middle of Fitna, which Wilders would have us believe is about the Quran, are Dutch news clippings included for no other reason than to provoke an emotional backlash against immigrants. This is why I don't believe this film had anything to do with theology. Fitna was nothing more than a veiled attack on the newest "outsider." Jews and Chinese in the past, the Polish in London today and Latinos here in the US, have been the butt of similar tactics by ideologues. Demagogues enjoy taking pot-shots at the things immigrants hold closest --- in this case, the Quran. I have no doubt that if it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Muslims held dear, Wilders would be trying to equate Muslims with Oompa-Loompas. The job of public intellectuals like Moynihan is to cut through the veneer and get to the heart of the matter.

Here, the heart of the matter is nativism, not Islam, and not whether Wilders has an unqualified right to speak.

Today, in Europe, immigrants from Muslim countries are viewed as being inherently incapable of becoming good citizens in the West. It reminds me of the late 19^th century when discussion waged in Europe about how it was impossible for a Jew --- who gives obeisance to Talmudic Law --- to simultaneously give allegiance to the state.

Similarly, the threat of "Eurabia," promulgated by men like Wilders, is not very different from the threat of "Aztlan" raised by anti-immigrant forces in the US. Neither scenario is likely. But in a picture where immigrants are painted as gang-bangers, rapists, arms and drug dealers, rioters, and multiplying like the Borg, the narrative quickly shifts from irrational phantasmagoria to social policies that are either explicitly bigoted, or which turn a blind eye to the immigrants' concerns. This shifting is what men like Wilders excel at.

What Wilders manages to do with relative ease is to shift the discussion away from how power and resources should be apportioned between native and immigrant Europeans into a referendum on jihadism. This is wrong and unfair. By and large, European Muslim grievances with Europe are grievances with the state apparatuses --- with unemployment, with police brutality, with poverty. Yet Wilders and his cohorts would have us believe that the issue is all of Islam all across the world and if you do not characterize immigrants' agitations in a theo-political manner then you are either "with the enemy" or have already turned into a "dhimmi." This is called missing the point.

A perfect example of this missing-the-point occurred during the riots by immigrant youth in France. The New York Times and various other news agencies took a barracking, right here at Jewcy, for referring to the rioters as "youth" and not as "Muslim." Yet, the fact was that the latest rounds of the riots were touched off not only by the 40% unemployment rate --- a rate that matches Saudi Arabia's --- among immigrant youth but the police mandate to deport 25,000 illegal aliens a year and the specific incident of the police rather bizarrely running over a pair of youth on a motorcycle. As the UK Spectator and Reuters both noted, what needn't have been about Islam, became about Islam.

If Wilders were interested in discussing extremism, jihadism or even Islamism, he would have done it in a way that allowed Muslims who oppose these things to join with him. However, he purposefully chooses to marginalize such people in order to pretend that they don't exist. In some quarters this is called bigotry. I’ve already pointed out, even dissenting Muslims are acknowledging that while Wilders shouldn't be banned, they are also feeling that he isn't someone to be taken seriously either. There are reasons for this, reasons having to do with the fact that the guy is not just a bore but also a boor. We don't jail boors, but we shouldn’t be particularly interested in what they are saying either.

What people like Wilders ultimately do is to encourage the worst parts of the discourse to feel empowered, whether Islamophobic or Islamophilic. I am, for example, not particularly surprised that on the heels of Wilders film we have news about French Muslim graves --- from World War I no less -- defiled by Islamophobic elements (which previously used Nazi imagery on Muslim graves). Nor am I surprised that around the world handmaidens of dictators have tried to stir violence in response to the film. (The Jamat-e-Islami’s protests are particularly disgusting given that they participated in the rigged 2002 elections of Pakistan and boycotted the 2008 elections because they were free and fair).

While I do not believe that we ought to be influenced by what ayatollahs and extremists on the other side of the globe think, I do think we ought to speak in a way that will promote our values: democracy, decency and exemplarism. When the philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty went to Tehran to criticize religious oligarchy, their lectures were attended by an astonishing 1500 people. Those of us who profess to support democracy cannot forget that in the world today our allies aren't people like Wilders, but those 1500 dissenters in Iran who brave torture and prison to exchange in the best of our ideas. If for no other reason than for the sake of their emancipatory project, we should reach out to them and tell them: As you fight your supremacists, we fight ours. The only way we can make this showing is if Wilders is aware that he is perpetually "this close" to losing his right to offend. I don't want Wilders criminalized but I certainly don't understand why I ought help make him more audacious.

At the end of the day, Michael, when I bully Wilders, it's not because I am a religious crackpot, or in league with any such people, or antagonistic to free speech, but because I consider Wilders a threat to our liberal principles (and so does the Dutch Parliament). As you said, people like Wilders have a right to offend, but simultaneously people like me have a right to chastise the offensive. My optimistic sense is that in liberal societies people like me far outnumber people like Wilders and always will. I happen to think this is a good thing.

The Kissers: John Currin's paintings spark controversy The artist John Currin is striving to bring sexy back, and he believes that the future of civilization depends on it.

The New Yorker profiled the artist's career last week, focusing on his recent pornography-inspired paintings. (A small portion of the article with artwork is online.)

Through "painting porn," Currin says that he seeks to challenge liberal, western societies that have disavowed -- and refused to defend -- artists who critique and attack puritanical, anti-sex ideologies, or offend the sensibilities of religious fundamentalists. His interest was piqued by the controversy over cartoons of Mohammed in European newspapers:

"That the Times decided it was not going to show the cartoons-O.K., they're terrible-ass cartoons from a quality standpoint, but the idea that those thugs get offended and we just acquiesce, that was the most astonishing display of cowardice. And the killing of Theo van Gogh, the film director, by some jihadist in Amsterdam-all of a sudden the most liberal societies in the world were having intimidation murders happen. That's when it occurred to me that we might lose this thing-not the Iraq war but the larger struggle." ... Currin talked about low birth rates in Europe, and people having sex without babies, and pornography as a kind of elegy to liberal culture...

Will Currin succeed in politicizing porn? Will his reaction-provoking paintings, such as "The Danes" and "Women of Franklin Street" inspire liberal societies to rise up against the forces of violent religiosity?

Maybe, but Currin fails to address an ominous paradox: He wants to spark resistance to censorship, but he's using a medium that has lost its ability to shock anyone. The pornography industry is suffering at the creatively destructive hands of the market. Sex has been sold, sold and sold. Consumers are past the point of saturation. The corporate extensions of the biz are in crisis due to Internet piracy and amateur video. High definition is "ruining" the "quality" of porn because every blemish becomes magnified, reducing those perfect bodies to flawed flesh with wrinkles and surgical scars.

Even the definition of pornography has been lost. The hyper-publicized paparazzi trophies of 2007 -- crotch-shots of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan -- blurred the line between pornography and celebrity gossip-mongering.

The label "pornographic" no longer elicits major outrage. The majority of our population would no longer hold book burnings to purify the world of sinful material. Instead pornography simply bores us.

Unless the mullahs of London and Amsterdam subscribe to the New Yorker or take a pilgrimage to the Gagosian Gallery, Currin's jabs at sexually repressed extremists might very well go unnoticed. (Will the same newspapers that were afraid to run the Mohammed cartoons decide to spotlight Currin's provocations?)

Nevertheless, Currin's intermingling of Hustlerian voyeurism with "Mannerist compositions echoing Old Masters from Baldung to Parmigianino" makes his work striking. Even if no political mobilization arises, Currin's "elegy to liberal culture" is a solace for those who are disgusted with flaccid western complacency.

Related: Arabs Hot For Israeli Porn  

• American prisons and policies failing at immigration detention. [The New York Times]
• "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" ruling shows free-speech hipocrisy of Supreme Court. [The Los Angeles Times]
• In the Vice President's office--"with no real remit and no real limits, open to exploitation and abuse"--Cheney's ongoing disregard for the Constitution. [The Nation]
• The most dangerous Vice President since Aaron Burr. [The New Republic]
• Doctors in the UK vote to make early-stage abortions more accessible. [The Daily Telegraph]
• Harper's editor Wyatt Mason on his friendship with Leonard Michaels. [Harper's Magazine]
• Robust opium crop in southern Afghanistan. [Guardian Unlimited]

One of the Offending Images: BobsYerUncle's effigy of SierraPrompted by my post below about l'affaire Sierra, Izzy engaged me in a Skype conversation. As always, it was more fun than either of us have any right to be having on the clock:

Izzy: So here's the thing: it sounds like you're advocating a "suck it up" approach. I mean, sure the internet is a nasty place. So's East New York. But if the police told any crime victim that they just shouldn't be in crime-ridden places, that would be hugely irresponsible.

Michael: Well, if you read her self-regarding post about the whole thing, you begin to think she's overreacting.

Izzy: I read it, and I don't. I can see how something in her tone could be off-putting – angry and scared people can sound a little self-obsessed. But legitimately – when someone threatens you, you become obsessed with your own well-being. I wouldn't have cancelled the conference, but i would have talked to the organizers about security.

Michael: The distinction is this: living in East New York means having to navigate a hazardous terrain everyday, and with no other choice in the matter. Starting a blog means granting yourself the ability to a) block comments, b) block certain ISP addresses, c) keep your identity, location private.

Izzy: But the comments weren't on her blog.

Michael: Some of them were.

Continue reading...

So says Lithuanian parliament, denying one blogger the right of accreditation as a member of the Fourth Estate. Frankly, why such membership requires accreditation in the first place is the real question.

"This decision does not allow me to enjoy the rights and protection other journalists are entitled to," Liutauras Ulevicius, author of the www.blogas.lt/liutauras, said.

Parliament rejected his application for accreditation, saying he and other bloggers do not meet the legal definition of a journalist.

"The Media Law describes a journalist as a person who collects, disseminates and provides information to the media, based on a contract with the media, or who is a member of a journalists' union," parliament's education, science and culture committee said.

Ulevicius told AFP the decision breached his right to self-expression.

He vowed to appeal in the first instance to parliamentary administrators.

"If this does not help, I shall defend my rights in court," Ulevicius said.

In honor of the French magazine editor who won a ridiculous and pathetic criminal case brought by the French state for his printing the Danish Mohammed cartoons. And bravo to Nicolas Sarkozy for his personal intervention in the matter.

If the sign of a healthy democracy is a media that publishes “inconvenient truths,” then Indian democracy has no peer.

This weekend, the Times of India offered 450 million Indian men the following news in an article titled "Indian men don't measure up":Indian men: Have had better weekends

Scientists at the country's premier medical research institute have just concluded an extensive two-year study of the penis sizes of Indian men. The data is still being collated and analysed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), but..."data collected in Mumbai till 2001 showed that 60% of the participants measured 126 to 156 mm in length and 30% between 100 and 125 mm," said a city researcher, pointing out that [Indian penises averaged 5 cm shorter than the international average].

I'll never again complain about Ha'aretz carrying B'tselem reports.

Compounding the bad news is that a parallel study launched by the Pakistani Council of Medical Research has determined that Pakistani men have the largest penises in the world.