Attacking an ad for calling a savage a savage
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October 10, 2012
The West’s muddled reaction to the anti-Islam video The Innocence of Muslims and its inadequate response to attempts by Muslims to carve out a special, protected niche for Islam under the guise of prohibiting Islamophobia, suggest that the First Amendment’s freedom of speech is being curtailed out of fear of Muslim threats and violence.
Events of last week involving a New York City subway advertisement seem to confirm this concern.
The sign in question was created by Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller is a blogger who operates the pro-Israel website Atlas Shrugs.
After a court battle with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Geller’s group was allowed to post an ad which read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
Geller is expanding her anti-jihad campaign across New York and the country. Some versions will include support for America, Baha’is, Copts, Hindus, Nigerian Christians, and Thailand — all victims of jihadist terror — in place of Israel.
Among those calling Geller’s campaign hate speech is Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, director of North American Programs for Rabbis for Human Rights. In an op-ed on the CNN website, she claimed, “The coded message makes clear who the savages are: those who support jihad, which in Geller’s mind includes all Muslims.” Going beyond the ad, Kahn-Troster writes that Geller has called Islam “an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the Earth.” While supporting the First Amendment, she condemns the ad as “words of hatred.”
Similarly, Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said, “The message of these ads may be protected speech, but that does not make it good speech. The fact that ads have been placed in the subway attacking Israel does not excuse the use of attack ads against Muslims.... The remedy for bad speech is good speech, not more bad speech.”
But to accept that these ads are anti-Muslim one must accept the logic of its critics. However, while all roses are flowers, not all flowers are roses. Yes, all jihadists are Muslims, but it does not follow that all Muslims are jihadists.
Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn provides a more logical reading of the ad. “[M]ost Americans probably read it the way it is written: Israel is a civilized nation under attack from people who do savage things in the name of jihad,” he wrote. “Whatever the agenda of those behind this ad might be, the question remains: What part of that statement is not true?”
Addressing the converse logic, McGurn asks why so many people associate jihad with murder and brutality. Two factors are the acts jihadists have committed and that some use jihad in the names of their terrorist organizations.
McGurn believes, that in light of jihadist atrocities, “savage” seems inadequate. “The point is that what makes someone a savage is not the religion he professes. It’s the actions he takes,” noting that the brunt of jihadist savagery has been borne by innocent Muslims who belong to the wrong political party or religious tradition.
To handwringing PC advocates, who condemn the subway ad as hate speech, McGurn says the First Amendment’s “glory, however, is as the cornerstone for a self-governing, free society whose citizens know that someone saying something disgusting about your faith is no excuse for murder.” McGurn’s op-ed appeared during a week in which the administration was slowly shifting from calling the attack on America’s Libya mission a spontaneous reaction provoked by the anti-Islam video, to acknowledging it for the premeditated terrorist attack that it was.
In closing, McGurn points to the strange ramifications of political correctness.
What a curiosity our new political correctness has made of our public spaces. Let your sex tape loose on the Internet and be rewarded with your own TV show; photograph a crucifix in a jar of urine and our museums will vie to exhibit it; occupy someone else’s property and you will be hailed by the president for your keen social conscience. But call people who blow up, behead and mutilate “savage” — and polite society will find you offensive.
Geller is on firm ground contrasting the civilized to the savage. Merriam-Webster defines savage as “lacking the restraints normal to civilized human beings.” It lists civilized as the sole antonym.
The ad states “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” I don’t think there should be any controversy over that statement.
So when it comes to differentiating between Israel and jihadists, which is civilized and which is savage? Or are both civilized; or both savage? Muslims are not the issue.
Jared Silverman, a West Orange attorney, is a self-described conservatarian. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
matt mclaughlin
October 10, 2012
Pitting a nation vs most often an international terror group isn’t the equation and doesn’t make an honest discussion. Its Israel vs the people that were railroaded in its creation who await justice that are not mentioned in the transit poster, nor the tradional Jew who is not Zionist.
kafantaris
October 10, 2012
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
As John Stuart Mill saw things, when citizens question their government, their laws and their sacred beliefs, this examination might find room for improvement.
But even if it does not, merely questioning things works miracles: It forces us to reflect on them and justify why we have them. This inquiry—in and of itself—removes doubt and infuses our institutions with life and vigor.
Like lack of exercise, muzzling speech hardens the arteries of even sacred institutions and is the reason why they stagnate and die elsewhere. And no one rushes to save them because folks had long forgotten why they are there in the first place.
Such is the utility of free speech—and a point entirely missed by authoritarian regimes.
R. Chatt
October 10, 2012
The so called railroaded people awaiting justice won’t ever get justice if their jihadist leadership continue their agenda of the annihilation of the State of Israel. How many land disputes have there been throughout history? Do you really believe that a settlement would not have been reached by this time if the Arabs had desired peace and accepted the existence of a Jewish state?
Great writing, Mr. Silverman!
Joseph E
October 12, 2012
The cited rabbis in the article are as dhimmicrats as is the morally bankrupt U.S Dep’t of States Soft Jihad policy .
Look at Eurabia !
Those dhimmis attacks against the Geller’s awarness campaign are the ten millionth “hint” of the kind of “piece” the Muslim world wants to assert over the U.S and Israel.
But, hey, who’s counting?
Maybe we can show them how nice we are by caving to more of their extortions whitewashed by the dhimmis political correctness as polite demands .
Maybe we can make more ‘painful’ concessions and goodwill gestures that result in more cruelty against us and loss of lives.
Maybe they’d like some more land for peace?
May be they’d like more western laws sharia compliant ?
Maybe there are some Jews we can throw out of their homes to prove just what stand up guys we are.
Maybe there are more U.S Embassies, Ambassadors and personnel that we could hand out to the mohamedans mobs just to appease them, so they would understand that our “eat and drink” routine won’t get us up to assert U.S Sovereignty Interests.
Maybe then they’ll like us or…. maybe not as those Islamo-lefties, liberals, progressive dhimmicrats want us to believe .
Chris
October 13, 2012
Just to see how racist this author is, just replace “Muslim” with “Jew” in the first sentence:
“... attempts by Jews to carve out a special, protected niche for Judaism under the guise of prohibiting anti-semitism…”
Sounds like Nazi Germany, doesn’t it?
A Humanist
October 20, 2012
The Jews were persecuted over the centuries by the so called Christians, because of their wealth and professional success.Hitler the anti Christ almost exterminated the Jews in Europe for this very reason.He did not like them for their pacific outlook and liberal views on politics.The horrors of the holocaust have been graphically documented by the Germans themselves.Hundreds of thousands of non Jewish dissidents,
intellectuals,Gypsies,mentally challenged persons, and other, ‘sub humans’, were ill treated,starved and worked to death along with millions of Jewish people.
The tragedy is that such a gifted and cosmopolitan people should become so militant and cruel in their treatment of the Palestinians evicted from lands they had occupied for more than a thousand years. Does not this overweening pride in military might that unleashes
tanks and aircraft against stone throwing protesters remind you of the Nazis who proudly rounded up helpless men,women and children and herded them into extermination camps?
India, too has witnessed terror and violence during her time of so called independence when hundreds of thousands of innocents were massacred on both sides of the border,drawn by the British.The bitterness resulting from those crimes have led to the present political situation on the subcontinent.
May the Jews,Christians,Muslims,Hindus,Sikhs,Buddhists,Atheists,Agnostics and other persons of goodwill, remember that hatred cannot be conquered by hatred but by love.
The war for Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 was led by the army chief Manekshaw, a Parsi,and Generals, Aurora,and JFR Jacob, a Sikh and a Jew respectively.
The defense minister, Shri Jagjivan Ram was a so called ,“untouchable”.
I hope the people of the world realize that it is possible for persons belonging to different religions and races to coexist and work together,instead of exterminating each other.Shalom!