Fundamentalist outrage in a secular society

It took a few days, but lefty bloggers are beginning to weigh in on the explosion of Muslim outrage over the Danish cartoons. Which is a good thing, because it is important to get thoughtful discussions of this issue, not just brief, snarky ones.

For instance, I don't normally link to Josh Marshall because you should be reading his work without prompting, but his observations on this issue are important to read and gets it exactly right.

The price of blasphemy is death. And among many in the Muslim world it is not sufficient that those rules apply in their countries. They should apply everywhere. Perhaps something so drastic isn't called for -- at least in the calmer moments or settled counsels. But at least European governments are supposed to clamp down on their presses to heal the breach.

In a sense how can such claims respect borders? The media, travel and electronic interconnections of the world make borders close to meaningless.

So liberal mores versus theocratic mores. Where's the possible compromise? There isn't any. On the face of it this gets portrayed as an issue of press freedom. But this is much more fundamental. 'Press freedom' is just one cog in the machinery of a society that doesn't believe in or accept the idea of 'blasphemy'. Now, an important cog? Yes. But I think we're fooling ourselves to reduce this to something so juridical and rights based.

I don't want to imply this is only a Muslims versus modernity issue. I know not all Muslims embrace these views. More to the point, it's not only Muslims who do. You see it among the haredim in Israel. And I see it with an increasing frequency here in the US. Is it just me or does it seem that more and more often there are public controversies in which 'blasphemy' is considered some sort of legitimate cause of action -- as if 'blasphemy' can actually have any civic meaning in a society like ours. Anyway, you get the idea.

It's true and it's not just him -- there is a rising tide of fundamentalism taking offense at what the religious right sees as attacks on their religion. In the most religious country in the West, religion is somehow vulnerable.

That's why, even from a distance, this issue proves more difficult to reconcile for the right than the left. The latter have a natural tendency to be "culturally sensitive" and to avoid giving offence. But for most of us, freedom of thought and expression and an insistence on a secular society is core to our values. For the right, on the other hand, their natural tendency to be offended by noisy demonstrations by Muslims and to attack brown people, must also be at odds with their demands that religion is the basis for our republic and that lefties' "godlessness" is a character flaw. For them, to criticize Muslims over this could potentially weaken their case when they cry outrage over the next movie or comments by Ted Turner. The right is arguing, of course, that Christians don't call for the death penalty when a crucifix is submerged in (allegedly) urine. Then again, in this country, the fundies don't have to hold demonstrations and burn flags. They go on TV.

UPDATED to fix a typo that rendered a barely comprehensible sentence entirely incomprehensible.