Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President, Mohammed Morsi, Un-Helpfully Threw Fuel on the International Fire Yesterday — Illustrating that, Even if We Successfully Remove Hidden Elements of American Christian Proselytizing in Implementing U.S. Foreign Policy, Islamic Leaders Like President Morsi Will Continue to Prove the “Clash of Cultures” Paradigm

27 September 2012

Leave it to prominent Islamists to keep (arguably karma-based) historical confrontations alive

No sooner had I cautioned about unnecessarily taunting Islamic publics with a quasi-overt “Christianized” American foreign policy, than grandstanding Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi threw gasoline on the “clash of cultures” fire.

Here is what he told the United Nations yesterday, according to the Washington Post:

Insults to the Islamic prophet Muhammad are part of an organized assault on Muslim religious and cultural values and cannot be brushed aside, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said Wednesday, rejecting the case for free speech made by President Obama just a day earlier.

“The obscenities that I have referred to that were recently released as part of an organized campaign against Islamic sanctities are unacceptable,” Morsi said, referring to a crude YouTube video called “Innocence of Muslims” that mocks Islam.

“We reject this. We cannot accept it,” Morsi said, his voice thin with anger. “We will not allow anyone to do this by word or deed.”

In an address before the U.N. General Assembly that marked his debut as an international statesman, Egypt’s first democratically elected president presented an unapologetically Islamic view of world events and Egypt’s role in them. He said outrage over insults to Islam does not justify violence but said nothing directly about the attack two weeks ago on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

And his assertion that the YouTube video was part of an organized assault risked undermining U.S. attempts to disavow it, although Morsi did not explain who he thought was behind the campaign.

“Egypt respects freedom of expression,” said Morsi, who was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood movement once banned by the U.S.-backed secular dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. But “not a freedom of expression that targets a specific religion or a specific culture.”

Consider the internal illogic Morsi’s provocatively incompatible statements

President Morsi allegedly said that violence is not okay, but (on the other hand), “We will not allow anyone to do this by word or deed.”

How are Muslims supposed to interpret those two bits of incompatible advice?

If we will not tolerate something that means that we will do anything necessary to stop it. An 8-year old can see the irresolvable conflict between President Morsi’s conflicting sentiments.

Prediction — a hard slog continues

It is going to be difficult for even secular Americans to put up with President Morsi’s kind of religio-cultural illogic. Egypt’s president is either is pretending to misunderstand what freedom of speech means or he’s an idiot.

I imagine that most Americans, at least those who take the time to consider the issue at all, will think that President Morsi is an ignoramus or worse.

The idiot/ignoramus characterization, of course, will not much diminish the American public’s unspoken wish to take hold of a broom to clean the planet’s house of him and his medieval-thinking ilk.

Cultural relativism — your “idiocy” versus mine

Were I a mushy-minded liberal, I might consider President Morsi’s statement to be of equal value with one that I, as a free speech supporter, might utter.

However, I am both politically liberal and conservative enough not to be a cultural relativist. Cultures are demonstrably not equal in ethical worth. Believing otherwise simply means that one has abandoned any way of measuring human “progress.”

Pertinent here, mainstream Islam (Sufism excepted) has done nothing especially overt to indicate that it is one of the world’s more thoughtful or loving religions. Islam appears (to most non-Islamic Americans):

to subject women (who constitute more than half the world’s population) to egregiously inferior status,

to be visibly hostile to education (in the same way that many Christian fundamentalists are),

and

to sit (mostly) idly by while its most extreme and lunatic elements go around killing people in the Prophet’s name.

There is not much in Islam’s recent and visible historical record that a rationally thinking Westerner can respect as being good for the future of a free, thoughtful, and loving humanity.

That is my point today. President Morsi’s implicit call for favorable perception cuts two ways. Right now, Islam is (probably) not winning the perception argument in reasonable and evidence-seeking minds.

It is not just Christian Americans who think that Islam, as it currently parades around on the world stage, has significant flaws as a world view

When one’s religion is most prominently characterized by murderous terrorism, medieval narrow-mindedness, and illogically provocative statements like Mohammed Morsi’s — one cannot legitimately complain when other people, who attempt to temper those traits in themselves and their cultures, disrespect it.

Like a presumably silent majority of non-Islamic Americans, I have grown tired of hearing about Islam’s purported virtues in a world environment, where they are so well concealed.

One would think that a genuinely spiritual tradition would speak more vociferously and effectively out against the murdering and perpetually hostile fringes in its midst.

In fairness to President Morsi — his constituent-pandering parallels that of every other prominent world leader that I can think of, including American President Obama

Spineless, lowest common denominator-ship characterizes the planet’s leadership figures today.

It is easier to achieve prominence and wealth by inflaming everything that is wrong with “us,” than by trying to educate and courageously lead toward better ways of being.

The moral? — Clash of cultures, indeed

Americans will be sorely challenged in attempting to remain patient with Islamist-generated button pushing. Teeth-gritting tolerance and military forbearance will, however, continue to be wise policy.

It might help to think of Morsi-like statements as karmic payback for the imperialist people-squashing that the United States and its colonialist allies have historically done and continue to do.

I stick (with gritted chompers) to the separation of church and state points (regarding appropriate American foreign policy) that I made yesterday.

PeteFree.com