Salman Rushdie et al on standing up to fundamentalists

[Lydia Leftcoast]

News World International is carrying a piece on the brouhaha about holding the Miss World Contest in Nigeria a year or two ago.

The country is only half Muslim, but the Islamic fundamentalists raised such a fuss about holding the contest in Nigeria, that the contestants were confined to their hotel rooms. Things were tense until Iziyoma Daniels, a young woman reporter for the largest newspaper in the country, fed up with protests against "lewdness" by members of a religion that allows polygamy, wrote a satirical piece in which she said that if Mohammed were alive, he would have chosen one of the contestants for a wife.

The article sparked outright bloody riots nationwide.

First the newspaper apologized, then they fired Daniels. That wasn't enough. Even the Nigerian government blamed Daniels for inciting the riots, and she felt that she had to leave the country. Her father bribed border guards to let her into Benin, where the family had friends, but even then, the imams put a fatwa on her, which meant that anyone who harbored her would be in danger. She fled to Europe and is currently living in Norway, the only country that would give her political asylum.

Salman Rushdie was interviewed in connection with the story. He said that apologizing to fundamentalists was a mistake, becauase it only emboldened them to demand more. However, they viewed not apologizing as a form of aggression. He compared it to thugs who break into your house and beat you up and then claim that you're the aggressor when you defend yourself.

I'm a liberal Christian, but I wonder how long it will be before a movie like Dogma or a novel like Live from Golgotha provokes nationwide riots in the U.S.

[Viktor Runeberg]

1. Let's riot!

It is time to simply be as intolerant of fundamentalism as of other sorts of criminal mentality. That they wear the cloak of religion doesn't hide the fact that fundamentalism in regards to any scripture or belief set is fundamentally evil. A sane society would burn their churchs and mosques and temples down, and run those who won't renounce their evil towards to borders and the seas.

[acmavm]

2. "A sane society would burn their churchs and mosques and temples down"?

Seriously that sounds as bad as the fundies.

Yep, that's tolerance for you. Burn ALL religious establishments down. Hell, let's start burning all believers at the stake. Why go half-way?

[davidwhite0570]

4. not all....just the ones who preach hate.....ala jerry falwell, evil

incarnate

[InvisibleBallots]

5. fundamentalism breeds fundamentalism

Looks like many "liberals" are catching the fundamentalism disease, turning into Secular Fundamentalists, a mirror image of Religious Fundamentalists. Each thing evokes its opposite. Fight fight fight!

[The Magistrate]

6. It Is, Mr. Ballots, Sometimes Necessary To Fight

"I want you to know, boys and girls, there are people in this world who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that...."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Personally, my Christian beliefs make me disinclined to be

violent towards anyone.

But the fundies are truly scary, and we need to find a way to break through their programming.

[justgamma]

7. Off topic, but so appropriate

"He compared it to thugs who break into your house and beat you up and then claim that you're the aggressor when you defend yourself."

This is what the righties have been doing to liberals for years. I have never seen it described so succinctly.

[TheKingfish]

8. Is there such a thing as a Mr World Contest ?

Why not? And if there is why isn't it popular like Miss World?