The West Has Two Liberalism Problems, And Burning The Quran Is Just One of Them
The disgusting burning of a Quran in Norway last week was a rabidly Islamophobic act of hatred that highlighted one of the West’s two liberalism problems, with the first being that the aforementioned stunt is supposedly protected by the principle of “free speech” while the other is that many Western governments are reluctant to encourage the assimilation and integration of civilizationally dissimilar (and largely illegal) immigrants, which partially contributed to radicalizing some already extremist-inclined domestic political forces.
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The burning of the Quran in Norway last week was a rabidly Islamophobic act of hatred that can never be justified, excused, or whitewash under any circumstances, full stop. Anyone trying to explain away the disgraceful actions of Arne Tumyr, the chairman of the already extremist-inclined “Stop Islamization of Norway” (SIAN) movement who committed this disgusting inter-civilizational provocation, or criticize the heroic intervention of the man identified as Ilyas who put a stop to this Islamophobic stunt is on the morally wrong side of the debate, to put it mildly Having gotten that “disclaimer” out of the way, there’s no avoiding the fact that this incident incited a furious discussion all across the world about the so-called “freedom of speech”, especially after the Norwegian envoys to Pakistan and Iran were summoned by those host states in protest over what that country’s police recently allowed to transpire before Ilyas’ brave intervention.
SIAN’s supporters insist that Tumyr has the right to freely express his socio-political views against Islam, while its detractors demand that nothing of the sort ever be allowed to occur again anywhere in the world without the culprit(s) being brought to justice afterwards. The most immediate issue obviously boils down to whether limits should be imposed upon the West’s cherished “freedom of speech”, and if so, then what exactly should they be, who makes this decision, what degree of foreign (or at the very least, non-citizen) involvement should contribute to this determination, what the consequences should be for violating it, and if the proposed measures should be implemented proactively or reactively. These are very deep questions that cut right to the heart of the stereotypical socio-political basis of Western society, and it’s unlikely that any “one-size-fits-all” approach will ever be reached, let alone practiced in all those countries or done so without double standards.
These are vitally important discussions that every society should have, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that already extremist-inclined domestic political forces are growing in popularity partially because of their governments’ hyper-liberal reluctance to encourage the assimilation and integration of civilizationally dissimilar (and largely illegal) immigrants. This has undoubtedly contributed to radicalizing some of those same political forces which ironically embrace the hyper-liberal principle of unrestricted “freedom of speech” up to and including the burning of religious texts in public. It’s therefore hypocritical that these same right-wing groups are against the hyper-liberal policy of open borders yet embrace its unrestricted “free speech” counterpart that’s simply the opposite side of the same coin. Quite clearly, this is an opportunistic approach which shows that such groups will do whatever is needed in order to promote their agenda.
That agenda, as is seen, isn’t just about protecting their country’s cultures that they feel are increasingly coming under threat as a result of their own government’s large-scale “open borders” policies that some fear amount to so-called “replacement migration”, but to ensure their people’s “right” to burn Islamic texts in public. If the issue was solely about the so-called “freedom of speech” and the supposed “right” to burn any book in public, then they presumably wouldn’t have a problem with a “native Norwegian” (as in one who has an overwhelming majority of ethnic Norwegian heritage) atheist burning Bibles and smashing crucifixes in the streets, though any objective observer could imagine SIAN and other groups’ reactions if such a stunt were to occur. They’d likely behave the same way that Ilyas did by intervening to stop the desecration of their sacred religious symbols.
Accepting this likelihood, it’s accurate to arrive at the conclusion that SIAN and other similar movements that hide behind the hyper-liberal policy of unrestricted “freedom of speech” while chiding the opposite side of the same hyper-liberal coin’s embrace of unrestricted (largely illegal) immigration are actually Islamophobic at their core. Supporters might argue that SIAN’s chairman did the disgusting act that he did in order to draw attention to those same hyper-liberal immigration policies that he implied ‘provoked’ him, but that doesn’t excuse disrespecting the over one billion believers in Islam, denigrating his own nation’s international reputation, and risking the danger that individuals less responsible than Ilyas might be provoked in their own right to continue the chain reaction of violence that Tumyr initiated by burning Bibles in response or worse.
Those who are sincerely concerned about the impact that state-supported large-scale (and largely illegal) immigration from civilizationally dissimilar countries is having on their the host nation’s culture should protest against the hyper-liberal policies that are driving it, not hide behind some of the same by invoking that ideology’s unrestricted so-called “freedom of speech” in an attempt to “justify” burning religious texts, especially when they wouldn’t stand idly by if someone (even their “fellow native compatriots”) decided to burn the Bible in public and go on a crucifix-smashing spree in the streets. The West therefore has two liberalism problems, the first being governments that are reluctant to assimilate and integrate civilizationally dissimilar immigrants and the other being those who think it’s “freedom of speech” to burn the Quran in response.
By Andrew Korybko
Source: One World
