Look into their eyes

So take the best, most thoughtful, engaging writers from every conceivable country all around the world with totally different backgrounds and social standing; cram them together into rooms to talk amongst themselves about everything from religion to love to politics to writing--and then let the public in to eavesdrop.

That's essentially one of my favorite NYC festivals, the PEN World Voices New York Festival of International Literature. I was only able to go for one day this year, but got to see four panels.

All panels at all conventions and festivals should be like these... 90 minutes never flew by so fast, every panel easily could've gone on for hours longer and yet at the end of every one you felt satisfied with how the topic had been hashed out.

The first panel I saw was Idols and Insults: Writing, Religion, and Freedom of Expression. The panel was structured around this:

Writers in many countries have come under threat for perceived insults to religious traditions, and some countries—England most recently—have tried to criminalize religious defamation. But the global repercussions of a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed internationalized the debate over free speech and respect for religious beliefs. Writers from several countries discuss the shifting and increasingly perilous terrain surrounding art and religion.

It was an interesting panel, made up of:

Ian Buruma, a solid Dutch novelist who's also written for prominent magazines and newspapers, moderated; his bio says he lived in Japan and Hong Kong for many years, maybe that's where he got his even keel from. He was an archetypical moderator--very much in control, but not overtly, secure enough in himself to let the panel define itself.

Juan Luis Cebrián, the energetic Spanish editor of El Pais, which Buruma said had a readership of about 3 million and may be the most respected paper in Europe. I'd never heard of it; but really liked Cebrián, he was an informal, rumpled man who seems to have seen a lot. He's obviously someone who lives and dies journalism, but hasn't spent his life shut up in an office. He started the panel off, saying universal values are not so universal anymore, that unfortunately it's only the economic ones that most people pay homage to. With a nod to the cartoon controversy, he said you need to differentiate between criticism and provocation; but at the same time, he believes it a duty of jounralists to provoke. Total old-school left-wing journalist, governments, totalitarian movements and big business are the enemy, writers and reporters need to fight them with all means necessary.

Upamanyu Chatterjee, an understated Indian novelist who appropriately enough is also a civil servant. He's not one of those precocious Indian writers, struck me more as the type who rose early every morning and worked patiently on his writing. In his opening he said you have to differentiate between insults in the private vs. the public sphere. Then he added he doesn't think you should criticize something as uniquely sensitive as a religion unless you really understand it; and that you should probably start by criticizing your own religion.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a brash old-school German critic and writer, with all the virtues and vices of someone steeped in centuries of literary tradition. [Whoever chose the photos for PEN did a good job]. He was kindof an irascible figure, someone who loved nothing more than talking about ideas and writing, maybe a bit too certain of his beliefs and thus not someone to be bothered by what other panelists said. In his opening he said a lot of people doing the attacking on religion are ones who can't themselves bear to be attacked; he didn't specifiy, but it was obvious he meant Muslims. He added that 'agents' made the cartoon issue bigger than it should've been.

Nilüfer Göle, a surprising Turkish woman who's a professor of sociology in Paris. I went from thinking she was kindof stuffy and didactic to thinking she's quite insightful and is probably someone who's used to being smarter than everyone else, but the only one to know it. She opened by contrasting taboos installed by the state with taboos via 'social norms', and saying you can't disconnect speech from power. She also said you can no longer think in terms of secular Europe and pious America, because of Islam in Europe and the reaction to it. She ended her dense opening by talking about how there's now this generation of Islamic neo-martyrs, suicide bombers who reflect an unprecedented mixing of faith and identity.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an astonishing Muslim originally from Somalia who's now a member of the Dutch parliament, a writer, and the co-creator with Theo van Gogh of the film Submission. She was the rock star by the time the panel ended, if not at the start. One of those people who seem to exist out of time; most people would count as a life's work what she's already accomplished in any one field. She'd requested to go last in the opening; started by saying "I like to laugh at Islam." Said all religions attempt to limit free speech, but Islam was the worst. She said she has no problem, though, with Islam trying to shut up critics--except for the fact that Muslims are violent about it. People applauded for everyone, but hers was of a different degree; funny, nobody thinks of someone like her when they picture Muslim women--but there she was.

Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Islamic scholar and professor at Oxford who the moderator said was the grandson of the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (now that's a lineage!) appeared via videotape. The U.S. government wouldn't grant him a visa; at first I thought too bad, after he spoke I thought my gosh, that decision deprived me of seeing in person someone amazing. Ramadan and Hirsi Ali's kids could rule the world; he was one of the most charismatic speakers I've seen in a while, very appealing and instantly likeable in the Barack Obama mode, even if a couple of times he did seem a bit too much of a politician. He basically said Muslims should learn to maintain a critical distance when others criticize their faith, and not get too emotional or fall into the trap of reacting to bait. On the flip side, non-Muslims need to respect Islam. And governments should play a mediating role between the two.

Ramadan also sortof said, but in a sly or hinting way, that Europe deals more carefully with the Jews, for example, because its considers Jews part of their society. That if you consider Muslims a minority, you're already threatened by them. He finished his part of the program by saying in today's Europe, Islam is not a foreign religion; "we are citizens, this is my society."

The 'opening statements' took like 45 minutes. But it was well-worth it, you totally got a sense for how each panelist thinks. After that Buruma threw out the question of does power matter, when it come to speech about religion. He also said let's not just talk about Muslims reacting to speech, bringing up the example of the anti-Semitic aspects of Rainer Werner Fassbinder play, Garbage, City and Death, that prompted the 'small' Jewish community in Frankfurter to protest and ultimately prevent the play from being performed.

It's too bad none of the panelists delved into that incident--given Germany's special history with Jews, it's understandable that the country has a law that prohibits denying the Holocaust, which certainly is a restriction on free speech; and likewise, it's understandable that the few Jews that still live there feel vulnerable to what others might dismiss as mere words.

Likewise, considering what Muslims in Europe live with, it's not surprising to me, at least, that they're pretty sensitive about overt attacks on their faith.

At any rate, the Spaniard Cebrián said essentially democracy is not a happy life; people are always going to be insulting and stepping on each others' toes. Hirsi Ali said what she'd really like to talk about is the horribleness of Islamic regimes in the Middle East, but given how repressive their governments are, the duty of Muslims who understandably immigrate to Europe is to reform their religion there, undergoing self-criticism in hopes of one day being able to change the religion back home as well.

Chatterjee said something about nowadays idols are performative, not discursive, that it's not surprising it was cartoons, with their immediately powerful imagery, that was at the root of the latest violence, instead of books, which get banned pre-emptively but which nobody reads anyway, specifically citing the case of the Satanic Verses in India. The other panelists responded to this question as well, nothing particularly distinct but Enzensberger went off on a thing against political correctness, saying people are so sensitive nowadays. Yeah, kindof makes you wish for the good old days when intellectuals and others in power could say whatever they wanted, and people knew their place....

After that Buruma asked a second question, I don't remember what it was but people didn't say much that was different from their opening. So Göle said since the panelists were all agreeing about everything, she'd try to be provocative, and in the course of discussion she wound up asking Hirsi Ali what she thought the solution was when free speech collides with religion.

Hirsi Ali said it's up to the secular state to mediate, with an emphasis on protecting individual rights from backwards Islam in particular. Göle said flatly she didn't accept that answer; that secular states so often are authoritarian, citing the example of her native Turkey, and France (in particular over the recent headscarf madness). She then basically India was the only secular state she could think of that wasn't authoritarian, but that in general she distrusted central control. The panel pretty much ended there, with some audience questions that didn't add much.

My thoughts coming out of the panel was I really like Hirsi Ali as a person; she's immensely courageous, and although she may not be intellectually the smartest person on the panel, she knows what she knows, and what for others is an interesting exercise is for her life. It's so interesting that she's a politician; I don't actually agree with some of her views, and some Muslims probably criticize her for airing the family's dirty laundry. But the key thing for me is she's still in the family--she's still a Muslim, which means she's speaking from love.

Likewise, I liked Ramadan; interestingly, I agree probably more with his views, but feel he's a little more slick and careful as a person than Hirsi Ali. Expanding upon his thoughts and mixing it with Hirsi Ali's biography, I think the essential problem with Europe when it tries to deal with Islam is that white European Christian still think of their Muslim countrymen as other. As long as that attitude persists, whatever they say--even if it matches exactly what someone like Hirsi Ali says--is going to be rejected by Muslims, because they know it's not coming from love, but rather in most cases hate, distrust, and at the very best that ugly word 'tolerence.'

Wecs have to understand because there's such a disparity in power, their words and their actions come inherently with a feeling of threat. Even if there's no such intention--which there always has been, unfortunately. That's why Muslims don't laugh when wecs make fun of them, they feel and see the steel underneath the jest, and react accordingly.

Ironically, wecs themselves are incapable of really joking about Islam because they're scared of Muslims--they don't understand them, and don't want to understand them, and worry they're going to get blown up by them. Really, they just want Muslims to in a best-case scenario somehow leave; at worst keep their heads down and not cause trouble. But this isn't possible; especially because Muslims in Europe tend to be poor and unhappy, openly ostracized from society and often physically ghettocized.

Besides which, Muslims wonder, who appointed wecs to be the arbiter of what's acceptable and not acceptable in a religion they have no understanding of? It's hard enough dealing with criticism from family like Hirsi Ali and Ramadan; it's intolerable when the next-door-neighbor jumps in with their half-baked, self-aggrandizing orders.

So it's no wonder Muslims fight back... on whatever pretext, sometimes riled up by disingenuous self-serving trouble-makers, but usually as a result of not just the immediate incident but the underlying smoldering anger, as well. When you're insulted in hundreds of small ways every day, when you're in a country where people call for you to 'go home', it all builts up and every so often explodes.

The only way out of this is for wecs to understand Muslims are part of the family now, for better or for worse. They're not people who can be sent away or done away with. Treat them like family, stop using words like 'them' and 'other' for Muslims and 'us' and 'we' for Europe, when you really mean wecs.

And given the demographic trends, it's in the interest of wecs to mend their relations with the rest of the family as soon as possible, since Muslims are soon going to be their literal caregivers.