One of the biggest news stories of this month was the furor over a low budget anti-Muslim film, portions of which were posted on YouTube where they attracted the attention of radical Islamists who took to the streets in protest in countries throughout the Middle East and Asia. Though the film itself is not worth commenting on (I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to), the subsequent debates about the conflict between religious sensibilities and freedom of expression is a more important issue, as some conservative Muslims have called for the enactment of international laws against insulting religion. While this proposal has little support in the West (and as the misuse of blasphemy laws in places like Pakistan shows, it’s a very bad idea), some Western leaders have said that while freedom of expression takes precedence, they personally oppose saying anything that insults others’ religious beliefs. But is this really wrong? After all, any sort of mockery or lampooning of a religion will be bound to be considered insulting or blasphemous by overly sensitive believers.
In medieval Europe, anything considered blasphemous by the religious authorities was punishable by death, as it still is in a few of the most conservative Muslim countries. But lampooning religion has a long and indeed artistically respectable history in the West, including brilliant works of art from Candide to The Life of Brian. While I myself have mostly refrained from mocking religious beliefs in this blog, except for my criticism of the practice of burning ghost money in Taiwan and the Catholic stance on contraception, I wouldn’t rule it out in the future (I can even think of tempting satirical targets in the beliefs or writings of every major religion). I don’t think religion should be any more inviolate than other belief systems, such as cultural traditions, superstitions, or nationalism. But I do think that any mockery of such things should be intelligent and based on actual elements of the religion (or whatever belief system is the target). Unintelligent name-calling and irrational insults make the one attacking look like more of a fool than their targets.
Offensively stupid attacks on Islam (and other religions and ethnic groups) are unfortunately not hard to find. Comment boards on news articles are littered with offensive Islamaphobic garbage from Internet trolls, including comments calling for all Muslims to be killed, comments comparing Muslims to pigs, and other blatant hate speech. That sort of thing is indefensible, and while I wouldn’t say the posters deserve to be stoned, some more mild form of punishment might well be in order. Aside from being violent and extremist, these comments are idiotic and ignorant. One I saw tried to rationalize his Islamaphobia by stating that all the violence and conflicts in the world involved Muslims (a laughably ignorant assertion, given that some of the world’s worst conflict zones – the Congo comes to mind – have no Muslims at all) and that Islam spread through forced conversions. The latter claim was only true at certain times and places – in most places Islam spread peacefully – and considering the history of forced conversions in Christianity from Charlemagne to the European colonial era, only an extremely biased or extremely ignorant person would condemn Islam for forced conversions without condemning Christianity as well.
For that matter, Christians are hardly in a position to accuse Muslims of violent overreaction to perceived slights to their religion (especially since the violent Islamists constitute a tiny minority of Muslims). While it’s true that now attacks on Christianity can be made with relative impunity in most places, only four and half decades ago John Lennon received death threats in the US just for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even though it was the truth, at least in the UK (which was what he was talking about). I am not saying that most of the Islamaphobes in the West are Christians, but some certainly are (the maker of the recent film and the Quran-burning pastor in Georgia are just two examples – and I also read some rather incendiary comments about Mohammed in a newsletter for a Christian organization once), and many of the blanket attacks on Islam apply equal to Christianity, and many other religions for that matter. But even anti-religious secularists who attack all religions equal shouldn’t engage in gratuitous insults. On the other hand, if they want to make fun of believers and even their holy books and holy figures, and they do so in an intelligent way, basing their mockery on the actual tenets of the faith or the way it is actually practiced (as opposed to just making things up), then I say more power to them. And as Salman Rushdie (and others before him) pointed out, if your belief system can’t handle a little lampooning, then it must not have been very strong to begin with.
I will also add that the violent reactions among the radical Islamic fringe to any depictions of Mohammed, let alone hostile or insulting ones, is an example of one of the worst tendencies among religions and other strongly-held belief systems, namely that of trying to impose your beliefs on others. I understand why Islam discourages depictions of people in general and Mohammed in particular – a similar feeling that such images may become objects of worship motivated the Christian Orthodox iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire and some Protestants – but that doesn’t mean non-Muslims should be bound by this. Similarly, if your religion forbids gay people from marrying, the eating of pork or beef, the consumption of alcohol or other drugs, abortion, extramarital sex, dancing, shaving, wearing hats, standing on your head, or whatever, then don’t do those things – but don’t try to tell non-believers they can’t do them, or advocate secular laws and other measures that make doing these things difficult (unless you have a completely non-religious reason for it, as might arguably be the case for a very few of the above things). For that matter, even believers cannot be punished for violating such rules except by expulsion from the religion – and if they choose to still consider themselves followers of your religion despite violating some of its rules, then there’s nothing you can reasonably do about it. In the final analysis, if a religious believer really wants to help spread their religion, the best way they can go about it is by being tolerant, pleasant, caring and positive in their speech and actions, not by responding to mockery with hostility or by telling others what they can’t do. As Rushdie said, argument is one of the characteristics of an open society, and people will always be saying things you don't like. As a Middle Eastern observer noted, this film and the response to it is an example of how the crazy people on both sides feed on each other. I would say the best response to the fringe elements on both sides (aside from taking whatever measures are appropriate against those who resort to violence), if we bother to pay any attention to them at all, is to laugh at them, and satire, whether targeted narrowly or broadly, is the best way to do that.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Fighting over Rocks in the Ocean
One of the big stories in this part of the world lately has been an increase in tensions between Japan, China and Taiwan over the islands known in Chinese as the Diaoyu or Diaoyutai Islands and in Japanese as the Senkaku Islands. In July, a group of activists based in Taiwan sailed to the islands to raise a flag, though rather absurdly the flag they raised was that of China, i.e., the People’s Republic of China, not that of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name); they claimed to have forgotten to bring their ROC flag. In August, another group of activists sailed to the islands from Hong Kong and planted both PRC and ROC flags before being arrested by the Japanese and deported back to Hong Kong. About a week later, a group of Japanese nationalists traveled to the islands to emphasize Japan’s claim, setting off anti-Japanese riots in China. Most recently, the Japanese central government officially purchased the islands from the Japanese family whose ownership it had previously recognized. While this was done in part to prevent a group led by a nationalist politician from making a bid for them, China has reacted angrily and Taiwan has also protested.
All three sides in this dispute have looked rather foolish. A key point to keep in mind is that these islands are uninhabited. All sides have asserted “historical claims” to the islands, which is frankly ridiculous. Historical claims are often founded on dubious grounds even when inhabited places are at issue; in the case of uninhabited rocks no one should be trying to use history as the primary basis for a claim. China and Taiwan say that the islands appeared on maps from the Ming and Qing dynasty and that some of the later maps marked them as being part of China. This is meaningless, as marks on a map signify very little, particularly when talking about a place where no one lives; in fact Qing China didn’t even rule all of the island of Taiwan, so how could it have exercised any sort of meaningful control over a bunch of rocks in the ocean far to the northeast of Taiwan? As for assertions that the islands were actually inhabited at some point by Chinese, even if this were the case, it was almost certainly a case of temporary habitation by fishermen or even pirates, and it’s unlikely that the Qing government even knew about it or that those on the islands cared anything for political claims by China or anyone else.
From what I have read, the only substantial settlement on the islands was during the first half of the 20th century, when a Japanese businessman built a fish processing plant on one of the islands that employed about 200 workers. This business collapsed in 1940, however, and no one has lived there since, so this hardly amounts to much more of a basis for claiming ownership than the activities of Chinese fishermen in the 19th century. From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1972, the islands, along with the much larger Ryukyu island group of which Okinawa is the main island, were under United States administration. While they were handed over to Japanese control in 1972, there is no particular reason why they should have been, as even Japan’s claim to the Ryukyus, which were once an independent kingdom, is a little dubious. But China’s claim is certainly no better, and Japan not unreasonably points out that China only started making a claim after potential oil and gas reserves were discovered in the area around the time of the American handover. On the other hand, Japan’s refusal to even officially acknowledge that a dispute exists is equally foolish, as its calling them an “integral” part of Japan (how can a bunch of rocks hundreds of kilometers from the main Japanese islands be integral in any way?). Certainly belligerent posturing by either China or Japan is completely uncalled for, given the shakiness of both sides’ claims.
As for Taiwan, the government has for the most part taken a slightly more low-key stance, and has called for negotiations over the islands. But in other ways it has managed to just look as foolish as China and Japan, if not even more so. In the incident in July, the activists’ fishing boat was actually escorted by Taiwanese coast guard vessels, even though they carried a PRC flag with them, and in the August incident, the Taiwanese coast guard gave the activists supplies, even though they were not coming from Taiwan but from Hong Kong and were essentially asserting the PRC’s claim, not Taiwan’s. At least as absurdly, the Taiwanese government has cited the same highly dubious “historical evidence” that China has. This is largely because the current government particularly is still trying to claim to be the heir of the Republic of China regime that ruled China itself in the first half of the 20th century (though without daring to challenge the PRC directly), but in fact, using such specious historical evidence is tantamount to supporting China’s equally baseless claims to Taiwan itself, which is a foolishly self-defeating approach to take.
The Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands are not the only disputed islands that have been in the news recently. The Liancourt Rocks, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese, are disputed between South Korea, which currently controls them, and Japan, which they lie almost exactly between. They were in the news recently because a South Korean soccer (football) player held up a sign referring to the Korean claim after his team won its bronze medal match against Japan in the recent Olympics. The islands (really just rocks) are inhabited by a single Korean civilian couple and several dozen Korean police officers and a few other government personnel. There are numerous disputed historical references to the rocks in Korean and Japanese records, but in this case also such things are a rather dubious basis for any kind of claim, as given that the rocks, being too small and isolated for permanent occupation without outside help, were uninhabited until 1991 when the couple living there now were sent by the South Korean government. In this case it is South Korea which refuses to consider negotiations or arbitration. In any event, both sides elaborate arguments backing up their claims are about as ridiculous as those of the claimants to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands.
The most complex dispute over islands in East Asia is that over the various island groups in the South China Sea, the largest such groups being the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands. Both China and Taiwan claim all of the islands in the South China Sea, and Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also claim various islands, rocks and shoals in the region. China exercises practical control over the Parcels and recently provoked controversy by upgrading the administrative status of the territory to a “city”, though its center of government is an island with only a few hundred residents. There was also a standoff between Philippines and Chinese vessels back in April over a shoal in the region. Aside from protests by Southeast Asian claimants over Chinese aggressiveness in the area, these actions have led the US to urge the parties (meaning mostly China) to refrain from stirring things up, which of course has led to angry statements from China. Taiwan, meanwhile, exercises control over the largest island in the Spratlys, which has a few hundred non-civilian residents, though Vietnam holds the largest number of islets. None of the islands in the South China Sea, however, has any significant civilian population and it is unlikely that they were inhabited for any substantial length of time in the past either. Once again, all the historical “evidence” asserted by the various claimants is questionable at best, and in most cases laughably flimsy. In one particularly absurd case, China, Taiwan and the Philippines have even laid claim to all or part of a sunken atoll or bank, even though it is entirely underwater. But the Philippines did make some good points regarding their dispute with China over the shoal mentioned above, namely that “historical claims are not historical titles...a claim by itself, including [a] historical claim, [is] not...a basis for acquiring a territory” and “the act of fishing by Chinese fishermen [cannot be considered] a sovereign act of a State nor can [it] be considered as a display of State authority.” These arguments apply equally to all the arguments based on history made by the different sides in all of these disputes.
While China is the most aggressive party in the South China Sea dispute, none of the various claimants in any of these disputes has a very substantial basis for their claims. Indeed, these conflicts illustrate the some of the more ludicrous aspects of the modern concept of sovereignty. The idea that any nation should have sovereignty over barren, uninhabited rocks in the ocean is silly to begin with. It is even more ridiculous to claim that such sovereignty is absolute or worst of all permanent. Anyone who uses the worlds "eternal", "forever", "inseparable", or the like in relation to sovereignty over any place can be discounted as a raving lunatic. These rocks have been around thousands of times longer than the nations that are fighting over them and will no doubt be here long after the nations are gone (though they may be underwater thanks to our alteration of the world's climate). If they belong to anyone, they belong to the seabirds and plants that call them home. Ideally of course, rather than making silly arguments and getting all worked up over nonsense like "national pride" (as if any of these nationalist protesters are really affected in any significant way by whether their country owns these rocks or not), the disputants would simply find a way to share the resources involved (though given the problem of climate change, I’d just as soon see any oil and gas in these areas left in the ground). But when it comes to territorial disputes, nations tend to behave like small children in a room with a bunch of desirable toys: They don’t want to share them with anyone else, and rather dubiously claim to have been playing with them first when anyone else tries to claim them. It would be nice to see them all grow up a little and find a way to share, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem too likely.
Related articles:
http://news.yahoo.com/china-sends-patrol-ships-islands-held-japan-051725925.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/05/us-china-usa-southchinasea-idUSBRE87401120120805
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0905/China-territorial-disputes-a-warning-in-the-history-of-Imperial-Japan
[Update: One topic I didn't touch on here is the residual hostility toward Japan in countries like China and Korea due to Japan's deeds in the early 20th century. While in disputes like the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Japan probably has a slightly stronger case, it's also true that Japan, unlike Germany, has never fully faced up to some of the horrible things it did in WWII and the period leading up to it (the Rape of Nanjing, comfort women, treatment of POWs and subject peoples, etc.). While this is not directly relevant to these territorial disputes, it doesn't help matters, especially when some of the same right-wing nationalists that have prevented Japan from making a full apology for what it did in the past are also among those provoking tensions over the islands along with the nationalists from China et al. However, this does not excuse the absurdly militant attitudes on the other side -- supposedly even Taiwan and Hong Kong singers and movie stars have been avoiding having anything to do with Japan lately out of a cowardly fear of exciting the ire of anti-Japanese Chinese nationalists. If these people were up in arms for the remaining comfort women or other victims of Japanese militarism it wouldn't be so bad, but to ignore historical issues of justice in favor of fighting for these rocks is idiotic. One Chinese protester was at least quite perceptive about the government's role: "'I think the government is encouraging this,' said one protester, who gave his name as Uda Chen. 'They could have stopped all of us approaching when we were at the subway station. The government has taught us to be anti-Japanese at school, so if they want us to stop it would be like slapping their own mouths,' he added." Of course, one wonders why if he is aware that the government has brainwashed him and is manipulating him, he continues to do what it wants.]
All three sides in this dispute have looked rather foolish. A key point to keep in mind is that these islands are uninhabited. All sides have asserted “historical claims” to the islands, which is frankly ridiculous. Historical claims are often founded on dubious grounds even when inhabited places are at issue; in the case of uninhabited rocks no one should be trying to use history as the primary basis for a claim. China and Taiwan say that the islands appeared on maps from the Ming and Qing dynasty and that some of the later maps marked them as being part of China. This is meaningless, as marks on a map signify very little, particularly when talking about a place where no one lives; in fact Qing China didn’t even rule all of the island of Taiwan, so how could it have exercised any sort of meaningful control over a bunch of rocks in the ocean far to the northeast of Taiwan? As for assertions that the islands were actually inhabited at some point by Chinese, even if this were the case, it was almost certainly a case of temporary habitation by fishermen or even pirates, and it’s unlikely that the Qing government even knew about it or that those on the islands cared anything for political claims by China or anyone else.
From what I have read, the only substantial settlement on the islands was during the first half of the 20th century, when a Japanese businessman built a fish processing plant on one of the islands that employed about 200 workers. This business collapsed in 1940, however, and no one has lived there since, so this hardly amounts to much more of a basis for claiming ownership than the activities of Chinese fishermen in the 19th century. From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1972, the islands, along with the much larger Ryukyu island group of which Okinawa is the main island, were under United States administration. While they were handed over to Japanese control in 1972, there is no particular reason why they should have been, as even Japan’s claim to the Ryukyus, which were once an independent kingdom, is a little dubious. But China’s claim is certainly no better, and Japan not unreasonably points out that China only started making a claim after potential oil and gas reserves were discovered in the area around the time of the American handover. On the other hand, Japan’s refusal to even officially acknowledge that a dispute exists is equally foolish, as its calling them an “integral” part of Japan (how can a bunch of rocks hundreds of kilometers from the main Japanese islands be integral in any way?). Certainly belligerent posturing by either China or Japan is completely uncalled for, given the shakiness of both sides’ claims.
As for Taiwan, the government has for the most part taken a slightly more low-key stance, and has called for negotiations over the islands. But in other ways it has managed to just look as foolish as China and Japan, if not even more so. In the incident in July, the activists’ fishing boat was actually escorted by Taiwanese coast guard vessels, even though they carried a PRC flag with them, and in the August incident, the Taiwanese coast guard gave the activists supplies, even though they were not coming from Taiwan but from Hong Kong and were essentially asserting the PRC’s claim, not Taiwan’s. At least as absurdly, the Taiwanese government has cited the same highly dubious “historical evidence” that China has. This is largely because the current government particularly is still trying to claim to be the heir of the Republic of China regime that ruled China itself in the first half of the 20th century (though without daring to challenge the PRC directly), but in fact, using such specious historical evidence is tantamount to supporting China’s equally baseless claims to Taiwan itself, which is a foolishly self-defeating approach to take.
The Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands are not the only disputed islands that have been in the news recently. The Liancourt Rocks, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese, are disputed between South Korea, which currently controls them, and Japan, which they lie almost exactly between. They were in the news recently because a South Korean soccer (football) player held up a sign referring to the Korean claim after his team won its bronze medal match against Japan in the recent Olympics. The islands (really just rocks) are inhabited by a single Korean civilian couple and several dozen Korean police officers and a few other government personnel. There are numerous disputed historical references to the rocks in Korean and Japanese records, but in this case also such things are a rather dubious basis for any kind of claim, as given that the rocks, being too small and isolated for permanent occupation without outside help, were uninhabited until 1991 when the couple living there now were sent by the South Korean government. In this case it is South Korea which refuses to consider negotiations or arbitration. In any event, both sides elaborate arguments backing up their claims are about as ridiculous as those of the claimants to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands.
The most complex dispute over islands in East Asia is that over the various island groups in the South China Sea, the largest such groups being the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands. Both China and Taiwan claim all of the islands in the South China Sea, and Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also claim various islands, rocks and shoals in the region. China exercises practical control over the Parcels and recently provoked controversy by upgrading the administrative status of the territory to a “city”, though its center of government is an island with only a few hundred residents. There was also a standoff between Philippines and Chinese vessels back in April over a shoal in the region. Aside from protests by Southeast Asian claimants over Chinese aggressiveness in the area, these actions have led the US to urge the parties (meaning mostly China) to refrain from stirring things up, which of course has led to angry statements from China. Taiwan, meanwhile, exercises control over the largest island in the Spratlys, which has a few hundred non-civilian residents, though Vietnam holds the largest number of islets. None of the islands in the South China Sea, however, has any significant civilian population and it is unlikely that they were inhabited for any substantial length of time in the past either. Once again, all the historical “evidence” asserted by the various claimants is questionable at best, and in most cases laughably flimsy. In one particularly absurd case, China, Taiwan and the Philippines have even laid claim to all or part of a sunken atoll or bank, even though it is entirely underwater. But the Philippines did make some good points regarding their dispute with China over the shoal mentioned above, namely that “historical claims are not historical titles...a claim by itself, including [a] historical claim, [is] not...a basis for acquiring a territory” and “the act of fishing by Chinese fishermen [cannot be considered] a sovereign act of a State nor can [it] be considered as a display of State authority.” These arguments apply equally to all the arguments based on history made by the different sides in all of these disputes.
While China is the most aggressive party in the South China Sea dispute, none of the various claimants in any of these disputes has a very substantial basis for their claims. Indeed, these conflicts illustrate the some of the more ludicrous aspects of the modern concept of sovereignty. The idea that any nation should have sovereignty over barren, uninhabited rocks in the ocean is silly to begin with. It is even more ridiculous to claim that such sovereignty is absolute or worst of all permanent. Anyone who uses the worlds "eternal", "forever", "inseparable", or the like in relation to sovereignty over any place can be discounted as a raving lunatic. These rocks have been around thousands of times longer than the nations that are fighting over them and will no doubt be here long after the nations are gone (though they may be underwater thanks to our alteration of the world's climate). If they belong to anyone, they belong to the seabirds and plants that call them home. Ideally of course, rather than making silly arguments and getting all worked up over nonsense like "national pride" (as if any of these nationalist protesters are really affected in any significant way by whether their country owns these rocks or not), the disputants would simply find a way to share the resources involved (though given the problem of climate change, I’d just as soon see any oil and gas in these areas left in the ground). But when it comes to territorial disputes, nations tend to behave like small children in a room with a bunch of desirable toys: They don’t want to share them with anyone else, and rather dubiously claim to have been playing with them first when anyone else tries to claim them. It would be nice to see them all grow up a little and find a way to share, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem too likely.
Related articles:
http://news.yahoo.com/china-sends-patrol-ships-islands-held-japan-051725925.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/05/us-china-usa-southchinasea-idUSBRE87401120120805
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0905/China-territorial-disputes-a-warning-in-the-history-of-Imperial-Japan
[Update: One topic I didn't touch on here is the residual hostility toward Japan in countries like China and Korea due to Japan's deeds in the early 20th century. While in disputes like the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Japan probably has a slightly stronger case, it's also true that Japan, unlike Germany, has never fully faced up to some of the horrible things it did in WWII and the period leading up to it (the Rape of Nanjing, comfort women, treatment of POWs and subject peoples, etc.). While this is not directly relevant to these territorial disputes, it doesn't help matters, especially when some of the same right-wing nationalists that have prevented Japan from making a full apology for what it did in the past are also among those provoking tensions over the islands along with the nationalists from China et al. However, this does not excuse the absurdly militant attitudes on the other side -- supposedly even Taiwan and Hong Kong singers and movie stars have been avoiding having anything to do with Japan lately out of a cowardly fear of exciting the ire of anti-Japanese Chinese nationalists. If these people were up in arms for the remaining comfort women or other victims of Japanese militarism it wouldn't be so bad, but to ignore historical issues of justice in favor of fighting for these rocks is idiotic. One Chinese protester was at least quite perceptive about the government's role: "'I think the government is encouraging this,' said one protester, who gave his name as Uda Chen. 'They could have stopped all of us approaching when we were at the subway station. The government has taught us to be anti-Japanese at school, so if they want us to stop it would be like slapping their own mouths,' he added." Of course, one wonders why if he is aware that the government has brainwashed him and is manipulating him, he continues to do what it wants.]
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