We Shouldn't Have a Lower Standard for Our Enemies Than We Do For Ourselves
The Rules of Civilization Should Apply to Barbarians, Too
A recent incident in the U.K. sparked some thoughts about the struggle between civilization and barbarism, a struggle which defines conservatism in many ways. To echo Solzhenitsyn, the line between civilization and barbarism runs through every human heart. The rules and laws which govern our conduct, the institutions which mold our character, the traditions which uphold our societies ensure that we stay on the right side of that line. But that doesn't mean that we can't be clear about who our enemies are, and why certain ideologies present a threat to civilization.
This thought came up after an Englishman named Hamit Coskun was fined for burning a Quran and shouting, "F**k Islam." Obviously, his expression was provocative. But provocation is in the eye of the beholder, and if we are to punish every person who uses provocative language, we will further entrench a culture of victimhood and grievance in our society. Naturally, I was bothered by the flagrant violation of free speech principles by the English court, but this is nothing new. I'm frequently reminded why I'm glad I live in America whenever I read about these sorts of cases in the U.K.
But what really bothered me about the incident was the implicit double standard inherent in the court's prosecution of the man for shouting "F**k Islam," while giving a pass to social media users who threatened to kill him.1 If you are going to regulate speech, it seems to me that death threats are more egregious broaches of public decency than discriminatory religious statements. Now, one man was prosecuted for attacking Coskun with a knife. And the death threats may have come from anonymous or foreign accounts. But it appeared that the subtext of the case was a belief that we have to have a different standard for critics of Islam who incur violent threats than we do for those making the violent threats. A belief that perhaps Salman Rushdie should be fined by Western governments for offending the Islamists who issued a fatwa against him.
The Quran-burner made clear that he distinguished between the individuals who practice Islam and Islamists (i.e., terrorists and the supporters of sharia law), and made clear that he objected to fanatical terrorism. One of his offenses was pointing out correctly that the Quran contains passages commanding Muslims to kill Jews and Christians. This true statement was deemed Islamophobic, no doubt by people who believe the lie that the mullahs in Iran aren't practicing "true" Islam. Not all Muslims are violent, but it is true that there are Muslims who are, and who are as a matter of religious faith, not as a matter of psychological disturbance, however much it might comfort us to pretend otherwise.
Let us be clear: radical Islamic jihadism, Islamist supremacy, is a direct threat to the civilization we all hold dear. This fact is so incontrovertibly obvious from the countless examples we have experienced over the past twenty-five years that the only people who deny it are being willfully blind.
There is an old argument against free speech maximalism, and a good one, that free speech principles shouldn't apply to the enemies of free societies. By this logic, Nazis, Soviet spies, and terrorists shouldn't be given free speech rights, because they will use them to further their ends of destroying societies with free speech. Communists in the West sympathetic to the Soviet Union believed in using the rules of liberal democracy in order to gain power, and then in eliminating them as soon as they had power.
I don't agree with the argument that we should deny free speech rights to Nazis or Soviets or terrorists on these grounds (although I do believe that the purpose of American government is to protect the rights of American citizens, not foreigners, and that foreigners on our soil are our guests, whom we can disinvite if they upset us with their speech or actions),2 but it is a serious argument.
The logic of the argument is that we are tying our hands while fighting enemies who won’t tie theirs. Although I still support free speech, I agree that we shouldn't tie our hands behind our backs when fighting enemies who want to destroy us, and who won't fight fair. That shouldn't justify all manner of atrocities and war crimes. But it should mean that we do not hold ourselves to some imagined higher standard which requires us to bend over backwards to give our enemies advantages the normal rules of fair play wouldn't give them. If we possess weapons they have no defense against, we don’t have to put our weapons down because it would be “unfair” to use them.3
There are those who argue that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than we hold our enemies. I believe we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than our enemies hold themselves. But the argument that they should be given a pass, that radical Islamic terrorists can't really be blamed for taking offense at Quran burning, that we can't expect Russians to refrain from raping and pillaging because that's the culture Russia has always had, is absurd. There are those who argue that because Hamas is less powerful than Israel, they can't be expected to follow the same laws of war. It shouldn't be a war crime, according to these folks, when Hamas uses a hospital as a base, or attacks unarmed teenagers at a music festival.
This is the sick logic of egalitarianism. I believe in civilization and morality. And because I believe in good and evil, I don't believe equality is useful in war. The good should always strive to be more powerful than the evil. Those who fight for civilization and morality should do everything in their power to dominate those who fight against those things.
Some argue further, a la Franz Fanon and Algeria, that the victims of "settler colonialism," have every right to use terrorism to eject settlers from their territory. Quite frankly, I think this argument is evil, and those who spout it are justifying evil.
It may seem we have gone far afield from the trial which sparked these thoughts. But we haven't. The judges in the case may not be sympathetic to the arguments I have laid out. But they do seem to suffer from a belief that we should perhaps have lower standards for Islamism than we have for citizens born in the West. We may not be able to expect ISIS barbarians to live up to our standards of good conduct. But we should expect more from civilized people. Because Western Civilization has been powerful for centuries, we should worry more about Islamophobia than we do about Islamist supremacy.
But this is entirely backward.