The Rushdie Affair, the Danish Cartoon Affair, the assault on Charlie Hebdo, and the earlier Carrell Affair, are examples of religious fanatics' extreme reactions to religious satire and criticism. Perpetrators of these actions consider themselves as true believers. This book aims to understand their motives by means of the concept of theoterrorism: terrorism grounded in religious zealotry.
- Cover
- Contents
- Introduction
- Preface
- 1. The Rudi Carrell Affair in Germany
- Carrell v. Khomeini
- Khomeini’s letter to Gorbachev
- The Iran-Iraq War
- Carrell’s earlier spoofs
- Apologies to Iran
- More apologies and more controversies
- A new film
- 2. The Rudi Carrell Affair in the Netherlands
- A discussion between the minister and a journalist
- The Dutch Parliament on the Carrell Affair
- Carrell and other affairs
- The importance of humor
- The Carrell Affair as precedent
- Telephone justice
- The meaning of Carrell’s apology
- Subdued tone of conversation
- A new sort of religious behavior
- Sense of humor and human emotions
- Not about freedom of the press
- 3. The Coherence of Theoterrorism
- Aboutaleb: the Mayor of Rotterdam
- The “village idiot” of Amsterdam
- The theoterrorists’ profession of faith
- The Woolwich attack
- The Woolwich attack and the London bombings of 2005
- The Woolwich attack and the murder of Van Gogh
- The theoterrorists argument analyzed
- Theocracy and democracy
- Two schools of thought
- The debate about the role of Islam
- Attacks on mosques
- The Netherlands, Denmark, and Great Britain
- 4. The Danish Cartoon Affair
- What are cartoons?
- Terrorizing the laicist state
- In good faith
- Why were the cartoons published?
- What did the Cartoon Affair prove?
- The dark sides of globalization
- Reactions to the cartoons
- Shouting fire and “senseless provocation”
- Can only Muslims criticize Islam?
- Tony Benn’s call to “respect” for religion
- Thomas Jefferson’s religious heterodoxy
- From cartoons to scholarly work: Jytte Klausen
- The refusal of Yale University Press to republish the cartoons
- Attacks and convictions
- 5. The Rushdie Affair and Charles Taylor
- Backing for Khomeini’s judgment in the Iranian Parliament
- Khamenei’s sermon on the Rushdie Affair
- The Islamist response
- Rushdie’s apology
- Not a clash of civilizations but of visions
- The secular West against the religious Rest?
- Rushdie’s own defense: the centrality of doubt
- The debate about revelation
- The right to express a humanist view of life
- “Wade through a filthy drain”
- The multiculturalist response of Taylor, Dummett, and others
- The later Taylor
- 6. The Rushdie Affair and Michael Dummett
- The legal and the moral
- Michael Dummett and the cause of anti-racism
- Dummett on Rushdie
- The tragedy of being an honorary white
- Whose pain?
- President Carter on the role of religion in brokering peace
- Rushdie knew what he was doing
- Rushdie, Nietzsche, Freud, and Spinoza
- Contemporary iconoclasts despised
- The realist response of John Berger and John Le Carré
- John Le Carré revisited and book burning
- Withdraw the book until a calmer time has come
- The political response and the press
- Some reactions by foreign states
- Other religious leaders
- Is reaching out a wise course to take?
- 7. Modern hostage taking
- Hostage taking in general
- Modern hostage taking
- Why modern hostage taking is so effective
- Contagious indignation
- The Kouachi Brothers’ final declaration of loyalty
- Coda
- Their force or our weakness?
- Solutions
- References
- Index
Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
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