all apologies
A group of Arab Muslims has created a website apologizing to the people of Norway and Denmark for the disgusting riots and embassy attacks by other Muslims that followed the publication of some massively shitty cartoons by the Jyllands-Posten. And I say: It's about time! We all owe an obligation to humanity to apologize for the actions of all of our co-religionists.Having been baptised Catholic and raised in the Protestant church, this means bad news for me! This may take a few years, but I'm going to try to knock out a few every day. Okay, let's get started:
I, Chris Bray, personally apologize to all ancestors of people harmed by the Inquisition.
I, Chris Bray, personally apologize to anyone who was harmed by Eric Rudolph. That guy was a total jerk. I formally diassociate myself from him. (Notarized affidavit upon request.)
I, Chris Bray, personally apologize for Martin Luther hammering a nail into a perfectly nice church door. (I'm conflicted about this one -- given my background, I guess I also apologize to myself.)
I, Chris Bray, personally apologize for the deaths of the "praying Indians" of seventeenth-century New England. And Acoma Pueblo! Dude, that stuff with the right foot was way, way harsh. My bad, seriously. I'm sorry. We shouldn't have done that.
Wow, this is rough! Well, I'm out of time. More tomorrow. Until then, be assured that I am ashamed and contrite. We mean well, really. We just get carried away sometimes.
posted by Chris Bray @ 5:40 AM
4 Comments:
I'm pretty sure the Martin Luther thing is a myth, so you can strike that off your list. You might want to add Galileo, though: I'm sure, as a Catholic, that you're responsible for all anti-scientific religiousity...
Seriously, though, why not see the apology as a positive sign that (as you noted at Cliopatria) there isn't a simple dichotomy between free speech and offensiveness, that all Muslims don't jump at the same stimuli and that there might be room for discussion?
Snark is fun, yeah, but reflexive snark is likely to get you into some positions you'll have to back away from.
Reflexive snark is why I get out of bed in the morning.
I don't think Muslims who don't engage in objectionable behavior owe apologies to the world for Muslims who do. It elides the distinction between "some Muslims" and "the Muslims," so nicely examined by Berel Lang in his essays about how we talk about the Holocaust and what we mean when we say "the Jews."
Apply the argument across any category of identity you wish. One of the things that interests me is that the nominally conservative community that demands apologies from all of Islam for the acts of some Muslims seem to be some of the same folks who ridicule the idea that all white Americans owe an apology to all black Americans for slavery. I agree with the latter, by the way; what I'm saying is that I think people should apologize for what they do, and that unbounded apologies for entire religions, or other categories of identity, assume unwarranted burdens of responsibility. Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment represented by the website, but I don't want anyone to apologize to me for something they haven't done to me.
This is a very different thing, by the way, than (for example) an apology from the formal institution of the Catholic Church for complicity with the German National Socialist regime. Institutions carry burdens that people don't, and the Syrian government owes a bunch of very serious apologies.
"Mea culpa", hold the mea?
"Hey, sorry 'bout that."
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home