Timiditas et deditio: “cowardice and surrender.”

Big Don

Sr. Grandmaster
Joined
Sep 2, 2007
Messages
10,551
Reaction score
190
Location
Sanger CA
“The scholarship equivalent of Yale donning a burqa to suppress the temptations its immodesty might otherwise inspire”
August 13th, 2009 6:10 am
Pajamas Media/Roger Kimball
EXCERPT


While everyone (well, not quite everyone) has been scurrying around worrying about not-so-gradual government take over of health care and other large swathes of the economy, the sinister pas-de-deux of Islamism, on the hand, and Western capitulation, on the other, proceeds under the radar in its slow but seemingly inexorable dance.The latest news from this front comes to us from the ivy-covered eyrie of Yale University. The venerable Yale University Press had contracted to publish a book called “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” i.e., the cartoons of Mohammed published in September 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.I’d like to second the desideratum expressed by the British journalist Charles Moore at the time: “I wish,” Moore wrote in the Telegraph, “someone would mention the word that dominates Western culture in the face of militant Islam — fear. And then I wish someone would face it down.”Is Yale stepping up to the plate? “Good idea!” you say. “About time someone had the courage to investigate that episode of insanity. I mean, really: you publish a handful of satirical cartoons and then adherents of the ostentatiously misnamed ‘religion of peace’ go postal, start burning down Danish embassies across the globe, issuing death threats to the cartoonists, etc.”Dream on. This is contemporary academia, after all. No, after consulting “two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism,” that great bastion of intellectual light, the Yale University Press, decided to publish a book about the Danish cartoons without the Danish cartoons.
SNIP
Really? Why was it difficult? Mr. Donatich presides over part of an academic institution whose motto is “lux et veritas,” “light and truth.” His “difficult” decision announced to the world that his motto timiditas et deditio: “cowardice and surrender.” He told the Times that he bravely published an unauthorized biography about Thailand’s current monarch, but when it came to publishing representations of a 7th-century religious fanatic — there he drew the line: “when it came between that and blood on my hands,” he said “there was no question.”
END EXCERPT
 
Hello, Sometimes..better to be safe? .....especially if it may trigger more...terrorism and harm to others...

It must been a very heavy weight thing on there minds when it came to printing the book!

..the book can be heaiver...yet to leave out a picture....out weights the out comes....here..

Prevention is better than cure...

It is NOT cowardice or surrender to leave it out...just a wise thing to do!

Aloha, just my opinion here....
 
Were the book about any stripe of Christians going ape over something insulting to their religion, that picture (s) would be on the COVER. Were it about Jews, Buddhists, Sikh, the feelings of the people of that religion would not be considered to the same extent.
That people calling themselves MUSLIM literally EXPLODE when they feel insulted is not a good reason to censor what is supposed to be a work of scholarship. Especially when that "scholarly work" is supposed to address the reactions of people to the artwork in question.
Yes, it is BOTH cowardice AND Surrender. Cowardice, in the fear of being beheaded or blown up, surrender to the idea that we should only write about Muslims as they say we can.
 
A well constructed video piece, I do admit. It's a slightly more extreme viewpoint than I would willingly support but the core point is fairly defensible.
 
I wouldn't call this 'surrender', but I would say that people need to start standing up to this kind of cultural coercion. We don't put up with threats of violence intended to curb free speach from any other group. We shouldn't tolerate it in this case either.
 
Back
Top