Detroit Free Press Shows Some Balls

Yesterday, we awarded the Golden Balls Award to MSU Professor Indryk Wichman, for a letter he sent to the Muslim Student Association protesting their protests against the Mohammed Cartoons. Although, Mr. Wichman seemed to lump all Muslims in with the Muslims who cause violence, I liked the letter.

Why? Isn't that unfair of me? Am I not aware that there are many Muslims who don't perpetrate violence against Infidels and Jews.

I sure as hell am. However, I am also aware that that are no major Muslim organizations protesting against terrorism. However, there are many like the Muslim Student Association who are protesting against the free speech expressed in cartoons.

What does that tell you?

Well, here's what it told the Detroit Free Press:


MSU professor Indrek Wichman has a beef with Muslims who think their religious sensibilities should trump the First Amendment rights of others.

In an intemperate e-mail response to a Muslim student group's pamphlet campaign against anti-Islamic cartoons, Wichman suggested that Muslim students upset about the depiction of Islam might more profitably protest suicide bombings and other atrocities undertaken in the name of Islam.

It's a legitimate point. But it would be a whole lot easier for me and other civil libertarians to defend if the tenured engineering professor who made it didn't sound like some boorish blowhard from Whatsamatta U.

"I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians," Wichman wrote in a poorly spelled e-mail that has precipitated demands for disciplinary action.

"I counsul you dissatisfied, agressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile 'protests,' " he added. "If you do not like the values of the West -- see the 1st Ammendment -- you are free to leave."

Before getting to the substance of Wichman's grievance, let's stipulate for the record that he could hardly have raised it more clumsily or in a manner less likely to provoke reasoned debate.
But let's be clear: the Muslim students to whom Wichman addressed his e-mail are victims of aggravated incivility, not religious persecution.

It's ignorant to disparage law-abiding Muslims as slave-trading brutes and outrageous to suggest that those who peacefully dissent from so-called Western values are obliged to live somewhere else. And it's certainly disheartening to learn that someone so inept at communicating has been entrusted with the transmission of technical knowledge. (Not surprising though. Techies are notoriously bad communicators. - Pastorius)

... Wichman should not be censured for defending cartoons that probe the troubling nexus between Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Western violence or for suggesting that devout Muslims have an obligation to explain scriptural references that seem to sanction violence against nonbelievers.

It's appropriate for members of an academic community to challenge one another's religious convictions in the same way they challenge one another's beliefs about politics, physics or literature.

The notion that religious beliefs should be exempt from rational scrutiny or criticism has no place in a free society, much less on a campus devoted to free inquiry.


Gee, even the editors at the liberal giveaway rags are getting fed up with the silence of the moderate Muslim community.

Here's an Infidel Koan for all of us to ponder on a Wednesday morning:

What is the sound of 1 billion moderate Muslims speaking out against violence?