Robert Spencer says test of moderate Islam is acceptance of Lady Gaga

Daniel S. writes:

Robert Spencer posts a story of Indonesian Muslims barring the degenerate “music artist” Lady Gaga from performing in Indonesia’s capital city, remarking:

Modern, moderate Indonesia is not moderate enough to tolerate this “envoy of the devil’s child.”

My question is why should they tolerate the degenerate Lady Gaga? How is the completely justifiable desire of Indonesians, Muslim or not, to keep such moral rot out of their society equivalent to murderous jihad attacks against Westerns, Christians, and others? When does opposition to jihad and Muslim colonization of Europe translate into defending degenerate and demonic musicians who aid in the destruction of Western civilization? Where does one draw then line? What exactly are we fighting to defend in opposing jihad? Cultural Marxism? Multiculturalism and liberalism? If the goal of opposing jihad is merely to impose the likes of Lady Gaga on the masses of Dar al-Islam then I am afraid the battle has already been lost.

In that same spirit would Robert Spencer condemn the Orthodox Christians in Russia who would bar the detestable Madonna from their nation?

LA replies:

This is a perfect example of the kneejerk liberalism for which I have been criticizing Robert Spencer for almost ten years. His liberalism consists in the fact that his highest value is freedom, an unqualified freedom he sees as the core of the West and of the good. Therefore the freedom of Lady Gaga to perform is good. Therefore a moderate Muslim country, i.e., a good Muslim country, would welcome Lady Gaga. And the fact that a Muslim country does not welcome her is proof that it is not moderate and good, but extremist and bad.

It doesn’t remotely occur to the “conservative” Spencer that a conservative Western country would not permit a Lady Gaga to perform—that, say, in the America of 1960, Lady Gaga would not have been able to perform. She does perform, and is a star, in the hyper-liberated, degenerate America of today. Spencer, because of his unqualified embrace of “freedom,” sees that as good.

I made a similar remarks concerning several of the speeches at the 9/11 tenth anniversary rally in downtown Manhattan last September. One speaker after another lauded freedom as the highest value, the value which we oppose to Islam. Not a single speaker qualified or limited this freedom in any way. That same day I saw at Manhattan bus stops ads for a TV cable show called Hung, about a male prostitute, accompanied by a large graphic photo. There was no indication that the 9/11 speakers thought there was anything wrong with a “freedom” that placed such advertisements in the public spaces, on government property.

Philosophically Spencer is a liberal, but so unreflective and unthoughtful is he (outside his one area of expertise) that he has no concept that he is a liberal and he thinks the very notion is a calumny against him.


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JC in Houston writes:

I can’t quite make out what Spencer’s take on this is, but to read some of his commenters on his web site..they are using it as examples of the evils of Islam, suppression of free speech, etc. This Lady Gaga is a talentless sluttish hack with radical leftist politics, who in fact has been protested in the Catholic Phillipines. Maybe in this case the Indonesian government is not acting in any special Islamic mode, but just to prevent the presentation of pornographic Western filth, as our country once did when it was a decent moral nation.

Paul K. writes:

My Googling has not produced results, but I remember that after the September 11 attack National Review ran an editorial chortling about how Western culture, with its scantily clad women and performers like Madonna, would eventually subvert traditional Islamic societies. The prospect delighted them.

It was around that time that I dropped my subscription to NR.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 18, 2012 06:37 PM | Send
    

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