Havel is magnificent.
But I have read this piece carefully, and I still have absolutely no idea what the connection with western attitudes toward “jihadists” is supposed to be. It feels completely tacked-on.
Comparing a totalitarian regime which focuses all power in a single state to a world-spanning religion of billions with many distinct sects and attitudes just doesn’t make any sense.
Who are these people “in the western world” who are getting bullied to give up their rights by Muslims and happily acquiescing to it?
Hey, that’s what you wrote:
“Today, in the Western world, if a group of Muslims starts bullying non-Muslims and seeking to limit their freedoms, most of the latter will not raise a peep in protest— instead, they’ll criticize those who resist.”
Yeah, those straw men are awful and they should step off and leave us brave defenders of freedom alone.
You also took a moment to point out that if we criticize our own country for moving in a more totalitarian direction, we’re trivializing what the victims of real totalitarianism go through. But apparently it’s fine for you to compare an entire religion— sunni and shiite, hundreds of millions of moderate Indonesians and, yes, conservative powderkegs like Iran— to a single monolithic totalitarian state. That comparison is A-OK and doesn’t stretch credibility at all because the point you’re making is too important to worry about things like that.
