One person I didn’t manage to interview was Erwin Arnada, the editor of the Indonesian edition of Playboy. I did, however, get hold of a copy of the magazine (the one now in my office): It contains not a single picture of a naked woman. The Playmate in the centerfold is clad in the kind of lingerie that would seem a bit old-fashioned in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue; a second photo essay in my magazine looks as if it belongs in a J. Crew ad.
Nevertheless, upon beginning publication in 2006 Mr. Arnada was almost immediately charged with violating Indonesia’s indecency laws. (He was ultimately acquitted.) His Jakarta offices were violently attacked by Mr. Rizieq’s goons, forcing the magazine to move to the predominantly Hindu island of Bali. “For Arnada,” wrote New York Times reporter Jane Perlez, “all the fuss represents fears about the intrusion of Western culture. ‘Why else do they keep shouting about Playboy?’ he asked.”
Mr. Arnada’s comment gets at the crux of the argument I made in my column, which is that it is liberalism itself—liberalism as democracy, as human rights, as freedom of conscience and expression, as artistic license, as social tolerance, as a philosophy with universal application—to which the radical Muslim mind chiefly objects, and to which it so often violently reacts. Are Israeli settlements also a provocation? Of course they are, as is Israel itself. Should Israel dismantle most or even all of its settlements? Sure, if in exchange it gets a genuine peace.
But the West will win no reprieve from the furies of the Muslim world by seeking to appease it in the coin of this or that Israeli withdrawal or concession
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