ARTICLE: “Temperatures Rise Over Cartoons Mocking Muhammad: European publishers seem stuck in a valley of culture difference,” by Craig S. Smith and Ian Fisher, New York Times 3 February 2006, p. A3.

The Danes did something stupid when they published cartoons depicting Muhammad, because they knew full well that any such depictions are inherently offensive to Muslims. Claiming equal treatment with other religions is nonsense. It’s a different line in Islam than it is in Christianity. The line for Christians would be more like depicting Jesus Christ as Mary Magdalene’s lover (a favorite over the years): artistic freedom to some, but patently offensive to others.

Reprinting the cartoons as some sort of solidarity statement was equally goofy, because it just pours gasoline on a fire.

Coming after the French riots and the European governments’ growing awareness of the rising alienation among ghettoized Muslim populations across the continent, this is just rubbing salt in wounds. “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke” is an excellent bar room rejoinder, but it’s no way to encourage assimilation and the toleration of diversity in a civilization that’s frankly dying within because it does both so poorly.

I mean, you see the Europeans shooting themselves in the feet on this one and you just have to laugh out loud at this slew of books over the past year predicting how Europe is going to lead the world as the next great superpower. Good God! Could reality and rhetoric be more separated?

All the Europeans do by this sort of insensitivity is simply raise the price they will ultimately pay in making their countries open and welcoming to Muslims.

And if you’re going to tell me that Europe won’t need those Muslims, don’t bother. Europe either makes this happen or recedes into the backseat of history, where, quite frankly, that sort of boneheadedness belongs.