Two good rejoinders to my post on the Danish cartoons on Muhammad
Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 4:57PM OP-ED: “Prophetic Provocation,” by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 7 February 2006, p. A21.
OP-ED: “Tolerance Toward Intolerance,” by Thomas Kleine-Brockoff, Washington Post, 7 February 2006, p. A21.
Got several emails pointing out how Christianity is regularly abused in the media and protests remain peaceful. Got several emails pointing out many Muslims the world over routinely sit on their hands when their own co-religionists commit some of the most heinous acts of terrorism, only to go postal (oops, another population slandered!) over a few cartoons in the Jylands Posten (same paper that profiled my talk in Copenhagen last year).
And these are all good arguments, as are the ones offered in these two op-eds, both of which are very intelligently written.
Robinson’s main point: the cartoons were purposefully inflammatory, but the response was purposefully over-the-top, and both actions indicate populations that feel quite pissed off and provoked beyond reason. And frankly, both sides are valid in feeling that, so fine, let’s talk it out.
And that’s Kleine-Brockoff’s point, he an employee of Die Zeit (where the original PNM article was reprinted): no sense in hiding the image that’s become an excuse for violence. Better to get it out in the open. I mean, it was gross and sick to see pictures of all those bodies and jumpers on 9/11, but what is the choice? To hide this reality so as to avoid talking about it? After all, if it’s okay and good to publish the Abu Ghraib pictures ad nauseum then it must be good to re-publish the cartoons, right?
Yes, by publishing such cartoons, European newspapers offended Muslims who’ve chosen to live in their lands. But when you choose to live in a secular democracy, do you not choose to abide by its dominant rule set? Should the goal of Europeans be to carve out a space for Muslims to be Muslims living as though they had never left the Middle East?
Upshot for me? I guess I care less about the provocation of the act than I do what comes next. Forcing debate, to me, is always good. Getting it out in the open, to me, is always good. But the key here is, what comes next?
There’s no question that Europeans need to find a social, economic and political space for Muslims in their societies. They either do this or decline mightily in coming decades. This is the kind of problem that you either rush toward its solution or scarier scenarios tend to rush toward you.
In the end, the cartoons end up being a very good thing, depending on what comes next.
Reader Comments (3)
The great thing about an interconnected world... Learning what the other guy says about the issues...
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2006/02/time-for-cartoon-post.html
You know that those cartoons were published for the 1st time months ago and we here in the Middle East have tonnes of jokes about Allah, the prophets and the angels that are way more offensive, funny and obscene than those poorly-made cartoons, yet no one ever got shot for telling one of those jokes or at least we had never seen rallies and protests against those infidel joke-tellers.
What I want to say is that I think the reactions were planned to be exaggerated this time by some Middle Eastern regimes and are not mere public reaction.
And I think Syria and Iran have the motives to trigger such reactions in order to get away from the pressures applied by the international community on those regimes.
However, I cannot claim that Muslim community is innocent for there have been outrageous reactions outside the range of Syria's or Iran's influence but again, these protests and threats are more political than religious in nature.
One last thing, even if the entire EU apologizes it won't change a thing; fanatics in our countries here had always considered the west their infidel arrogant crusader enemy and no apology no matter how big or sincere can change that.
Amir Taheri hits it out of the park. Essentially the whole controversy is manufactured by a subset of Islam that is looking to pick a fight and willing to lie about Islam's history to manufacture taboos.
The Muslim Brotherhood's position, put by one of its younger militants, Tariq Ramadan--who is, strangely enough, also an adviser to the British home secretary--can be summed up as follows: It is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. Both claims, however, are false.
Read the whole thing.
In the end, the cartoons end up being a very good thing, depending on what comes next.
I have hard time with that statement. Just because something good comes out of something bad, doesn't mean the 'bad' was ultimately 'good'.
Was the Holocaust a 'good thing' because it brought attention to the plight of Jews? Uh...no.
That said...it was interesting to read the original reaction that came out of the Middle East over the cartoons was a boycott on Danish goods. That was a reasonable reaction, but then all hell broke loose. The hypocrisy of most of these people is disgusting. And then look how the Egyptians reacted to the ferry disaster...breaking in and tearing apart the company's building...burning, rioting.
But then I recall how many of the people in New Orleans behaved after Katrina hit, and I wonder how much finger pointing we can do.