Posted on 02/07/2006 4:41:14 AM PST by Clive
A twilight zone of insanity
Cartoons in a Danish newspaper depicting the prophet Muhammed have set off a clash of civilizations. Problem is, all blonds look alike in a jihad.
BARBARA AMIEL
One of the easiest things to start off is a Muslim mob. Last September, author Kåre Bluitgen complained to the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that he couldn't get an illustrator for his book on the prophet Muhammed. For Muslims, depicting Muhammed is blasphemy. The newspaper's sophomoric response was to ask cartoonists to help Bluitgen commit it.
Any Hollywood director can depict Christ as an adulterer or the Virgin Mary nude without fear of Christians taking up Kalashnikovs. But when Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons of Muhammed, the paper faced bomb threats and thousands of demonstrators.
By October, ambassadors from 10 Muslim countries -- who assumed Denmark was run like their own fiefdoms -- were demanding the Danish government take the newspaper "to task." An Islamic group in Pakistan offered a bounty for the murder of the illustrators. A group of radical Danish imams produced a 43-page booklet on Danish Islamaphobia and toured the Middle East. The booklet contained three extra cartoons -- Muhammed with a pig's snout, a dog raping a praying Muslim and Muhammed as a pedophile devil. Who actually drew them is uncertain, but a Muslim is more likely to know his religion's most poisonous slights. Efforts paid off. Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, declared the cartoons "unacceptable" and referred the matter for investigation. On Jan. 27, imams across Saudi Arabia denounced the Danish newspaper and urged the Islamic world to act.
Followers of radical Islam seem prone to attacks of "the must." Most of the time they work quietly at their jobs, running their shops or doing whatever it is they do. Then, one day, like the Indian bull elephant in George Orwell's essay, they go berserk. Perhaps the madness was jump-started by the urging of the Saudi imams, but suddenly much of the Muslim world spun out of control.
Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador from Denmark. Libya and Syria closed their embassies. The EU offices in Gaza were occupied by masked Arab gunmen firing into the air (no tears for Eurocrats, but one wished it had been in a better cause). The Arab League demanded the UN pass a binding resolution. Danish goods were boycotted. Geographical dyslexia took hold as Muslim threats were levelled at Swedes as well as Norwegians and Danes. All blonds look alike in a jihad.
The story had escalated beyond any merit into some twilight zone of insanity. The economic committee of the Egyptian parliament announced it had stopped discussing a US$72.5-million loan from Denmark. Riots took place in Jakarta. In Qatar, Bill Clinton seized a quote opportunity to ask rhetorically if anti-Semitism was going to be replaced by Islamaphobia.
Unlike Europeans, Canadians are hampered in evaluating the issue by being unable to see the cartoons -- censorship being what it is in this country. Which presents another small dilemma. As a former newspaper editor myself, the idea of publishing a juvenile scribble of something held sacred by a large number of people is simply not on. Alas, the only way people can now judge this matter is by seeing the cartoons. One would have to do it -- and resent it deeply.
European editors discovered backbone -- briefly. The tabloid France Soir printed the Danish cartoons as well as one showing various religious divinities with the caption, "Yes we have the right to caricature God." "Imagine a society that added up all the prohibitions of different religions," France Soir intoned. "What would remain of the freedom to think, to speak and even to come and go?" Not much, demonstrated the paper's Egyptian owner, who fired its managing editor the same day. The cartoons also appeared in Spain, Italy and Norway. The BBC flashed them. British newspapers did not. The London bombings are raw on British nerves and there is some anecdotal evidence that Muslim newsagents in the U.K. are under threat from Islamists if they distribute papers deemed to be antagonistic.
"In the West, one discovers different moral ceilings," editorialized the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, claiming that a Danish cartoon about a rabbi would never have been published. Probably not. But it's hard to attribute this to some nefarious view of Islam. It is not followers of radical rabbis blowing up trains in Europe, but the followers of radical imams. To be surprised by resentment against beliefs that breed people who blow you up on the way to work is unrealistic. Minimally, these events will elicit sarcastic cartoons.
How ironic that in this clash of civilizations, the media take a stand over cartoons rather than the murder of train riders. For Europeans, who since the age of the French Revolution have worked to build an enlightened, secular society, it appears being told you cannot say certain things has more force than the commuter carnage of Madrid or London.
All the more curious since Europeans (and North Americans) are told all the time what they can and cannot say. The shibboleths of left-liberalism are as restrictive as any theocracy. Make a sexist or racial joke, offend some basic tenet of political correctness, and if you are an academic, a politician or have any public profile, you face the likelihood of losing your job and possible prosecution. Yet most people accept these restrictions with equanimity. We coexist with our own secular restrictions though they curtail our liberty often as much as the religious ones we abhor.
We can try countering the malignant narrow-mindedness of a theocratic society with the anemic cowardice of a politically correct one. Both are geared to the meanest of sensibilities, both are astigmatic. But ultimately it's no contest. Malignant trumps anemic. As we know, alas, from history -- and medicine.
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Specially to a culture of prehistoric misfits playing with fire, and not having enough of a clue to realize that they need to invent wire before they can launch rockets...
"In Qatar, Bill Clinton seized a quote opportunity to ask rhetorically if anti-Semitism was going to be replaced by Islamaphobia."
Un-F'ing real.
Even the First Rapist's smooth delivery cannot redeem that pathetic comparison and the poverty of character and thought behind the mind that would create it.
Imagine a Cargo Cult society with the cash to buy anything they want... the discipline of a drunk dog, and the delusions of the totally ignorant...
Well said!
Well, not exactly.
We have not yet descended into the islamic hell.
Publicly it may seem thus; privately we say anything we want, without an imam under every rock, or an almost-insane illiterate idle escapee from the 7th century rushing off to report us.
I can confess one good thing about the banality of PC. It is not likely to start murderous riots anywhere civilized people gather, since civilized people can recognize bullshit when they need to live it.
I hope this article identifies the method of killing the infestation, as quickly and permanently as possibly.
But I doubt it.
Muslims are such good people, aren't they?
Honestly, when will the United States and Canada and Europe stop bowing to this ARROGANCE???? This $hit makes my trigger finger itch!!
WHERE are all the leaders? of the Islamic countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria etc. - Why are they so silent? They are perhaps afraid that their phony Royal Families may come tumbling down if they "correct" these barbarians??? The truth is, NONE of us should be doing ANY kind of business with these countries. Canada has enough OIL for all of us for the next 500 years!! Scrap OPEC tomorrow. Boycott every single product we buy. it's PAST TIME to deal with this. Ever seen a Muslim paper represent via cartoon the Isreali's, or us Christians???
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