Tempered reaction among American Muslims to cartoon row

The Hamilton Spectator

Hamilton, Ontario

editorial cartoons

By Dianne Rinehart

The Hamilton Spectator

Feb 4, 2006

We are all Danes now, as Paul Belien, editor of the Brussels Journal
said in his editorial this week.

Or we should be.

Because today Denmark is taking a beating for us all, fighting for press
freedoms that can mean the difference between democracy and
totalitarianism, between free speech and terror, between sleeping at
night and being afraid of the knock on the door, between light and despair.

And that tiny democracy is doing so under threat of economic sanctions
-- and death for its citizens and those of other Western countries where
news media have rallied to the defence of free expression.

Think I'm overstating the danger of the outpourings of threats, violent
protests and intimidations from radical Muslims over the Danish
government's refusal to shut down Jyllands-Posten -- a newspaper in the
Free World, after all -- after it published 12 cartoons depicting
Mohammed, including some that appeared to be commenting on terrorism
carried out in the name of religion?

Consider this news sampling: Fatah gunmen took over the French cultural
centre headquarters in the Gaza strip to protest the refusal,
Jyllands-Posten received bomb threats, its cartoonists death threats,
Libya announced it would close its embassy in Denmark, and Pakistan's
ambassador -- eeek! --urged the Danish prime minister to "penalize the
cartoonists!"

Meanwhile one Muslim leader noted if Satanic Verses author Salmon
Rushdie had been killed for his writings about Islam -- "this rabble who
insult our Prophet Muhammad ... would not have dared to do so."

This is a powder keg of violence, we should note, created by Danish
Muslims who enjoy Danish freedoms -- including the rights to pen their
own opinions for publication and to hold protest rallies, if they'd
cared to -- who toured Arab countries in January denouncing Denmark and
demanding a boycott of Danish products.

(They got that. Arla Foods, Denmark's biggest exporter to Arab
countries, announced this week it would lay off 125 staff as a result of
lost sales.)

And what did some publishers of newspapers -- which are supposed to
defend free speech -- do in the face of terror?

Fold.

Ironically the first "beheading" occurred in the homeland of the great
French philosopher Voltaire whose views were once summed up as: "I do
not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to
say it."

Would that the publisher of France-Soir had remembered those words
before firing his editor after the paper republished the original
cartoons along with another depicting Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and
Muslim gods sitting on a cloud that said: "Yes, we have the right to
caricature God."

Meanwhile a Jordanian newspaper reprinted the cartoons to show readers
"the extent of the Danish offence" -- along with an editorial entitled
"Muslims of the world be reasonable."

"What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures
of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the
camera?" wrote editor Jihad Momani -- before he was fired.

Whether you find the drawings clumsy, offensive or dead on (they're on
the web) is not the issue.

The issue is that the paper had a right to print them. And a proper
response is to write back to express views -- not violence.

It's called democratic debate, and there's too precious little of it in
this so-called Free World anymore where governments and powerful
institutions, including religions, use politically correct blankets to
smother debate and criticism -- for their own purposes.

Ironically, the world's most beloved religious leaders -- who so often
fought despotic rulers for the right to freedom of religion, expression
and peace -- must be mourning this turn of events from the heavens.

And so in the spirit of the solidarity in which the Danes defended Jews
in the Second World War -- by suggesting if the Nazi's ordered Jews to
wear armbands in Denmark they would all be Jews.

And in the spirit of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy's "I am a
Berliner" speech -- defending democracy over Communist tyranny.

And in the spirit of the editorial in the French paper Le Monde after
9/11- "We are all Americans."

I agree with the Brussels Journal: We are all Danes.

And I for one am going out to buy some Danish cookies and jams today.
And if you care one fig for freedom, so should you.

Dianne Rinehart is a former magazine editor and news correspondent who
has worked in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and Moscow.

* Freedom of the press includes defending the right to criticize religion

JEFF JACOBY
We are all Danes now
By Jeff Jacoby,
Globe Columnist
February 5, 2006

HINDUS CONSIDER it sacrilegious to eat meat from cows, so when a Danish supermarket ran a sale on beef and veal last fall, Hindus everywhere reacted with outrage. India recalled its ambassador to Copenhagen, and Danish flags were burned in Calcutta, Bombay, and Delhi. A Hindu mob in Sri Lanka severely beat two employees of a Danish-owned firm, and demonstrators in Nepal chanted: ''War on Denmark! Death to Denmark!"In many places, shops selling Dansk china or Lego toys were attacked by rioters, and two Danish embassies were firebombed.

It didn't happen, of course. Hindus may consider it odious to use cows as food, but they do not resort to boycotts, threats, and violence when non-Hindus eat hamburger or steak. They do not demand that everyone abide by the strictures of Hinduism and avoid words and deeds that Hindus might find upsetting. The same is true of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons: They don't lash out in violence when their religious sensibilities are offended. They certainly don't expect their beliefs to be immune from criticism, mockery, or dissent.

But radical Muslims do.

The current uproar over cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper illustrates yet again the fascist intolerance that is at the heart of radical Islam. Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest daily, commissioned the cartoons to make a point about freedom of speech. It was protesting the climate of intimidation that had made it impossible for a Danish author to find an illustrator for his children's book about Mohammed. No artist would agree to illustrate the book for fear of being harmed by Muslim extremists. Appalled by this self-censorship, Jyllands-Posten invited Danish artists to submit drawings of Mohammed, and published the 12 it received.

Most of the pictures are tame to the point of dullness, especially compared to the biting editorial cartoons that routinely appear in US and European newspapers. A few of them link Mohammed to Islamist terrorism -- one depicts him with a bomb in his turban, while a second shows him in Heaven, pleading with newly arrived suicide terrorists: ''Stop, stop! We have run out of virgins!" Others focus on the threat to free speech: In one, a sweating artist sits at his drawing board, nervously sketching Mohammed, while glancing over his shoulder to make sure he's not being watched.

That anything so mild could trigger a reaction so crazed -- riots, death threats, kidnappings, flag-burnings -- speaks volumes about the chasm that separates the values of the civilized world from those in too much of the Islamic world. Freedom of the press, the marketplace of ideas, the right to skewer sacred cows: Militant Islam knows none of this. And if the jihadis get their way, it will be swept aside everywhere by the censorship and intolerance of sharia.

Here and there, some brave Muslim voices have cried out against the book-burners. The Jordanian newspaper Shihan published three of the cartoons. ''Muslims of the world, be reasonable," implored Shihan's editor, Jihad al-Momani, in an editorial. ''What brings more prejudice against Islam -- these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras?" But within hours Momani was out of a job, fired by the paper's owners after the Jordanian government threatened legal action.

He wasn't the only editor sacked last week. In Paris, Jacques LeFranc of the daily France Soir was also fired after running the Mohammed cartoons. The paper's owner, an Egyptian Copt named Raymond Lakah, issued a craven and Orwellian statement offering LeFranc's head as a gesture of ''respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual." But the France Soir staff defended their decision to publish the drawings in a stalwart editorial. ''The best way to fight against censorship is to prevent censorship from happening," they wrote. ''A fundamental principle guaranteeing democracy and secular society is under threat. To say nothing is to retreat."

Across the continent, nearly two dozen other newspapers have joined in defending that principle. While Islamist clerics proclaim an ''international day of anger" or declare that ''the war has begun," leading publications in Norway, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have reprinted the Danish cartoons. But there has been no comparable show of backbone in America, where (as of Friday) only the New York Sun has had the fortitude to the run some of the drawings.

Make no mistake: This story is not going away, and neither is the Islamofascist threat. The freedom of speech we take for granted is under attack, and it will vanish if it is not bravely defended. Today the censors may be coming for some unfunny Mohammed cartoons, but tomorrow it is your words and ideas they will silence. Like it or not, we are all Danes now.

I seem to remember a story form WWII. Interestingly enough, it concerns Denmark. When the Germans occupied Denmark, they issued an order for all Danish Jews to wear the yellow star. The King of Denmark went on the radio and said that he would be wearing the yellow star, himself, and suggested that all Danes wear it as well. What I have read is that all, or nearly all, Danes put on the star of David, and the Nazis never rounded up Danish Jews. Now, I am depending upon memory, here, so might not have all details correct, but the event is instructive. What if all, or nearly all, Western newspapers published http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/postthe cartoons? Might a few get targeted for violence? Sure, but what about the Danes wearing the yellow star? They sure took a chance, each on an individual basis to be at least hassled by the Nazis or beat up imprisoned.

Is protecting freedom of speech in Western nations as important as protecting Danish Jews? Yes it is.

Further, this furor is manufactured. The pix in question were first published some months ago, weren't they?

Mass publishing of the cartoons in question by Western press would put the Islamofacists on notice that lots of people care about their Western liberties such as freedom of speech. Perhaps it would have a "chilling effect" on escalating violence against innocent Westerners or attempts to install Sharia in Western countries. Of course it would have to be followed up with equally gutsy, and consistent, actions by the West (I fear that my whole scenario is a pipedream, sadly).

Rioting over cartoons is silly, but so is going out of one's way to piss someone else off!!

It's not silly, it's potentially lethal - unlike drawing cartoons. There's something much deeper going on here.

The reason people usually end up objecting to Muslims is not because they are strange and smell funny but because when they start to congregate in large enough swarms their true nature emerges - and it's not pretty. Deep down in their black hearts they are psychos, unfit and unwilling to peacefully live and let live with their neighbors. The only way they will ultimately agree to live at peace with you is if you become a member of their murderous cult, become their Dhimmie, become their slave, or become dead. Personally, I'm not willing to live with any of those choices. It's unAmerican and against everything a reasonably sane American should stand for. Period.

If they don't like it they can go back to the ghastly hell-holes they've already conquered and polluted and from which they emerged. Such people aren't welcome here - nor should they be!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.