Dr. Walid Phares: The Cartoon Offensive ...

Yubanet ^ | Feb 15, 2006 at 07:26 | Dr. Walid Phares

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

"In my religion" said Imam abu Laban, leading Muslim cleric of Denmark, "drawing images of Prophet Muhammad is forbidden." In my country, said the editor in chief of Copenhagen's Jyllands Posten newspaper, "there is a freedom of press." The BBC TV forum was attempting to educate its vast public worldwide about the cartoon drama.

Unfortunately, the debate left viewers in greater disarray. The anchor seemed to ignore why theological cartoons are offensive to Muslims to start with, but also missed why secular democracies are clashing with their antithesis.

World media and their respective governments have been reacting to television images rather than to direct knowledge. The crisis of the "offensive cartoons" has in fact become a "cartoons offensive." Here is why:

The Danish cartoons were published in September 2005. Why did it take five months for what Western media dubbed "instant reactions to the insult" to materialize? One hundred and fifty days and nights are too long for a mass reaction to be described as "instant."

Leaders of the Muslim community in Denmark said they attempted to resolve the matter locally by asking the newspaper or the government to apologize for it. We all know what the Danish official position was: a matter of principle.

It was also known that a delegation from Denmark was touring to trigger a campaign of "support" for the protest. Imam Ahmed Abdelrahman abu Laban said on BBC TV that "many spiritual leaders in the region, including in Lebanon, were horrified by the caricatures." Some see a greater agenda: taking advantage of the harm made by the pictures to impose a new political order in Denmark and beyond.

Reaction time between the publishing and the outrage was too long, but it was a political time par excellence. For while the Danish Muslim delegation met with many leaders, including Hezbollah's Nasrallah in Lebanon and leaders from Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood (in addition to more mainstream leaders), the cartoons were indeed circulating.

Why didn't the protest explode until only few weeks ago? Because decisions were made, measurements were designed, and plans were laid out by the "Jihadi elites." The masses had to wait until the establishment decided to unleash the emotions. Every single regime and organization had to refine the expectations and project the dividends.

Would a generalized inflaming of the masses on the "cartoon matter" be better before or after the Palestinian elections, by Hamas standards? Before or after the Egyptian elections, by Muslim Brotherhood plans? Before or after the Iranian decision to rush to the nuclear race, by Ahmedinijad's planning?

A major coincidence was the fact that Denmark was to head the U.N. Security Council, just as its members were to take Tehran to task for its refusal to be forthright regarding Iran's nuclear program.

At first glance, there is no link between the spontaneous but violent demonstrations on the one hand and the complex calculations of the web of regimes and organizations. I argue otherwise.

Why would the Danish Muslims go beyond diplomatic circles as Danish citizens and seek assistance from religious authorities and militant forces in the Middle East? Because a decision to ignite an intifada had already been made by many decision centers engaged in a variety of international confrontations.

It was beyond the Danish cartoons. It was about a broader issue, something a representative of an American Islamist group called on CNN "a strategic change in world relationship after 9/11." Hence, the procedure - not the substance of the protest - had to be thought, devised and prepared.

Many voices are asserting that the Jyllands Posten and its journalistic sisters wanted to make a point - to affirm that freedom of speech is not selective. But many others are discovering that the group the journalists confronted was not the Muslim public, but political activists - the Islamists - who claim to represent about a fifth of humanity.

Islamists want to draw the limits of world freedoms, and Western liberals reject that limitation. Islamists refer to articles of Muslim faith forbidding any drawing of Allah and Prophet Muhammad, let alone satirical ones. Western liberals say they aren't bound by any religious law, let alone by fundamentalist interpretations.

In normal circumstances, the Danish cartoons certainly hurt the feelings of average Muslims. But the circumstances aren't normal; they have been modified by the Jihadi international machine and transformed into battlefields from Indonesia to Beirut, from Paris to Copenhagen.

Without the Jihadi-organized, anti-European intifada worldwide, the crisis would have resembled similar ones. When Jesus was depicted in degrading images or other deities insulted across the globe - including the bombing of the Buddha statues by the Taliban - the reactions were relatively peaceful.

But the cartoon crisis has generated another type of reaction - a war against the West led by the Jihadists, claiming that a war against Islam has warranted their Jihad.

Dr. Walid Phares is a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and the author of Future Jihad. He is on a European tour at the invitation of legislators and think tanks.

[Fiddlstix]

The Danish cartoons were published in September 2005. Why did it take five months for what Western media dubbed "instant reactions to the insult" to materialize? One hundred and fifty days and nights are too long for a mass reaction to be described as "instant."

I've wondered about that too!
Hmmmm.........

[D Rider]

Leaders of the Muslim community in Denmark said they attempted to resolve the matter locally by asking the newspaper or the government to apologize for it.

We are sorry that you backward Muslim peoples were offended by comics. But would like to encourage you to join the modern world, or go back to your tents in the deserts, where you came from.

[VOA]

bump

[Fiddlstix]

Btw, for cartoons that muslimes find offensive check this thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1585300/posts

FYI
As usual they get it all wrong.

[no-to-illegals]

But the cartoon crisis has generated another type of reaction - a war against the West led by the Jihadists, claiming that a war against Islam has warranted their Jihad

May mohammad the prophet, be known far and wide for his true honest self.

oh but we can trust mohammad (that is something new I've learned recently), and last I heard mohammad isn't the enemy....all these new developments in the war on terror and me a tinman without a brain to understand.

[SkyDancer]

He should get a hold of some old Koran's ... they have pictures of their prophet in it ....

[Cicero]

Good analysis. Too bad the MSM seems incapable of similar rational thought.

"Islamists want to draw the limits of world freedoms, and Western liberals reject that limitation."

I think we should add that conservatives reject that limitation, too. In fact, the liberals seem to be prepared to swallow it, because with a few honorable exceptions most of them are spineless.

Only conservatives seem to be prepared to say that they refuse to let Muslim clerics dictate what they can say and do. Liberals, however, have shown that they are eager to retreat and to compromise.

[ncountylee]

Pakistan has a literacy rate of under 50%. Takes a while for the vermin to get the word.

[Nathan Zachary]

""In my religion" said Imam abu Laban, leading Muslim cleric of Denmark, "drawing images of Prophet Muhammad is forbidden.""

Imam abu Laban Is a LIAR. Muslims have been drawing images of their sadistic prophet for ages.

So their agenda is something else. Any why are these Clerics who drew a few "extra' images, who then took them to Islamic countries to publish(notice no burning down of Arab media) and generate ariots, why are they not in prison, or have 'fatwa's on their heads?

Plus, muslims, so "sensitive about insulting religious figures, don't seem to have any problem trashing churches and insulting Jesus, who they LIE and say they respect. Of course our media has no problem publishing their lies, but they have a problem publishing the truth.

[The_Reader_David]

No, he means Western liberals--he is writing in Europe. In America, where socialism never sold, American socialists have stolen the word 'liberal'. In terms of Western civilization, we American conservatives are conserving liberalism in its original sense: free markets, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech.

Socialists (falsely called 'liberals' in America) aren't retreating, because they were never really committed to the defense of freedom. (Notice how the further left the faculty and administration of a university are, the more likely it is to have a 'speech code' or have adopted one only to have it overturned? That's because American liberals aren't liberal in the old, original sense of the word.) It's not retreat to support your tactical allies. The left thinks the Islamists are useful idiots, and the Islamists return the favor. It happens on this point, it is the Islamists who are correct--the left advances their cause far more than the other way around, because unlike the Caliphate, which worked as a tyranny for over a millenium, socialism can't work long-term (as Hayek and vonMises showed in argumentation as it was being implemented by force in Russia, and history has shown since.)

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the attachment of the map colors to parties after the 2000 election, rather than incumbent and challenger as traditionally, we 'liberated' the color red form the left. Now I want the word liberal back--it really is ours, not theirs.

[ApplegateRanch]

I love the typo in the translation! EXTREMINATED!

I hope the do hurry up and EXTREMINATE Christians...and Buddhists, Hindus, animists, etc.

They still curse the results of the first time they EXTREMINATED the Christians: The Crusades.

When we all get EXTREMINATED, they will wish they had stayed in their tents, and had never heard of Mad Mo.

They already succeeded in EXTREMINATING the Christians in southern Nigeria, resulting in the Muslims being killed or run out.

EXTREMINATE away!