The Danish cartoon controversy: A contrast in protests

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Here at SM headquarters we have quite an intricate system for vetting which stories make it to our website. Most of our stories are unearthed by the army of ex test-monkeys (retired from military, space, and medical research) that we house in our basement. They are the ones who scour the internet all day and feed important stories to our bloggers, while we spend most of our time at our full-time jobs. We also have the tipline, by which dedicated readers send in tips. Later, in our conference room, we ask ourselves three main questions about a prospective post:

  1. Can I do this story justice/am I knowledgeable and interested enough to write about it without sounding ignorant?
  2. Does the story have an angle highlighting South Asians?
  3. Does the story have an angle of interest to North Americans?

The reason you haven’t seen us post on this topic before is because not all of us were convinced that we could answer yes to all three questions. After attending the SAAN Conference this past weekend (which will be summarized in my next post), I have become convinced that we have missed the relevance this issue has to our community, and that the answer to all three questions is yes. I am speaking of course of the controversy surrounding a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish a picture of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb as his turban.

Arab foreign ministers have condemned the Danish government for failing to act against a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
At the Arab League conference in Cairo, they said they were “surprised and discontented at the response”.

Islam forbids any depiction of Muhammad or of Allah.

The Jyllands-Posten newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons showing Muhammad, in one of which he appeared to have a bomb in his turban. [Link]

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p>I see great irony in this situation that doesn’t seem to have registered in the press (as far as I know). Muslims around the world are protesting this cartoon (often violently) because it is forbidden in Islam to depict the Prophet, especially in such a vulgar manner as this. Muhammad, in his boundless wisdom, wanted to make sure that his image would never be used or treated as an idol, and that men would never worship him as one. In Christianity for example, many most sects now worship Christ as God, instead of seeing him as only a mortal prophet. It was the message of Islam, and not Muhammad the man, that was to better the world. By violently protesting this cartoon, it could be argued that Muslims around the world are acting as if an idol has been desecrated. Using violence to protest this “desecration” legitimizes that which the Prophet cautioned against in the first place. He has become an idol to be defended and avenged in the eyes of many. Part of the reason that we haven’t already written about this issue is that it hasn’t had nearly as much impact in the U.S. as it has had in Europe and the rest of the world. Do Americans even care or understand what this is all about? Why am I not hearing more about this from the desi community? Before I go on, I want you to take a careful look at some pictures. Don’t read text that follows the pictures until you guess which country each was taken in:

1.
2.
3.
4.

Give up? 1) London, 2) New Delhi, 3) Philadelphia, 4) Tehran
It’s almost funny to see the signs held up by protesters in Philly, as compared to the blood-thirsty mobs portrayed in the rest of the pictures. “No to hate” and “Distasteful,” vs. “Behead those who insult Islam” and flag burning.
Muslims offended by the [Philadelphia] Inquirer’s decision to reprint a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that has inflamed the sensibilities of their co-religionists across the world picketed the newspaper this morning…

Most American newspapers have decided not to reprint the cartoon. Newspapers in Europe have, as a gesture of free press solidarity with Jyllands-Posten, run the caricature as well as 11 others pillorying the prophet. One image depicts Muhammad halting a line of suicide bombers at the gates of heaven with the cry, “Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins…”

One demonstrator, 54-year old Aneesha Uqdah of Philadelphia, argued that precedent exists for newspapers to withhold some information to prevent harm: “If a woman was a rape victim, you wouldn’t publish her name,” she said…

The demonstrators carried signs that read, “Freedom of Speech, Not Irresponsible Speech,” “No to Hate” and “Islam = Nonviolence…” [Link]

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How can you, as an average American citizen, not agree with the level-headed logic of the woman in the quote above? Common sense alone would convince most Americans that the cartoon is inappropriate, partly because there is nothing American’s admire more than peaceful protestors willing to risk jail and personal injury for a cause which they believe is just. Such truth and justice is infectious. The civil rights movement was based on such Gandhian principles, which were adopted by Dr. King. Most South Asians in America have adopted this ideal ideal as well. No matter how much Muslims in America, including South Asian Muslims, disagree with this cartoon, I cannot imagine them violently protesting it like in Europe and around the world. Almost every non-white American has experienced racism or intolerance in their lives. The way we deal with it is the polar opposite of other minority populations around the world. We fight every bit as hard as those elsewhere, but our battles are guided by the belief that America can be changed by its own citizens for the better. We don’t instinctively burn flags or cry out for blood. We get angry, we get focused, and then we work for our cause. By contrast, look at this nutjob in London. He felt that he could make his displeasure for a Danish cartoon known…by dressing up as a suicide bomber. He not only hurts his cause, but he endangers (through stigma and suspicion) the lives of all those he thinks he is defending:

Speaking outside his home in Bedford, Mr Khayam, 22, said: “I found the pictures deeply offensive as a Muslim and I felt the Danish newspaper had been provocative and controversial, deeply offensive and insensitive.

“But by me dressing the way I did, I did just that, exactly the same as the Danish newspaper, if not worse. My method of protest has offended many people, especially the families of the victims of the July bombings. This was not my intention.”

Downing Street today described the behaviour of some Muslim demonstrators in London over the last few days as “completely unacceptable”. Some demonstrators carried placards calling for people who insult Islam to be killed. [Link]

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Fareed Zakaria writes in the latest Newsweek about how the Bush Administration may have misjudged their ability to affect change in the Islamic world:
There is a tension in the Islamic world between the desire for democracy and a respect for liberty. (It is a tension that once raged in the West and still exists in pockets today.) This is most apparent in the ongoing fury over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a small Danish newspaper. The cartoons were offensive and needlessly provocative. Had the paper published racist caricatures of other peoples or religions, it would also have been roundly condemned and perhaps boycotted. But the cartoonist and editors would not have feared for their lives. It is the violence of the response in some parts of the Muslim world that suggests a rejection of the ideas of tolerance and freedom of expression that are at the heart of modern Western societies. [Link]
So where do I stand on this issue. After much thought I decided that I must stick to the principles I believe in as an American, most importantly the freedom of speech. Freedom means the right to publish hate-speech, as long as it doesn’t incite violence against someone. In this case, the newspaper has apparently incited violence against itself. You should not have to fear for your life, or the lives of your countrymen abroad, simply for drawing a picture. I am not being a hypocrite or inconsistent with past beliefs. I also support the right to place Ganesh on a beer bottle, and Rama on shoes, or any other “blasphemy” you can think of. I may protest things that offend me, but never through violence. This behavior you see around the world is not Islam. It would seem that many Muslims have just decided to turn their backs on the teachings of the Prophet and return to the pre-Islamic roots of some of their cultures. Especially under poor socio-economic conditions, a false sense of justice, blood feuds, intolerance, and tribalism has taken over. These pre-Islamic norms are what must be protested.

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There are about a dozen other angles to this story that I am going to leave for the readers. I caution however that we need to keep this dialog constructive going forward. I will be moderating the comments a lot more closely, so please keep it clean and flame free.

243 thoughts on “The Danish cartoon controversy: A contrast in protests”

  2. Ah, just sent you something about this before I saw the story posted. Hari Kunzru the writer’s has written about the issue on our blog today: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/279

    Considering he has been pretty vocal FOR freedom of speech (most recently campaigning against the Religious Hatred law), he has taken a broadly similar stance as I have on the issue.

    I.E., the right to freedom of speech and expression is paramount. But what that comes responsibility and taboos that some people don’t really like to touch. Sexualising of young girls, the holocaust, dressing up like a suicide bomber for e.g. In a way that twat, pictured above as a suicide bomber, did a very foolish thing (and doesn’t recognise the irony of having freedom of expression to do what he did) – he also makes the point that dressing up as a suicide bomber is very taboo – and therefore will evoke the exact same reactions as drawing a caricature of Mohammed with a bomb on his head.

    Of course in retaliation British people didn’t run around burning stuff, but that is another point.

    Another point worth mentioning…. JP, the newspaper that published the cartoons, previously passed up on publishing cartoons on Jesus, which kinda re-enforces my point that there are certain taboos people are happy to break, and not others.

  3. I’m deeply saddened by the immaturity of the protestors, and the way Muslims are shooting themselves in the foot as far as tolerance in the Western world goes. What next? A jihad against anybody who eats ham, since Muslim tradition prohibits it?

  4. Or to put it in a nutshell, I would support freedom of speech regardless, but I would have some respect for the incident in question only if there was a noble or actual point to be made. I don’t really feel JP, the Danish paper, was trying to make any point other than just break some Muslim taboos because it felt like it.

  5. Good post!

    Abhi: I think you are inadvertently infantilizing the mutineers by censoring the ‘bomb in Muhammad’s turban’ part of the cartoon. I do respect your right to control the content of your website, but I think you should have a little more faith in the mutineers.

  6. good post, but, pre-Islamic roots of some of their cultures, you have a problem with arabian paganism?* 🙂 instead of trying to point culturalist fingers let’s just say it is what it is. i don’t think there is an “authentic” islam that is “true” to a set of teachings, i’ve read translations of the koran, and it is vicious or pacific, depending on the passage. the weight you give to the interpretation function is all individual (or social).

    also, please see this post over at my blog. and the comments might interest some (please skip the first 20, some of them are nuts).

    • the key here is that the pre-islamic cultures of various islamic cultures differ, it would seem unparsimonious to posit a culturalist argument that roots this violence in pre-islamic substrate, and just by coincidence all the cultures who transitioned from non-islam to islam shared this commonality, while those that transitioned from non-world world to christianity/buddhism/hinduism did not share this preexistent prediliction. in other words, if you are making a culturalist argument, i think the most parsimonious explanation would be that it is something about islam. of course, that’s not good public relations, nor do i buy an easy and simple culturalist argument.

  7. I would urge everyone to read the novelist Hari Kunzru’s article on this issue, which Sunny mentions above.

    Incidentally Sunny, it is great that you are attracting people of the calibre of Hari Kunzru to write for you – great stuff.

  8. Abhi: I think you are inadvertently infantilizing the mutineers by censoring the ‘bomb in Muhammad’s turban’ part of the cartoon. I do respect your right to control the content of your website, but I think you should have a little more faith in the mutineers.

    AMfD, I have no problem with posting the full picture. If I do however, half the comments on this post will be about whether or not I should have posted the picture, instead of the more substantive issues that we could be discussing.

  9. also, i think we should distinguish between ethnicity and religion when it comes to caricature: ethnicity you can not control, religion, like any ideology, is a set of beliefs and it is up to the individual. and in fact, i have seen caricatures of christianity in danish newspapers in blogs in response to the contention that the attack on islam is special or specific, many europeans just think religion is weird.

  10. I may protest things that offend me, but never through violence.

    /Saheli stands up in her cubicle and claps.

    Let me just say that these cartoons are incredibly idiotic, obnoxious (and perhaps worst in the Sepia scale of things) and BADLY DRAWN–but, BUT damn. No violent response to speech. My sister gave me a lecture about this when I was 3 or 4, and it only took me about a day to absorb the lesson. (There was a hilarious incident in the interim involving a missing watch and a bloody nose, but that’s a story for less serious times.) If you want send in contemptuous, spiteful letters, urge boycotts, make fun of people, hurl vicious Captain Haddock inspired insults, and cross the street to walk on the other side when you run into the idiot-cartoonist, all the more power to you, but . . .but. . .that’s it. It’s really very simple. A child may respond to speech with force, but it is the responsibility of being an adult–really, of being older than5–to respond to speech with speech, and only to force with force.

  12. If I do however, half the comments on this post will be about whether or not I should have posted the picture, instead of the more substantive issues that we could be discussing

    Actually I agree with Al Mujahid and would say that the picture with the top half blanked out is simultaneously tittilating and censorious. I would have thought it woul dbe better to either publish in full or not at all.

  13. I appreciate what you’re trying to do but there’s just way too much hemming & hawing here over a situation that’s ultimately pretty cut & dry.

    If this incident were about whitefolks burning embassies, threatening bombings, and killing because someone desecrated Christian symbols (how about Kanye West’s current Rolling Stone cover? Or Piss Christ? Or Marilyn Manson?) — you’d call them racist, religiously intolerant nuts.

    There are a lot of very religious Christians out there (some argue that a few have taken over the White House) who are offended by these things. But they aren’t out burning embassies and walking around with faux suicide bomb vests. And when they do things along this vein but on a FAR smaller magnitude we’re quick (rightly) to condemn them.

    How about this, as someone on the blogosphere put it, if an apology is to be delivered, it should be delivered from the largest Christian church in Saudi Arabia. Oh wait, they don’t allow…..

  14. Actually I agree with Al Mujahid and would say that the picture with the top half blanked out is simultaneously tittilating and censorious. I would have thought it woul dbe better to either publish in full or not at all.

    All you have to do is click on it to see the whole thing. I tried to have it both ways.

  15. wingnut

    I appreciate what you’re trying to do but there’s just way too much hemming & hawing here over a situation that’s ultimately pretty cut & dry.

    Who is hemming and hawing? I don’t think Abhi could have made any clearer his view that the violence is wrong and he condemns it absolutely. So far on this thread nobody has deviated from this.

  16. Am I the only one who saw a racial angle in these cartoons? Maybe my sepia tinted eyes see a race angle when none exists. But there is something unnerving about these vintage Orientalist caricatures from a racial not religious angle. The turban, the covered women, the big black beard, the camel.

  17. after undergoing a crushing but informative debate on this topic on my blog, which you are welcome to check, i have the following to share: my blog, by the way is at eteraz.wordpress.com – we have gone away from the cartoons specifically and moved onto ‘civilizational’ conflict – but this was not meant to be a soliciting kind of email (before abhi gets mad). i have the following to say:

    i’m going to make a subtle point here and i hope the commentators will appreciate the distinctions.

    there are two levels of this debate, and i fear they are being conflated.

    1 – freedom of speech: this is the more general point. can you mock a religious figure in a paper? yes. can you make caricatures of a man of whom people do not make caricatures. yes! can you? oh yes. in answering yes to these questions, europe, the west, americans, are all absolutely correct.

    2 – incitement of hate-crimes: this is the more difficult point, and i’ll be blunt about it: european muslims (and i’m limiting this to them) have a rightful reason to fear that mockery of their beliefs will lead to an increase in violence against them. american muslims generally dont have to worry about hate crimes. that’s why we don’t really care how many muslim villains you put into hollywood movies. hell, we go along with everyone else to watch these movies. consider ‘the seige’ – a horrible movie if there ever was one – all about stereotyping arabs and muslims – it couldn’t even recognize that not all arabs are mulims or that not all muslims are arabs – still, i recall when it came out, me and fellow muslims were eating popcorn and buying soda by the ton at showings. why? because we were at top 10 colleges; we were lawyers, and as a consequence we have faith in the american system. european muslims, on the other hand, don’t have this kind of success in europe. there are a number of institutional, economic and psychological reasons — IN WHICH BOTH THE EUROPEAN ESTABLISHMENT AND THE IMMIGRANT MENTALITY are complicit. as a consequence of these wide scale failures, the european muslim minority fears reprisals when their beliefs are so publicly mocked. the thought is: “if they can mock our most holy man, they surely won’t stop at anything if they come after us.” this is a psychological insight about the place of the minority and can be best understood by understanding the black viewpoint in the american south in the 1970’s (after the civil rights era but before economic improvement).

    what’s most unfortunate is that when the middle east becomes the main spokesman against these attacks, what they have really done is take attention away from the problems that european muslims face. point # 2 gets ignored. it becomes all about point # 1. law professors write about freedom of speech and forget about the ghettoization of a community immigrants that reminds me very much of the ghettoes of the deep south that remain to this day.

  18. The timeline of the controversy is to be observed.

    The cartoons were originally published in September 2005.

    Danish Muslims went to the Middle East with a dossier of the cartoons to whip up support – and in the dossier were included three other truly bestial depictions of the Prophet that were not part of the original twelve cartoons.

    So four months later the situation blows up.

    Why?

    Arab governments (especially Saudi Arabia) playing Islamist politics – flexing their musicles, hyping the situation – the whole spiralled out of control super fast.

    It is similar to how in 1989 British Muslims toured Iran and lobbied the Ayatollah to do something about Rushdie – you know what happened.

    The whole scene is INCENDIARY.

  20. From Abhi’s link:

    In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to remove a carving of Muhammad from its marble frieze depicting historic lawgivers sparked rioting in India’s part of Kashmir. [Link]

    A NYC court did remove a Mohammed statue from its edifice after a request by a Muslim group.

  21. incitement of hate-crimes: this is the more difficult point, and i’ll be blunt about it: european muslims (and i’m limiting this to them) have a rightful reason to fear that mockery of their beliefs will lead to an increase in violence against them.

    i’m skeptical of this, the ones who are protesting and tweaking out don’t seem to be very terrified. granted, that’s just a superficial observation, but i’ll go check out you site to see if there is anything more substantive to your contention that they have to fear hate crimes in relation to this sort of mockery.

    re: AMJ and racial caricatures, i can see them too. the jewish analogy is apropos. but if you took out the context i think much of the racial character would disappear. intent is 9/10 of the problem. hell, ppl don’t know what muhammad looked like really, the problem is that they said they are representing muhammad, the thought and intent mattered.

  22. The picture in the post reminds me of almost nude pictures with strategically placed objects on body parts. And then they write a whole page describing what is not shown. 🙂

  24. Tillykke!! Artig det at skrive, Abhi 🙂

    I lived in Denmark for 10 months, ’98-’99. Interesting time…

    Conflict even back then between homogeonous Danish population believing that its socialst economy was being taken advantage of, and Arab/Iraqi kids who were born in Denmark to conservative Muslim guestworker parents. I mean, it was culture shock to me to see porn on regular TV. The kids were raised super strictly (I think some of us an sort of relate to this) at home by parents determined to uphold a strict moral code…and then outside their homes they’d be regarded with suspicion by the “easygoing” (as they like to think of themselves) Danes.

    I had more than one YOUNG Dane tell me that the immigrant/Iraqi kids were hoodlums who statistically commited more crimes than Danish kids etc. They’d jsut look at me funny when I commented that surely the incidence of capture for the Iraqi/Arab kid who stole a CD or keyed a car was higher because s/he would be so screamingly visible…that surely plently of Danish kids were up to as much mischeif, they jsut weren’t getting caught.

    Tension was high and rising back then. Soon after I left, the Danes voted in a hard-right government. haven’t kept up with much, but this cartoon-thing doesnt’ surprise me. I’m all for freedom of speech, but I’m willing to bet this was deliberately provocative.

    Not that it’s any excuse for all the stupid flag-burning going on.

    At this point, it’s a chicken/egg question. The Arab/Iraqi population grew in the 70-80 as Danes were so depopulated (and wealthy) they needed guest-workers to come in and do the menial jobs. They were pretty fair and open-minded back then (and they still, msitakenly or not, consider themselves to be) I gather, and tried to make the new immigrants comfortable, more or less. The new immigrants in turn, scandalized by porn on regular TV (no shit. I was pretty scandalized myself) and very lax/egalitarian sexual mores (this was pre-Sex in the City and one night stands were commonplace there) demanded concessions toward their beliefs to the point of asking for seperate-sex public schools. I don’t think they got that particular request, but the demands really did get sort of ridiculous and the cultural tension was really high when I left.

    The race issue has been such an ongoing debate in the States, a comparison to Denmark isn’t possible. Denmark is a really homogenous country, with a thoroughly scandanavian culture…so the influx of Arab immigrants created cultural conflict that soon acquired racial overtones.

    Hope any of this makes sense. It’s impossible to generalize, and I met some really great people there. On the other hand, thai sex workers were the latest sexual fetish and many Danes assumed I was Thai (yes, they really did think all small browny people looked alike) and were whatchammacallit (clueless?bigoted?stereotyping?orientalising?racist?) enough to respond “ooh, spicy!” when I’d tell someone who’d asked me to bed/his room or touched me to FUCK off.

    (adding to the lack of easy answers: what does it mean that some of the Danes hitting on me were blindingly hot and would never have looked at me twice if the context were changed to the US? Scandanavian women are still a fairly big ‘sexy’ draw in the US, but were considered played out and boring while I was in Denmark…so on one hand, I’m suddenly supposed to be really hot. On the other hand, I’m hot like the thai sex workers. At the end of the day, I still wasn’t very flattered.)

  26. Abhi,

    Thank you for a superb post – I was wondering when SM would put it on the table. Might I add that you have addressed it with equal parts sensitivity and social consciousness. I also appreciate that you haven’t shown the entire cartoon in the post.

    As an Indian-Canadian, I concur with the general view that there the resort to violent protest has resulted in paradoxically undermining the concept of ‘limits’ to freedom of expression that is being protested in the first place. The familiar “death to…..” deathknell for someone who has allegedly upset Islamic sensitivities has become ubiquitous in recent times. As a non-Muslim and a non-supporter of institutionalized religion it puzzles me how Muslims all over the world can unite so rapidly and coherently in support of or against something. We don’t see this happening on such a large scale in other religions (or do we? – this is a genuine question).

    My second question for SM readers is: the concept of ‘ummah’ or Muslim nation is something that is quite unique to Islam in comparison wtih other religons/faiths, and helps them connect with each other in a way that few Hindus or Buddists or Christians do on a global scale. Knowing this, does it make it okay for a person or a publication or a group of people to knowingly upset Islamic sensitivities? I guess what I’m trying to get at is: have we come to a point where we need a different set of rules to respect Islamic sensitivities in present times, with so many political/religious/social aspects of the Arab/Islamic world having come to the West’s attention in the form of the Iraq war, terrorism, democracy, and so on…. I wonder if anyone else sees this virtual distinction?

  30. While i completely believe in freedom of speech, this episode resembles the growth of anti-semetic behaviour in Europe prior to world war II. During those times there were cartoons which depicted Jews as rats. This was a prevelant attitude even among common folks. Which ultimately led to the Holocaust and during which all of europe turned a blind eye to it. The current atmosphere is similar to those days, with all of the world supporting the notion that Islam is a violent and radical religion.

  31. Cic: ask Vinod about getting picked up in Iceland.

    No need. I can well imagine 😉

  32. While i completely believe in freedom of speech, this episode resembles the growth of anti-semetic behaviour in Europe prior to world war II. During those times there were cartoons which depicted Jews as rats. This was a prevelant attitude even among common folks. Which ultimately led to the Holocaust and during which all of europe turned a blind eye to it. The current atmosphere is similar to those days, with all of the world supporting the notion that Islam is a violent and radical religion.

    i do think that it is unseemly trivilizing the anti-semitism of the nazis and comparing it to ANYTHING that is going on today. after all, europeans moot islamophobia laws, when did anti-semitic gov. moot anti-anti-semitism laws? many of europe’s muslim communities are highly dependent on the welfare state, the germans incinerated jews, they didn’t put them up in public housing. so

    1) the comparison is specious and revolting, and not adding to the discussion 2) whether the reasoning is islamic or not, there is a strong correlation today between islam and violent and radical religion.

    or should i join you in neverland too?

  33. Maybe this is my immature side emerging but I can’t seem to stop laughing every time I look at that cartoon. I don’t see why people need to get all worked up about something so trivial. And I am not saying this just because I’m a Hindu. I would probably find a Ganesh being used for advertising an “all you can eat” outlet immensely hilarious!

  34. many of europe’s muslim communities are highly dependent on the welfare state, the germans incinerated jews, they didn’t put them up in public housing. so

    The Jews were independent too not long before they were barricaded to certain parts of the cities. At one point they owned about 60% of the manufacturing factories in the Germany.
    My point is, if the Danish or the French for that matter start treating all Muslims as radicals and impose restrictions on them, the public wouldn’t oppose it because they have been bombarded with images depicting all Muslims as terrorists. My comparision was to the early parts of the growth of anti-semetism, the perception of the common people. Not to the later part of events. My point was it could lead to such events….

  35. In Christianity for example, many sects now worship Christ as God, instead of seeing him as only a mortal prophet.

    AFAIK Christians always regarded Christ as God as opposed to a mortal prophet. Am I missing something here?

  36. I tend to think the cartoons were meant to be deliberately provocative. Otherwise, Europeans have generally been very politically correct and sensitive on the surface no matter what their attitudes are in private. All of a sudden it seems they need to rebel. Part of the reason for this could be the double standard as someone pointed out in one of the posts here. If Hindus or Christians express outrage at similar things they are generally mocked for being rednecks. In the case of Muslims there is much temerity and people tend to side with them publicly. As a result a lot of genuine problems never get aired, discussed or critiqued.

    I find it funny that people who are outraged by the cartoons nevertheless think this is permissible just because of free speech. When will the west transcend normative thinking and learn to contextualize? These things keep coming up but no-one seems to think that this is worth addressing.

  37. My point is, if the Danish or the French for that matter start treating all Muslims as radicals and impose restrictions on them, the public wouldn’t oppose it because they have been bombarded with images depicting all Muslims as terrorists. My comparision was to the early parts of the growth of anti-semetism, the perception of the common people. Not to the later part of events. My point was it could lead to such events….

    many things could happen. i don’t think conjuring the shadow of nazism on the most minimal of pretenses is judicious. there is racism and prejudice against muslims, but the relation between muslims & europe and jews & europe in different time periods is radically different. the analogy, i suspect, more likely to polarize and inflame or render implausible to those who you address.

  39. AFAIK Christians always regarded Christ as God as opposed to a mortal prophet. Am I missing something here?

    no. the historical literature, and analysis of the bible, seems to suggest that the divination of jesus as normative took a few centuries (read paul closely for example). the arian christians rejected the trinity and the divine jesus (at least fully divine). nestorians believed that mary gave birth to the man jesus, not the god (though jesus was god). in the modern era jehovah’s witnesses are explicit arians, as are christian unitarians, they regard jesus as a prophet.

  40. In Christianity for example, many sects now worship Christ as God, instead of seeing him as only a mortal prophet.

    Not really, I may be a lapsed Syrian-Orthodox and now a wavering Episcopalian. Christ is indeed God. The concept of the Holy Trinity is hard to grasp but the nuns at St. Ladislaus (a Polish Catholic school) taught it best when they said “Think of the Trinity as a three leaf clover….all three parts are equally the same leaf.”

    So there is no blasphemy in saying or worship Christ as God.

  41. I find it funny that people who are outraged by the cartoons nevertheless think this is permissible just because of free speech. When will the west transcend normative thinking and learn to contextualize? These things keep coming up but no-one seems to think that this is worth addressing.

    Huh?

  42. I guess nobody wants to talk about the real matter at hand. Under the post war era the west has hardly ever resisted from flexing muscles? but when there is such progressive aggresion there is voice to, similar to the ones above which keeps the many drunken pledges of renewing the crusade and finishing the job inside and hidden in louge or backyard parties. It is suprising to see noone ever talked about why are we sitting on this time bomb which keeps ticking loudly everytime there small misunderstanding? There is a deeper unrest nobody seems to be comfortable discussing. Why are people so aggressive even after centuries of crusade? west isn’t so matured either just because major economic structure is fashioned under the Colonist west does seem claim its self righteous status on every topic of the world. Freedom of speech equals to responsibility not a license to make sure everything which hasn’t been said have the right to be said. Who decides what is need to be said is said or not? Who would see the world through the eyes of the kids who lost their lifes in this utter madness?

    or let us just agree we are hero worshippers, we herd up agaisnt the winner

    Jo jeeta wohi sikandar Baki sare Bandar…darwin you win

  43. can we all just agree that god is a delusion and religion is a virus? we’d all be better off.

  44. with all of the world supporting the notion that Islam is a violent and radical religion.

    MG: query whether it is the rest of the world portraying Islam as a violent religion or the nutjobs themselves who are engaging in these kinds of ridiculously barbaric displays that are doing that. i don’t think islam needs much help in being portrayed as a religion of violence.

  45. “can we all just agree that god is a delusion and religion is a virus? we’d all be better off.”

    Hear, hear! And it’s a tool for the ruling class (priests) to keep people under their thumb. Never trust a man who says “trust me without question, or die.”

    “We are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” — Stephen Roberts

  46. well freedom of speech just like the ganesh toilet seats. freedom to offend is important. From the kashmir conflagration:

    burned Danish flags, burned tires and shouted slogans in several parts of Srinagar, police officer Ali Mohammad said. Protesters also hurled rocks at passing cars, but no one was reported hurt.

    Ok why destroy your environment over an incident that happened in europe…. Why should your neighbors have to smell the stink of a burning tire This is the kind of nonsense i dont get, The danes didnt even notice or care

  47. There is a deeper unrest nobody seems to be comfortable discussing.

    Though the furor over the cartoons may be politically motivated, and is well organized, the sheer intensity and violence of people’s reactions worries me. No political party or government can whip people up into a frenzy to the extent we’ve witnessed, in a matter of days, unless there is an underlying, latent core of belief and emotion that propels people to march down the street and torch embassies, throw knives and stones, etc.

    It’s as though sections of the Muslim world — maybe bifurcated based on national or class lines — have this low-grade, simmering anger against all things “Western”. It doesn’t take much to rile them, especially if they are cynically manipulated by anti-Western rhetoric. But I suppose the real challenge for us Western-based defenders of free speech is this: how do we reach these sections of the Muslim world and address the core of anger and/or resentment directed at the West? Because if we don’t, then the jihadists, the radical mullahs, and the extremists always will. In the meantime the pressure cooker continues to simmer, and we’ll continue to see such outbursts with increasing intensity and violence.

    Sadly, the more I look at the world the more Huntingtonian it looks.

  48. AFAIK Christians always regarded Christ as God as opposed to a mortal prophet. Am I missing something here?

    Not all Christians believe that Christ is God from what I remember. There was a vote taken several hundred years after his death that elected him God. Even the Da Vinci Code touched on this I think. This is a very complicated debate and I don’t remember enough details to lay it out with any confidence. The best source to explain the facts however, is The History of God by Karen Armstrong. Absolute must-read.

  49. I just don’t get why people need to die over this? Isn’t that sort of counterproductive to the whole ethos of Islam?

    Besides, Kofi is on our side. What he says sort of echoes the irony of the protests, as Abhi so cleverly pointed out 🙂

    He urged [Muslims] to “act with calm and dignity, to forgive the wrong they have suffered, and to seek peace rather than conflict.”
  50. But I suppose the real challenge for us Western-based defenders of free speech is this: how do we reach these sections of the Muslim world and address the core of anger and/or resentment directed at the West?

    Maybe not baiting Muslims with crude and crass representations of Mohammad as a hook nosed terrorist would be a good start.