il ragno
02-09-2006, 01:41 AM
Admittedly, the main reason for this thread was I wanted to be the first weisenheimer to coin 'cartoongate'. But it's always useful to view another example of neocon punditry speaking with one ventriloquist's voice on any given topic.
Daniel Pipes:
The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise; Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.
More specifically, will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy an immunity from insults? Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones; are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?
The deeper issue here, however, is not Muslim hypocrisy but Islamic supremacism. Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who published the cartoons, explains that if Muslims insist “that I, as a non-Muslim, should submit to their taboos, … they're asking for my submission.”
Precisely. Robert Spencer rightly calls on the free world to stand “resolutely with Denmark.” The informative Brussels Journal asserts, “We are all Danes now.”
Some governments get it:
· Norway: “we will not apologize because in a country like Norway, which guarantees freedom of expression, we cannot apologize for what the newspapers print,” commented Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
· Germany: “Why should the German government apologize [for German papers publishing the cartoons]? This is an expression of press freedom,” said Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble.
· France: “Political cartoons are by nature excessive. And I prefer an excess of caricature to an excess of censorship,” commented Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Other governments wrongly apologized.
Christopher Hitchens
As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week's international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean "unacceptable"? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people. However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.
Con
Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken. Which is what taboos are for.
Ann Coulter
In order to express their displeasure with the idea that Muslims are violent, thousands of Muslims around the world engaged in rioting, arson, mob savagery, flag-burning, murder and mayhem, among other peaceful acts of nonviolence.
Muslims are the only people who make feminists seem laid-back.
The little darlings brandish placards with typical Religion of Peace slogans, such as: "Behead Those Who Insult Islam," "Europe, you will pay, extermination is on the way" and "Butcher those who mock Islam." They warn Europe of their own impending 9/11 with signs that say: "Europe: Your 9/11 will come" -- which is ironic, because they almost had me convinced the Jews were behind the 9/11 attack.
The rioting Muslims claim they are upset because Islam prohibits any depictions of Muhammad -- though the text is ambiguous on beheadings, suicide bombings and flying planes into skyscrapers.
Muslims ought to start claiming the Koran also prohibits indoor plumbing, to explain their lack of it.
Largely unnoticed in this spectacle is the blinding fact that one nation is missing from the long list of Muslim countries (by which I mean France and England) with hundreds of crazy Muslims experiencing bipolar rage over some cartoons: Iraq. Hey -- maybe this democracy thing does work! The barbaric behavior of Europe's Muslims suggests that the European welfare state may not be attracting your top-notch Muslims.
Making the rash assumption for purposes of discussion that Islam is a religion and not a car-burning cult, even a real religion can't go bossing around other people like this. But Muslims think they can issue decrees about what images can appear in newspaper cartoons. Who do they think they are, liberals?
Jeff Jacoby
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. Muslims regard any depiction of the prophet as sacrilegious, and 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. Some make no point at all — one simply portrays a man walking with his donkey in the desert.
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, the ability to disagree with what you say while firmly defending your right to say it: Militant Islam knows none of this.
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.
Jonah Goldberg
The riots and demonstrations across the Middle East and Western Europe over some cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad have set off a parallel intellectual riot in the West over the nature of free speech and free expression. Some news outlets are updating their procedures so as not to offend "religious" sensibilities in the future.
The quotation marks around the word "religious" should say it all. We're not talking about "religion." We're talking about a specific religion — Islam. Does anyone truly think that the burning of Danish embassies and calls for the "slaughter" of those responsible by Muslim protestors have really taught the BBC or the New York Times to be more polite to evangelical Christians or Orthodox Jews? Does anyone really think that Arabic newspapers — often state-owned — are going to stop recycling Nazi-era images of Jews as baby killers and hook-nosed conspirators because they've become enlightened to notion that words can hurt? Considering that an Iranian newspaper just announced a contest for the best Holocaust cartoon, the odds seem slim. Besides, why belittle the Holocaust for something a Danish newspaper did? (Partial credit given for the answer: "It's always useful to pick on the Jews.")
The issue of "offense" is a distraction too. Let's assume that the publication of the cartoons was motivated entirely out of a desire to offend Muslims — or at least some Muslims. How does that change how we should view events now? If I needlessly offend my neighbor, shame on me. If, in response, he burns down my house and threatens to murder my entire family, who cares what I said in the first place?
Tony Blankley
In Czechoslovakia, under communism, it was common to see signs that read "Workers of the world, unite" in the windows of fruit and vegetable stores. Vaclav Havel, in his book "Living In Truth," discerned the significance of those signs.
Mr. Havel believed the shopkeeper does not believe the sign. He puts it up because it was "delivered from the headquarters along with the onions." The grocer thinks nothing is at stake because he understands that no one really believes the slogan. The real message, according to Havel is "I'm behaving myself … I am obedient, and therefore I have the right to be left in peace."
But Mr. Havel shrewdly points out that even a modest shopkeeper would be ashamed to put up a sign that literally read "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient." He is, after all, a human being with some sense of dignity. Havel concludes that the display of the sign "workers of the world, unite" allows the green grocer "to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power." (As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian theologian hanged by the Nazis for conspiring to try to kill Hitler observed: The failure of the people to speak small truths leads to the victory of the big lie.)
I would argue that this Czechoslovakian parable of the self-deceiving green grocer goes a long way to explaining the decision of most American news outlets not to re-publish the Danish cartoons currently stirring up so much of Islam.
Dennis Prager
Anti-Nazi German pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous statement can be updated for Europeans:
First they came for Israel, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Jews. Then they came for Lebanon's Christians, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Maronites. Then they came for America, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Americans. Then they came for Sudan's blacks, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Sudanese blacks. Then they came for us, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for us.
As long as Muslim demonstrators only shouted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," Europe (and the rest of the world's Left) found reasons either to ignore the Nazi-like evil inherent in those chants (and the homicidal actions that flowed from them) or to blame America and Israel for the hatred.
But like the earlier Nazis, our generation's fascists hate anything good, not merely Jews and Americans. And now the Damascus embassy of Norway, a leading anti-Israel "peace at any price" country, has been torched. And more and more Norwegians, and Brits, and French, and Dutch, and Swedes, and the rest of the European appeasers who blamed America for 9-11 and blamed Israel for Palestinian suicide bombings, are beginning to wonder whether there just might be something morally troubling within the Islamic world.
Did any Jews riot when the Los Angeles Times published a cartoon of the holiest site in Judaism, the Western Wall, with its stones reconfigured to spell "hate"?
Did any Christians riot when museums displayed "Piss Christ," a crucifix submerged in artist Andres Serrano's urine?
What we have is a culture largely based on saving face and honor juxtaposed with a Judeo-Christian Western culture largely based on saving liberty and innocent life.
Ralph Peters
Astonished Europeans insist on their right to press freedom. Muslims are outraged at the willful violation of a widespread Islamic belief: The Prophet's image must not be depicted.
Now the confrontation's gone too far for either side to back down. And both sides are wrong.
First, consider the Europeans. The Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons last September was not standing up courageously for freedom of expression. The editors and cartoonists were so oblivious to any reality beyond their Copenhagen coffee bars that they just thought they were pulling an attention-getting prank. In the name of press freedom, of course.
The problem is that with freedom comes responsibility, a quality to which Europe's become allergic (nothing is ever a European's fault). Breaking a well-known taboo of Islam was irresponsible. No other word for it.
There's plenty to criticize in the failed civilization of Middle Eastern Islam. But the European press avoids the serious issues. Instead, they attacked a religion's heart. Gratuitously.
Through their clumsiness and vanity, the Europeans have made this an all-or-nothing issue. If the Europeans appear to capitulate now, it will only encourage Muslim extremists around the world.
Wasn't it those oh-so-clever Europeans who complained about a heavy U.S. hand in the Middle East? Who made excuses for 9/11, the Madrid bombings, street murders, terrorist kidnappings and beheadings, the London bombings, French suburbs aflame and no end of hate speech? Then treated Islam the way a dog treats a fire hydrant?
That's Europe for you: A continent of cowards who start fights they can't finish themselves. Thanks, Hans. [I]Merci[/I], Pierre.
Of course, the blame doesn't fall solely on the Eurotrash. The over-reaction within the Muslim world is psychotic — yet another indication of the spiritual and practical collapse of the Middle East and realms beyond. What we're seeing in the Middle East is strategic theater. Meanwhile, the nuts-for-Allah boys in Tehran are using the issue to whip up support for Shia nukes. Kashmiri separatists are milking the controversy, as are the remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The protests stretch from Indonesia to England. Expect more blood.
Even a French philosopher can't forever glorify a civilization that puts more energy into calling for death to cartoonists than it does into human rights, education or good government.
For once, we Americans can sit back and watch the fight (pass the popcorn, please). The Europeans are going to get a few more teeth knocked out. As for the Islamist bigots, they'll lose at least a few of their European apologists — the sort who make excuses for terrorists, as long as they only kill Americans (or Muslims).
Looking at the pigheaded intolerance driving the Europeans and Islamist fanatics alike, the healthy response is, "A plague on both your houses."
Cal Thomas
Throughout the Middle East, state-controlled newspapers regularly depict Jews and Israeli leaders in despicable, stereotypical and anti-Semitic caricatures. These cartoons show Jews with hooked noses; Stars of David morphing into swastikas; Palestinian and Arab blood drips from Jewish hands and Jews are blamed for creating AIDS. Neither those newspapers, nor Arab embassies have been attacked by Jewish mobs.
When a Danish newspaper publishes several political cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, riots ensue and the artists and newspaper receive death threats. When newspapers in France and Germany courageously (and unexpectedly) reprint the cartoons as a demonstration of their right to free speech, further demonstrations occur and threats are made against those newspapers.
Occasionally moral clarity comes with something quite simple, like political cartoons. These riots impress upon us an objective truth: the "clash of civilizations" is more than a conflict between peoples; it is between the 21st and the 7th centuries; between a G-d who has "commissioned" his followers to exact judgment on the world, according to their narrow interpretation, and a G-d who offers man grace, along with the freedom to choose or reject it, reserving judgment for Himself on another day.
It won't stop with cartoon censorship, but will advance to telling us what to wear and Islam will be insulted if your wife or girlfriend doesn't wear a head scarf. Will free societies give in to threats, intimidation, murder and riots? If we don't stand now against this fundamentalist intolerance, there may not be enough of us left standing for the next and subsequent battles.
In a speech to the National Press Club last week, Secretary Rumsfeld said of Islamic terrorists, "they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs."
It's going to be a long war.
Tom Gross
The cartoons published last September in Jyllands Posten, a paper that hardly anyone outside Denmark, one of Europe's smallest countries, had ever heard of, are mild when compared to cartoons routinely produced about Jews in the countries where some of the worst anti-Danish protests are now being staged.
Arabic Jew-baiting is not — as Israel's enemies in the West often try to argue — limited to political attacks on Zionism. They are directed against Jews in general, and are as loathsome and dehumanizing as those produced under the Nazis.
We might expect such demonic images from a country led by a Holocaust-denier like Iran, or a rogue regime like Syria. But these vile images are to be found in the media of supposedly moderate, pro-Western states like Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt.
Al-Watan (Oman) has run Nazi-type caricatures of Jews with hooked noses and hunched backs, not wearing shoes, and sweating profusely.
Akhbar Al-Khalij (Bahrain) has shown anti-Semitic caricatures of black-hatted Jews spitting and sweating as they manipulate America to do their bidding.
Al Ahram, one of Egypt's leading dailies, has published cartoons of Jews laughing while they drink blood. (The U.S. senate has approved a $1.84 billion aid package for Egypt for 2006, the second highest in the world.)
The official cartoonist of the Palestinian Authority has portrayed Jews in the form of snakes, a historic motif of medieval European anti-Semitism. The PA website has posted cartoons repeating the ancient blood libel that Jews murder non-Jewish children.
Some of the cartoons don't just resemble those published by the Nazis. They are literally copied from Nazi originals. For instance, a cartoon from Arab News (an English-language Saudi daily regarded as one of the more moderate publications in the Arab world), depicts rats wearing Stars of David and skullcaps, scurrying backwards and forwards through holes in the wall of a building called "Palestine House." The imagery used is almost identical to a well-known scene from the Nazi film "Jew Suess" — a scene in which Jews are depicted as vermin to be eradicated by mass extermination.
At other times the Jews are the Nazis. The Jordanian newspaper, Ad-Dustur, for example, ran a cartoon showing the railroad to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau — but with Israeli flags replacing the Nazi ones, and a sign which read "The Israeli Annihilation Camp." Jordan is supposedly a moderate country at peace with Israel.
To mark the UN designation of January 27 as Holocaust memorial day, the cartoonist for Al-Yawm (Saudi Arabia) superimposed the Nazi swastika on the Star of David.
Nor is Judaism spared. The Daily Star in Beirut ran a cartoon showing a large Talmud with a bayonet sticking out of it shooting an elderly man in Arab headdress who then has red blood gushing out of him. Other Arab cartoons have shown Jews with money bags, spreading death, terror and disease.
The relatively mild Danish cartoons have been republished in several European papers so readers can discover what all the fuss is about. But not in papers in Britain or in any major publications in the US, countries that are now apparently too intimidated to run the risks that might go with reproducing them.
At the same time, whereas editors from both the Guardian and Independent in London, for example, have appeared on the BBC saying they wouldn't dream of publishing cartoons that Muslims find offensive, these papers have not hesitated to publish cartoons offensive to Jews (Arab blood being smeared on the Western Wall in The Guardian, the flesh of Palestinian babies being eaten by Ariel Sharon in The Independent, and so on.)
The New York Times rushed to praise a frivolous Broadway play showing Jesus having gay sex with Judas, yet hasn't dared to reproduce a Danish cartoon making a serious point about the misuse of the teachings of the prophet Mohamed by Islamist terrorists.
Daniel Pipes:
The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise; Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.
More specifically, will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy an immunity from insults? Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones; are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?
The deeper issue here, however, is not Muslim hypocrisy but Islamic supremacism. Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who published the cartoons, explains that if Muslims insist “that I, as a non-Muslim, should submit to their taboos, … they're asking for my submission.”
Precisely. Robert Spencer rightly calls on the free world to stand “resolutely with Denmark.” The informative Brussels Journal asserts, “We are all Danes now.”
Some governments get it:
· Norway: “we will not apologize because in a country like Norway, which guarantees freedom of expression, we cannot apologize for what the newspapers print,” commented Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
· Germany: “Why should the German government apologize [for German papers publishing the cartoons]? This is an expression of press freedom,” said Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble.
· France: “Political cartoons are by nature excessive. And I prefer an excess of caricature to an excess of censorship,” commented Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Other governments wrongly apologized.
Christopher Hitchens
As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week's international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean "unacceptable"? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people. However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.
Con
Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken. Which is what taboos are for.
Ann Coulter
In order to express their displeasure with the idea that Muslims are violent, thousands of Muslims around the world engaged in rioting, arson, mob savagery, flag-burning, murder and mayhem, among other peaceful acts of nonviolence.
Muslims are the only people who make feminists seem laid-back.
The little darlings brandish placards with typical Religion of Peace slogans, such as: "Behead Those Who Insult Islam," "Europe, you will pay, extermination is on the way" and "Butcher those who mock Islam." They warn Europe of their own impending 9/11 with signs that say: "Europe: Your 9/11 will come" -- which is ironic, because they almost had me convinced the Jews were behind the 9/11 attack.
The rioting Muslims claim they are upset because Islam prohibits any depictions of Muhammad -- though the text is ambiguous on beheadings, suicide bombings and flying planes into skyscrapers.
Muslims ought to start claiming the Koran also prohibits indoor plumbing, to explain their lack of it.
Largely unnoticed in this spectacle is the blinding fact that one nation is missing from the long list of Muslim countries (by which I mean France and England) with hundreds of crazy Muslims experiencing bipolar rage over some cartoons: Iraq. Hey -- maybe this democracy thing does work! The barbaric behavior of Europe's Muslims suggests that the European welfare state may not be attracting your top-notch Muslims.
Making the rash assumption for purposes of discussion that Islam is a religion and not a car-burning cult, even a real religion can't go bossing around other people like this. But Muslims think they can issue decrees about what images can appear in newspaper cartoons. Who do they think they are, liberals?
Jeff Jacoby
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. Muslims regard any depiction of the prophet as sacrilegious, and 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. Some make no point at all — one simply portrays a man walking with his donkey in the desert.
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, the ability to disagree with what you say while firmly defending your right to say it: Militant Islam knows none of this.
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.
Jonah Goldberg
The riots and demonstrations across the Middle East and Western Europe over some cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad have set off a parallel intellectual riot in the West over the nature of free speech and free expression. Some news outlets are updating their procedures so as not to offend "religious" sensibilities in the future.
The quotation marks around the word "religious" should say it all. We're not talking about "religion." We're talking about a specific religion — Islam. Does anyone truly think that the burning of Danish embassies and calls for the "slaughter" of those responsible by Muslim protestors have really taught the BBC or the New York Times to be more polite to evangelical Christians or Orthodox Jews? Does anyone really think that Arabic newspapers — often state-owned — are going to stop recycling Nazi-era images of Jews as baby killers and hook-nosed conspirators because they've become enlightened to notion that words can hurt? Considering that an Iranian newspaper just announced a contest for the best Holocaust cartoon, the odds seem slim. Besides, why belittle the Holocaust for something a Danish newspaper did? (Partial credit given for the answer: "It's always useful to pick on the Jews.")
The issue of "offense" is a distraction too. Let's assume that the publication of the cartoons was motivated entirely out of a desire to offend Muslims — or at least some Muslims. How does that change how we should view events now? If I needlessly offend my neighbor, shame on me. If, in response, he burns down my house and threatens to murder my entire family, who cares what I said in the first place?
Tony Blankley
In Czechoslovakia, under communism, it was common to see signs that read "Workers of the world, unite" in the windows of fruit and vegetable stores. Vaclav Havel, in his book "Living In Truth," discerned the significance of those signs.
Mr. Havel believed the shopkeeper does not believe the sign. He puts it up because it was "delivered from the headquarters along with the onions." The grocer thinks nothing is at stake because he understands that no one really believes the slogan. The real message, according to Havel is "I'm behaving myself … I am obedient, and therefore I have the right to be left in peace."
But Mr. Havel shrewdly points out that even a modest shopkeeper would be ashamed to put up a sign that literally read "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient." He is, after all, a human being with some sense of dignity. Havel concludes that the display of the sign "workers of the world, unite" allows the green grocer "to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power." (As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian theologian hanged by the Nazis for conspiring to try to kill Hitler observed: The failure of the people to speak small truths leads to the victory of the big lie.)
I would argue that this Czechoslovakian parable of the self-deceiving green grocer goes a long way to explaining the decision of most American news outlets not to re-publish the Danish cartoons currently stirring up so much of Islam.
Dennis Prager
Anti-Nazi German pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous statement can be updated for Europeans:
First they came for Israel, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Jews. Then they came for Lebanon's Christians, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Maronites. Then they came for America, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Americans. Then they came for Sudan's blacks, and we didn't speak up because we weren't Sudanese blacks. Then they came for us, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for us.
As long as Muslim demonstrators only shouted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," Europe (and the rest of the world's Left) found reasons either to ignore the Nazi-like evil inherent in those chants (and the homicidal actions that flowed from them) or to blame America and Israel for the hatred.
But like the earlier Nazis, our generation's fascists hate anything good, not merely Jews and Americans. And now the Damascus embassy of Norway, a leading anti-Israel "peace at any price" country, has been torched. And more and more Norwegians, and Brits, and French, and Dutch, and Swedes, and the rest of the European appeasers who blamed America for 9-11 and blamed Israel for Palestinian suicide bombings, are beginning to wonder whether there just might be something morally troubling within the Islamic world.
Did any Jews riot when the Los Angeles Times published a cartoon of the holiest site in Judaism, the Western Wall, with its stones reconfigured to spell "hate"?
Did any Christians riot when museums displayed "Piss Christ," a crucifix submerged in artist Andres Serrano's urine?
What we have is a culture largely based on saving face and honor juxtaposed with a Judeo-Christian Western culture largely based on saving liberty and innocent life.
Ralph Peters
Astonished Europeans insist on their right to press freedom. Muslims are outraged at the willful violation of a widespread Islamic belief: The Prophet's image must not be depicted.
Now the confrontation's gone too far for either side to back down. And both sides are wrong.
First, consider the Europeans. The Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons last September was not standing up courageously for freedom of expression. The editors and cartoonists were so oblivious to any reality beyond their Copenhagen coffee bars that they just thought they were pulling an attention-getting prank. In the name of press freedom, of course.
The problem is that with freedom comes responsibility, a quality to which Europe's become allergic (nothing is ever a European's fault). Breaking a well-known taboo of Islam was irresponsible. No other word for it.
There's plenty to criticize in the failed civilization of Middle Eastern Islam. But the European press avoids the serious issues. Instead, they attacked a religion's heart. Gratuitously.
Through their clumsiness and vanity, the Europeans have made this an all-or-nothing issue. If the Europeans appear to capitulate now, it will only encourage Muslim extremists around the world.
Wasn't it those oh-so-clever Europeans who complained about a heavy U.S. hand in the Middle East? Who made excuses for 9/11, the Madrid bombings, street murders, terrorist kidnappings and beheadings, the London bombings, French suburbs aflame and no end of hate speech? Then treated Islam the way a dog treats a fire hydrant?
That's Europe for you: A continent of cowards who start fights they can't finish themselves. Thanks, Hans. [I]Merci[/I], Pierre.
Of course, the blame doesn't fall solely on the Eurotrash. The over-reaction within the Muslim world is psychotic — yet another indication of the spiritual and practical collapse of the Middle East and realms beyond. What we're seeing in the Middle East is strategic theater. Meanwhile, the nuts-for-Allah boys in Tehran are using the issue to whip up support for Shia nukes. Kashmiri separatists are milking the controversy, as are the remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The protests stretch from Indonesia to England. Expect more blood.
Even a French philosopher can't forever glorify a civilization that puts more energy into calling for death to cartoonists than it does into human rights, education or good government.
For once, we Americans can sit back and watch the fight (pass the popcorn, please). The Europeans are going to get a few more teeth knocked out. As for the Islamist bigots, they'll lose at least a few of their European apologists — the sort who make excuses for terrorists, as long as they only kill Americans (or Muslims).
Looking at the pigheaded intolerance driving the Europeans and Islamist fanatics alike, the healthy response is, "A plague on both your houses."
Cal Thomas
Throughout the Middle East, state-controlled newspapers regularly depict Jews and Israeli leaders in despicable, stereotypical and anti-Semitic caricatures. These cartoons show Jews with hooked noses; Stars of David morphing into swastikas; Palestinian and Arab blood drips from Jewish hands and Jews are blamed for creating AIDS. Neither those newspapers, nor Arab embassies have been attacked by Jewish mobs.
When a Danish newspaper publishes several political cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, riots ensue and the artists and newspaper receive death threats. When newspapers in France and Germany courageously (and unexpectedly) reprint the cartoons as a demonstration of their right to free speech, further demonstrations occur and threats are made against those newspapers.
Occasionally moral clarity comes with something quite simple, like political cartoons. These riots impress upon us an objective truth: the "clash of civilizations" is more than a conflict between peoples; it is between the 21st and the 7th centuries; between a G-d who has "commissioned" his followers to exact judgment on the world, according to their narrow interpretation, and a G-d who offers man grace, along with the freedom to choose or reject it, reserving judgment for Himself on another day.
It won't stop with cartoon censorship, but will advance to telling us what to wear and Islam will be insulted if your wife or girlfriend doesn't wear a head scarf. Will free societies give in to threats, intimidation, murder and riots? If we don't stand now against this fundamentalist intolerance, there may not be enough of us left standing for the next and subsequent battles.
In a speech to the National Press Club last week, Secretary Rumsfeld said of Islamic terrorists, "they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs."
It's going to be a long war.
Tom Gross
The cartoons published last September in Jyllands Posten, a paper that hardly anyone outside Denmark, one of Europe's smallest countries, had ever heard of, are mild when compared to cartoons routinely produced about Jews in the countries where some of the worst anti-Danish protests are now being staged.
Arabic Jew-baiting is not — as Israel's enemies in the West often try to argue — limited to political attacks on Zionism. They are directed against Jews in general, and are as loathsome and dehumanizing as those produced under the Nazis.
We might expect such demonic images from a country led by a Holocaust-denier like Iran, or a rogue regime like Syria. But these vile images are to be found in the media of supposedly moderate, pro-Western states like Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt.
Al-Watan (Oman) has run Nazi-type caricatures of Jews with hooked noses and hunched backs, not wearing shoes, and sweating profusely.
Akhbar Al-Khalij (Bahrain) has shown anti-Semitic caricatures of black-hatted Jews spitting and sweating as they manipulate America to do their bidding.
Al Ahram, one of Egypt's leading dailies, has published cartoons of Jews laughing while they drink blood. (The U.S. senate has approved a $1.84 billion aid package for Egypt for 2006, the second highest in the world.)
The official cartoonist of the Palestinian Authority has portrayed Jews in the form of snakes, a historic motif of medieval European anti-Semitism. The PA website has posted cartoons repeating the ancient blood libel that Jews murder non-Jewish children.
Some of the cartoons don't just resemble those published by the Nazis. They are literally copied from Nazi originals. For instance, a cartoon from Arab News (an English-language Saudi daily regarded as one of the more moderate publications in the Arab world), depicts rats wearing Stars of David and skullcaps, scurrying backwards and forwards through holes in the wall of a building called "Palestine House." The imagery used is almost identical to a well-known scene from the Nazi film "Jew Suess" — a scene in which Jews are depicted as vermin to be eradicated by mass extermination.
At other times the Jews are the Nazis. The Jordanian newspaper, Ad-Dustur, for example, ran a cartoon showing the railroad to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau — but with Israeli flags replacing the Nazi ones, and a sign which read "The Israeli Annihilation Camp." Jordan is supposedly a moderate country at peace with Israel.
To mark the UN designation of January 27 as Holocaust memorial day, the cartoonist for Al-Yawm (Saudi Arabia) superimposed the Nazi swastika on the Star of David.
Nor is Judaism spared. The Daily Star in Beirut ran a cartoon showing a large Talmud with a bayonet sticking out of it shooting an elderly man in Arab headdress who then has red blood gushing out of him. Other Arab cartoons have shown Jews with money bags, spreading death, terror and disease.
The relatively mild Danish cartoons have been republished in several European papers so readers can discover what all the fuss is about. But not in papers in Britain or in any major publications in the US, countries that are now apparently too intimidated to run the risks that might go with reproducing them.
At the same time, whereas editors from both the Guardian and Independent in London, for example, have appeared on the BBC saying they wouldn't dream of publishing cartoons that Muslims find offensive, these papers have not hesitated to publish cartoons offensive to Jews (Arab blood being smeared on the Western Wall in The Guardian, the flesh of Palestinian babies being eaten by Ariel Sharon in The Independent, and so on.)
The New York Times rushed to praise a frivolous Broadway play showing Jesus having gay sex with Judas, yet hasn't dared to reproduce a Danish cartoon making a serious point about the misuse of the teachings of the prophet Mohamed by Islamist terrorists.