A few thoughts on the cartoon contoversy

[chickenfeet]

• Jyllands Posten is a squalid right wing rag. The editor knew exactly what he was doing when he originally printed the cartoons. I'm not going to paint the editor as a martyr anymore than I would the editor of the Sun or the Toronto Sun when they get up to similarly border line racist antics.
  
  
• The motives of the Arab governments that dragged this story back into the limelight four months later are dubious at best. See The Religious Policeman for more.
  
  
• Boycotting things Danish because a newspaper printed something one doesn't like is asinine. It's like boycotting all American products every time Pat Robertson opens his mouth.
  
  
• Boycotting Norwegian products is even more stupid.
  
  
• Reprinting the cartoons was probably ill judged. I see the point in not wanting to be seen as giving into pressure but I don't really see that any purpose has been accomplished by the reprints.
  
  
• The demonstration in London was by 500 people, which is pretty pathetic for a demonstration in London. The placards and chanting were highly offensive and undoubtedly illegal. As Asghar Bukhari has said the demo should have been stopped by the police. In my view those inciting violence should be prosecuted.
  
  
• The demonstrations in Gaza, Syria etc are the usual Rent-a-Mob efforts to distract attention from the utter incompetence and brutality of the local governments,
  
  
• The press would have been better advised not to concentrate on the antics of a handful of nutters.
  
  
• Kudos to those in the Muslim community and the Arab world who have condemned the violence and pointed out its utter lack of proportion.
  
  
• Thanks to the Muslim community in Toronto and Canada as a whole for not jumping on the bandwagon. Also to the tens of millions of Muslims worldwide who just shrugged and got on with life.

Comments

[piratehead.livejournal.com]

This is the most sensible thing I've read about the "controversy".

We did this several years ago.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, not that offensive, other than depicting Mohammed (http://www.axesandalleys.com/and-mohammed-is-his-prophet/) with a beer. Never saw a rile about that.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Kudos to those in the Muslim community and the Arab world who have condemned the violence and pointed out its utter lack of proportion.

Can you point me to those, besides Shihan's editor Jihad al Momani? I'd be glad to link to some reasonable comments out there.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

This from Al-Jazeera:

Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said US Muslims, are unlikely to take to the streets in outrage.

"We admonish against that because we don't find it helpful to our situation in America," he said.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Asghar Bukhari (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4676524.stm)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

these people are less representative of Muslims than the BNP are of the British people."

Good man!

I receive the Hizbut Tahrir press releases and loathe the way they keep describing the demonstrations (there is another one scheduled for Frebruary 18 in Central London) as "peaceful".

Here is another

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The Labour MP Shahid Malik, who is on the Home Affairs Select Committee, wrote a letter to Sir Ian Blair, head of the Met Police, on Friday calling for prosecutions.

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

morsefan has been keeping a list in this entry (http://morsefan.livejournal.com/256561.html).

[(Anonymous)]

I agree - this is the most sensible comment I have seen in any of the media - period.

[nanila]

One interesting little tidbit I read in The Guardian this morning said that three of the most offensive drawings (Mohammed with the face of a pig, a dog sodomizing a praying Muslim, Mohammed as a paedophile) being waved about by the ultra-conservative Danish imams were "mysteriously unsourced." Hmm.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Yes! The actual cartoons in Jyllends Posten were really crude and weak; lacking both humour and political punch. Frankly they could have been drawn by not very bright ten year olds. I have a hard time believing that many of the people protesting have actually seen them.

[ironed_orchid]

Well said.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I have to say, I've been in two minds about this. I absolutely believe in freedom of the press, but I tend to be one of those people that believe that there is a lot of responsibility that comes with living in a free and democratic society. The cartoons weren't even good satire -- they were just hateful and insulting. They also showed a lot more about the ignorance of the cartoonist and audience wrt Islam than anything else.

So I'm kind of torn in my response. Part of me really wants to see more condemnation -- not because I think anyone should be protected from lampooning or because people don't have a right to publish whatever they want*, but because I think that ignorant and hateful behaviour should be discouraged. And part of me wants to say that everybody should be fair game. Except, of course, that we don't allow everyone to be fair game -- if the picture had been one of Coretta Scott King as a crack whore, I think there would have been some outcry based on the sheer offensiveness of the idea. Or something like that. There aren't a whole lot of truly sacred cows in modern society, but the subject of pictorial representations of Muhammed in Islam really is one. Oh hell -- like I said, I've got some mixed feelings about this.

*I do think there are limits to free press. I have no problem with making illegal inciting violence and hatred or pr0n that involves anybody but consenting adults.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The really sad thing is that all decent and reasonable people lose in a situation like this. The winners are those who demonise the Islamic world as a whole, the vicious and reactionary governments in the middle east and the fanatics of fundamentalist Islam. Nobody is reporting the undeniable fact that the vast majority of people are treating this as a storm in a tea cup, and an artificial one at that.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

too true.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I agree with more or less everything you worte.

'Nuff said.