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

[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.