The Mighty Pen

Here are the Danish cartoons that have led to recent violent protests:

























A Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, originally published them last fall because an author (a scholar, apparently) was writing a book about Mohammed but couldn't find anyone to illustrate it. This is because Islamic law, or at least certain flavors of it, forbids any representation of Mohammed, good or bad. The printing of the drawings prompted angry denunciation but, now that various European news outlets are printing them, violent protests have erupted. One such outlet was France Soir. But instead of championing free speech, the newspaper's owner fired the editor. A similar situation played out in the Middle East :

In the Arab world, a Jordanian newspaper, Shihan, took the bold step Thursday of running some of the drawings, saying it wanted to show its readers how offensive the cartoons were but also urging the world's Muslims to "be reasonable." Its editorial noted that Jyllands-Posten had apologized, "but for some reason, nobody in the Muslim world wants to hear the apology."

Hours later, the Jordanian government threatened legal action against Shihan, and the owners of the weekly said they had fired its chief editor, Jihad al-Momani, and withdrawn the issue from sale.

It's a vicious circle going on here. Western cartoonists comment on the barbaric, voilent element of Islam and some Muslims respond with barbarism and violence which just feeds the fire. From ABC News:

An imam at the Omari Mosque in Gaza City told 9,000 worshippers that those behind the drawings should have their heads cut off.

As Richard Dawkins once wrote:

To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.

And Douglas Adams said:

Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe, no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furore Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.

No newspaper editor, no government official, indeed, no one at all owes any Muslim (indeed, any religious person) any respect whatsoever for simply believing a fairy tale to be true. That you believe Mohammed brought the message of Allah to make war on unbelievers or that Jesus walked on water or that some deity forbade his followers to eat shellfish but commanded them to eat barley cakes infused with their own fecal matter does not qualify you for a priori respect. Not surprisingly, the State Department doesn't feel this way. Its spokesperson, Janelle Hiromimus, said:

We call for tolerance and respect for all communities and for their religious beliefs and practices.

I hate to sound all John Galtish because no objectivist am I, but there's not a cat in hell's chance that I will show any tolerance or respect for a person or community that calls for the beheading of cartoonists. ABC also reports:

Pakistan's parliament unanimously voted to condemn the drawings as a "vicious, outrageous and provocative campaign" that has "hurt the faith and feelings of Muslims all over the world."

Since when does anyone have the right to not have their feelings hurt? If this right does exist, then the human rights of every person on the planet are being violated constantly. And how did these cartoons hurt anyone's faith? Someone please tell me because I really want to know. Are Muslims the world 'round suddenly undergoing apostasy? Here we go again with this notion that, because someone believes a fairy tale to be true, their feelings on the matter must be respected and protected at all costs. Here's a couple other ditties:

Muslims have also directed their anger at other European countries, with Palestinian gunmen briefly kidnapping a German citizen Thursday…

"If they want a war of religions, we are ready," Hassan Sharaf, an imam in Nablus, said in his sermon.

If you as an individual think that kidnapping a person is an appropriate response to cartoons carried by a newspaper in that person's home country, then there is something seriously wrong with you. And I think that Sharaf has either completely misunderstood the situation or twisted it purposely. Nothing I have read about the cartoons and their publications even hints at this being Christian vs. Muslim. It's about an idea that is non-religious, namely, freedom. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that the publication of these cartoons was irresponsible on a practical level. One needn't have been a prognosticator to say that their publication would be greeted with hostile reactions so it is fine to argue that offending Muslims would be imprudent but to argue that they shouldn't have been published because they are offensive is ludicrous.

I'm having a hard time even finding agreement with Arab "moderates" on this. (The one's whose statements I've read, anyway.) Also from ABC:

In Iraq, the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, decried the drawings but did not call for protests.

"We strongly denounce and condemn this horrific action," he said in a statement posted on his Web site and dated Tuesday.

While I'm pleased that he didn't call for any beheadings, I find it sadly amusing that he describes the publication of cartoons that offend some people as "horrific". Preventing young girls from escaping a burning building and letting them perish in the flames because they aren't wearing prescribed religious garb is horrific. Hijacking jetliners full of people and flying them into buildings with even more people inside them is horrific. Threatening a woman and her family (and perhaps even killing her) for fighting for the rights of Muslim women is horrific. The list of horrific actions goes on with acts committed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike but caricaturing is not on this list. Unless the above is a mistranslation or a quote out of context, I must say that describing the publication of cartoons with the same word which describes the deaths of children is ridiculous and demeaning.