Gathering Speed

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or just don’t have any interest in international news you’re going to have heard about this (if your idea of international events revolves entirely around Simon Cowell, you’d better hurry and go vote for this week’s “Who Wants to Marry My Cat” on Fox). To make a long story short, a Danish newspaper decided it would be prudent/hilarious/incendiary to publish a week-long series of illustrations depicting the prophet Muhammad as a psychotic terrorist with a bomb-shaped turban (By the way, according to the Qu’ran, you can’t depict the image of Muhammad at all in any fashion, good or bad. So the fact that he’s drawn like a terrorist is irrelevant in many eyes). Before we get into the actual topic here, let’s get this out of the way: can a Western nation, powerful or otherwise, repeatedly make sweeping judgments and openly mock a gigantic organization of people who are currently embroiled in a culture war with the predominately Christian and Jewish West?
You can’t do that.
(The Can You Do That? feature will be launching shortly. Consider this an appetizer, a little piece of toast with cream cheese and smoked salmon. Main course to follow.)
Anyway, so the Danes made a mistake, I think that’s clear. A lot of people are trying to play the Freedom of the Press card, forgetting of course that the Bill of Rights does not cover the entire world and that America’s laws do not apply in every corner of the globe. It’s alarming, but true, there are other nations with other governments. Even the people who argue that our policies are always correct and that the citizens of foreign nations would have better lives if they adopted our ways can’t disagree with this one. When you satirize someone who looks differently and acts differently than your majority does, you’re just begging for someone to get offended. If Al-Jazzera, the Fair and Balanced Fox News of the Middle East, responded to the outbreak of sexual assault by priests with images of Jesus (H. Christ) engaged in deviant activity with small boys, you’d see Rumsfeld and Cheney tossing the phrase “act of war” around. So something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, they showed staggeringly poor judgment (this wouldn’t be the first time; historians have found Danish illustrations of Fortinbras wearing a baby bonnet and holding a rattle). Because the ratio of psychotic fundamentalist muslims to laid back muslims is about the same as rainy days in Tucson, yeah, the Danes were out of line.
That being said…look at the result.
The Danish embassy in Jakarta was stormed (a word forever associated with the Bastille) by angry protesters. The protesters did not reach the embassy itself, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Danish flags and effigies of the Prime Minister of Denmark were burned in the streets around the world. Gunmen raid the EU office in Gaza demanding an apology. Death threats were mailed to the newspaper and Denmark’s government officials.
This is not exactly a rational response. While a lot of people do not want to say it, one of the reasons so many apologies are being issued is that no one in Denmark wants to get blown up. And you know what? Everyone in the world right now, no matter how free thinking and accepting of all peoples, thinks it’s about to happen.
You do not protest a blasphemous cartoon by acting them out. You do not challenge people who make sweeping judgments by making your own. It wasn’t like the Government of Denmark released an image of Muhammad doing something ridiculous and declared it their new national seal. The country is being blamed for something that happened in a newspaper. That’s like a family in Brooklyn being called insensitive over a controversial cartoon in the New Yorker. That doesn’t exactly follow.
Attention Middle Eastern and Islamic nations: if you want people to stop depicting your religion as one based in violence and lunacy, stop reacting to controversy with violence and lunacy. There are civilized ways to do this, the world was already on your side in this matter. Those M-16 bullets don’t have to burn a hole in your pocket, you’ll have another chance to fire them into the air. Chill out.
A great example to follow is the one taken by Ali al-Sistani, the Grand Ayatollah of Iraq who, in the same speech, condemned the drawings while making no call for protests, suggesting that militant Muslims were partly to blame for distorting Islam’s image (MSNBC, 2/3). The true leadership of Islam understands what’s going on and knows that they are responsible for policing the out-of-control members of their following. The Vatican is equally responsible for keeping a leash on their fundamentalist Christian groups. The Philadelphia Eagles as an organization are responsible for keeping their fans from throwing batteries at opposing players and fans (there’s actually an NFL mandate penalizing a home team 15 yards if the fans throw things on the field; they hold the team responsible). Every group has its share of crazies and it is up to the leadership to keep them under control, lest their whole group gets lumped under the same umbrella.

-Mike Rosolio