So the Prophet Muhammad Walks Into a Bar…
A Danish newspaper is under fire—death threats, protests, international condemnation—for publishing a series of cartoons that mocked the Prophet Muhammad. The NYT reports…
When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including one in which he is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, it expected a strong reaction in this country of 5.4 million people.Muslims gathered at city hall in Copenhagen in October to protest cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.
But the paper was unprepared for the global furor that ensued, including demonstrations in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, death threats against the artists, condemnation from 11 Muslim countries and a rebuke from the United Nations.
“The cartoons did nothing that transcends the cultural norms of secular Denmark, and this was not a provocation to insult Muslims,” said Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s largest newspaper, which has declined to apologize for the drawings.
The piece goes on to talk about whether Denmark’s “famously liberal laws on free speech have gone too far.”
Yeah, that free speech stuff—how much of it can one country stand?
The xenophobe in me reacted harshly to that idiotic statement. Can we all agree to stick up for free speech? You would think that a newspaper that is currently under assault from the Feds for publishing stories that annoyed the president would fall squarely on the side of free speech. For Muslim immigrants to the liberal democracies, I would say this: if you can’t stand the free speech, stay the hell out of the West. (And, yes, I’m opposed to idiotic “speech codes” that seek to protect sensitive homos from hate speech.) Seriously—free speech, and the occasional offense it causes, is part of the price of admission. One Danish Muslim calls the cartoons “mental torture.” That’s bullshit. It’s a cartoon. Oh, you’ve got every right to be offended, of course, and to fight speech you regard as bigoted with more speech (even protests), but death threats and insisting that it shouldn’t be legal for a paper to mock your prophet because it hurts your feelings? Sorry, no.
And how can one possibly argue with this:
Soren Krarup, a retired priest and leading voice in the party, said the Muslim response to the cartoons showed that Islam was not compatible with Danish customs. He said Jesus had been satirized in Danish literature and popular culture for centuries - including a recent much-publicized Danish painting of Jesus with an erection - so why not Muhammad?
Damn straight: Why not Muhammad? Why not L. Ron Hubbard? Why not Jesus Christ? Why not Nazi Popes? Why not Joseph Smith? Freedom of thought, freedom of speech—it means, amongst other things, people have a right to think your religious beliefs are utterly ridiculous and the right to say so.
Unfortunately Krarup goes on to say this…
“Muslim immigration is a way for Muslims to conquer us, just as they have done for the past 1,400 years.”
That’s crap, of course. Xenophobic crap. Pointing out that immigrating to a country with liberal tradition of free speech means tolerating the occasional swipe at your sacred cows is not xenophobic, however. It’s necessary, it’s crucial. Liberal democracies won’t survive—to say nothing of liberal newspapers—if they shy away from making that point aggressively.
The real difference between a cartoon of Jesus and a cartoon of Muhammad, and the cause for all the (totally unsurprising) global uproar, is that the Koran specifically forbids any visual representation of Muhammad. This is one of the unbreakable rules of Islam - and is behind much of the creativity in the Muslim world's art and architecture.
So, from that standpoint, Muslims are absolutely right to be outraged. But as us First Amendment types and Danish cartoonists know, religious dogma isn't law, so we have the legal right to write or say just about any damn thing we please. If we lived in Kashmir, maybe not so much, but luckily we live in George Bush's Freedomland.