If I have claimed that protesters are not angry over cartoons, I misunderstood myself.

I think it would be a little closer to the mark to say that colonialism, propping up fascist regimes, destabilizing popular ones etc. helps us understand why it is so easy to provoke fanatics into a blind rage with nothing more than cartoons, or for that matter why the fanatacism exists so abundantly in the first place.

Is this the part where you accuse me of blaming the cartoonists again?

It's condescending and dangerous, David S., to over-explain the root cause of people's behavior until you can firmly blame yourself. Dangerous because every day, people everywhere suffer through trials of humiliation, lack of respect, difficulty in making ends meet, random frustration at the behavior of strangers (if not The Stranger), etc. The vast, vast majority of these people react with decent humanity, taking out whatever anger they have in healthy (and healthy-ish) ways, and we should all be glad about that. To exempt a group of people from this expectation because world-historical forces have been against them is absurd. World-historical forces have been against most people throughout most of time. (And those have been real forces with concrete effects; not tepid political cartoons that are themselves a response to violent threats.)

Then there's the condescension, which is critical in this case. As Dan says, those running rampant over embassies and innocent journalists are telling us exactly what's pissing them off -- the graphic representation of a religious figure. If they wanted to riot and threaten journalists' lives because of the several-generations effects of colonialism, it might be more interesting for those of us who read the New York Review of Books, but it would be a different circumstance. I feel like someone is being threatened for humming a Beach Boys song in public, and some fringe on the left continues to insist that it's really about the price of exported corn.

My take on this anger is that it has nothing to do with colonialism, or even insulting Islam. Slowly, but surely, Western culture is starting to creep into Middle Eastern culture. Women are starting to see what it might be like to have some rights. I think this scares Middle Eastern Muslim men more than anything else. Things are starting to change and there's nothing they can do about it, so, they get angry and resort to violence.

Fascism is alive and well all around the world, but let's not blame a few religious zealots for it. Its origins lie in the posh clubs and mansions of the super-rich. They are the ones who create the divide between rich and poor. The imams simply exploit it to draw deeper religious strength from their communities.

It's been driving me crazy that rich, white commentators in America have been pasting the leaders over there with this label of "inciting violence". Our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are inciting violence. What these guys are doing is what Martin Luther King, Jr. was doing over here, doing their level best to awaken their people to a spiritual crisis in their communities. Their spiritual brethren have been insulted and their prophet lampooned. They have legitimate beef. Now, if more prominent Muslim clerics and officials were to speak out in defense of free speech and against violent responses to cultural offenses, of course this thing wouldn't get so out of hand. But that simply isn't the climate that exists for Muslim leaders right now. They have to represent for their constituents strong respect for the prophet's saintly character. If they let something like this go, they would lose the respect of the people.

Personally, I think it is wrong to directly assault someone's religion in the way that these cartoonists did. The editor of the Danish paper sounds to me like a right-wing jerkoff who just wanted to tell the Muslims in his community to shut up and sit down. Reminds me a lot of the media in Martin's time. You should have seen some of the cartoons about him. Of course, Martin and Coretta were committed to nonviolence and didn't choose to make a federal case out of every offense. But for a world community of Muslims who are terrified that their house will be searched next and that their kids could be kidnapped by secret police and never returned, they don't see the point of nonviolence.

And also, it's important to keep in mind that the vast majority of the demonstrators are nonviolent, just like demonstrators in nearly all demonstrations (speaking as a man who has been to plenty). Many of the deaths were shooting deaths caused by state police or paid security forces shooting into crowds and killing people needlessly. We can't really blame those deaths on the protestors, since they are the result of repressive regimes that don't like public displays of outrage.

I think that if Islam is to achieve the kind of modern character that Christianity has developed (at least in the industrialized world) it has to go through growing pains like this. One by one, leaders in the Islamic world will change their minds and come to respect secularism and the free exchange of religious ideas between cultures. Until then, however, we can expect to have these sorts of outbursts from time to time. It certainly doesn't mean that we have to always call every outburst by Muslims a "clash of civilizations". I mean, honestly. Do we call Christians backward and violent because Fred Phelps harangues the family members of dead gay soldiers? I don't think so.

Let's stop being so frigging poltically incorrect and accept that Muslims are scared sh*tless that we are coming to destroy their entire way of life and steal all their resources. We've seen this movie before, with Africans, African Americans, Latin Americans, Native Americans, Palestinians and so on. Anytime you insert a degree of heightened paranoia by inserting an army of heavily armored shock troops into someone's country or allied nation, there is bound to be some backlash. That's what this is, and it should be understood. I just wish Stranger writers weren't so caught up in their own boutique causes and actually understood that the oppression brown people feel in this world is orders of magnitude worse than the oppression out gay men face in Seattle. I know, everyone's issues are important, but colonialism is sick, it's bloody, and it hurts everyone in different ways.

Thanks for letting me rant, and I hope you guys get a frigging clue and actually embrace the Muslims we have here in our community and maybe even let them speak for themselves once in a while.

Jeff Richardson
Education Director
America in Solidarity
www.americasolidarity.com

Fascism, according to the dictionary:

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

That would be a problem with reading comprehension. Not my fault.

dash over to Beirut and explain to Nasrallah that he’s really upset about colonialism

I've had silly right wingers suggest I go get myself beheaded in Iraq appeasing terrorists. This seems about on par with that kind of playground baiting. I'd prefer to take you seriously, because a part of your argument has merit. Oh, well.