Published 09 February 06

International Desk

By Abigail R. Esman
World Defense Review columnist

Cartoon protest hypocrisy

Last November, we were among the first to report on growing unrest in the Muslim community in response to a group of cartoons published in Denmark's Jyllands Posten, including one in which Mohammad sports a turban resembling a bomb. Depictions of the Prophet are considered blasphemous in Islam.

Now, as has since been more widely reported, the furor has spread, once more pitting the West against the Muslim world, once more showing that the pen can be as mighty as the sword. In Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Jordan; Muslim groups have gone from boycotting Danish products to issuing fatwas and threatening to blow up European headquarters in Gaza. And Britain's The Independent reports, "At the Omari mosque in Gaza City, 9,000 worshippers were told those behind the cartoons should have their heads cut off."

In response, newspapers across Europe – and some Internet sites – have joined in solidarity to republish the offending drawings, leading, in turn, to more violence: Palestinian gunmen kidnapped a German tourist on February 2 in Nablus in response to the publication of the cartoons in de Welt (The German was later released.), while Danish flags were burned across the region. In Bangladesh, CNN reported, thousands of citizens took to the streets. Syrians have now torched both the Danish and Norwegian embassies. And back in Denmark, bomb threats have twice forced the Jyllands Posten's editors to evacuate their offices.

"It is a matter of free speech," newspaper editors have declared.

"It is a matter of respect," snap Muslim leaders in retort.

Respect?

Over the past few days, Dyab Abou Jahjah, leader of the Europe's Arab European League, has commissioned anti-Semitic cartoons for the organization's web site (the site has now been closed down, but images and comments are temporarily available at arabeuropean.blogspot.com).

A UPI report quotes Jahjah: "I am for the absolute freedom of speech everywhere, and that's why I call upon every free soul among Arabs to use the Danish flag as a substitute for toilet paper ... [and] illustrate every wall with graffiti making fun of everything Europe holds as holy: dancing rabbis on the carcasses of Palestinian children, hoax gas-chambers built in Hollywood in 1946 with Steven Spielberg's approval stamp, and Aids spreading fagots [sic]."

The extraordinary thing is that even from the start, the target of rage has not been limited to Denmark; some days before other European media carried the cartoons, bomb threats were made against Swedish and Norwegian consulates in the Middle East.

Time for an English lesson, I want to say: here is where the word "discriminate" can be a good thing – discriminating from, not discriminating against. Sweden is not Denmark. Norway is not Denmark. Just as Egypt is not Iraq. Iraq is not Iran. Iran is not Afghanistan. Afghanistan not Indonesia.

But then it occurs to me that none of this really matters. Denmark isn't the issue; the West is. Just as jobs and poverty were not really the issue in Paris, or American affluence the reason for 9/11.

I am reminded of a conversation I had once with a scholar of Islamic studies who, to my amazement, defended the United States" use of torture in its handling of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Iraq. "If nothing else," I said, "it only makes them angrier."

His reply was chilling: "they're that angry anyway."

Fact is, the Muslim world has promoted anti-Jewish propaganda in its media for decades, at the least - more examples than you can begin to count are cited by the Middle East Media Research Institute alone (Protocols of Zion, anyone?). Anti-Americanism also increasingly infects the Middle-Eastern press, according to a report by Adel Darwish and The Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA).

Moreover, as Jihad Mamani, the courageous editor of a Jordanian weekly who also published the Danish cartoons has noted, "What creates more antipathy towards Islam? These caricatures? Or photos of kidnappers who slice the throats of their victims before the camera, and a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding in Amman?"

Perhaps when Dutch Parliamentarian and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali declared that Islam desperately needs a Voltaire, she was mistaken. What Islam really needs, it seems to me, is its very own Woody Allen.

But lacking this, its followers turn to rage. And what is particularly striking about that fury is the fact that these are the very people who have, on occasion, gone to court for the right to walk the streets chanting rhymes the likes of "Hamas, Hamas, All Jews To the Gas" and sing songs with lyrics about killing an apostate. And we in the West defend them in that right. At worst, we pen editorials decrying them: we say things like, "We wish they'd stop." But we do not burn their flags, or use the pulpits of the houses where we worship to inspirit their beheadings. We do not threaten to blow their children up.

Frankly, it astounds me that there has not been a greater outcry in America against these acts – even coincident with public understanding and compassion for those who have felt offended. It is, after all, possible to disagree without killing, dissent without blood.

Or are we in the West forgetting that, as well?

I have, over the years, known good, kind, generous Muslims, the kinds of people you treasure having as a friend – and fortunately, such people count for the majority (A Palestinian friend described the Muslim response to the cartoons as "barbaric, and quite frankly, embarrassing." In an e-mail, she added, "We are trying to convince the world that Islam is not inherently violent, and that it is an intellectual religion that is adaptable to the Modern age, and this is how we behave? By issuing death threats to journalists and destroying embassies? It's utterly insane."

But at the same time, "Islam and the Prophet Mohammed call for the use of violence against non-believers," convicted Muslim terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri told a Dutch court last week. "If anyone tells you Mohammed was a pacifist, he's lying. Bloodshed is unavoidable in this 'clash of civilizations.'"

Given the current situation, one could almost start to wonder.

— Abigail R. Esman is an award-winning author-journalist who divides her time between New York and The Netherlands. In addition to her column in World Defense Review, her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Salon.com, Esquire, Vogue, Glamour, Town & Country, The Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic and many others. She is currently working on a book about Muslim extremism and democracy in the West.

Abigail R. Esman can be reached at esman@worlddefensereview.com.

Visit Esman on the web at abigailesman.com.

© 2006 Abigail R. Esman

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