DEPT. OF CLASHING CIVILIZATIONS

Fiery Words, Cartoon Wars

The flames of outrage over the now-infamous cartoons of the prophet Muhammad burned high last week -- and not just on the streets, but on newspaper pages and Web sites, too. Here's a sampling of the scorching rhetoric that emanated from the press in both Europe and the Muslim world:

I feel offended.

Zealots are pinning veils on the faces of my sisters in Afghanistan and Pakistan and are busy hanging women, homosexuals, adulterers and nonbelievers. . . . I demand that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Indonesia and Egypt apologize to me. Otherwise I am unfortunately forced to threaten, beat up, kidnap or behead their citizens. Because I am somewhat sensitive about my cultural identity. . . .

Videos show journalists, truck drivers and NGO workers having their throats slit or their heads chopped off. Jews see themselves represented as cannibals and pigs, Western women as decadent sluts. Apolitical engineers have to fear for their lives. . . .

I demand that all newspaper editors in chief and television broadcasters in the Islamic world apologize to me, because they do nothing to prevent these obscenities. . . .

In the self-referential world of God or Allah or Yahweh warriors, feelings are increasingly used as weapons and honored as the highest authority. Readily summoned, merciless.

-- Sonia Mikich in German dailyDie Tageszeitung

* * *

It is impossible to justify these caricatures with the pretext of freedom of expression. . . .