Fiery Words, Cartoon Wars
Sunday, February 12, 2006
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
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It is impossible to justify these caricatures with the pretext of freedom of expression. . . .
We all know that freedom of expression is not unlimited in Western countries, including Denmark. Let someone dare write an article about the Jews, let someone dare publish similar caricatures (about the Jews), and let us see what happens. He will not know where to hide because he will be tormented and not only by the Jews.
-- Commentary in Turkish daily Istanbul Zaman
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We are now confronted with the globalization of hatred . . . following doctors, pharmacists, nurses, lawyers and reporters, the time has come for fanatics without borders.
Only a tiny minority of those who, from Pakistan to Algeria, are demonstrating against the cartoons . . . would be able to locate Denmark on a map. But what does geography matter! In the age of the Internet, everyone is everywhere. . . . And that's the horror.
Those who are fighting free speech in the name of respect for their beliefs scorn the beliefs of others and make it clearly known. Newspapers in Tehran, Damascus and Cairo overflow with vengeful caricatures shamelessly demonizing Orthodox Jews and the Talmud.
-- Alain Finkielkraut in French dailyLibération
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There was a time when funny was something that made you laugh. . . . Funny was just simply funny.
We have come a long way since then. Now funny is personal and painful. . . . Funny is the color of your skin and the language you speak or do not know how to speak. Funny is about being cruel. It is about being personal. Now funny is not funny anymore.
The West is calling the cartoons of Muhammad funny and the exercise of freedom of speech. They are calling it the right of the people to express their thoughts and their feelings on issues they have absolutely no command over. If that is the case then they cannot dictate the outcry of Muslims as unjust. Why is their right to express justified and ours
not? . . .
After all is said, is it not hypocritical and an easy way out to say "We apologize" if we have hurt anyone's feelings? If that is the case then [Osama bin] Laden can send this to the U.S. of A., "Sorry if we hurt anyone's feelings on 9/11. . . . We did not mean to. . . . It was our exercise of freedom of speech and action. . . . " Wonder what the reaction would be then?
-- Nadiya Aamer in Pakistani dailyThe Nation
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Christians in the West are forced to put up with incredible insults every day: Christ depicted as a homosexual, Mary as a prostitute, etc. And if they show the slightest indignation, they are subjected to a hailstorm of criticism from those who invoke the sacrosanct principle of free speech. . . .
All it takes is for a Danish newspaper to publish a few mediocre cartoons of Muhammad and you have half the intellectuals in the Western world discovering the religious sensitivity of Islam, doing penance, excusing the acts of violence by Muslims and reminding us how important it is to try to understand them, they who are taking a direct hit from the West's arrogance. . . .
The hatred that certain Western intellectuals harbor toward their own culture is one of the most fascinating phenomena of the contemporary world. If a civilization is no longer even capable of arousing the instincts necessary for its own survival, perhaps it no longer deserves to live.
-- Luciano Amaral in Portuguese dailyDiario de Noticias
SOURCES: World News Connection, signandsight.com, individual Web sites
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