Friday, February 10, 2006
AN ANALYSIS OF THIS WEEK'S "CARTOON" EVENTS
in an article at The Weekend Australian website where you can see a page of Holocaust "cartoon" replies...
The following passages from the article indicate the level of response, not entirely unexpected:
In Gaza, a Muslim cleric has called for the beheading of those European editors who published the anti-Islamic cartoons, while others are demanding that the hands of the cartoonists be amputated. As the smoke begins to clear - literally - from the extraordinary events, the so-called clash of civilisations between Islam and the West has opened again the gulf in values, between the freedom of expression that is central to Western democracy and to the spread of democracy in Muslim countries, and a religious ban on depiction of prophets, let alone their satirical association with terrorism.
"There are those who would argue that the controversy does not reflect a clash of civilisations," the Jerusalem Post said in an editorial this week. "Yet it is precisely this persistent refusal to acknowledge the obvious that weakens the cause of tolerance and liberty ... tolerance must be a two-way street."
The most glaring inconsistency about the protests is that many Islamic newspapers through the world have for years published highly offensive cartoons about Jews and the Jewish religion. One such cartoon in Egypt's largest daily newspaper, the government-controlled Al-Ahram, depicts laughing Jews feeding Arab children through a grinder and then drinking their blood.
"These are numerous blatant examples of anti-semitism such as this in the Islamic press around the world," says Ted Lapkin of the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council.
Lapkin says the fact that the cartoons were in the public domain for four months before this week's protests "proves just how contrived and calculated and non-spontaneous this has been".
Some interesting questions are posed:
But the protests around the globe this week had more than a whiff of hypocrisy and selectivity about them. "Why are Arab countries recalling their ambassadors and closing their embassies because of 12 cartoons yet they refrained from adopting similar measures in response to the invasion of Iraq?" asks Amir Butler, co-convenor of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network.
"Or why did they not react with similar rage and emotion to the hijab bans imposed in France and Turkey? Or the passage of laws in various Western democracies that pose a far greater threat to the practise of Islam than do these appalling cartoons?"
Those questions lead to a speculation that someone somewhere has an escalation of religious conflict on his or their agenda. That makes me then wonder if the high gas prices and the high heating bills are part of a plan to turn Americans against the oil rich Arab countries? If the violence escalates, so will the homeland security laws and power escalate. One could almost conclude that there are elements in the world that seek to incite war. So who wins? Perhaps ultimately only the devil himself.
It seems to me that the typical Western reaction to the Islamic world's reaction to the cartoons is exemplified by this statement:
"With Life of Brian we were vilified," recalls Monty Python's Terry Gilliam. "Yet Christianity is alive and well. If your religion is so vulnerable that a little bit of disrespect is going to bring it down, it's not worth believing in frankly."
That goes a long way toward explaining why Christians don't become upset to the point of violence when Christianity is vilified.
The article states that "The publication of tasteless cartoons was insensitive", yet I wonder if the surviving relatives of those who died in the World Trade Center bombing would find it insensitive?
"It adds to the sense, which has grown among Muslims since America launched its war on terror ... that their faith itself is being branded as violent."
How do you separate the faith from the terror when Allah is mentioned as a terrorist kills a priest? How do you separate the faith from the terror when you read articles like this one? We may not talk about what we think out of political correctness, but it's rather difficult not to make the association that is being rubbed in our faces.
The closing of the article is the most telling:
The magazine suggests a Danish imam, Abu Laban, "may have started the whole thing by touring the Middle East to drum up outrage, including distributing far more offensive cartoons of the Prophet [as a pig, as a pedophile] which he said had been received by Muslims in Denmark".
But the magazine speculates it "is more likely that Islamist forces of varying stripes have seized the opportunity both to assert their presence and to reinforce the sense of Muslim embattlement that suits their goals.
"Recent electoral advances by Islamists, in Turkey, Iraq and Egypt as well as Palestine, had already emboldened these forces."
Something is being fomented.
I'm the last person to comment on politics. It's simply not my forte. But the signs of the times are pretty hard to ignore.
