Back of the Envelope

I wasn't going to post any of the cartoons which are causing all the mess in the Middle East. As a Christian, I'm often on the receiving end of all sorts of mockery in "brave" artwork, so I'm rarely in the mood to mock anyone else's beliefs. I tend to think I'm usually pretty respectful of anyone who has strong convictions, although I occasionally get sharp tongued when I'm debating someone. But the fact that I do debate them is a sign of respect, and in many ways so is my sharp tongue--I assume they are adult enough to take it. All the chaos in the Middle East made me curious about the cartoons, so I looked them up, and found that Michelle Malkin had the complete set. Most of them aren't very good, so I wouldn't post them on my blog anyway. The best one is this one (I borrowed the image from Michelle Malkin):


I thought it was funny. None of the other ones are any more insulting than this one, although none of them are as good either. Are these mildly off-putting and even more mildly funny cartoons why the Islamic world is in flames? The simple answer is no. A lot of the protests are remarkably small affairs, only a few hundred people showing up in countries where the government handles spontaneous protest with machinegun fire, so you know that there's nothing spontaneous about the protests in Iran and Syria. In places where the protests are more spontaneous, many of them have never seen the cartoons, just heard their Imams' description of them, filled with the usual hate-mongering hyperbole, when there aren't any outright lies. But worst of all, when the Danish Islamic group took the comics on the road in the hopes of raising some outrage in the Middle East, they included some cartoons which had never appeared in the newspaper. Cartoons and photos showing Mohammed as a pig and a demonic pedophile. According to an article quoted at Captain's Quarters, the extra cartoons came from Weekendavisen and the photos came from anonymous hate mail sent to Muslims in Denmark. So it looks like the various sources are being conflated, and that the relatively mild cartoons published by the newspaper which is taking all the heat, Jyllands-Posten, really isn't the source of the illustrations which are causing the outrage.

I haven't said much on the cartoons which are causing such an outcry in the Muslim world. I have some thoughts of my own, but I've been pretty busy writing, so instead I'll just borrow someone else's, namely John O'Sullivan:

As riots spread through the Islamic world, the British foreign secretary, the U.S. State Department, the U.N. secretary general, various responsible Muslim organizations and many commentators in Europe and America are calling for restraint on both sides.

What both sides would those be? Well, one side has published a handful of cartoons, arguably blasphemous and certainly insulting to the Prophet Mohammed, and the other side has burned embassies, taken hostages, murdered three people suspected of being Christians and/or Danes, shot at Danish soldiers helping children in Iraq, marched through London with banners threatening further bomb attacks on the city, and attacked and beaten people whom they suspected of some vague connection with, well, with Europe or Christianity.

Suppose both sides listen to these calls for restraint. What would happen? I suppose that one side would stop burning embassies and murdering people and the other side would no longer publish cartoons to which the murderers might object. That would mean the murderers had obtained their objective and the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons had been defeated in its campaign against the unofficial Islamist censorship that in recent years has spread across Europe by murder and intimidation.

As uncomfortable as it is, he certainly has a point.

Update (2/10/2006): Link fixed.