An interesting article which gave me more to think about.
Mocking Muhammad
Published February 8, 2006
For all the uproar they have caused around the globe, the 12 cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad commissioned by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten are about as juvenile as the stunt that produced them.
Muhammad with devil horns.
Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
Muhammad greets a band of suicide bombers at the entrance to heaven with the words, "Stop, stop, we've run out of virgins."
It's not surprising that Muslims, who believe any artistic rendering of the prophet is blasphemous, were offended. Offending them seems to have been the point of the exercise. The editor of the paper invited cartoonists to submit drawings of Muhammad to challenge what he said was a climate of self-censorship.
Angry Muslims demanded an apology. What they got was a simplistic defense of the right to free expression.
Newspapers across Europe reprinted the cartoons as a sign of solidarity. The German paper Die Welt printed the bomb-in-a-turban drawing on its front page and asserted defiantly that in free societies, "there is a right to blasphemy." The daily France Soir republished the drawings under the headline, "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God."
All of this indignant posturing overlooks the fact that nobody's stopping editors from publishing whatever they wish. Freedom of speech, after all, means, freedom from government sanction, not freedom from angry reactions by your readers. Petitioned by Muslim groups who wanted the newspapers prosecuted, the governments said they could neither control nor apologize for the actions of a free press.
The governments held to this position even as the flag burnings and boycotts of Danish goods escalated to mass demonstrations and the torching of embassies in Syria and Lebanon. Several Muslim countries recalled their ambassadors from Denmark, as if the Danish government were somehow to blame for the cartoons.
Many Muslims undoubtedly fail to see that distinction because their own governments dictate what is and isn't published. Some of those same governments aren't troubled by content that is offensive to other groups, regularly permitting or even encouraging the publication of anti-Semitic material.
In some Arab countries the message is controlled so tightly that U.S. officials are openly suspicious of, for example, the "spontaneous" protests in Syria, in which marchers chanted slogans against Americans and Jews on their way to set the Danish embassy ablaze.
The editor of the Danish paper that started it all says he's stunned by the response. Yes, the violence is a stunning response.
Yet, those who aren't offended by the cheesy cartoons can still be dismissive of the various papers' protestations that some greater good was served by publishing them. It's arrogant and disingenuous to claim the high moral ground for insulting an entire religion just because you can.
The Danish paper says it is sorry for hurting feelings but defends its right to publish the cartoons. American newspapers, including the Tribune, support that position. Most, though, including this one, have chosen not to print the drawings themselves. Editors here and elsewhere decided the story could be told without publishing images that many readers would find deeply offensive.
Yes, we have the right to mock Muhammad, Jesus Christ, anyone. But with rights come responsibilities. "Just because a society has almost unlimited freedom of expression," cartoonist Garry Trudeau told the San Francisco Chronicle, "doesn't mean we should ever stop thinking about its consequences in the real world."
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Originally Posted by lizbud
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