Million Cartoon March 2006

Has the Muslim world really gone that mad? Do a billion Muslims really want to kill a few insensitive cartoonists because they violated their religious sensibilities, however dear they may be?

Luckily, the answer to both questions is no. In fact, what some Islamic scholars are calling "cartoongate"--the publication of insulting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in more than half a dozen European papers--actually reveals more about the state of the Western, and particularly European fears of Islam, than it does about Islam today.


Originally published last September in a Danish newspaper, the depictions of Muhammad in the cartoons include some very insulting images indeed: Muhammad with a turban-shaped bomb on his head; Muhammad at the Pearly Gates informing newly arrived suicide bombers that Heaven has "run out of virgins" (an allusion to the 72 virgins that supposedly await martyrs in Heaven); Muhammad menacingly holding a sword with two veiled women behind him, and so on. The images were commissioned because the paper's editor was having trouble finding a cartoonist willing to caricature the Prophet, depictions of whom are prohibited according to Muslim tradition.......

And as the latest protests in Beirut make clear, the reasons behind them often involve issues of class, politics, and religious identity, as the consulates are often located in wealthy neighborhoods where the countries' elites and wealthy foreigners live, and which feature expensive shops far beyond the means of most protesters. And the organizers of the protests are most often groups looking to gain political capital by challenging weak governments at a moment of heightened tension......

Of course, Muslim newspapers have long depicted Jews in similarly hateful ways. Perhaps the uproar will lead them to reconsider the practice--although considering Iran has just announced that its leading newspaper will run a series of cartoons satirising the Holocaust, the chances are perhaps not that great.
Ironically, the same day that editorial pages of American newspapers began criticizing Muslims for their lack of respect for freedom of speech, peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested and removed from her seat at the State of the Union speech (she was invited by Representative Lynn Woolsey), simply for the "crime" of wearing a t-shirt under her jacket that listed the number of dead US soldiers in Iraq as of last Tuesday--2,245. A security guard saw the number on the shirt, screamed "Protester!" (perish the thought!) into his walkie talkie, and out she went. Nary a word of protest was uttered by the US media.
For most of the Muslim world, America's willingness to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis and see killed thousands of our own children for a war launched on a series of half-truths and outright prevarications (which almost no one in our own journalistic establishment had the courage to expose, despite clear evidence at the time) is as "crazy" as their willingness to boycott, or even threaten violence against Westerners, because of a few religiously insulting cartoons......
Animation Site.