In Palestine protestig about 12 cartoons is apparently more important than ensuring continued EU aid.
Ten Palestinians armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers rallied outside the European Union headquarters in Gaza City and fired in the air, demanding an apology and saying Danes and Norwegians there would be at risk of attack.
“We warn the citizens of the above-mentioned governments to take this warning seriously because our groups are ready to implement it across the Gaza Strip,” one of the gunmen said, reading from a prepared statement.
Militants set fire to Norwegian and Danish flags and painted a footprint on the Danish flag, a severe insult for Arabs.
Thousands of protesters in the West Bank town of Qalqilya marched through the streets, demanding an apology and burning Denmark’s flag, a white cross on a red background.
Militant groups linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction issued a statement saying, “We call upon all Danish citizens in (Palestine) to leave immediately.”
Hamas, the militant Islamic group which won Palestinian elections last week, urged Islamic countries to take “deterrent steps against idiotic Danish behavior”.
“We call on Muslim nations to boycott all Danish products because the Danish people supported the hateful racism under the pretext of freedom of expression,” it said in a statement.
Congratulations! It is possible that Hamas will indeed put an end to kleptocracy and corruption in the Palestinian Authority but that will be because there is nothing to steal. I may at some point have a rant about the Palestinians, a group of people for whom I have much sympathy but whose leaders seem determined to squader every single piece of good will they might inherit, but this is about the cartoons.
Currently the stereotypical muslim, as perceived by many in Europe and America, is a fanatical suicidal maniac who insists on keeping his wife locked up and who would cheerfully execute anyone who disagrees with his viewpoint that Islam is best. The reaction to the cartoons by protesters in Palestine, Pakistan or Iraq where they threaten death to the cartoonsist only reinforces this stereotype.
Libya and Saudia Arabia, those bastions of tolerance and democracy (ha ha), with their withdrawal of ambassadors etc. are just as bad. Even the most virulent Bush hater will find it impossible to come up with examples of the evil US president insisting that newspapers in other countries stop publishing negative cartoons about hum, the USA or Christ. The Pope frequently criticises the makers of movies or art that depicts Jesus in unflattering or insulting ways but he doesn't request that the government of the country where the artist lives issue some sort of statement condemning it, neither do fundamentalist Christians in America attempt to get their government to do the same thing.
I am all in favour of the Islamic world boycotting Denmark, if that is their desire. I think it will do more harm to the Islamic world than to Denmark but boycotts and sanctions are precisely the sort of argument that takes the Islamic world away from its stereotypical image. Unfortunately the idiots who threaten death to passing Danes only serve to reinforce it.
I have debated taking down my cartoon page a few times because I accept that many Muslims do find the cartoons offensive but I'm not going to because it seems to be doing an excellent job of showing whether or not even the sorts of educated Muslims who have access to the Internet (and would therefore one assumes be more understanding) actually meet the stereotype above or not. I am pleased to say that many comments on this blog in numerous threads are positive but there are a significant number (as well as private emails) which are crudely insulting and threatening.
There are two other ways that the cartoons help confirm stereotypical intolerance and illogic. The first is that - as in the quote above - the cartoons are depicted as RACIST. I'm willing to give a certain amount of slack to people whose mother tomgue is not English but these cartoons are clearly not racist and the claim has been repeated too many times for this to be an accident. Racism might involve (for example) calling Arabs Towel-heads or worse. Insulting a religion that is shared by people of all races is not racist and by insinuating that it is the Arab Muslims do, it seems to me, confirm the stereotype that Arabs consider other sorts of Muslim less important.
The second point is that reacting to insults with death threats comes across as childish. The response to an insult should be disdain and possibly, if it is worth it, an insult in kind. A threat to kill the person making the insult seems to show a mentality that has barely developed beyond that of the playground bully. As a general point Islam needs to accept that it is permissable to deny that Allah is god, that Muhammed was his prophet and that the Koran is divinely inspired. Once Islam as a whole punishes its own who attempt to enforce their beliefs on others the rest of us will consider it to be a mature religion that deserves respect. Until that point all the jumping up and down and complaining does is confirm the stereotypes mentioned above.
Related to that is the intolerance and hypocrisy. Saudi Arabia effectively bans all other religions than Islam and even persecutes non Sunni Muslims. Pakistani extremists and the Taleban in Afghanistan do much the same. Even relatively moderate regimes like Tunisia or Egypt censor their citizens internet access and make it hard to get permission to buld a church or to proselytise. If you want people in the west to treat your religion with respect you need to show a bit of tolerance yourselves, otherwise you sound like spoiled children. And can expect to be treated like them.