Newsflash: Cartoons DO Influence Behavior

The cartoon is NOT about Mohammed. It is not even a depiction of Mohammed. It is a representation of extremist perversion of the prophet: Mohammed is not a suicide bomber, nor does Allah countenance that kind of brutality. Islam is about "submission," but it is not about submitting to God through fear or threat of injury. That sort of spiritual abuse is what is depicted in the cartoons that have set people rampaging.

Thus is my opinion on the now infamous political cartoons printed in Danish and Norwegian newspapers that have fomented Muslim outrage. Unfortunately, it is outrage built on misunderstanding, on obtuseness. It is a rage that lacks nuance. For this is not about disrespect for Mohammed, but about respecting him properly as a religious leader who must have known that force never produces obedience and compliance. For the Mohammed the Danes know is a man of wisdom and goodness; he is not a bombmaker, nor is he a fatalist. Thus, their caricature of "Mohammed" was not a caricature of the prophet at all. It was a rebuke against religious distortion.

One commentator stated that the cartoons represent "provocative and arrogant European disdain for Muslim sensitivities about the prophet Muhammad." He is wrong. It is about appreciating the REAL Muhammad, and not the one who kills children on a school bus.

There is an intellectual blindness, even hubris, to all this. I heard a reporter suggest last night that this all represents the West's inability to understand the Arab World. British religion commentator Karen Armstrong opined that "I think it was criminally irresponsible to publish these cartoons. They have been an absolute gift to the extremists - it shows that the West is incurably Islamophobic. It sends a very bad message." Both viewpoints are wrong. The former is wrong largely because it ignores the much more credible and obvious point: Islam refuses to understand the Western world (even refusing to assimilate and integrate in those countries to which Muslims have immigrated, with France and Denmark serving as examples, in part). The latter is wrong because Ms. Armstrong misunderstands the cartoons: they are not Islamophobic at all. They are critical of hate, the hate that is believed Mohammed would not endorse. Furthermore, it is the Islamofascists who are phobic, fearful of the weakness of their control over others (particularly those of us in the West) and the potential weakness of their faith.

Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the whole issue "a growing global crisis." Interesting. It's a "global" crisis. Not an American one, or a French one, or a Christian one. It's a global crisis. And Rasmussen wondered if the world's governments could rise up and stand strong against it. Wow. Alarmist? Perhaps.

Here's a related op-ed by the New York Times that was subsequently shredded in this telling editorial by a Rocky Mountain News columnist. But here is the most interesting op-ed of the day, written by a female Muslim. Engaging stuff. I hope you find them all interesting.

(I am under the weather, so forgive this hasty post.)

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.