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Jewish World Review
Feb. 6, 2006
/ 8 Shevat, 5766
Today censors may be coming for some Mohammed cartoons; tomorrow it is your words and ideas they will silence
By
Jeff Jacoby
WE ARE ALL DANES NOW!
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Hindus consider it sacrilegious to eat meat from cows, so when a Danish supermarket ran a sale on beef and
veal last fall, Hindus everywhere reacted with outrage. India recalled its ambassador to Copenhagen, and Danish
flags were burned in Calcutta, Bombay, and Delhi. A Hindu mob in Sri Lanka severely beat two employees of a
Danish-owned firm, and demonstrators in Nepal chanted: ''War on Denmark! Death to Denmark!"In many
places, shops selling Dansk china or Lego toys were attacked by rioters, and two Danish embassies were
firebombed.
It didn't happen, of course. Hindus may consider it odious to use cows as food, but they do not resort to boycotts,
threats, and violence when non-Hindus eat hamburger or steak. They do not demand that everyone abide by the
strictures of Hinduism and avoid words and deeds that Hindus might find upsetting. The same is true of Christians,
Jews, Buddhists, Mormons: They don't lash out in violence when their religious sensibilities are offended. They
certainly don't expect their beliefs to be immune from criticism, mockery, or dissent.
But radical Muslims do.
The current uproar over cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper
illustrates yet again the fascist intolerance that is at the heart of radical Islam. Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest
daily, commissioned the cartoons to make a point about freedom of speech. It was protesting the climate of
intimidation that had made it impossible for a Danish author to find an illustrator for his children's book about
Mohammed. Muslims regard any depiction of the prophet as sacrilegious, and no artist would agree to illustrate
the book for fear of being harmed by Muslim extremists. Appalled by this self-censorship, Jyllands-Posten invited
Danish artists to submit drawings of Mohammed, and published the 12 it received.
Most of the pictures are tame to the point of dullness, especially compared to the biting editorial cartoons that
routinely appear in US and European newspapers. A few of them link Mohammed to Islamist terrorism — one
depicts him with a bomb in his turban, while a second shows him in Heaven, pleading with newly arrived suicide
terrorists: ''Stop, stop! We have run out of virgins!" Others focus on the threat to free speech: In one, a sweating
artist sits at his drawing board, nervously sketching Mohammed, while glancing over his shoulder to make sure
he's not being watched. Some make no point at all — one simply portrays a man walking with his donkey in the
desert.
That anything so mild could trigger a reaction so crazed — riots, death threats, kidnappings, flag-burnings —
speaks volumes about the chasm that separates the values of the civilized world from those in too much of the
Islamic world. Freedom of the press, the marketplace of ideas, the right to skewer sacred cows, the ability to
disagree with what you say while firmly defending your right to say it: Militant Islam knows none of this. And if the
jihadis get their way, it will be swept aside everywhere by the censorship and intolerance of sharia.
Here and there, some brave Muslim voices have cried out against the book-burners. The Jordanian newspaper
Shihan published three of the cartoons. ''Muslims of the world, be reasonable," implored Shihan's editor, Jihad
al-Momani, in an editorial. ''What brings more prejudice against Islam — these caricatures or pictures of a
hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up
during a wedding ceremony in Amman?" But within hours Momani was out of a job, fired by the paper's owners
after the Jordanian government threatened legal action.
He wasn't the only editor sacked last week. In Paris, Jacques LeFranc of the daily France Soir was also fired
after running the Mohammed cartoons. The paper's owner, an Egyptian Copt named Raymond Lakah, issued a
craven and Orwellian statement expressing "regrets to the Muslim community" and offering LeFranc's head as a
gesture of ''respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual." But the France Soir staff defended
their decision to publish the drawings in a stalwart editorial. ''The best way to fight against censorship is to prevent
censorship from happening," they wrote. ''A fundamental principle guaranteeing democracy and secular society is
under threat. To say nothing is to retreat."
Across the continent, nearly two dozen other newspapers have joined in defending that principle. While Islamist
clerics proclaim an ''international day of anger" or declare that ''the war has begun," leading publications in
Norway, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have reprinted the
Danish cartoons. But there has been no comparable show of backbone in America, where (as of Friday) only the
New York Sun has had the fortitude to the run some of the drawings.
Make no mistake: This story is not going away, and neither is the Islamofascist threat. The freedom of speech
we take for granted is under attack, and it will vanish if it is not bravely defended. Today the censors may be
coming for some unfunny Mohammed cartoons, but tomorrow it is your words and ideas they will silence. Like it or
not, we are all Danes now.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
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© 2006, Boston Globe
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