Muhammad Cartoons and Nazi Sympathizers, Where I Stand
February 20, 2006
I’ve held off on talking about the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad - may peace be upon him - that have set off such anger in the Muslim world because it’s taken me a while to figure out exactly what my stance is on the whole thing. But today’s news that an Austrian court had sentenced a man to three years in prison for claiming that there were no gas chambers used during the Holocaust helped me to clarify my thinking.
The cartoons depicting Muhammad were deeply disrespectful of Islam because of their flagrant disregard for the religious injunction against depicting the Prophet. The claims of British “historian” / Nazi sympathizer David Irving are deeply disrespectful of the Jewish community because of their flagrant disregard for the atrocities committed against us by the Nazis during World War II. Jews and Muslims alike have the right to be offended, furious and hurt - and I feel all these things about both pieces of trash.
But that doesn’t mean that those who issued the offensive material in the first place should be punished. David Irving should not be going to jail. The people at Jyllands-Posten (no link for a reason) should not have been fired for their publishing of the images. There should be no rioting over this issue.
That doesn’t mean that people don’t have a right to be angry. Sometimes freedom of speech angers us. I may not like what neo-Nazi groups or anti-abortion zealots have to say - but I am still committed to preserving their right to say it. And that means allowing people like David Irving and the editors at Jyllands-Posten to continue to spout hateful, insensitive and mean-spirited words and images into the world.
I think that people the world over have a right to boycott Danish products, and to protest peacefully against the cartoons. That is their exercise of free speech - a rule that protects the offender and the offended alike - which should be protected above all else.
Your position is reasonable. But I think the issue goes beyond people having the right to be offended and people having the right to offend.
The rioting and violence that has occurred and is being called for by imams creates a different dimension to this issue. People are just as outraged at what many perceive to be a complete lack of a sense of proportion of the matter, and rightfully, ask, where that same outrage is when suicide bombers killed innocent women, children and elderly people in streets, in mosques, at funerals.
I think that there is a need on both sides for moderation. People need to stop wrapping the “freedom of speech” flag around themselves while all the while rubbing salt in a wound, and others need to stop calling for 12th Century jihad and fatwas in the 21st Century. The violence does nothing to advance anyone’s respect for a people or religion, just as the cartoons posted all over the world are hardly going to win the battle of words.