Because student papers are on the forefront of this, the Danish Mohammed cartoon story has some legs for my group. Just last weekend I saw some kid at a bar in Williamsburg with a "We're all Danish Now" t-shirt. Over the top sentiment? Yeah, but it shows people care.
In trying to think through the big whoop over those cartoons, I've been seeking parallels. The first step is understanding what's going on.
Will, it's clear that the cartoons are blasphemous by doctrine. Unlike Christianity, which is replete with images of Christ, Islam prohibits pictures of the prophet as a sort of idolatry. There's a whole lot of high quality art from Islamic history that's purely abstract -- all about patterns, carpets, etc -- and that tradition stems from this prohibition. So there's that.
Further, some of the cartoons are clearly defamatory and designed to inflame tension. There's no other reason to depict Mohammed with devil horns, or as a mean-looking bearded dude with a bomb for a head than to increase tension.
Still, on principle I think I side with the first-amendment crowd, although I also think painting it as a "brave" stand is pathetic and masturbatory. I'd say it's more like taking the stand that, yeah, the KKK can rally. The right thing to do, but not really something to celebrate in and of itself. Certainly not a great moral victory.
Here in the US, any "censorship" of these cartoons has been self-imposed, which really amounts to deciding what's worth publishing. Some say this is cowardly, but how do they feel about publishing all those other Abu Ghraib photos? It's tricky, innit? I think it's a fair choice to say that the cartoons (or those photos) aren't worth the time and effort to print. As long as the state isn't preventing them from being published, the market can sort of have its way. Others can disagree.
It's also clear that opportunists in the Islamic world have been using the cartoons as propaganda to enflame tensions. If I were a Right-Winger, I might make some noise about "aiding and abetting the enemy," by serving up this softball, but I supposed if I were a winger, I'd have the forethought to keep my powder dry for the next time Howard Dean calls bullshit on the president or something.
The point is, in Europe, there's already widespread discontent among the Muslim populations, and the cartoons have been an effective catalyst for mobilizing the discontented. The base grievance stems both from geopolitics (Palestine, Iraq, etc), and from the conditions of everyday life (unemployment, education, lack of life chances). It's also worth noting that this kind of dynamic is not outside historical norms for immigrant populations. Sometimes they get upset and riot. It's really not unprecedented or anything.
Back to parallels, I'm reminded of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, a play that suggested that Jesus was a homosexual. That's on a similar scale of offensiveness, I think. I remember the protests in NYC in 1998 where the play premiered. I counter-protested in the support of art, and the fundamental christians who bussed in to rally in front to the theater were a pretty angry lot. They didn't cause any property damage, but this was America, and were about 100 NYPD officers there with barricades set up to keep the two camps apart.
Now, in the Middle East -- where embassies were burned, etc -- the West is generally viewed as an unwelcome occupier, a hard outside power, a military force. The stakes are higher for folks, and violence is more a part of everyday political life. Regime change is often accompanied by rockets and bombs, as we all well know.
To get a decent parallel, we'd have to imagine if, say, Oklahoma were ruled by effete intellectuals from far-off New York with little understanding or respect for local culture. Their business interests, which offered no real opportunities to the local plebs, would protected by paramilitary forces. Oklahomans would be prohibited from traveling to New York (or wherever) and forced to live out their lives within their home state, as the far-off elites lived of the fat of their land and laughed at their backwards, christ-loving ways.
Do you think, under those circumstances, that some really radical right wing Oklahomans might try to smash some of the property of the elite intellectual state? Americans in far less dire conditions have already shown their willingness to bomb medical facilities that provide abortions and to assassinate doctors directly. Others have destroyed entire buildings, killing 100s, motivated by little more than ethnic pride and a dislike for the government, a mixture of sentiment I hardly think we've got a monopoly over.
I really don't think it's so hard to fathom the rage of a hardcore Syrian Muslim when his Imam whips out these cartoons. Certainly no harder than it was to fathom the rage of those people I saw outside the theater in 1998. That doesn't mean I endorse the burning of the Danish embassy (I don't), but given the parallels in our own country and culture, this hardly seems like an irreconcilable "Clash of Civilizations."
I think there are radicals on both sides who are spoiling for a fight. They want this clash. They want us to fear and loath one another from afar, because this is quite literally the source of their power. I think they're dangerous and wrongheaded. They're war pigs. We acquiesce to or ignore them at our collective peril.
