Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh is asking a question that has been haunting me for the past couple of days. He wonders:
"A question to my fellow Muslims and Arabs: isn’t this picture more of an insult to Islam than the silly J-Posten cartoons? And don’t you think it can easily be an inspiration for similar future cartoons? Just 2 innocent questions here."
With all due respect, I have to agree with Big Pharaoh here. While I still regard the cartoons as offensive — exhibiting a terrible stereotype of millions of Muslims out there — some of the reactions to the cartoons, including, let’s see — the storming and torching of embassies, throwing grenades onto the grounds of a French embassy and harassing European nationals, and more — have caused more harm to the image of Muslims and Arabs than the actual publication of the caricatures did. Anyway, like fellow Jordanian blogger Naseem, I’m ‘sick of the word cartoon.’ Let’s hope this is the last post I write about this particular topic.
Arash, it seems Iran does care:
Don, when are you going to understand there is ONLY ONE ISLAM. You can’t pick it apart to fit your whims. Why don’t we explore the reactions by some in the US? The pictures on the web of men taking dumps on the Quran. Men flushing it down the toilet.
Is that supposed to be helpful? Can I say “not America as a whole, but violent, ignorant, paranoid, racist, nuke-the-rest-of-the-world America”?
What’s the difference between you and the people in the picture? I see none. Well, okay, maybe you wear a white hood.
Iran could care less Kagehi, reactions has been sparse and slow to come from people and even the government. It seems to have an added layer of veiled nationalistic pride for Arabs. As such, Iran is relatively muted. Now if they’d cartooned Muhammad and mislabeled Persian Gulf in the same caricature…
Natasha, I have posted a few comments on Big Pharaoh’s blog regarding the cartoons, the sorts of reactions we see in the muslim world, and (most critically) the startling reaction of liberal-democratic western europeans – they seem far more enraged by the muslims pictured above than by the events in Madrid or London.
And I think this is critical for the muslim world to recognize – we are at the brink of something really awful galvanizing in the west as a political reaction to small provocations in the muslim world.
Just imagine how bad it could get, and how quickly it would happen, were something large and very bad to take place in europe. Any serious reflection on the propensity of europeans to slaughter each other in wholesale quantities, repeatedly, within living memory, would tell you that it could happen again. And perhaps happen more easily if the someones being slaughtered don’t live nextdoor.
Anyone who cares: please ask your muslim friends and colleagues to spread moderation. The world really poised at the edge of a cliff. A bad sneeze could ruin us all, much less another bomb or airplane.
I am sick of uneducated americans.
I am sick of uneducated muslims.
I am sick of people in need of the crutches of a doctrine so that they can limp through their lives in self inflicted blindness. Unfortunately, so are most americans and muslims. The former, because they have created an evil “meritocracy” that has managed to elevate the “winner takes all” and “survival of the fittest” to first, second, and only commandments, and the latter because they still live in the 1400 in dire poverty and misery.
I cannot believe that because of those who are blind the entire world is marching backwards with giant steps, like we never had the Enlightenment and we are not about to harness the most abound source of energy that we will ever need.
I only wish that god forgive the blindness of those who seek blindness and want the rest of us to live in it.
That photo you posted is exactly what the cartoons are about – not Islam as a whole, but violent, ignorant, paranoid, suicide-bomb Islam. A drawing made from that photo would fit perfectly with the other 12.
This is just proving the point they are trying to make, don’t you think?
I have erad a lot of the other side’s blogs and it was not a fun journey, I am putting the link here if Natasha allows me ..
http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/2/18533.html
you can read some of the captured reactions they had on the current situation if you are interested ..
Thank you
Sadly, given the fact that I doubt we are going to see a stupidity vaccine any time soon and the great lengths some in the ME seem to go to remember every real and imaginary slight that ever happens to them, I suspect we will still be talking about this for years, if not more likely centuries. In fact, I can imagine the headlines already:
Febuary 16, 2306 – “Denmark and Iran go to war over 2005 cartoons depicting Mohammed!”
Sad things is, unless things change a lot, 300 years from now someone might read this and start looking at everything else I wrote, thinking I was another Nostrodamus. Not just because it doesn’t currently look unlikely, but because there are bound to still be idiots 300 years from now trying to shoehorn the ancient equivalent of tabloid journalism’s astrology page to fit events that have nothing to do with the rediculous nonsense in them. Then again, maybe I am just being extraordinarilly cynical, given the current trend to promote stupidity in the US and the existing stupidity in so much of the rest of the world.
This is stupid and reprehensible. Big Pharoah doesn’t pose the question correctly, though.
But yes, this is insulting to Muslims. Not surprised. In some places they were calling on bin Laden to bomb Denmark.
Education, education, education.
Its amazing how the “message of Amman’ for love, tolerance and forgivness to show the ‘true’ meaning of Islam has collapsed in front of the first triall . Even HMK Abdullah is furious and says in front of Americans he can not forgive such ‘ offense’.