Combs Spouts Off

Matt Donegan is lucky that he only lost his job. If he’d made hate-filled, bigoted comments about Muslims instead of blacks and women, he might have been forced to go into hiding in fear for his life, like the Danish cartoonists who dared draw pictures of Mohammed. And, no, their depictions were nowhere near as crude and insulting as Donegan’s blogging — but judge for yourself [Update: See small versions of the cartoons below] (cruder, more insulting cartoons of Mohammed were circulated in the Middle East, but they were never published — they were fakes created by Danish Muslim clerics apparently in order to inflame Muslims).

HNN blogger Judith Klinghoffer has lots of terrific posts about this issue — just keep scrolling.

Hamas has indeed begun to moderate. Judith pointed to this Reuters story from Gaza, which reported that some clerics were calling for "severing the heads of those responsible" or "the slaughter of those who harmed Islam and the Prophet," but Hamas supporters suggested a less extreme solution:

At a rally organized by the Islamic militant group Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections last week, as many as 50,000 protesters called for the cartoonists to be punished.

‘Let the hands that drew (the cartoons) be severed,’ they chanted.

To put Muslim outrage over these unflattering and mocking, but mild cartoons into perspective, Middle East media analyst Tom Gross gathered together some Arab cartoon depictions of Jews, Americans, and other non-Muslims, but his site is currently unavailable because he’s exceeded his bandwidth limit. Fortunately, Silent Running has made Tom’s 15 Arab cartoons available for your revulsion; this is what disgusting, hate-filled cartoons really look like. If you want to thank Silent Running, go to their Cafe Press store and order some "Buy Danish" gear.

Neal Boortz made up a long bullet list of things that didn’t provoke Muslim outrage — mostly things that involved beheadings, explosions, mass murders, etc. — and then argued:

Come on, is this really about cartoons? They’re rampaging and burning flags. They’re looking for Europeans to kidnap. They’re threatening innkeepers and generally raising holy Muslim hell not because of any outrage over a cartoon. They’re outraged because it is part of the Islamic jihadist culture to be outraged. You don’t really need a reason. You just need an excuse. Wandering around, destroying property, murdering children, firing guns into the air and feigning outrage over the slightest perceived insult is to a jihadist what tailgating is to a Steeler’s fan.

I know and understand that these bloodthirsty murderers do not represent the majority of the world’s Muslims. When, though, do they become outraged? When do they take to the streets to express their outrage at the radicals who are making their religion the object of worldwide hatred and ridicule? … 

Well, a few moderate Muslims have spoken out. A Jordanian editor printed three of the cartoons to show how mild they are and pleaded with his readers:

"Muslims of the world, be reasonable," said the editor-in-chief of the weekly independent newspaper Al-Shihan in an editorial alongside the cartoons, including the one showing the Muslim religion’s founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

"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?" wrote Jihad Momani.

Momani was fired. So far, no reports of his head being found anywhere.

In the West, where it’s easier for Muslims to speak out, the Free Muslim Coalition condemned Muslim reaction against the cartoons and concluded:

When will Muslims wake up and realize that their intolerance of opposing opinions is keeping them in the dark ages? When will Muslims realize that respect must be earned and not forced through violence and coercion? When will Muslims realize that individual liberty and freedom of expression are fundamental human rights? When will American Muslim organization provide solutions to Muslims rather than instigate problems? The Free Muslims Coalition hopes that the answer to all these questions is soon.

But the most passionate, stirring statement on this subject came from Muslim apostate and author of Why I Am Not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq:

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? …

… The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.

Go read the whole thing. Please!

Then join the Support Denmark campaign. Or buy something Danish — here’s a list of suggestions, complete with links.

UPDATE: I’m belatedly joining the "Muhammad Cartoons Blogburst" suggested by E.L. Core and promoted by Michelle Malkin (I think I’m number 150-something). Here are all twelve offending Danish cartoon images of the prophet, the ones for which people are being threatened with beheading, butchering, or (from the more moderate Islamists) cutting off of the hands:

Does that strike you as pretty tame stuff? Mocking, but not exactly vicious or hate-filled? Much ado about very little? Me too.

Technorati: Jyllands-Posten Cartoons Mohammed Denmark intolerance  

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