that the global context of America leading the West in shitting on the Muslim world--over and over again--is the main root underneath the spreading fury about some cartoons. They see the cartoons as adding insult to injury I expect and it serves as a trigger event upon which to focus their accumulating rage. In a context of general peace and lower tensions between the West and the Muslim world, the cartoons would probably have attracted zero attention.
I think everyone should read the article
"Rotten Judgment in the State of Denmark" at Salon.com, by Jytte Klausen
The cartoons started out as a gag, the kind you do when the news is slow. Flemming Rose, the paper's culture editor, decided last summer that he was fed up with what he described as the spreading "self-censorship" on matters related to Islam, so he solicited cartoonists for drawings of "how they saw the Prophet." On Sept. 30, 12 cartoons were published under the headline "Mohammed's Face." Rose cited a statement by a Danish stand-up comedian, who had complained that he was afraid to make fun of Mohammed on TV. A children's book author complained that he could not get anyone to illustrate his book about Mohammed. Another example of Islamic pieties' crushing influence on free speech was that three theaters had put on shows deriding George Bush, but none Osama bin Laden. Cartoons are an important anti-totalitarian expression, Rose wrote, and therefore the paper had asked 40 Danish cartoonists to draw their image of Mohammed. Only 12 responded. Rose implied that some of those who did not respond were infected by self-censorship.
This all would have been very well if the paper had a long tradition of standing up for fearless artistic expression. But it so happens that three years ago, Jyllands-Posten refused to publish cartoons portraying Jesus, on the grounds that they would offend readers. According to a report in the Guardian, which was provided with a letter from the cartoonist, Christoffer Zieler, the editor explained back then, "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them." When confronted with the old rejection letter, the editor, Jens Kaiser, said, "It is ridiculous to bring this forward now. It has nothing to do with the Mohammed cartoons." But why does it not? Can you offend Muslim readers but not Christian readers? "In the Muhammed drawings case, we asked the illustrators to do it. I did not ask for these cartoons," Kaiser said. "That's the difference."
And therein lies the truth. The paper wanted to instigate trouble, just not the kind of trouble it got. And in this mission it acted in concert with the Danish government. "We have gone to war against the multicultural ideology that says that everything is equally valid," boasted the minister of cultural affairs, Brian Mikkelsen, in a speech at his party's annual meeting the week before Rose's cartoon editorial last fall. Mikkelsen is a 39-year-old political science graduate known for his hankering for the "culture war." He continued, "The Culture War has now been raging for some years. And I think we can conclude that the first round has been won." The next front, he said, is the war against the acceptance of Muslims norms and ways of thought. The Danish cultural heritage is a source of strength in an age of globalization and immigration. Cultural restoration, he argued, is the best antidote.
(And he's not talking about restoring secularism here!--kb)The Danish government has protested that Danish Muslims and the Islamic countries have conspired in a misinformation campaign regarding both the paper's motives and the law of the land. Among the examples of preposterous misinformation are that the paper is run by the government, and that the government can do anything to regulate what is said or not said. While radical Islamists have exaggerated and exploited these themes to incite violent protest, the painful reality is that there is some truth to them. The paper is related to the government, not by ownership but by political affinity and history. And Denmark is no paragon of free speech. Article 140 of the Criminal Code allows for a fine and up to four months of imprisonment for demeaning a "recognized religious community."
As it happens, the author has ties to both the paper and the party, and knows what he's talking about. The intent of the paper was demeaning, provocative, hypocritical and under existing Danish law, arguably illegal. Not that such expression limiting laws are what he approves of. The article raises a number of noteworthy issues and facts and this insight, that the intent of the paper may have been to serve only its own brand of bigotted extremism, but it has had the unintended effect of serving and strengthening the extremism of militant Islamists just as well.