We Are All Danes Now

My recent post on the cartoon controversy has received many a comment. Not long after posting it, a Jordanian tabloid editor decided to republish the caricatures so that people would actually see what they were protesting about. He added this:

“Who offends Islam more? A foreigner who endeavors to draw the prophet as described by his followers in the world, or a Muslim with an explosive belt who commits suicide in a wedding party in Amman or elsewhere.

Needless to say, the aversion to the truth that many Muslims have prevailed and he was fired hours later and gave a public apology. However, Spiegel Online has chimed in with a fiery editorial by an anonymous Muslim author that is a breath of fresh air and surprising coming from a radically left magazine:

The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, “Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being ‘pushed to an extreme’; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.”

[...] A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

[...]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? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.

Whatever you do, read the entire thing!

Meanwhile, The Tension has some rather disturbing images of Muslim protesters with signs reading “Europe learn from 9/11,” “Massacre those who insult Islam”and more. You have to see it to believe it. The longer this goes on, the more pessimistic I become about the Middle East’s ability to fix its failing culture.

On a personal note, I was studying in Copenhagen on September 11th and received endless support from the Danes. They stood by us 100% and were calling for war while I was still trying not to jump to conclusions before the facts were in. While the Danes expressed their outrage and support of the United States, Palestinians burned US flags and danced in the streets upon hearing the news. Like the rest of us, I’ll never forget where I was on 9/11 and I’ll also never forget the outpouring of support, solidarity and sympathy I and fellow American students got on that day and the following months. Tak Danmark