I have to admit I’ve been puzzled by the whole Danish Cartoon ??? I don’t even know what to call it. Controversy seems too mild a word when buildings are burning and people are dying. Debacle implies that the Danish newspaper did something wrong, or at least something worse than what every other newspaper does, and that is to continue publishing political cartoons, an artform that (in the US at least) is simply wretched, worn out, and cliched. Who can take them seriously anymore? Crisis may be the best fit, but that depends on whether anything is learned or changes (on either side) or if after awhile the whole thing settles down to the status quo ante.

So how did we get here? The Brussels Journal provides a pretty good overview of the whole affair (there, I’ve made my decision on what to call it for now):

Do not think that by now you have heard all that there is to say about the “Danish cartoon” crisis. Last September, a Danish paper noticed that some cartoonists were frightened to depict Near Eastern topics. They seem to have sensed that being funny leads to serious trouble. So the paper made some effort to get such material. The result was twelve drawings [see them here, halfway down the page]. Some are good, others so-so. Still others are not especially funny. When perusing the material before the cartoons became the story, I thought that they depict an “Islamic type” in different situations. The best one seemed to be a scene at the gates of heaven. Incoming suicide bombers (“martyrs” if you insist) are told by the gate-keeper: “Stop, we ran out of virgins.” Another favorite is several women in burkas that follow a turbaned fellow. The rectangular eye-hole cut out of the black cloaks is transferred over the eyes of the (unenlightened?) man. In time it was discovered that the caricatures show the Prophet. That is a no-no if you are a Moslem. As time passed there was, rather than boos, a bit of protest. When it intensified, other papers reprinted the cartoons to show what the outcry is all about. Thereupon the insulted protestors defending the messenger of peace became violent. Considering that Islam claims to be a creed of mercy, peace and benevolence, its discontented are surprisingly violent. All of which makes one wonder what would happen if the faith would not have peaceful forgiveness in its core.

And they are one of the few places you could see the cartoons over the past four months. So by all means, go and read up on the subject there if you are interested.

The contrast between the anger of those upset and the silliness of the simple cartoons can serve to distract us from the important issues confronted here — at core what can I expect of and what can I demand of my fellow man. Normally in religion the questions are about the relations between man and God; here despite the religious angle the questions are about the relations between man and man, and the different beliefs on that subject that are informed by the overall culture, not just religion (and it can be mighty hard to separate the two). Christopher Hitchens agrees with me, just at greater length and with a different view of religion.

The fault lines are not just between West and East; there are fault lines within the West as well, and are well explored by Jeff Goldstein:
“This battle over the Danish cartoons highlights all of these philosophical dilemmas (which I have argued previously are the result of certain linguistic misunderstandings that are either cynically or idealistically perpetuated); and so we are brought to the point where this clash of civilizations – which in one important sense is a clash between theocratic Islamism and the west, but in another, more crucial sense, is a clash between the west and its own structural thinking, brought on by years of insinuation into our philosophy of what is, at root, collectivist thought that privileges the interpreter of an action over the necessary primacy of intent and agency and personal responsibility to the communicative chain – could conceivably become manifest over something so seemingly trivial as the right to satirize.”
Actually, I think that arguments in the abstract don’t cause anyone but college professors to get excited; it takes something simple and concrete like satirical cartoons to set everyman’s heart to pounding.

I expect there are fault lines within the East as well, its just as a man of the West I’m not the best judge of them.

And I have to wonder, with all the provocations to chose from, why this one?

Another view is that the cartoons are an excerise in racism, freedom-of-speech a dodge to hide it, and that the Prophet Muhammad is not a current figure who would be an appropriate target for political cartoonists. Apparently symbolism is lost on some people.

Cassandra, not surprisingly, has girded her loins for intellectual battle:

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than the Danish cartoon kerfuffle. But for all the overwrought fulmination about freedom of expression, what the Coalition of the Outraged hate to admit is that unfettered speech in the Western world is more sentimental fiction than reality. By law and by custom, Western society has always recognized all sorts of limits on the right to speak freely. A notable example is the fighting words exception to the First Amendment, which recognizes that certain words and ideas are so inflammatory that society’s interest in maintaining order outweighs the individual’s right to express himself without limitation. Another, the criminalization of ‘hate speech’, places paramount value on the feelings of certain identity groups while allowing others to be insulted or attacked with impugnity. A third, cultural bugaboos, are equally problematic in that they allow rappers to casually drop words like ‘nigger’ but mandate that everyone else use silly euphenisms like ‘the n-word’ as surrogates for an appellation so shocking that only the pigmentally gifted may utter it without rending the fabric of the universe in twain.So it would appear that protestations to the contrary, our own tolerance for free speech has definite limits. The question then becomes not, “Does a free society recognize any limitation on speech?”. Of course it does. The sticking point becomes “Where do we draw the line, and who gets to draw it?” And therein lies the rub. The mainstream media regularly exercise self-restraint… but only when it suits them. As I observed earlier regarding the JCS controversy, media self-censorship is at best a hypocritical exercise:

She doesn’t stop there my friends, but of all people I don’t want to steal her thunder.

And as far as the cowardly response of the American Press to spare our delicate sensiblilities by not showing the cartoons, what am I as a Christian to learn? That there is a double standard when handling Islam or Christianity? That we would be better off killing abortionists, blowing up abortion clinics, burning down movie theaters that show movies like Dogma or The Last Temptation of Christ, offing Dick Wolff or any other TV producer when he shows Christians in a negative light, or anyone else who disrespects us because then we would get respect? Then would our feelings would taken seriously? We’ll never know, will we, because we wouldn’t be Christians if we did. There’s an idea for a movie – The Latest Tempation of a Christian.

Maybe, just maybe we should applaud some obscure Danish newpaper for having the audacity to commission cartoons these cartoons, and by doing so have caused not just turmoil in Islamic lands but soul searching in Western lands . We live in interesting times.