 |
|
US
papers haven't run the Danish cartoons as they don't want
violent protests. |
Felicity
Arbuthnot quickly moves from the twelve Danish cartoons at
question to denouncing America for being founded by racists and
xenophobes, for basing violent foreign policy interventions on
America's insatiable need for oil, for starting a crusade in
response to 9/11, and for completely misunderstanding Islamic
culture. Fortunately for her, there are hundreds of
cartoons attacking America for just these shortcomings.
American
cartoonists drew them and American papers published them. I
know because I drew some of them. My radical, left wing
newspaper is owned by a major American corporation and
anyone reading this can buy shares of it (and me) on the New
York Stock Exchange.
Not
all American newspapers have editorial cartoonists and not all
American cartoonists are against the war in Iraq. But of
the 80 or so full time cartoonists working at major newspapers
in this country, many have been extremely critical of the war,
American detention camps, government surveillance, and our
addiction to oil. These cartoonists include those at the Washington
Post , Arizona Republic , Boston Globe and in
other large cities. A few of these cartoonists drew against
the war even as their editorial page bosses supported the war.
| If
a religious group starts meddling in our political life,
they become a target for political cartoonists. |
True,
some of the cartoons my colleagues and I have drawn aren't as
vicious as some cartoons drawn by foreigners. Those
foreigners would include a lot of British and European
cartoonists and even Danes who have shown no mercy toward
President Bush and his wars.
George
W. Bush would consider it a good day if only 12 cartoonists drew
cartoons denouncing him as a bomb-throwing war monger. I
say this not to defend the President but to defend our freedom
of press that allows us to criticize everything in our public
life, including religion, without people erupting into riots.
Felicity
Arbuthnot writes that after 9/11 it was "open season on
Islam and Muslims." I would just remind her that here,
for cartoonists, it is also open season on Christianity and
Christians. I am not the only cartoonist who has been
singled out by local religious lobbies as being anti-Christian
or anti-Jewish for taking on self-righteous religious
extremists.
Felicity
Arbuthnot is right that the speech laws in Europe are erratic
and tend to protect some groups over others. Throwing David
Irving in jail in Austria is one stupid example. He would
not have landed in jail here in the States. Instead, his
theories were torn apart and discredited.
| The
lack of nasty images of Mohammed in American cartoons
doesn't mean that people aren't thinking nasty thoughts. |
As
I said in my earlier piece, I don't get up in the morning
thinking about making fun of someone's religion. However,
if a religious group starts meddling in our political life, they
become a target for political cartoonists. When a bunch of
Islamic fundamentalists flew planes into buildings killing 3,000
people in a morning, and doing it in the name of their religion,
they become a target for political cartoonists, too. They
earned that distinction. When their supporters threatened
further jihad in the name Islam and sawed heads off of
foreigners, they, too, earned their place in cartoons.
To
me, the cartoons that were published in Denmark were not about all
Muslims anymore than cartoons about warmongering American
politicians are about all Christians or all
Americans. Some of the Danish cartoons weren't even about
the war but about drawing under the threat of violent
retaliation. Of course, most people can't comment on the
cartoons because most publications never did reprint the
cartoons and the very few that did usually only printed
one. I had to hunt for them on the web and found them
printed in Danish, which wasn't of much help.
Some
Muslims will be gladdened to know that, in fact, the violence
and intimidation against the cartoons worked. Most papers
in America don't want violent protests or innocent people
killed; so, except for a handful, they did not run the Danish
cartoons and won't run anything remotely like them.
Smart
Muslims, however, will not be cheered. They will know that
although there aren't any nasty images of Mohammed in American
cartoons, it doesn't mean that people aren't thinking nasty
thoughts. It's just that we won't have the early warning
system of cartoons to tell us what those thoughts are until it's
too late.
**
Signe Wilkinson is
an editorial cartoonist best known for her work at the
Philadelphia Daily News. She won the Pulitzer Prize for
editorial cartooning in 1992. From 1994-1995 she was president
of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. She has
been featured on several programs on the cartoon debate since
the cartoons ridiculing Prophet Muhammad were published in
Denmark. She has also been actively engaged in open discussion
on freedom of expression.
