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US papers haven't run the Danish cartoons as they don't want violent protests. |
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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.
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If a religious group starts meddling in our political life, they become a target for political cartoonists.
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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.
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The lack of nasty images of Mohammed in American cartoons doesn't mean that people aren't thinking nasty thoughts.
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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.
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