I briefly wrote about the Danish and Norwegian papers that featured Prophet Mohamed PBUH caricatures in my post Freedom of Racism. But ever since that, there has been an explosion of reactions in the Muslim world, both online and offline. The blogosphere has witnessed a huge number of blogs about this topic, people all over the Muslim world are boycotting Danish and Norwegian products, some countries have pulled their ambassadors, …etc.
Over this time I’ve mainly been watching from the sidelines, wanting to write more about it, but just not finding the time to.
Most opinions I’ve read in the blogosphere are totally against what happened, yet some people think it’s not normal and very backward to react this strongly to these caricatures, and that we should just let it go.
I personally strongly disagree with these people. We’ve let go of a lot of things, we’ve tolerated a lot of disrespect and racism over the years, but when it gets to our Prophet and touches our religion, there is no way we can just let go! It is totally unacceptable!!
I’m against any violent reactions or death threats, but I’m totally for peaceful protest and political or economic boycott if necessary.
If the same paper published some caricatures that touched a Jewish figure, the whole world would have stood against it and pointed the anti-semitic finger at them, and ripped them apart.
But the caricatures being about the prophet of Islam, no one cares, and the angry and offended muslims are made out to be backward thinking and untolerant.
Well yeah, we don’t tolerate anyone attacking our Prophet or religion, and you can call it whatever you want!
A bit earlier, I read that the Danish newspaper that published the cartoons has apologized for offending Muslims around the world, not for publishing the cartoons, but for offending Muslims.
“We apologize for the fact that the cartoons undeniably have offended many Muslims,”‘ Carsten Juste, editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten, wrote late yesterday in a letter on the paper’s Web site. He said Jyllands-Posten wasn’t sorry for running the cartoons though.
As for Vebjoern Selbekk, the editor of Norwegian Magazinet, the paper that republished the caricatures, he too said that he “regrets if the drawings were offensive to Muslims.”
Those sound like half ass apologies to me. It’s like someone raping someone and then saying: “I’m not sorry for raping you, but I’m sorry it hurt!”
It’s more of an insult than an apology!
I think they should be able to do a lot better than that!
Related Links:
– The Danish Cartoonist
– Le Boycott : Arme de Destruction Massive (FR)