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Cartoon context — tolerance is a two way street

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By John Metzler
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, February 10, 2006

UNITED NATIONS — The rising tide of resentment in much of the Islamic world over the publication of cartoons which offensively portray the Prophet Mohammed, has reached high water mark — riots and killings have marked the demonstrations. When the emotions subside we will see a curious chain of events and timing which may have little to do with the latest religious flashpoint. So let’s not be totally blindsided by the cartoon frenzy and miss the gathering storm — the unfolding drama of Iran’s nuclear confrontation with the U.S. and Europeans.

First some context. The West for the most part, professes a militant secularism, where the sacred is often tastelessly mocked but that’s the end of it. Many Arab countries, as well as Iran and Pakistan, have a far more, should we say, medieval response where an enraged mob forms and then attacks targets of opportunity — embassies and “western interests,” with boycotts and flag burnings.

Importantly, the Muslim outrage confronts the innate Western sense of tolerance and subconsciously puts us on the moral defensive. Prof. Samuel Huntington calls it a “Clash of Civilizations” and in many ways it really is. But the understandable outrage on the part of many Muslims represents a faction of the faithful who are, as usual, being manipulated by mendacious mullahs and the security services of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The profane is hijacked by the political.

While the mob has lashed out at Denmark — the original source of the tasteless caricatures — their publication was not a policy of the Copenhagen government but the editorial stance of an individual newspaper. Though originally printed in September, the satirical lampoons took on a new life when the Parisian France Soir newspaper ran the cartoons igniting a row across Europe. Again these were not government decisions and thus European governments should not apologize. It’s Syria who should apologize and compensate for the trashing of the Danish and Norwegian Embassies.

Calls for calm by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the Islamic Conference, and many prominent Muslim figures has failed to dampen the disturbances. French President Jacques Chirac has condemned as "overt provocation" decisions by yet another Paris publication to reprint cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammad

While it’s easy to abhor anti-religious bigotry, what about the spate of anti-Semitic and anti-Christian cartoons which are often the accepted fare in many papers — most especially in the Islamic world? Even in Europe the profane is often idolized and anti-clericalism becomes a left-wing cult. Cartoons mocked the late Pope John Paul II, Israel’s Ariel Sharon etc. One may wince, but then move on to either peaceful protest or simple disgust.

Our natural reaction is to speak from the intellectual parapets of press freedoms — but this is originally an Anglo/American concept nurtured in the pamphlet tradition of Thomas Paine, followed by John Peter Zenger, and Horace Greeley. Quite frankly that tradition does not exist in the Islamic world. Some of the Arab and Iranian press revel in vile forms of political pornography against Christians and Jews.

While Americans will debate but ultimately accept the finer points of press freedoms, such sublime rights are somehow missed by the mobs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran who are seeking vengeance as much as they are being manipulated by the secret hand of fundamentalist mullahs. We are not speaking about a Faculty Club discussion here, but the hair trigger emotions of the Casbah, the Arab Street, and the churning rumor mills of the madrassas who are often looking for an excuse and which is easily directed often by a secular regime who needs a scapegoat de jour as in Syria, or Islamic Iran who needs a political smokescreen for its diplomatic standoff with the West.

Secretary of State Condi Rice stated scathingly that both Damascus and Teheran have used this latest religious row to “incite violence.” She stressed, “I don’t have any doubt that given the control of the Syrian government in Syria, given the control of the Iranian government — which, by the way has not even hidden its hand in this — that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiment and to use this to their own purpose.”

With press freedoms equally come a responsibility not to willfully provoke the sensitivities and religious emotions in any parts of the world. But neither should there be religious exceptionalism — if tolerance is demanded in Europe for Islamic sensibilities, what about the religious rights of Christians and Jews in the Muslim world?

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.