Kathleen Parker skewers the dhimmitude of the Boston Globe and others. (Thanks to all who sent this in.)
...What's clear is that East and West are not just cultures apart, but centuries, and that certain elements of the Muslim world would like to drag us back into the Dark Ages.What is also clear is that the West's own leaders, both in Europe and the USA, as well as many of our own journalists, have been weak-spined when it comes to defending the principles of free expression that the artists in Denmark were exploring.
Instead of stepping up to passionately defend freedoms won through centuries of bloody sacrifice, most have bowed to ayatollahs of sensitivity, rebuking the higher calling of enlightenment and sending the cartoonists into hiding under threat of death....
The other argument, also based on a logical fallacy, is that the Danish cartoons are comparable to racist caricatures of Jews in Nazi Germany and blacks in the segregationist South. The Boston Globe, which saw fit in the past to defend "Piss Christ" (a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine) as well as a depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in feces as worthy of government subsidy, made such a case recently.
There are at least two reasons why The Globe's comparison is bogus: gas chambers and lynchings. Both the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan were officially sanctioned enforcers of immoral social orders that used caricature to further degrade and dehumanize beleaguered minorities they ultimately murdered.
There is no equivalence between organized murder on behalf of a malignant social system and a half-dozen nerdy artists, speaking only for themselves, lampooning a fanatical religious sect whose members, by the way, specifically advance the delightful goal of exterminating millions of "infidels."
The correct comparison, in fact, for Nazi and Klan terrorists are their brothers under the hoods - the jihadists who issued a death sentence on writer Salman Rushdie, who beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl and businessman Nick Berg, and who kidnapped an innocent American female journalist and showed videos of her sobbing and terrified among armed men holding guns to her head.
These are the fascist thugs, not the artists who draw cartoons in the service of democracy and truth. And those who out of a misguided sense of cultural sensitivity and niceness try to justify Muslim outrage over a cartoon are, frankly, lending aid and comfort to the enemies of civilization.
The west continues to feed the muslim stereotype of us; weak, timid and frightened.
They push, we run, they run after us, we fall to our knees and beg. This is sad, why are we unable to collectively stand up and tell the muslims we have had enough and are tired of dealing with their threats and intimidation. That would make it stop.
Typical of the so CALLED
Brave Reporters
Brave Journalists
Brave Leftists..
Who will stand up to christians, Jews, The US president, our military and the US People
With EASE...
But...
When it comes to actually telling muslims
Who are violent
Whos religion calls for DEATH to infidels..
Who's religion calls for DEATH for Apostates of islam
Heck Islam calls for DEATH for just about every offense....
Then these BRAVE reporters, journalists and editors...
RUN for the HILLS so fast
They beat the Anti war and draft dodgers
Running to canada..
Succinct, incisive, apt and all-too-rare.
Make her editor-in-chief of the U.S. Press.
Sheep are easily panicked because they don't understand how to rally together and fight en amsse.
Militant Muslims have it figured out.
Time to mirror their passion.
We have more to lose than theocratic zombies.
All they get are shinier chains.
I don't believe this is misguided cultural sensitivity, but an attempt to cloak cowardice as cultural sensitivity. The writers at the Times and other papers aren't that stupid....oh, wait...maybe they are.
The Boston Globe, NY Times, Washington Post etc. all support freedom of the press when it calls for leaking secrets vital to our national security, or printing cartoons of a quadrapalegic serviceman. They do this while insisting that they are defending freedom of the press. But when freedom of the press is actually under attack, as is the case with the Danish cartoons, they are cowards.
The Washington Post had a representative on Hannity & Colms a few nights ago to defend the cartoon the Post published regarding the quadrapoligic serviceman. Hannity asked him how they could mock the servicemen that were defending the very freedom of the press that allowed the Post to publish. He replied that the US constitution provides him freedom of the press and not the military.
So if it is really the constitution, then why are they unwilling to publish the Danish cartoons? Could they fear reprisals such as website hack attacks, bombings, or kidnapping of reporters? The MSM are real heroes when there is no risk involved. They know there is nothing to fear by denigrating a US serviceman. But defend freedom of the press when they have something to loose? Ha! Cowards!! Cowards!!
Where is the "brave" ACLU that wanted more Abu Ghraib pictures published even at the risk of the lives of American soldiers? Notice also the "brave" reporters of the NYT who don't mind risking the lives of American civilians by leaking classified secrets. They just won't risk there own lives by printing cartoons even in the name of "press freedom".
Bravo! Well said! These papers in the US and UK are just spineless! The fact is there scared of the Muslims! They can print all they want about Christians, Hindus, Jews...ect because they know there won't be riots and death threats against them, but Muslims you can't even think about
"MO HA MAD" without staring mass riots and death!
To Roxane:
You are right on about this! Where are they now? Nothing but silence!
I'm with Seymour Paine: The response in the Anglo-Saxon countries' media, for the most part (exceptions such as the brave Kathleen Parker aside) is based on fear. Journalists are afraid of being killed or having their family members killed. They may justify their condemnations of the cartoons by appeal to political correctness, senstivity, respect, etc., but I too have to ask...Are they THAT stupid? Are they that stupid to think that this is about genuine respect? Are they that ignorant of Islamic doctrine to think that Islam (the Surrender!) allows for respect of any non-Muslim?!
Ishaq:489 "Do the bastards think that we are not their equal in fighting? We are men who believe there is no shame in killing. We don't turn from piercing lances. We smite the heads of the haughty with blows that quash the zeal of the unyielding [non-Muslims]. We're heroes, protecting our war banner. We are a noble force, as fierce as wolves. We preserve our honor and protect our property by smashing heads."
Ishaq:530 "Get out of his way, you infidel unbelievers. Every good thing goes with the Apostle. I believe in his word. We will Fight you about its interpretations as we have fought you about its revelation with strokes that will remove heads and make enemies of friends."
Ishaq:326 (also Koran, 8:57) If you come upon them (infidels), deal so forcibly as to terrify those who would follow, that they may be warned. Make a severe example of them by terrorizing Allah’s enemies.
Sahih Bukhari Volume 1, Book 3, Number 125: Narrated Abu Musa: A man came to the Prophet and asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What kind of fighting is in Allah's cause? (I ask this), for some of us fight because of being enraged and angry and some for the sake of his pride and haughtiness." The Prophet raised his head (as the questioner was standing) and said, "He who fights so that Allah's Word (Islam) should be superior, then he fights in Allah's cause."
Also another thing: the cartoonists didn't make fun of muslims, they made fun of Mohammad. That is the difference.
As Queensland premier said, "no-one is off limits, Jesus isn't off limits, no-one is".
Making fun of Mohammad is fully legitimate, just as making fun of Jesus is legitamate, as well as Moses and any other founder of religion.
Roxanne:
Your hoisting of the ACLU and the NYT is worthy of five of Catherine's gold stars!
Re: burkas. I'm pretty sure that in most cases one size definitely fits all.
The Boston Globe did publish an excellent editorial by Jeff Jacoby, basically to the effect that Islam overreaches by demanding that non-Muslims respect its prohibitions.
By the same token, shouldn't Muslims refrain from eating beef, lest Hindus be offended? And shouldn't they refrain from female genital mutilation, which most of the world finds abhorrent?
...What's clear is that East and West are not just cultures apart, but centuries, and that certain elements of the Muslim world would like to drag us back into the Dark Ages.
No disagreement, though some might read into this a suggestion of developmental disadvantage; that we in the West have had six centuries 'head-start', & that therefore we should excersise patience, & eventually they'll catch up. When the reality of course is that a few centuries ago we were at similar stages of development, but that while we have surged ahead, they have been held back, or even retarded, by their enslavement to a retrograde ideology. As fast as we try to drag 'em kicking & screaming into the 21st century, they'll try to haul us back to medieval Arabia.
Parker's main point on the non-equivalency of characterisations of Islam vs mis-characterisations of Jews & blacks is one the BBC might take notice of... though i won't be holding my breath.