In FrontPage this morning I explain why Muslims have only themselves to blame for the recent proliferation of Motoons:
With last Thursday’s “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” which began on Facebook but spread to anti-jihad sites all over the Internet, Muhammad cartoons are now everywhere — and Muslims are outraged. The government of Pakistan shut down Facebook and YouTube, but that didn’t pacify the thousands of Pakistanis who took to the streets to protest against drawings of Muhammad that they could not have seen even if they had wanted to.
One protester held a sign bearing a threat: “Facebook, do not try our patience/STOP your coward activity.” Others shared a large banner reading: “We are ready to sacrifice on [sic] our beloved holy prophet.”
So far there have been no new riots or killings to rival the immediate aftermath of the publication of the original cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in September 2005. After the Organization of the Islamic Conference decided at its meeting in Mecca in December 2005 to use the cartoons as an object lesson in the perils of Western secularism, Islamic rage against the cartoons began to boil over all around the world. At least 139 people were killed and 823 were injured over the next few months in Muslim riots against the cartoons.
Another, perhaps even more ominous response to those cartoons was the beginning of the OIC’s anti-free speech campaign — an attempt to compel the West to criminalize criticism of Islam and accept Sharia restrictions on non-Muslims speaking about Islam. In 2008, the Secretary General of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, issued a peremptory threat of his own: “We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed” regarding free speech about Islam and jihad terrorism.
Yet while the government and media elites in America and Europe have generally rushed to show how willing, even eager, they are to show that they will not cross those red lines, their supine response to this assault on free speech has created a backlash among free people. It is worth bearing in mind the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” would never have aroused much interest among anyone if cartoons of Muhammad didn’t arouse Muslims worldwide to homicidal rage and attempts to restrict the freedom of speech.
While it may in other circumstances simply be obnoxious, or legitimately (not to say to an extent justifying murder) offensive to lampoon someone else’s cherished religious leader, the Muslim reaction to Infidel cartoons of Muhammad is entirely itself responsible for the interest Infidels have in lampooning the Islamic prophet in the first place. If Christians had reacted to Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or Chris Ofili’s dung-encrusted portrait of the Virgin Mary with the same murderous outrage with which Muslims greeted the cartoons of Muhammad, the West would be experiencing a glut of pictures blaspheming Christ and Christianity….