Updates at the end – keep scrolling

It is truly amazing how history works. Apparently it will be cartoons that provide the EU its much needed wake up call on radical Islamists. Michelle Malkin has the cartoons here and the story behind them here at Real Clear Politics. The basics of the story, for those who want a thumbnail version, has an enterprising Danish newspaper calling for cartoons of Mohamed last fall because a writer could not find and illustrator on the subject for a book. The calls was answered and submissions printed. The response was enlightening

The insecurity of the radical Islamists is well documented, from their treatment of women to their anger at every possible slight. The image of brave Moorish warriors from the historic heights of Islam is being replaced with modern images of suicide bombers killing little boys and girls – when not hiding in caves. I am not surprised at how this is panning out. Something was going to bring things to a boil in the EU between the West and radical Islam.

What I hope everyone remembers is that moderate Muslims represent the salvation of not only Islam, but world peace as well. America has been very clear in discerning our views on radical Islam verses moderate Islam. While we prepared for war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda we walked with Muslims to protect them from any out of control backlashes from people who cannot discern a radical movement from an ancient religion.

Unfortunately, it seems the cartoons may have pushed some moderates towards the radicals.

Despite how relatively tame the pictures actually are (compared not only to Western standards, but also to the vicious, anti-Semitic propaganda regularly churned out by Arab cartoonists), the drawings have literally inflamed the radical Muslim world and its apologists. Eleven Muslim ambassadors to Copenhagen immediately protested to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen demanding retractions from the newspaper. The ambassador of Turkey urged Rasmussen to call the Jyllands-Posten to account for “abusing Islam in the name of democracy, human rights and freedom of expression.”

Rasmussen, in a rare show of European spine, steadfastly refused to appease the howlers.

Just as Christians here in the US rightly do not appreciate their religion derided by secular Hollywood in exercises of free speech such as ‘The Book Of Daniel’, insensitive caricatures about Islam can do the opposite of what we want regarding the salvation of Islam.

We have to be careful what signals we send that could recruit moderates into the radical’s camp. I am not sure what the answer is. The cartoons do not seem that offensive, but then again we here in the West have become numb to the idiocy of political cartoonists. Just yesterday Michelle and myself and others castigated the Washington Post for a truly sick cartoon. Here we are today on the other side defending something that hit some the same way as that Toles cartoon hit us.

Are moderate Muslims sending us a message to retune our positions? Are we listening?

We need to protect the cartoonists rights to free speech – no question. The paper needs to be backed for doing nothing more than asking and printing the voices of the people. But can’t we also explain to moderate Muslims that free speech means people say dumb and hurtful things and we do not need to lash out at them? How do we explain to a region that is not use to free speech that people are free to make fools of themselves, and the rest are free to peacefully echo back the view these people are fools?

The Palestinians, as usual, are setting the wrong example by storming an EU office with armed thugs. Leave it to them to dumb down Islam to a brutish image. The calls from Muslim Ambassadors for retraction are not realistic, but the fact they are peacefully expressing their hurt is not wrong either.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I am fairly sure I have not seen it yet. These cartoons showed us something, a way to stumble and repel moderate Muslims. But they may possibly show us a way to catch ourselves and help ME Islam to deal with something foreign to their life experience. Free speech.

UPDATE:

BTW, I am for reprinting these as a way to show solidarity, as long as there are recognitions of their impact and some outreach as I described above.

Broadening a debate that has set Europe against the Islamic world, several European newspapers on Wednesday reprinted cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in an unflattering light, supporting a Danish newspaper that had inspired a huge outcry in the Islamic world by publishing them in the first place.

The newspapers’ actions fed a sharpening debate here over freedom of expression, human rights and what the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, the paper that first published the cartoons last September, called a “clash of civilizations” between secular Western democracies and Islamic societies.

It doesn’t have to be ‘a clash’. It could be ‘a meeting’ or something less destructive. We need to remember free speech is powerful and hard to get used to. We in the West are the ones who are more experienced with it, so we should be the more calm about it.

UPDATE II:

Piglet joins the dicussion, but the heat is being raised by the radical jihadists in the hope the West will probably say or do something to push the moderates towards the radicals.

UPDATE III:

Are we paying attention? We have two moderate allies now raising objections to these cartoons:

While Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s government was bracing for further protests and planning an offensive to try to defuse the tensions, Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak and Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the cartoons.

Is the West going to bungle this challenge?

UPDATE IV:

It appears this is a propaganda trick to push moderates muslims towards the radicals.

However, the Danish Muslim delegation showed much more than the 12 cartoons published by Jyllands Posten. In the booklet it presented during its tour of the Middle East, the delegation included other cartoons of Mohammed that were highly offensive, including one where the Prophet has a pig face. But these additional pictures were NOT published by the newspaper, but were completely fabricated by the delegation and inserted in the booklet (which has been obtained and made available to me by Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet). The delegation has claimed that the differentiation was made to their interlocutors, even though the claim has not been independently verified. In any case, the action was a deliberate malicious and irresponsible deed carried out by a notorious Islamist who in another situation had said that “mockery against Mohamed deserves death penalty.”

A fabrication to trick the West into an over reaction? The Jihadists know we tolerate more free speech (or sick speech) and they know the middle east has little to no experience in free speech. Let’s not lose our self control and become puppets of the Jihadists. There is nothing wrong in condemning the mockery of a religious symbol and defending the right to mock.