This is no Family Circus

Several dozen people have died, a few embassies have burned, and a lot of Muslims are offended. So what's really with these cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed?

Politics
Kwame Appiah of the Philadelphia Inquirer says it's about the political inequality. It's easy to shrug off slights of your religion and person when you are powerful and the slanderous are not. But when a Danish paper can mock one billion Muslims with impunity, it's more about the political power to do so. Appiah has a nice historical role reversal, of a Saint Perfectus in 9th Century Spain.

The Christian Science Monitor seconds the political notion, but argues that it's internal. Arab leaders (in countries like Iran, Syria, and Lebanon) are looking to score political points with their people by creating a common enemy to rally around, in their ongoing competition against Al Qaeda for the hearts of the faithful. In Iran, for example, young activists have protested in favor of greater democracy and secular government. This cartoon fiasco is the perfect chance to create "Persian nationalism" and anti-Israeli sentiment.

Free Speech
The Christian Science Monitor and others also discuss the free speech issue. For example, CSM editors opine that the Danish newspaper had the free speech right to publish the cartoons, but that the Danish paper recklessly used its freedom in solicited offensive depictions of Mohammed. Other US Media outlets such as the Washington Post agree that it's no reduction in free speech to refrain from publishing gratuitously offensive material.

Time Magazine writer Andrew Sullivan argues that its one thing to enforce a taboo internally, but one can't expect non-believers to adhere to Islamic taboos. "I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite," he writes.

Writer David Morris also defends free speech, in particular for the opportunity to learn about other cultures. How, for example, can Americans even understand what is offensive if they can't see the cartoons? Or why, you might add, was it okay for an Egyptian newspaper to publish the cartoons with a condemnation if the depiction of Mohammed is always taboo? His strongest point concerns Salman Rushdie, who wrote a novel called the Satanic Verses that earned him the following:

In February 1989, the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a religious edict. He called for Rushdie's death, for blasphemy. His fatwa extended also to "those publishers who were aware of its contents...I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islam again...…" Iran offered a $1 million reward to spur Rushdie's execution.

In other words, these Danish publishers were trying to emphasize how fear of violence from extremist adherents of Islam is chilling free speech, even in European countries.

Was it worth it?
Judge for yourself. This link goes to the Brussels Journal, allowing you to see all 12 cartoons for yourself.