[Mb-civic] We are all Danes now - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  We are all Danes now

By Jeff Jacoby  |  February 5, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

HINDUS CONSIDER it sacrilegious to eat meat from cows, so when a Danish 
supermarket ran a sale on beef and veal last fall, Hindus everywhere 
reacted with outrage. India recalled its ambassador to Copenhagen, and 
Danish flags were burned in Calcutta, Bombay, and Delhi. A Hindu mob in 
Sri Lanka severely beat two employees of a Danish-owned firm, and 
demonstrators in Nepal chanted: ''War on Denmark! Death to Denmark!"In 
many places, shops selling Dansk china or Lego toys were attacked by 
rioters, and two Danish embassies were firebombed.

It didn't happen, of course. Hindus may consider it odious to use cows 
as food, but they do not resort to boycotts, threats, and violence when 
non-Hindus eat hamburger or steak. They do not demand that everyone 
abide by the strictures of Hinduism and avoid words and deeds that 
Hindus might find upsetting. The same is true of Christians, Jews, 
Buddhists, Mormons: They don't lash out in violence when their religious 
sensibilities are offended. They certainly don't expect their beliefs to 
be immune from criticism, mockery, or dissent.

But radical Muslims do.

The current uproar over cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed 
published in a Danish newspaper illustrates yet again the fascist 
intolerance that is at the heart of radical Islam. Jyllands-Posten, 
Denmark's largest daily, commissioned the cartoons to make a point about 
freedom of speech. It was protesting the climate of intimidation that 
had made it impossible for a Danish author to find an illustrator for 
his children's book about Mohammed. No artist would agree to illustrate 
the book for fear of being harmed by Muslim extremists. Appalled by this 
self-censorship, Jyllands-Posten invited Danish artists to submit 
drawings of Mohammed, and published the 12 it received.

Most of the pictures are tame to the point of dullness, especially 
compared to the biting editorial cartoons that routinely appear in US 
and European newspapers. A few of them link Mohammed to Islamist 
terrorism -- one depicts him with a bomb in his turban, while a second 
shows him in Heaven, pleading with newly arrived suicide terrorists: 
''Stop, stop! We have run out of virgins!" Others focus on the threat to 
free speech: In one, a sweating artist sits at his drawing board, 
nervously sketching Mohammed, while glancing over his shoulder to make 
sure he's not being watched.

That anything so mild could trigger a reaction so crazed -- riots, death 
threats, kidnappings, flag-burnings -- speaks volumes about the chasm 
that separates the values of the civilized world from those in too much 
of the Islamic world. Freedom of the press, the marketplace of ideas, 
the right to skewer sacred cows: Militant Islam knows none of this. And 
if the jihadis get their way, it will be swept aside everywhere by the 
censorship and intolerance of sharia.

Here and there, some brave Muslim voices have cried out against the 
book-burners. The Jordanian newspaper Shihan published three of the 
cartoons. ''Muslims of the world, be reasonable," implored Shihan's 
editor, Jihad al-Momani, in an editorial. ''What brings more prejudice 
against Islam -- these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker 
slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras?" But within 
hours Momani was out of a job, fired by the paper's owners after the 
Jordanian government threatened legal action.

He wasn't the only editor sacked last week. In Paris, Jacques LeFranc of 
the daily France Soir was also fired after running the Mohammed 
cartoons. The paper's owner, an Egyptian Copt named Raymond Lakah, 
issued a craven and Orwellian statement offering LeFranc's head as a 
gesture of ''respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every 
individual." But the France Soir staff defended their decision to 
publish the drawings in a stalwart editorial. ''The best way to fight 
against censorship is to prevent censorship from happening," they wrote. 
''A fundamental principle guaranteeing democracy and secular society is 
under threat. To say nothing is to retreat."

Across the continent, nearly two dozen other newspapers have joined in 
defending that principle. While Islamist clerics proclaim an 
''international day of anger" or declare that ''the war has begun," 
leading publications in Norway, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, 
Switzerland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have reprinted the Danish 
cartoons. But there has been no comparable show of backbone in America, 
where (as of Friday) only the New York Sun has had the fortitude to the 
run some of the drawings.

Make no mistake: This story is not going away, and neither is the 
Islamofascist threat. The freedom of speech we take for granted is under 
attack, and it will vanish if it is not bravely defended. Today the 
censors may be coming for some unfunny Mohammed cartoons, but tomorrow 
it is your words and ideas they will silence. Like it or not, we are all 
Danes now.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/05/we_are_all_danes_now/
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