The Danes in the Hot Seat

From Reuters:

"Denmark warned citizens on Monday not to go to Saudi Arabia and Gaza gunmen said any Danes or Norwegians who came there would face attack, as Muslim fury mounted over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

Denmark has defended the Jyllands-Posten newspaper’s right to publish the satirical drawings that seemed to portray the prophet as a terrorist and which a Norwegian paper has run too."

So Denmark has had to pull aid workers from Gaza, Saudi Arabia has pulled its envoys, Libya has closed it embassy in Copenhagen. Danes have been advised not to travel in the Middle East. Hamas urged Islamic countries to take “deterrent steps against idiotic Danish behavior”. Thousands of Palestinians have marched protesting, militants armed with grenade launchers and Ak-47s (de rigeur) have rallied in front of the EU HQ in Gaza.

All of this ... why? Because of a couple cartoons.

Now, looking at it from here in the US, this all seems faintly ludicrous, but one person's sacrilege may be humor to another. So, let's put the shoe on the other foot: let's say that these same newspapers had lampooned Martin Luther King or George Washington. While neither is similar in social position to Mohammed, a founder of a world-wide religion, they are highly revered in the US. George Washington was a military man, a landowner and a slave owner -- and "the father of our country." MLK was a civil rights leader who championed equality among the races. We have federal holidays taken in respect of these men ... note the use of the word "holiday," it is not a Federal vacation day. Holy ... let's not go there.

So what would happen then? The outcry in the US would be that any such cartoon was any one of rascist, insulting, damnable or offensive. There would be calls for retraction. The author of the cartoon and editor of the paper would likely receive threats. If that paper was in the US, you might even see cries of "hate crimes," abuse of civil rights, and other accusations. You see, in the US we have our own untouchable subjects too. The muslim world might look at that event with some bemusement. And you know, in the context of a country that champions "free speech" they would be justly mystified. We do not apply "free speech" freely or evenly. We only apply what is politically correct at that point in time. For a variety of reasons, a few cartoons about Mohammed does not offend the average Amrican very much.

But would we pull ambassadors, threaten lives of persons so wholly unconnected with some two-bit newspaper, merely because of their nationality, as is happening through out the Middle East? No. That's pretty fair to say. But we do not extend the right to free speech to all, only selectively. You had better keep your bubble thoughts to yourself in the US -- as a certain Ivy League president found out recently. So in that manner, we are not much better than the hateful, gun-toting mobs in Gaza, or the various governments demanding apologies and taking diplomatic action. One man's thoughts here can, if voiced, bring out other hateful mobs, demanding apologies, censuring thought and taking action. We can all think of certain "public figures" here in the US who are grandstanding at the drop of a hat when their particular turf is invaded by thoughts opposed to theirs. Interestingly, not a few of them are "Reverends" ... drawing another similarity to various Imams and Mullahs.

Denmark, by contrast has the following official policy: Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen refused on Sunday to apologize, defending the right of free speech and saying he could not influence the media, but he condemned attempts “to demonize people because of religious beliefs.” Bravo.