A Pilgrim’s Digression

I’ve been trying for days to see clearly through this issue of the so-called “cartoon violence.” Amir Taheri, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, provides his point of view on the subject today in a free, online Opinion Journal article titled Bonfire of the Pieties.

Taheri makes a compelling argument that the Koran prescribes no universal ban on images depicting Muhammad, and that in fact Muhammad has been depicted in art and in satire throughout the ages. Taheri provides a few examples and says there are many more too numerous to list. Muhammad has even been the subject of satire, and Taheri says the Prophet even pardoned a poet “who had lampooned him for more than a decade.”

Taheri’s thesis is that the rioting throughout the world is merely another move in the political game of chess between fundamentalist Islamists–”fascists,” he calls them–and moderate secularists in the West. He points out that the cartoons were originally published in September of last year, and that the cartoons only became an issue since a radical Islamic political organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, decided to use the cartoons for their own political ends. The cartoon war is a political war, not a religious war. The groups that are fomenting the war–Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda–do not represent Islam accurately, says Taheri, “just as the Nazi Party was not the sole representative of German culture.” Further, “their attempt at portraying Islam as a sullen culture that lacks a sense of humor is part of the same discourse that claims ’suicide martyrdom’ as the highest goal for all true believers.”

Taheri’s argument is perfectly cogent, and I find myself persuaded. My only quibble is that there are literally thousands of people who are apparently outraged over these cartoons. Not all of them are members of Islamic Jihad or the Muslim Brotherhood. However, I have no doubt they could easily have been hoodwinked into feeling more outrage than necessary, just as demagogues can bring out the worst in Christians for political gain (Terri Schiavo), Christians who would otherwise stay home and mind their own business. I can easily believe that the masses we see torching buildings and burning Danes in effigy are nothing more than pawns in the game.

On the other hand, that does not mean that the cartoonists and their publishers should not apologize. The more stubbornly the Europeans resist apologizing, the more fuel is thrown on the bonfire of Muslim hatred. But do they really have anything to apologize for? I just don’t know anymore. Part of the problem I have making up my mind is that I am colossally ignorant of Islam and Islamic culture.  I am uncomfortable formulating judgements about a people, culture, and religion which are totally alien to me.

Thus I am inclined to feel that humility in the face of this violence is the best tactic.  More people died in Afghanistan today, trying to storm a U.S. base there.  If a simple apology would put an end to the violence, then someone, anyone with responsibility and authority, ought to make the apology. This is getting out of control.