Cartoon Violence
There's something ironic about Muslims responding with violence to cartoons that criticize Islam as violent. Or perhaps the word I'm looking for is predictable. The cartoons exploit the Muslim world's Achilles' Heel - their intolerance of criticism of their religion & prophet. My initial reaction was that it is good for European newspapers to help Muslims "exercise" tolerance, although, of course, I'm hypocritically not in favor of anyone exploiting my Achilles Heels in order that my soft tissue be exercised. And it's hard to dispute the Vatican Press Office's assertion that "a reading of history shows that wounds that exist in the life of peoples are not cured this way." Islam will be fixed by Muslims, not from the outside.
So the cartoons are probably less a strengthening of a weakness than a pouring of salt on a wound, although the temptation is to feel that this was bound to happen sooner or later so we might as well get it over with. Newspaper editors worship the First Amendment and Muslims near-worship the Prophet Mohammed so this train wreck was all too obvious. Were the cartoons disrespectful? When is humor not? (See WFB's comment below about Heaven being the place where 'humor does not lacerate'.) Let sleeping dogs lie, they say, but Islamo-fascism is already awake and biting. But there are degrees of "biting" and I wonder how smart it is to needlessly antagonize biting dogs by poking sticks at them.
Tony Blankley in his book "The West's Last Chance" imagined a scenerio in which Muslims began rioting outside European museums because of the depiction of naked females in art, but it seems the real incite to violence is criticism of Islam. And there is a surprising diversity of opinion. The respected blogger Hugh Hewitt came down against the cartoons, as does Robert Duncan of Spero News. Amy and Rock (here and here) have interesting posts up. Mark Shea has also come out against the cartoons.
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