More on the Mohammed Cartoons...

I found an article talking about a recent protest in Lebanon, and saw a quote in it that actually did a lot to quell the sympathy I have for the Muslim standpoint on this.

On the street, the riot began to take a more sectarian turn. Throwing the metal barriers and barbed wire aside they chased the police up into the narrow alleys of Achrafieh, well beyond the embassy and deep into the Christian quarter. They smashed dozens of parked cars and tossed bricks through the windows of the furniture boutiques and hair salons. Others overturned two police cars and threw rocks through the windows of the St Maron church.

"What is the guilt of the citizens of Achrafieh for caricatures published in Denmark?" said Charles Rizk, the justice minister and a Christian. "This sabotage should stop."

Asad Harmoush, a leader of Jamaía Islamiya, the conservative Sunni Muslim group that had helped organise the protest, tried to deflect the blame. "We can't control tens of thousands of people. We tried to limit the harm and we extend our excuses to our brothers in Achrafieh and to the security forces. There has to be an investigation. Obviously there were infiltrators."

Okay--a government has to be held responsible for the disrespectful-but-physically-harmless publishing of a blasphemous cartoon (by a paper which they are, by their own laws, not allowed control over)...but when protestors destroy thousands if not millions of dollars of property, of people who had NOTHING to do with the cartoons (people that have been neighbors for years!), suddenly it's time to shift the blame and find excuses?

The initial publishing of the cartoons was deplorable...and the boycott of Danish goods in the Middle East is having an economic impact that will be felt for years if not decades in Denmark (one of the largest dairy producers in Denmark is losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in business DAILY because no one in the Middle East is buying their products anymore). It was ill-advised, short-sighted, and incredibly disrespectful...not to mention in very poor taste.

The REPEATED publication of them was just crude...you can show your support for another press entity without having to throw gas on the fire...that's what editorial pages are for, and editors can always choose to move their editorial to the front page if they really want to emphasize their point.

But I wish the Islamic world would wake up to the hypocrisy they are propagating. The violent protests are only justifying the biased nature of the cartoons. Yes, they're a different culture, and they have different ways of dealing with these kinds of problems. But this isn't just a Muslim problem, it's a worldwide problem...and if they want a worldwide response to it, they need to take a more temperate approach. It's human nature to respond more honestly to earnest requests, not angry demands.