I came across this story via Yahoo!News which smacks of the type of reactionary thinking I rarely come across outside a classroom filled with 12 year olds.

Hamshahri, a prominent Iranian newspaper, is sponsoring a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust in response to the recent publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

The paper asks:

Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?” Hamshahri wrote, referring to the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

This is a very childish response and, I think, unecessary. How many publications have satirized Judaism or Christianity in the past? I submit that via cartoon, editorial, or inflamatory statement, the free press has often satirized and/or denounced these religions. How often have these events spawned the kind of violent protests that we are seeing around the Muslim world right now?

Muslims are right to be offended by the cartoons, but there are more productive methods to voice their outrage. This Holocaust cartoon exercise will backfire on them. And even if it did provide the kind of response they are trying to provoke, it in no way justifies the needless vandalism and death that has taken place over the past few days.

Picured is one of several cartoons published in a Danish paper. I’m not sure what the coverage has been like in the US, but at least a third of the news coverage on CNN International over here has been about the Danish cartoon and the Islamic reaction. Throughout the coverage CNN will show what we can only assume are the actual cartoons because they scramble the actual images. I haven’t figured out why they show a close-up of the cartoon if they are just going to make it uninteligible.

Muslims seem to be upset because the cartoons are offensive to them. And I don’t think many would argue that. Though I suppose “upset” is stating it a bit mildly. They are shutting down Danish embassies and threatening bloodshed if Denmark does not apologize.

I have been puzzling over the extreme Muslim response to these cartoons, and have a few thoughts.

1. Islam, being iconoclastic, is forbidden from making images of Mohammad or any other religious icons. So, making a satirical image of Mohammad is doubly offensive to them.

2. The whole debate seems to be about Free Speech, yet I think Muslims on the whole do not understand the concept. Most Islamic countries are repressive and their citizens do not enjoy the basic rights of Western countries. Making such a cartoon in Iran or Indonesia would get you arrested or worse.

3. Furthermore, though Muslims are growing population in Europe, they have not done a good job of assimilating into their respective countries. I wonder to what extent this has complicated their problems. They seek refuge in Europe, and then seem to set themselves against their new country of residence. I realize that is an oversimplification, and that there are many other factors at work, but their presense as a foreign community within a Western society appears to breed many problems.

All of this discussion doesn’t even touch upon the fact that this cartoon could be interpreted differently. Perhaps instead of meaning to say that Islam is a religion of violence, it could mean that extremists use Islam as an excuse for violence.

Is the cartoon is poor taste? Probably. But that’s not really the point.

Though I find it ironic that the Muslim response to these cartoons is a violent one. I just saw a Danish embassy on fire on CNN.

Why has Islam pitted itself against the West instead of trying to cooperate with them?