| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Proving our point |
| 2006-02-15 |
| A nicely done editorial from what is otherwise the dhimmitown of Toronto National Post Published: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 As reported on the National Post's front page yesterday, Iran's best-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, is staging a competition to find the best cartoons mocking the Holocaust. Presumably, the editors think this is a clever move to pay back the Western world for a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. In fact, the stunt will only reinforce the revulsion many Westerners feel toward the medieval intolerance and backwardness exhibited by Islamist extremists. The story of the Danish cartoons is well-known: They were not published as an expression of hatred against Muslims, but rather as a blow against censorship. And while some of the images were provocative -- depicting Muhammad with a bomb on his head, for instance -- the object of the satire was fair game: the divergence between the prophet's honourable teachings and their perverse interpretation by terrorists. Most Western media outlets -- including this one -- elected not to republish the images. Though we respect those magazines and newspapers that decided otherwise, we judged it would be needlessly provocative to publish images that had already led to violence in many parts of the world. But we do not see the cartoons as hate speech, as some Canadian Muslim leaders are alleging. Rather, they lie within the modern Western tradition of subjecting all icons -- religious or otherwise -- to irreverent treatment. As numerous commentators have noted, we live in a society where a urine-soaked crucifix is lauded as high art. By this standard, the Danish cartoons are mild fare. Cartoons mocking the Holocaust are different. They intentionally belittle a genocide that killed six-million Jews. In so doing, they communicate the message that anti-Semitism and further Jewish slaughter are acceptable. Of course, we doubt such fine points are of interest to the editors of Hamshahri. After all, they work in a country whose President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Holocaust denier who rhapsodizes about the immolation of Israel. But even if Hamshahri embraces Mr. Ahmadinejad's agenda of hate, the newspaper should shut down its perverse cartoon competition for the simple reason that it casts Islam in disrepute. On this score, it is worth quoting a fine column by The New York Times's David Brooks, published last week: "You want us to know how you feel. You in the Arab European League published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank so we in the West would understand how offended you were by those Danish cartoons. You at [Hamshahri] are holding a Holocaust cartoon contest so we'll also know how you feel. Well, I saw the Hitler-Anne Frank cartoon: the two have just had sex and Hitler says to her, 'Write this one in your diary, Anne.' But I still don't know how you feel. I still don't feel as if I should burn embassies or behead people ... I still don't feel your rage. I don't feel threatened by a sophomoric cartoon, even one as tasteless as that one." Muslims responding to the publication of the Danish cartoons have rioted, issued death threats, killed people, burned embassies. Yet when Iran puts forward its filthy cartoon contest glorifying the killing of Jews, there will be no violence. Jews and other civilized people will respond as civilized people always do -- with letters to the editor, diplomatic gestures and articles like this one. In other words, the editors of Hamshahri are making the case against Islamist bigotry -- at least as it is presently manifest -- in a way that a thousand Danish newspaper cartoons could not. © National Post 2006 |
| Posted by:Hupomoger Clans9827 |