As many of you know by now, protests at or near Danish embassies and elsewhere by Muslims in response to cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, have erupted. The U.S. State Department says that publication of the cartoons was wrong. I think the government is wrong.
Here in the West, freedom of the press and freedom of speech are among our most treasured liberties. It is not illegal, in the United States or in most countries of Europe, to draw and publish a cartoon thought by some, even many, to be blasphemous.
I understand that Islam believes that it is wrong to depict Mohammed the Prophet in a cartoon, even favorably. But that isn't the issue and we should not let it become the issue. Otherwise, we would have to condemn editorial cartoons that make fun of Popes, Jerry Falwell, and the Dalai Lama.
Indeed, the whole point of the War on Terror is to defend our liberties from a fundamentalist Islamic movement bent on destroying them. That same movement has no qualms about suppressing speech and press in the countries in which it has a significant political voice, and even Islamic countries where the fundamentalists are marginalized have pretty poor records when it comes to these liberties.
To say now that the cartoons are "disrespectful" and should not have been published is, I think, both misguided and hypocritical. Misguided because it places Islamic religious beliefs above our commitment to freedom of the press; hypocritical because the American government has not generally felt the need to comment on and criticize unfavorable editorial depictions of other religious figures. Moreover, we who are engaged in a war in one of the most Islamic of all nations, a war with a rationale that is, to say the least, unclear, are hardly in a position to pretend that we are pro-Islam.
Finally, I saw the cartoons. You can see them here - http://www.humaneventsonline.com/.... They seem to me to be a fair, albeit provocative, commentary on the proclivity of the Islamo-fascists to kill innocents.
If anything, our State Department, and the diplomats in Europe now falling all over themselves to apologize, should forthrightly defend the freedom of the press. They should say to the Islamic world, "look, we're sorry you're offended, but freedom of the press means taking the risk that someone won't like what's published. It's a trade worth making, and that freedom is one we hope you will have in the very near future."