Anthonares

There seems to be a fundamental difference between the way that Europeans (including Russia, sorry to geographically offend any Russians), and Americans have reacted to the controversy over the Mohammed caricatures. Officially, European countries are vocally for the cartoons while our newspapers and government officials have spoken out against the offense they cause to Muslims.

Let me venture out onto very thin ice to ask a question that I think everyone ought to be asking: are the motivations of those who speak out either for or against these cartoons motivated by racism?

Let me first lay down a motivation for asking this question. Islam has made significant inroads into European culture. Birth rates are low enough amongst Christians and the non-religious that the only real population expansion is occuring within the Muslim community. Therefore, a demographic shift is in progress. The Muslim people also have a strong culture that resists immediate integration into European societies. Unlike is true of immigrants to the US, many second-generation Muslims in Europe still define themselves as Muslim before they call themselves European.

The threat felt in this demographic shift is evident in conversations I’ve had with folks from European countries. I’ve talked to people from the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. Also, I listen to the BBC fairly often and can hear the way questions are asked differently there. There is resentment in western Europe harbored towards the Muslim people that results from this demographic shift, and the perceived threat they bring to European societies. Just look at France’s recent attempts to ban displays of religious symbols in schools. That wasn’t to shelter kids from the effects of religion, it was to force a western view of the female role in society upon Islamic immigrants (I’m not saying that the female role in Islamic law is appropriate, I’m simply stating my observation on the purpose of the law).

Russia has its own reasons for a culturally pervasive anti-Islamic sentiment, largely focused around Chechnya. But ethnic tensions in that region have existed for centuries despite Soviet attempts to the contrary.

More hard-line elements of the religious conservative movement here in the United States are certainly anti-Islamic, but those voices are not the ones we hear speaking out against the caricatures. We hear our government speak out, as well as our news media. The government does not wish to offend the Islamic countries because so much of our security and energy depends on that region. The political cost of siding against the caricatures is quite low, so it certainly makes sense to do so. But, the media in the US, why have they agreed not to print or show the caricatures? Corporate risk aversion. Media outlets like Slate online have linked to the caricatures, but large media companies have too much to lose if they offend significant portions of the American population. Additionally, the cartoons are not very good. Only a few of them actually make a point, and one of them is intentionally offensive. Mohammed did not tell modern Muslims to blow themselves up, radical Imams did.

So, I have to ask if Europe is perhaps speaking out in favor of freedom of speech so vocally because of anti-Islamic sentiments in whiter parts of those countries. The governments would condemn an attempt to protray certain aspects of the Jewish holocaust as funny, and portrayals of fundamental violations of tenets of the Christian faith would not be welcomed either. I’m not so sure that this is a freedom of speech issue as much as it initially seemed to be (see my earlier post). I don’t think that news organizations should refrain from religious satire, but portrayals of the founding prophet of the religion as a terrorist are perhaps crossing the line into pure offense.

Now that said, the cartoon showing Mohammed waving his hands at the line of blown-up terrorists saying “Stop, stop! We’ve run out of virigins!” is damned good satire. That’s part of what makes this issue a tough one for me because that kind of satire is needed, but if the Islamic world is offended by the mere portrayal of the Prophet, than censorship is taking place. Is there any place in the world for a conflicted blogger on matters of politics and world affairs?

See my earlier post on this matter for links to the cartoons, as well as to see how my opinions have changed on this matter a little bit. I’m not a religious man, but when I see who is speaking out and why I have to temper my response a bit. The violent protests are ridiculous, and they are certainly not entirely about the cartoons either. I don’t doubt they are begun by extremists and fueled by ever-present tensions between western and Islamic cultures. The world is not a simple place, and we should not so readily condemn the responses of a billion people as wrong. Most reasonable people agree that freedom of speech has limits, and I think everyone would agree that it should not be raised as a thinly-veiled justification for racism.