Haaretz on anti-Islam cartoon caricatures

Unless you've been ignoring the rest of the world for the last two weeks, you probably know about the international fracas over some derogatory cartoons published in a Danish paper. The cartoons were crude caricatures that basically implied that all Muslims were terrorists and that Islam as a whole taught terrorism. One, for example, portrayed Mohammed with his turban made our of a bomb.

This caused the obvious diplomatic meltdown, boycotts of Danish products in the Middle East, closing of embassies, protests which have now spread as far as Indonesia and Brisbane. Across the Middle East five people died in protests and other clashes. European papers stubbornly reasserted their right to a free press by spreading publication of the cartoons to other papers, displaying a pig-headed bigotry towards Muslims that is quite palpable.

While most of the non-European Western press is still simply reporting events too stunned to reflect on the chaos and stupidity of the situation with any depth, a reasoned response has come from an unlikely source. Haaretz, a center-left Israeli newspaper has an interesting perspective on the whole debacle.

It takes both sides to task. Europe for the way it has taken a right to an absurd and gratuitous extreme and Muslim protesters for so quickly and so self-defeatingly leaping to violence as a first rather than last response.

One of my fellow interns who studied in Cairo for a year and lives in Madison, Wisconsin - a white leftist heartland - is writing a piece for SojoMail. It's a developed version of a rant he wrote to me pointing out that Europe is deeply racist, despite its uber-tolerant reputation. He says, like Madison, it talks a big game while there aren't actually any foreigners around but as soon as more than two or three show up where they live suddenly their true colours come out. He gives examples of people throwing bananas at African soccer players in Europe, or school kids chanting "Food stamps!" at kids from a poorer school at a sporting event in Madison.

It is all a bit of a glitch in the Matrix for the global PC brigade. Suddenly everyone looks just as bigoted and irrational as everyone else.

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