Listening to NPR this morning I heard an interview with an analyst who said that the Mulsim reaction to the Danish cartoons was immensely hypocritical, because the Arab world publishes cartoons all the time that demean the US, the west, the Israelis, etc.
I have no doubt whatsoever of this. But I’ve never seen any. Anybody got any idea where examples might be found?
Hypocritical, and ironic. The whole package.
No idea where the pictures are, though.
Um… any Middle Eastern newspaper.
This marks maybe the 8th time or so I’ll make this point in GQ - and others do it more frequently than me - but the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world isn’t Arab and a decent minority of Arabs aren’t Muslim, and the two words shuldn’t really be used interchangably. (Maybe the posts need a Venn Diagram tool…)
And according to the google ads, 1000s of them in the UK are single. Right now!
Absolutely true, and the wording of my question was not well considered, even though I should know better. In fact, if you believe Wikipedia[sup]1[/sup], the first six countries in ranking of Muslim population by absolute numbers are not Arab. Egypt is the first, at #7.
Actually, it’s Iran at No 6.
I thought Iranians were not Arabs?
I have several Iranian friends who call themselves Persian.
Oh an I just posted a similar thread in MPSIMS…
Just to keep the issue straight, we should probably note that the reaction to the cartoons is not because they demean Muslims - rather because they consider it blasphemy. That’s altogether a different thing from the examples given in the OP, and if one thinks it’s helpful to accuse people of hypocisy then one should use valid comparisons.
What charizard said. You can debate the relative significance and importance (but not in this forum 
), but a cartoon featuring GW Bush is nothing like the same deal.
Numerous controversial ones (includeing the recent hot topis) can be found here, grouped together.
http://www.mastalk.com/mastalk/readOfTheDay.jspx
Posted by radio host Michael Smerconish, who appears on cable shows as a host and guest. He has been all over this subject.
The editorial cartoons is the local papers are an endless source of puzzlement to me. I ask my Arab office-mates to help figure them out, but often they remain a mystery.
This is a fair point. I looked at the examples at Fear Itself’s link, and though they might be offensive they do not mock the religion itself. They are primarily political. The only one that represents a religious figure is one of the Pope saying, “Peace on Earth.” This sample is not, of course, exhaustive.
However, I would add that in the Danish cartoons, Mohammed is used as a symbol of the religion in much the same way that the Star of David was used in the cartoons criticizing Israel. It is an easy way to personify the religion. I didn’t pick up on this story until the response became violent so I don’t know the background–whether there was underlying intent to deliberately violate the prohibition against depicting the Prophet, or if it was naive.
That being said, I wonder if there is a cartoon from the Middle East depicting something like Jesus giving cash and fighter planes to Israel, or something like that of an inarguably religious nature.
Persians are the largest ethnic group in Iran. Arabs are a tiny (and persecuted) minority.
I’ve heard that some Mullahs passed around the now famous cartoon with several that were never published and possibly were made up by some mullahs themselves to incite the masses. Anyone know where those other cartoons can be found?
From what I’ve seen, the whole thing began when the Danish newspaper specifically enlisted cartoonists to draw pictures of Mohammed. The article that ran with the cartoons discussed the self-censorship among illustrators, who would not draw such pictures for fear of reprisals by extremist Muslims. So it certainly was a deliberate act of defiance.