# Europe and the furor over cartoons **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 6, 2006, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265 "2006-02-06T18:08:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/41 "2006-02-13T21:05:45Z")
> [@](#): > > For what it’s worth, I think those cartoons went beyond “reasonably offensive” to “deliberately outrageous.” I’ll grant you the one depicting him with a bomb in the turban was pretty offensive. (Although one must feel damn silly to make violent acts because of it.) Other than that, what? I don’t see it. Maybe the rhyme is insulting, but mohammed isnt even in that cartoon. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2006, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/42 "2006-02-13T21:22:09Z")
I have to wonder if the far right is picking up support because of this all this, especially in view of the weak, almost craven, response by European and American authorities. I note that, according to Snopes, a German businessman was recently arrested for printing the words “The Holy Koran” on sheets of toilet paper and sending them to mosques, saying that he was going to market the stuff and donate the profits to victims of Islamist terror. Is there any evidence of anti-Muslim and/or anti-immigrant feeling spiking in Europe because of this mess? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/43 "2006-02-14T02:54:37Z")
This is the great human race? This is what world civilization has led to? Cartoon wars? Makes me feel like in the song by Todd Rundgren, “We must be on the wrong planet.” My view of Islam after studying and working alongside Muslims, and trips to the Muslim world: Muslims have been programmed to react certain ways, they’re remote servers running software from a developer called Islam. You know how Microsoft puts stuff in their programs to force users to only run them Microsoft’s way? And it takes a good hacker to hack the code to disable the corporate bullshit and just run the good parts? The best hope I see in the Islamic world is the hackers who hack their own programs in the Islam OS of the mind. Like Irshad Manji, the controversial lesbian dissident in Canada who has decided to stay inside Islam and fight for change from within. That woman really has ovaries. She is unafraid to speak out and she pisses off almost everybody. She has bulletproof covers over her windows. But she is hacking the code and disabling the viruses. We need more Muslims like this. Edgewalkers. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/44 "2006-02-14T18:04:29Z")
Intersting. CNN has one of those internet polls on their [latest article](http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/14/pakistan.cartoons.ap/index.html) detailing the continued violence. It asks the question: > [@](#): > > Do you believe some Middle East governments are inflaming the controversy over Mohammed cartoons? The real interesting thing is that something like 90% of the responders say ‘yes’ to this. That kind of says something. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a poll with so overwhelming a response. Anyway, just wanted to share. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Pope\_Bob\_The\_Pious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@Pope\_Bob\_The\_Pious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pope_Bob_The_Pious)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2006, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/45 "2006-02-15T08:51:52Z")
[A KFC in Pakistan is burned during a ‘Cartoon Protest’.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4715084.stm)😕 It is hardly suprising that Colonel Sanders (PBUH) has his fickle hand in all this… ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/46 "2006-02-16T05:50:53Z")
An article by Hani Shukrallah at Salon the other day expressed my concerns well. > [@](#): > > Yet the bogus “clash of civilizations” – ludicrous, recycled, 19th century Orientalist racism as it may be – is becoming all too real. The two sides are getting more enamored of the fracas with every passing day. To try to convince them that this is a bogus altercation looks increasingly to be as futile as attempting to convince a bunch of drunk English soccer hooligans that, win or lose, a football match is nothing to come to blows over. > > Make no mistake about it: The recent West versus the Muslim World contention over 12 ignorant and offensive cartoons is not about freedom of expression and its limitations. It is first and foremost about the bleak reality of a great many powerful forces – on both sides of the Atlantic, north and south of the Mediterranean and all the way to the Indian Ocean – having a decided stake in perpetuating and escalating the so-called clash of civilizations, even if for a whole range of very different reasons. This is no conspiracy but, rather, an ugly convergence of equally repugnant interests. On the internet such troublemakers are called “trolls” and their bloodyminded aggression results in nothing more than electrons spilled. In real life they cause people’s real blood to be spilled. In _Midnight Express_ a prisoner named Ahmet has been locked up for so long his mind is gone. He wanders around saying things like “We’re all just machines. That’s all we are, broken machines…” I think he was onto something. He was commenting on the state of Muslims. People’s human OS programmed by software that’s buggy, obsolete, and crawling with mental viruses. Programmed to explode if you push the wrong button. Some idiot in Denmark notices the button, hasn’t bothered to find out what it’s connected to. Gee, I wonder what would happen if I pushed this button. NO! DON’T TOUCH TH… KA-_BOOM!!!_ The mass anger machine goes off automatically; people die. What’s the point of it all? I think Bob Dylan had it right when he sang, “Don’t follow leaders.” If I were programming for Muslim countries I would let them hear “Subterranean Homesick Blues” a lot. Actually, if Muslims would read the Qur’an and think for themselves instead of listening to mullas, they would see the Qur’an’s message is **"Think for yourself."** Like the cartoon (real or imaginary, I don’t know) described by Robert Anton Wilson in the _Illuminatus!_ trilogy. A man is looking up into the clouds for a sign from Heaven. And the sign says, “Think for yourself, shmuck!” ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/47 "2006-02-16T08:58:37Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Actually, if Muslims would read the Qur’an and think for themselves instead of listening to mullas, they would see the Qur’an’s message is **"Think for yourself."** I’d really like a cite from the Koran (one not superceded by a later sura) for that because from all my reading of the Koran and Islam the one message it does not contain is that. Islam is all about submission to the will of God. It’s the very meaning of the word. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265/48 "2006-02-16T19:14:39Z")
**tagos** , apparently you haven’t read the Qur’an. If you have a copy, all you have to do is read the thing instead of making me look up quotes for you. If you don’t have a copy, there are plenty online. The Qur’an contains several verses to the effect of “Don’t blindly imitate what people did before. Look at things for yourself and use your own intelligence.” It says these things in so many places that if you missed those, I have to conclude you haven’t read the Qur’an; if you did, you must not have been paying attention, so try reading it again with your eyes open to see what-all it really says - instead of seeking corroborations to cherry pick for an already established position. We all have brains set up to filter our perception of reality one way or another. I do it, you do it, everyone does it. I have my filters set up to take in data consistent with a liberal feminist bias. Given this, I’m aware that my brain is less likely to be pinged by, for example, accounts of women who abuse men rather than vice versa. I recognize there’s a danger I may miss out on real instances of such abuse, so I try to keep my mind open to perceptions that might otherwise be filtered out. Your posts indicate that you have filters consistent with an antagonistic bias against Islam as a whole. Your brain is probably less likely to be pinged by the Muslims’ point of view of their relationship with the West; this includes a great many non-extremist, non-radical Muslims who had been hoping to work out reasonable compromises with the West. Robert Anton Wilson made a point of reading stuff from people he totally disagreed with, to check what his reality-filters were screening out. Seriously, this is a valid exercise for a truly skeptical mind, a mind that turns its skepticism back on itself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/europe-and-the-furor-over-cartoons/343265.md?page=2)