Cartoon protests - yes, still spamming.

[icarus]

In a new turn, a prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition, saying it wanted to see if freedom of expression — the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings — also applied to Holocaust images.

Good point. Suddenly the Islamic cartoon protests make sense to me (if not the violence).

Comments

[orca-girl.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, though -- at this point, it's difficult to separate the protest over the cartoons from the violence of that protest.

Or, from the other point of view -- this "turnabout" attempt to get the point across really only works if the reaction throughout the West to grievously offensive Holocaust cartoons in an Iranian paper is on the same level. But, it's not going to be. Which is part of the point being missed. A not-insignificant portion of the problem *now* isn't that Westerners can't get that Muslims were offended, or even hurt; it's that they can't comprehend the scale and quality of the reaction.

Another dimension to it being missed by the Iranian paper is that segments of the West have been entirely aware of the corrosive, vicious portrayal of Jews and Israel and Westerners endemic to media throughout the Muslim world, prior to this. Blasphemy and sacrilege in cartoons aimed at the West, though presented to a Muslim audience? Already there. We may look at them and feel anger. We may look at this latest set, and feel disgust. But that's a pretty far cry from calling for the murder of the cartoonists. Or from storming hotels to find any random person of the right nationality on whom to commit violence. The gulf isn't just the lack of understanding of what gives offense. It's the difference in feeling at the gut level of what constitutes an acceptable level of reaction.

The hypocrisy of the Dutch paper in a past decision not to run cartoons about Christ also clouds the issue. Because the issue has moved beyond will/won't, would/wouldn't, and is about can/can't. Especially, can/can't when under death threats.

And further problems: Iranians failing to understand the fine point between expressing opinion, and denying fact. Iranians would vehemently oppose any attempt by any Western agency to say what "can" be said in Iranian papers, be it Holocaust denials or denigrating cartoons. The West makes no comment at all on the latter (prior to the present iteration), and on the former, the rhetoric is not about censorship, but about rebuttal. Not "you cannot say that" (in any attempt to make that literally true, that is), but "you should not, not least because you are factually deluded if you try to deny an event for which there are still living victims and living eyewitnesses and piles of documentary evidence".

Recommended interesting reading: today at Salon.com (I always use the free day pass to read), the Somalian woman who is the author of the film for which van Gogh was killed. (A death-threat to her was pinned to his chest with a knife.) She is a member of the Dutch parliament, and an ex-Muslim. The interview doesn't go into the depth I would have liked to see, because her voice is a voice sorely missing from the usual media coverage we hear. There is, of course, nobody bitter about a religion like an ex member of that religion.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have to go home and have WG kick me off the computer (at my request because of the level of homework I have for tomorrow) but I'm thinking.

Icarus

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Iranians failing to understand the fine point between expressing opinion, and denying fact.

Exactly. And BTW, Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine which republished the Danish cartoons this morning have said they will run the Holocaust Iranian cartoons when they come out. Their reasoning is that people should see to what obscene lengths the Iranians can go - and draw conclusions. Which I find eminently mature. There have been hateful Nazi-like (sometimes literally copied from old Nazi publications) cartoons in the Middle Eastern press for years. Time to publicize that little-known fact.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm all for it. At a certain point when people get into a contest in being offensive they start making the whole issue ridiculous.

That's always a good point to reach.

Icarus