Them cartoons

It really is fascinating the debate/range of opinions these cartoons have lead to, these differences in opinion are perhaps the most interesting part of the whole sorry affair. Way more than the cartoons themselves, thats for sure.

For we choose to take sides and debate out position on them, from our unique cultural and ethnical corners, yet here there is also a valubale opportunity to see things through someone elses eyes, not always comfortable but enlightening to varying degrees none the less.

The more we can understand others the more these catch words like mulitcuturalism can actually take substance and form, and from there we can learn not only to live together but to benefit as individuals and societies in the differences of our brothers and sisters of every colour, culture and faith.

I've read thousands of words on the topic and expect to read many thousands more. I really can't get enough of it to be honest for the more views I read the more I realise I have so much to learn about the peoples of the world I live in, how sheltered I am and how ignorant I am of most peoples history from anything but a Western perspective.

Here's a bunch of words that I feel best sum the whole sorry affair up best, that I've read thus far.

"What was being put to the test in the cartoon affair was the willingness of a minority group to conform to majority assumptions.

IT is impossible not to be dismayed by the spiral of events. A witless racist cartoon is elevated into a totem of Western democracy and holocaust denial becomes a symbol of resistance to imperialism.

The message contained in the Danish cartoon was blunt: it drew an equation between Muslims and terrorists, between Islam and murderous violence. It was devoid of humour, irony, artistic or social merit, yet editors across Europe took it upon themselves to publish it. They did so, they claimed, as a "test" of free speech. Now, more often than not, the Western media is cautious about testing free speech, especially when it comes to exposing government secrets or embarrassing rich people who enjoy recourse to libel lawyers. There are a wide range of offensive images — racist, pornographic — that they routinely refuse to publish. But when it came to the Danish cartoon, the usual inhibitions were cast aside. What's apparent from statements made by the editors and their supporters is that what they were eager to put to the "test" was not an abstract principle but the willingness of a minority group to conform to majority assumptions.

Selective memory


Listening to Western commentators exercise themselves over whether "we" have made too many concessions to "cultural differences" and to what extent "cultural diversity" is compatible with "our democratic values", I wonder what history books these people have read. Did they miss the 100-odd years during which non-Western peoples fought for elementary democratic rights against Western colonial powers? Did they miss "our" slave trade, "our" genocides, "our" use of weapons of mass destruction? Have they missed the "culture wars" that have ravaged the United States for two decades, in the course of which a well-funded right-wing religious movement has mounted successful attacks on science and personal freedom? The current relative openness of Western society has had to be extracted from recalcitrant elites inch by inch, and is today threatened first and foremost by its own governments.

Coming from British commentators, members of a notoriously mono-lingual majority whose knowledge of other cultures is often limited to the menu at an "Indian" restaurant (usually run by a Bangladeshi or Pakistani), the complaint that Muslims have cut themselves off from the wider world is rich. Not as rich, of course, as lectures on democracy and tolerance coming from those who breach international law, inflict violence on civilian populations and abuse human rights. The mythology crudely expressed in the cartoon acquires a daily deadly impact in Iraq, Palestine, Guantanamo and on the streets of Europe, where innocent Muslims are treated and punished as "terrorists".

Many of those who proclaim the right to offend seem shocked and outraged when offence is duly taken. Surely, the same principle that protects the cartoonist protects the idiot dressed as a suicide bomber. But while the Muslim response to the cartoon is presented as pathological, the Western mentality that begat the cartoon escapes scrutiny.

The affair has been driven in part by media sensationalism. Ethnic polarisation — real or imagined — provides drama, stirs emotions. Crucially, across Europe, the market the media aim to capture is overwhelmingly white and non-Muslim. In this market, coverage of jihadi extremism takes on a prurient tinge. It's exotic, it's threatening and it makes the white European feel smug and superior. Producers and editors are reluctant to admit it, even to themselves, but the ingrained assumptions and festering resentments of white supremacy make the story resonant for readers and viewers and shape the way it is constructed.

The debate about whether, where and when it might be acceptable to restrict freedom of speech is both difficult and necessary. But that's not the terrain that's being explored or "tested" here. Instead, discussion has been imprisoned in two related paradigms, both of them unreal and distorting. One counterposes "multi-culturalism" to "integration" and the other sets "Islam" against "the West". The first does not remotely reflect the way people live, the multiplicity and fluidity of actual social relations. The choices it offers are unreal. The second offers a clash of incommensurable abstractions, in which so much is left out, not least the authoritarian and hierarchical strands in Western thinking and the humanist and egalitarian strands in Islamic thinking."

For the full article, you know click here

I dread the possibilty of a world where the west squares off against the Muslim world in some sort of global conflict and it seems some in the west are hell bent on pushing us all into this sort of conflict. On the other side the Muslim extremists may also get their wish and the many millions of peace loving Muslims may just tire enough of the constant pushing of the west to say enough is enough.

If it happens and both sets of extremists loons get their way the world is truely fucked.

You know ot, grab ya peas and give em a chance.