Filed Under "Ya Think?"

From the always-insightful, never inciteful Times:

West Beginning to See Islamic Protests as Sign of Deep Gulf

Do tell:

As Islamic protests grew against the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, a small but vocal Muslim immigrant organization responded with a drawing on its Web site of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. "Write this one in your diary, Anne," Hitler was shown as saying.

The intent, said the group, the Arab European League, was "to use our right to artistic expression," just as the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten did last September when it published 12 cartoons showing Muhammad, several of them satiric.

...After days of violent protests that have claimed several lives, the conflict has pushed both sides across an unexpected threshold, where they view each other with miscomprehension and suspicion.

The Times floods the zone with another story in the Arts section:

They're callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.

But drawings are drawings, so a question arises. Have any modern works of art provoked as much chaos and violence as the Danish caricatures that first ran in September in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten?

That's an interesting question, which is not really answered in the article.  Well, let's take that as a "No".

And in late news, Bush addresses this:

President Bush called on governments around the world to halt the violence that has followed the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Europe, as four more protesters were killed in Afghanistan.

The deaths, which took place when Afghan police fired into a crowd marching on an American military base, brought the total of people killed in protests in Afghanistan in recent days to 12.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah, Mr. Bush said that the United States believes in acceptance of all faiths and in freedom of the press, but that "with freedom comes the responsibility to be thoughtful about others."

"We reject violence as a way to express discontent over what is printed in the free press," he said, and called on governments "to stop the violence, to be respectful, to protect property and to protect the lives of innocent diplomats who are serving their countries overseas."

Here is the White House link.

Comments

[Anon]

To The Virgins?

Is this the situation? There are irreconcilable differences between Muslims and the rest of the world. If so…then perhaps there are only two options. We both go our separate ways, live and let live. Or, continue this on-going war until all those angry young masked men have been sent to the virgins.

[larwyn]

TM - did you miss this today:

dung-clotted “Holy Virgin Mary” photo in today's NYT'S

Today in TimesWatch:
(Headlines link to online postings with links to cited articles & sources)

Hypocrisy on Parade: Times Runs Photo of Dung-Clotted “Virgin Mary”

Just yesterday the Times wrote in an editorial on the Danish cartoons of Mohammad that “The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”

Apparently the Arts pages didn’t get the memo, because it runs a photo of Chris Ofili’s dung-clotted “Holy Virgin Mary” in Wednesday’s Arts section story by Michael Kimmelman, who calls the Danish cartoons “callous and feeble.”

This is the most striking example yet of the double standard by the Times when it comes to art that offends religious sensibilities.

Ya think they are hoping to stir up some Christian riots? You know - multicultural expression!

Just as they ignored Moynihan's "dumbing
deviancy down" and suceeded.

If only they can get some Christians to burn
news stands - that would prove "all cultures
equal" wouldn't it?

Or is this just the NYT'S sense of
humor on display???

Click here: Dr. Sanity
LOOKING FOR HUMOR IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Instapunk extends the discussion from one of my previous posts, "Shame, Guilt, the Muslim Psyche, and the Danish Cartoons" (here) when he states the following:

To boil it all down to simplest terms, I'm suggesting that Japan has been able to retain vast parts of its traditional culture while coexisting with hugely different western cultures because its people acquired, finally, a sense of humor.

As with Dr. Sanity's perspective on shame culture, we are looking now at something that appears incidental or secondary but really isn't. A sense of humor is the great bridge between the prison of immature egotism and belonging in the greater world of humanity. Its possessor simultaneously views himself more humbly (and charitably) and others with greater wonder, appreciation, and pleasure. The ability to make a joke that causes others to laugh is one of the most direct sensory experiences of individual identity there is, and the ability to see that humor arises from the unexpected juxtapositions of great and small things is not to have learned a trick, but to have perceived a deep truth about life itself.

Interesting insightful read that will have you realize NYT'S humor
in at stuck somewhere prior to maturity.

[Extraneus]

Amir Taheri had a relevant column today on the misconception behind Muhammad's image problems.

[kim]

I've thought for awhile that the eventual globally encompassing culture will have a public spirituality that is Confucian, a private one that is Buddhist. Holidays will be Hindu in style and structure if not essence, and the remnants of the cults of Abraham will be marginalized as too violent.
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[kim]

Mickey Kaus has a nice little squib about ali Sistani not overreacting about the cartoons. Where is his Nobel. Oh, sorry Alf. What, me whirl?
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[kim]

One sad thing about this is that the Danes have been almost as internationally neutral and sane as the Swiss. This is an attack on the most civil of nations.

Rotate the UN bureaucracy to the capitol of whoever is President of the Security Council.
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[maryrose]

Larwyn:
I have long believed that a sense of humor is essential in navigating in today's world of controversy and unrest. If you can't laugh at yourself or with others you lack a necessary tool to obtain happiness and well-being.

[r flanagan]

This is the most striking example yet of the double standard by the Times when it comes to art that offends religious sensibilities
UNQUOTE larwyn.
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It would be if the two offences were viewed
equally seriously in the respective religions. But it's not an article of faith of Catholic doctrine that the Virgin should never be represented . Certainly an insult but more of a garden variety one of which there were innumerable examples in the 17th
and 18th centuries when Mariology was the subject of bitter dispute within Christianity.

On another aspect of the matter , Condi
might well have been right that Syria and Iran have been instigators of much of the violence -altho Juan Cole feels there's a downside for the secular Baath dictatorship in encouraging a fundamentalist riot ( ironically it pretty much shares our view of Fundamental Islam) - but today's 700,000 Beirut demonstrators , while undoubtedly marshalled by Hezbollah , give the aappearance of refuting Condi's subtext that the riots are more stage managed than popular.

[kim]

When Juan Cole feels there's a downside, I look on the bright side.
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