Cartoons of Mohammed.

First of all, before Muslims rage against cartoons about Mohammed, they would do well to look at the Stuermer-like cartoons which are daily being produced in the Muslim world. The media in the Muslim world frequently revive the Blood Libel. Some Muslim clerics regularly select the more violent passages of the Koran and the Prophet's hadiths to justify killing infidels in general, and Jews in particular. Ignoring the more tolerant passages in the Koran, they describe militant jihad, suicide bombings of civilians etc as a religious duty, enjoined by the Prophet and rewarded by bliss in Paradise; so they cannot complain if such incitements to murder are translated into cartoons.

However, two blacks don't make a white. While of course the Press in the Western world has a perfect right to satirize everything, that does not mean that it was sensible to exercise it in this way. It is well known how sensitive even peaceful Muslims are about any mockery or even portrayal of Mohammed; and in the present climate it is surely irresponsible to to stir up this particular hornets' nest. It could also have been anticipated that the Muslim response would be totally excessive and infantile, taking their rage out against Danish-produced milk products (!), imperilling or doing damage to people, buildings and institutions that have nothing whatever to do with the publication, recalling diplomats although they know that Western governments, unlike Arab governments, have no control over the Press, etc. And even if Jyllands Posten had not anticipated all this, the papers which have now deliberately reprinted the cartoons after the row had already started, have inflamed it further: and that is totally irresponsible. The fact that we have no censorship does not absolve the press from observing a degree of self-censorship. Anyone who wanted to see the images that caused all the fuss could easily access them on the Internet (as I did): there was no need to reprint them in order to inform the public, and especially not after Jyllands Posten had expressed its own regret. One suspects that the desire to boost circulation, rather than all the high-minded talk about standing up for the freedom of the press, had more than a little to do with it. It would not after all be the first time that the freedom of the Press has been hypocritically invoked to publish offensive material.

There is, I know, the counter-argument that witholding publication would be giving in to blackmail. There are unfortunately many occasions when one has to run the risk of saying or doing something that inflames the Muslim world and that may do disproportionate damage, but publishing or republishing these cartoons was not one of them.