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The cartoon wars continue
February 20, 2006 | 11:56 AM ET
Mobs of ignorant thugs continue to riot around the world over the publication of some rather innocuous cartoons that are seen as mocking the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
Here's a map showing the location of the riots worldwide, and here's a report from Nigeria:
Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.
It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa's most populous nation. An Associated Press reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze.
These people are doing more to make Mohammed look bad than any cartoonist ever could.
They're also sparking more and more debate about the limits of toleration. Right now it seems a one-way street: The Taliban blew up millennia-old Buddhist monuments, avant-garde Western artists show their "courage" by immersing crucifixes in urine, and the burning of American flags hardly raises an eyebrow. And Western media certainly don't mind publishing photos or reports (such as Newsweek's false report that Korans were flushed down the toilets at Guantanamo) even if such reports will "inflame the Muslim World." So long, anyway, as it's not inflamed at them. When it comes to the Danish cartoons, as Tim Blair notes, "Most media organisations have taken a stand by boldly running away."
Indeed. A happy exception to this trend was the Rocky Mountain News, which published the cartoons and reports that reader reaction was highly favorable. Yeah, readers tend to appreciate news media actually, you know, reporting things, rather than deciding to keep them in the dark.
Of course, it's worth noting, as James Hudnall does, that the Danish cartoons weren't enough to "inflame the Muslim world" on their own -- the Danish imams who peddled the story added three fake cartoons of their own. Apparently the originals were too tame.
Too tame to inflame the Muslim world. But still, apparently, too offensive for us to see. Or, perhaps just too scary for the press.
The unfortunate question remaining for folks in the media is this: Now that people have realized they're easily intimidated by threats of violence, who'll be the next to try that approach? And in what cause?
