Kwtia

By all means, be offended, insulted, angered by the racist cartoons that were published five months ago (when we didn't manage a squeak over them)... Free speech is sacred, yes, but I also recognise that The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." and now the collective noses of millions of muslims are smarting...and suddenly the match is lit under our lazy behinds by this wildfire of a controversy which has everyone shocked and shaking their fingers (and their guns) at the offensive depiction of the prophet as a terrorist...
So.... how do we, in our infinite imaginativeness, defend his honour? How do we prove that the Prophet was sent as a 'mercy' unto nations? How do we show the Islamophobes that they are wrong? Hell, we torch the Danish and Norwegian Embassies! We threaten peaceworkers from Scandinavian countries! We make death threats...and publish fatwas! We threaten London with another 7/7! Bravo...Where do we come up with these brilliant ideas? When an ignorant cartoonist unfairly and idiotically depicts the Prophet as a terrorist,is this the way we disprove the stereotype that has be hounding us ever since 9/11?... the one that says that all Muslims are somehow hardwired for violence and savagery...
It does hurt to wonder why an invitation to "members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him" ended up with cartoons that portrayed him with such ignorance and hatred... And yet what are we doing to change that image? How does our violent lashing out help? Doesn't it just mean we might as well have drawn the cartoon ourselves? And how does the flurry of European papers publishing the cartoon help the cause of freedom of expression? Couldn't there have been a more noble example used to further the cause of free speech? This escalation on both sides is serving no one ...
The ironic bit about the hoopla here is that the very same Kuwaitis who use the word Hindi/iya to mean servant.... who have spent the last 15 years spitting and sputtering about Iraqis and Palestinians and whoever else was not on the best of the best of God's creation list, namely the one millionth of a percent of the human species known as the Kuwaiti citizen...the same people who accept the racist depictions of Jews and Christians let alone people of the non-monotheistic faiths that are vomited all over the pages of so many Arab newspapers....these very same people are suddenly enraged, indignant and inconsolable at the insult hurled at a man who, even when someone urinated in a mosque in front of him, had the decency, the tolerance and the self-control to tell the enraged worshippers not to harm the man, because "you have been raised to deal with people gently and you have not been raised to deal with them harshly."
But, unfortunately, we today have not been raised with gentleness and we may never be able to behave gently with those we disagree with...
Where is our outrage and our suddenly efficient boycott-muscle while hundreds of thousands are killed in wars we are deaf, dumb and blind to? Where is our huffy moral indignation when millions upon millions starve unnecessarily, and millions upon millions of others are enslaved?...where is our disgust at our choking planet? Where are our bleeding hearts at all the suffering and wretchedness that fills this world? Aren't all these gifts from the very Creator these outraged masses are foaming at the mouth to impress, by going crazy over cartoons? Would the Prophet, seeing his followers today, be doing so with pride at what we have reduced ourselves to? I am sure that many must believe that their defense of his honour, in this wild frenzy of vengeance, would somehow ingratiate themselves to the Prophet(PBUH)..and to God...But I don't know...maybe if we had shown some moral rectitude when it came to all the insults hurled at every single gift this world has been filled with...maybe if we had the same staunch spines when it came to defending all the other outrages on this weeping planet, it might have been more convincing to hear these cries...
But after all, perhaps this is the last straw that broke the targeted Muslims' backs...Maybe too many years of feeling marginalised and demonised and ridiculed has reached tipping point..and here we are...spilling all over the map...but I can't help but wish that we knew better ways to express the well deserved feeling of disgust at having our faith so flippantly desecrated...maybe I wish we had a better track record being respectful, tolerant and never insulting other faiths ourselves...maybe I just wish that this world wasn't hurtling towards confrontations we have all been guilty of ignoring, inciting or committing...
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We must put a stop to this savage bitterness

The Observer

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'Can't take a joke' is the age-old taunt of the bully

The Independent

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Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark

Slate

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The reality of cartoon violence

FT

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Cartoon battle turns uglier

Al-Ahram

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Peace be upon you...isn't that the way it goes?