The Hate of the Muslim World's Cartoons
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 16, 2006
Aggrieved Muslims are astir, ostensibly venting their outrage over a series of cartoons published in an obscure Danish newspaper that were deemed disrespectful of the Prophet Mohammed. The current riots are reminiscent of last yearÂ’s violent eruptions in response to a false allegation that an American soldier at the Guantanamo Bay detention center had flushed the Koran of a prisoner down a toilet, riots that claimed 16 lives.
Allegedly “moderate” Muslims who have appeared in the media to air the purported voice of reason, have tempered their criticisms of the riots with reprimands against the Western press. They warn that such unnecessary acts of “provocation” (meaning the aforementioned cartoons) only serve to make it more difficult for Westerners to win the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims.
Then you read the sources many of the Mideast’s Muslims read. Consider, for instance, just a handful of published cartoons – extremely offensive to Jews – that sparked not the faintest whisper of rebuke in the Muslim world. All of the following may be seen on the Palestinian Media Watch website:
* September 3, 2005: In Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, no minor fringe publication but rather the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, a cartoon appeared depicting Israel as a rat with a Star of David on its back.
* February 5, 2005: A grinning Israeli soldier reaches out to shake hands with a tentative, frightened Arab, who notices that the soldier’s “hand” is in fact a bear’s paw. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* December 1, 2004: A bald man whose head is rendered as a globe is shown on his hands and knees, holding a magnifying glass with which he is scrutinizing the ground. The caption above him reads, “The search for terror is still ongoing.” In the background is a large, grinning ape with a human face and a Star of David on its belly. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* August 2, 2004: Titled “The Settlers,” this cartoon depicts Jewish settlers as the monster Medusa: six ravenous, sharp-toothed, serpentine figures (with blood dripping from their long tongues) are shown sprouting from a single common trunk, like branches of a tree; an Arab man stands by warily, fearful of being devoured. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* July 14, 2004: A hideous caricature of a rifle-wielding Jew (with a large hook nose and a sharp fang) sports an outfit adorned entirely with human skulls. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* April 20, 2004: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is depicted as a bull slowly bleeding to death, his flesh having been pierced by nine arrows, each one bearing the name of a Palestinian terrorist group (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida). That same day, the very same publication featured a split-frame cartoon picturing an open-mouthed Jew with blood-dripping fangs, alongside a grotesque, fanged, beastlike figure with blood dripping from its mouth and a Star of David on its fur.
* March 22, 2004: Ariel Sharon is depicted holding a large bowl filled with small, bleeding Palestinian children, whom he is systematically piercing with a fork and devouring. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* November 8, 2003: Israel is portrayed as a large serpent preparing to devour a frightened man representing the “European Commissionership.” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* October 11, 2003: An Israeli is depicted as a subhuman, prehistoric caveman carrying a studded club, presumably in search of Arab prey. His feet are bear claws, and his primitive garment is adorned with Stars of David. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* October 4, 2003: Israel is represented as a wolf with a Star of David emblazoned on its leg, pursuing a small, bespectacled, frightened man who symbolizes the new Palestinian Authority (PA) government, which the drooling beast seeks to consume. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* October 4, 2003: Israel and the United States are depicted as worms busily eating an apple that represents the Arab world, Israel starting from what the PA claims is Palestinian land, and the U.S. starting from Iraq. “Be strong,” says the Israeli worm to its American counterpart. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
Other recent cartoons alternately depict Israel as a large green alligator that eats Palestinians (October 9, 2003); a pitchfork-wielding Satan (March 22, 2000); an octopus with a star of David on its head, reaching up from its murky swamp to grab a dove with one of its tentacles (April 17, 2000); a rat (with a Star of David on its head) gorging itself on a block of cheese that represents the Arab world (August 1, 2001); a worm eating the sacred scrolls of Islamic scripture (July 25, 2003); and the lice on an ArabÂ’s headdress (April 23, 2003).
These are but a few examples of the type of disrespectful, venomous garbage that gets published all over the Islamic world on a daily basis. The targets are always non-Muslims – mostly Jews and Christians. Muslim culture does not even bat a proverbial eyelash when its own publications, many of which represent the officially sanctioned views of Islamic governments, print such things. But when an outlet of a Western nation’s free press dares – independently of any governmental endorsement or instruction – to print a cartoon that Muslims may find offensive, all hell breaks loose.
What makes this especially ironic is the fact that the Islamic world generally treats the symbols of other religions with great contempt. Recall, for instance, when the Taliban in 2001 used tanks, explosives, and anti-aircraft weapons to destroy all of AfghanistanÂ’s ancient religious icons that were not of a Muslim nature, the most notable being two colossal sculptures of Buddha (175 feet and 120 feet high, respectively) that had been cut, probably in the third and fifth centuries A.D., into tall, sandstone cliffs.
In Pakistan, Muslim rioters have often driven Christians from their villages, burned their homes, and razed their churches. In February 1996 in Egypt, a mob of 10,000 Muslim youths pillaged and burned three Christian villages in the Nile Delta; such abominations have occurred many times there. In Kuwait, conversion to Christianity is a crime punishable by death. Over the past two decades, Sudan’s Muslim government (which has made it a crime to convert to Christianity) has bombed, burned, and looted many of the country’s Christian villages, capturing and selling into slavery countless thousands of the inhabitants – including women and children. In Saudi Arabia, possession of a Bible may result in arrest, deportation, or in some cases execution; the Saudi government desecrates and burns all Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points or during raids on Christian expatriates during their private worship services. Saudi Arabia also bans the importation or the display of crosses, Stars of David, or any other non-Muslim religious symbols. Indonesia, Nigeria, and Iran too are rife with anti-Christian hatred.
The multiculturalists of the West have encouraged radical Muslims to preserve their culture in Western nations. Now we are re-learning that tremulous appeasement cannot purchase the goodwill of those intent on crushing “infidels” – as evidenced by the deadly arsons and riots that erupted all over France last November, when angry Muslims turned their wrath on the land that had made multiculturalism its highest ideal. We are not engaged in a cultural dialogue in which we may seek to try to “understand” our would-be murderers; we are engaged in a protracted struggle for the survival of our way of life. The Islamists and the appeasenik leftists are on the wrong side.