Islamic Cartoons and the Clash of Civilizations

The Danish cartoons and caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed can be seen at MohammedCartoons.com. See other related cartoons at: Image Problem and A Right to Blasphemy.

Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones. Are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?  While the debate rages, an important point has been overlooked: despite the supposed Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world (see examples here).

Daniel Pipes has a must-read editorial on the subject: Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism.  He writes:

"The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: Will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise: Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not."

Writing in the Intellectual Activist, Robert Tracinski rightly points to the need for the West to show solidarity in the face of threat of Muslim censorship.  In Publish or Perish: The Lessons of the Cartoon Jihad, he writes: 

"The answer, for publishers, is to tell the Muslim fanatics that they can't single out any one author, or artist, or publication. The answer is to show that we're all united in defying the fanatics."

So why is this particular cartoon so offensive to Muslims?  Clearly, it is not simply for the reason claimed by Islamists, that it caricatures Mohammed - people have been doing that for a very long time, more or less with impunity.  The real cause of Muslim fury is the direct linkage that the cartoon wittily establishes between the Islamic faith and the violence and terrorism that it is responsible for spreading around the world (see the Authentic Voice of Islam for examples).  Identifying that connection has become a taboo, not only in Muslim countries, but also, to our shame, in the West, where political leaders are seen running around with copies of the Koran under their arms proclaiming Islam to be a "religion of peace" and denouncing all those who would defend free speech as intemperate radicals (see:  Jack Straw, Appease in Our Time and The British "covenant of security" and its consequences).

Throughout the body of her work Ayn Rand argued eloquently to establish the necessary philosophical connection between faith and force.  In the famous John Galt speech, for example, the central hero of Atlas Shrugged describes the philosophical and psychological links between mysticism and dictatorship as follows:

"Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims—as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force—he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads . . . "

"The fissure had many philosophical names: soul versus body—mind versus heart—liberty versus equality—the practical versus the moral. But all of these false dichotomies are merely secondary consequences derived by the mystics from one real, basic issue: reason versus mysticism—or, in political terms, reason and freedom versus faith and force."