I guess the "Cartoon Riots" aren't over yet, but they should be. Still, today, word out of Pakistan that police had to fire tear gas to disperse around 100 young Islamists who tried to stage a protest over those old cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. There's a government ban on such cartoon rallies already in central Pakistan but, I guess, boys will be boys.
Many words have been tossed about on this issue. We even tossed a few silly ones out on this blog nearly two weeks ago imploring cartoon rioters to stop. Incredibly, even with the power of "News!Views!&Schmooze!" behind the call to sanity, they have continued... (Note to My Foreign Readers: This was sarcasm. Thank you. Editor)
Yet, as I play back all the words, there was one essay that really struck me as right on. It came from the Februaruy 13 issue of Time and was written by Andrew Sullivan.
"You can respect a religion without honoring its taboos. I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite. As a Catholic, I don't expect atheists to genuflect before an altar. If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one. Freedom means learning to deal with being offended."
Here is the entire essay for you to think about: Your Taboo, Not Mine
I guess I don't know if it's the last word on this subject but, from my POV, it's among the best. And I would say this even if I hadn't been stuck in traffic on Wilshire a week ago so that Muslim UCLA students could exercise their free speech rights here in Los Angeles about their displeasure with Danish cartoons published months ago. That goes with living in LA and adds to the color. Besides, here, no buildings were burned.
Anyway, to all our Muslim friends around the world, a word about simple international relations. If you have a militant minority that flies airplanes into skyscrapers, blows up subways, bombs mosques and straps on suicide belts out of honor, you should be working harder at getting that behavior under control. Killing, rioting and burning in the name of protesting political cartoons -- no matter how much they offend you -- isn't going to get you anywhere. This is not to try to excuse any of the issues you think you have with us, some of them legitimate, but simply to say this: we have our s--- to take care of and you have yours. Everybody start.
