A mountain out of a molehill

Nouille posted the following article, written by Mona Eltahawy, and I think there are some very important points here worth repeating.

1. Danish law does forbid incitement. It just happens that in this case, there is no incitement, only an act which hurt other people's religious feelings. Even that, not directly but by doing something that the Danes are really not forbidden to do. It is the Muslim who is not allowed to depict Mohammed (though there are examples galore of that being done), not the infidels.

It is interesting to note that Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons originally in order to show that the Danes are not afraid of death threats over publishing pictures of Mohammed.

2. There is much more to the current "protests" than just cartoons

What should have remained a local issue turned into a diplomatic uproar that Muslims otherwise rarely provoke when fighting for their rights around the world. Perhaps the Muslim governments who spearheaded the campaign - led by Egypt - felt this was an easy way to burnish their Islamic credentials at a time when domestic Islamists are stronger than they have been in many years.

That is, the Muslim secular governments are building up on the cartoons in order to show that they can protect Islam just as well as the Muslim fundamentalists who are seriously threatening their power base (see the case of Hamas).

3. Muslims should be insulted by the way their brethren are now acting all around the world. Compared to that, the cartoons are really bland. Protesting is one thing (though it's really going overboard), but threatening violence and actually going through with it?

Muslims must honestly examine why there is such a huge gap between the way we imagine Islam and our prophet, and the way both are seen by others. Our offended sensibilities must not be limited to the Danish newspaper or the cartoonist, but to those like Fadi Abdullatif whose actions should be regarded as just as offensive to Islam and to our reverence for the prophet. Otherwise, we are all responsible for those Danish cartoons.