« The Danish PM Comes Through | Main | At the Danish Embassy in Washington DC »
February 17, 2006
Max Boot Gets It
Writing in the LA Times, Max Boot (via NRO) reports on the disturbing, but unfortunately predictable reaction to the cartoons and the riots they have created by Muslims while at a conference at Kuala Lumpur the other day.
Although the conference was not about the cartoons or anything similar, they were apparently issue number one. Here are the most important parts
Even though all of the Muslim delegates were intellectuals, activists, politicians and other movers and shakers, they resonated with the rage of the dispossessed. With considerable justification, they fulminated against the backwardness of the Islamic world compared to the West. With considerably less justification, they blamed their frustrations on the West....
IN RECENT years, some Muslims, notably the authors of the 2002 U.N. Arab Human Development Report, have been acknowledging internal problems — a lack of freedom, honest government, gender equality, scientific research and education — that have turned their societies into global also-rans. But in Kuala Lumpur there wasn't much introspection in evidence. Most attendees — and I suspect their views are broadly representative of the Muslim world as a whole — preferred to rant against supposed Western oppression.The cartoon brouhaha not only confirms this victimization legend, it assuages the shame many Muslims feel over the atrocities committed in their name by Osama bin Laden & Co. To hear many Muslim attendees talk, you would think there is no difference between a cartoonist who injured no one physically and terrorists who kill thousands of innocent people. The trope of the conference seemed to be: "We have our extremists … and you have yours." Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami took this argument to its logical conclusion by equating American neoconservatives with Al Qaeda. As if Paul Wolfowitz were plotting to crash hijacked aircraft into Tehran office buildings.
The most depressing aspect of the whole cartoon affair is not the intolerance for press freedom exhibited throughout Muslim lands. It is the willingness of so many Muslims — even those who would never burn a consulate or threaten a newspaper editor — to scapegoat the West for their own failures. Muslim nations will never make any progress unless they stop focusing on the offenses, real or imagined, visited upon them by the outside world and start looking within for what ails them.
(emphasis added)
Meanwhile, some Brits Get It Too
If this article in the British newspaper The Times has it right, much of the British public is fed up with the Muslim reaction to the cartoons (I found this one myself thank you):
PEOPLE in Britain take a hard line against Muslims protesting violently against supposed insults to their religion, and are gloomy about future relations between Muslims and the rest of the population.Muslims protested peacefully in Trafalgar Square yesterday. But a Sunday Times-YouGov poll of more than 1,600 people shows widespread public anger about protests earlier this month in Britain and the worldwide uprising in response to Danish cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad.
The poll shows that 86% of people think the protests were “a gross overreaction”. By 56% to 29% respondents said it was right to publish the cartoons in Denmark and republish them elsewhere.
Earlier this month Muslim protesters in Britain carried placards urging violence and death against those who insult Islam, and celebrating last year’s July 7 London bombings. Asked about those protests, 58% said it made them angry and 76% said the police should have arrested those carrying offensive or provocative banners.
The police and politicians are criticised more generally for not confronting Islamic extremism, with 80% of respondents saying the authorities show too much tolerance of Muslims who urge extreme acts. Two-thirds, 67%, think this is because senior policemen such as Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, are too “politically correct”.
Now let's see if this anger turns into action. Don't hold your breath.
Posted by Tom at February 17, 2006 8:47 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.theredhunter.com/mt/refer.cgi/584
Comments
Tom,
I referenced your post on my blog. I would have linked to it, but I havn't yet figured out how to do that.
Posted by: Seaspook at February 19, 2006 1:53 PM
