Cartoon Clash of Civilizations

Like many of you, I've been following the Danish cartoon scandal for several days now, where twelve cartoons making fun of the Prophet (peace be upon him) were printed in a Danish newspaper about a week or so ago, and it seems that not just the Danes but the French, the Germans, the Italians, and the Spanish think it would be fun to publish these cartoons in their newspapers to see how upset Muslims get.

The Web pundits are of course howling too, saying that Muslims are stupid if they get this upset over a bunch of cartoons. But some British people on the street were showing the cartoons and they remarked that the cartoons' sole purpose seemed to be inflammatory. Whereupon someone immediately took the cartoon and lit their spliff with it.

What astonishes me is that in a time when relations between the Western/European/American world are so delicate, people would want to do something to fire up Muslim sentiment against Europe: specifically against the Scandanavian countries, who don't strike me as being particularly concerned with the war against terrorism. For France to follow the Danish example and publish the cartoons out of spite seems also extremely foolish given that they've not yet cleaned up the ashes of the last Paris riots.

I can just imagine how the decision-making process went in France right now: "I am le bored," the French newspaper editor probably said to his mistress one afternoon. "Nothing exciting ees happening in France zees days."

"Well mon amour why don't you publish zees cartoons zat are cauzing so much excitement in le Denmark?" she replied in between bites of her croissant.

"Ma cherie! You are le genius!" shouts the editor... and so on and so forth til he got fired by the newspaper's owner as a mark of respect to the sentiments of the Muslims living in France (and who probably didn't want to have to rebuild his entire newspaper office in the case of a fire, bomb, riot, or combination of all three).

Of course the Danish newspaper's original pretext was: "We published these cartoons as a test to see if Islamic fundamentalism had affected Danish freedome of expression". This is like saying "I put my hand in front of a massive Doberman that was growling and slavering just because I wanted to see if it would bite."

Anyway, the cartoons, which I refuse to look at because I don't feel like being insulted while I have the flu - adding insult to injury - have prompted the usual angry reaction from the Arab world: beat up a few useless supermarket employees, burn some flags, recall ambassadors and in the case of Libya shut down the embassy (good riddance to bad Arabs I can hear the Danes saying).

However the smart thing that they've finally learned after about fifty years of aggression and twenty years of sanctions is to boycott Danish goods. Already dairy giant Arla Foods has had to lay off 100 employees becaues the Saudis are not buying their products. I should join in the boycott too as soon as I can steel myself to give up my Lurpak butter. If they had any intelligence they'd boycott McDonald's and Pizza Hut too but there's only so much one can expect of the Saudis.

The lesson to be learned is this: people are always going to be making fun of religion and religious leaders. Chances are they're not going to be terribly upset if your feelings are hurt by their actions. So don't expect them to be sympathetic to your feelings. but if you must protest, do it with your wallet, not your fists. In these days where capitalism reigns supreme and scandal sells newspapers, money talks. It's just a matter of making it speak your language. Muslims simply must learn to express themselves not with violence and threats, but with boycotts, sanctions, and other forms of economic might. And in that case, if Muslims can learn to do that, they will find out that money is a far more powerful weapon than anything else in the arsenal.

Vive le freedom of expression!