Klein's Quips

What about the argument that Denmark and other European countries are acting hypocritical to defend these cartoons on free expression grounds considering their broad hate speech laws?

I'm not familiar enough with how restrictive the hate speech codes are, but even, for the sake of argument, European governments are being hypocritical, it still doesn't justify the response of the Muslim world. They don't seem to have a capacity to differentiate between the actions of a newspaper in a given country and all citizens of that country. They don't understand how to constructively vent their frustrations with government. Palestinian gunmen are threatening all Europeans. Think of how twisted that is. Imagine if some art gallery in San Francisco ran an exhibit that featured Jesus Christ in a jar of urine. It wouldn't trigger anti-American riots around the world, and you wouldn't have Catholic gunmen in Brazil threatening all Americans.

That's clearly right about the twisted response from much of the "muslim world" (though many muslims are venting their frustrations more reasonably). But I also don't think it's likely that magazines and commentators everywhere would proudly re-publish the Urine-Jesus or anti-semitic imagery in solidarity.

That's because Jews or Christians wouldn't provoke them into doing so by using threats and intimidation the way Muslims have.

But if this debate is about violence, why respond in a way that antagonizes reasonable non-violent muslims (i.e. reproducing and arguably endorsing images they deem hateful)? It seems to me that this is a circumstance on which we should look for common ground with reasonable muslims.

Again, you wouldn't defend the rights of free expression of an anti-semite by displaying his artwork (or by writing an introduction for his holocaust denying book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair), you'd do it by arguing forcefully about why free speech is such an important ideal.

We can go back and forth on this, but I think it is important for the free world to show that they will not be intimidated. This isn't an isolated case. Whether it's Salman Rushdie, Theo Van Gogh, or these cartoons, Muslims seek to stifle free expression by instilling fear. And it works. Because Christians are much more reasonable than Muslims, you have images like the cover of Rolling Stone, in which Kayne West is portrayed as Jesus. But lampooning or criticizing Islam in any way is avoided out of fear.