Cartoon Bloodshed

Am I the only person who thinks that a headline like "Afghan Police Kill Four in Cartoon Bloodshed" sounds as if Yosemite Sam has taken up a career in Afghani law enforcement?

Fareed Zakaria wrote a superb column about American misconceptions about the Middle East; his column touched on the current imbroglio over a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting Mohammad in what is seen by many to be a blasphemous manner. (Interestingly, the below-mentioned Neil Gaiman refers to the possibility that "...three of the images that upset people the most were apparently created by the people who were showing them," in other words that the people protesting the cartoons may have created some of them, but I haven't found any corroboration of that anywhere.)

Now I'm the last guy to make value judgments of a culture, and I sure as hell won't do so here. But I will happily talk about perceptions of a culture. The Americans, for example, have for years now been doing a piss-poor job of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Middle East. (Cf. Mr. Zakaria, again.) When the Bush administration pushes free elections as the perfect exemplar of liberty, then refuses to acknowledge an Islamist party when it wins said free elections, it is fair to assume that the people of Palestine and Iraq might see that as yet another example of a pervasive Western hatred of Islam.

But. When Muslims in Europe and the Middle East see a few cartoons and start burning embassies, it also fair to assume that we in the West might see those good Muslims as intolerant, narrow-minded children whose customary reaction to anything that challenges their worldview is to set it on fire.

An interesting parallel: a couple weeks ago, Rolling Stone ran the instantly-infamous cover photo of Kanye West as Jesus. There were certainly plenty of good Christians who found this offensive, and they certainly had something to say about it. (For the record: I do not find the image of Mr. West blasphemous, but I do find it to be in remarkably poor taste.) But you didn't see Catholics setting fire to the offices of Rolling Stone.

So while I readily acknowledge that we in the West are doing a miserable job of presenting the virtues of our way of life, including our tolerance, to those in the Middle East; at the same time, those in the Middle East are not at present doing anything to help their image in the West. It would be awfully nice if both sides would just calm down a little and not be so damn reactive about everything, but clearly I just moved into the realm of pipe dreams and it's time to stop now.