The Hate of the Muslim World's Cartoons
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 16, 2006
Aggrieved Muslims are astir, ostensibly venting their outrage over
a series of cartoons published in an obscure Danish newspaper that
were deemed disrespectful of the Prophet Mohammed. The current
riots are reminiscent of last years violent eruptions in response
to a false allegation that an American soldier at the Guantanamo
Bay detention center had flushed the Koran of a prisoner down a
toilet, riots that claimed 16 lives.
Allegedly moderate Muslims who have appeared in the media to air
the purported voice of reason, have tempered their criticisms of
the riots with reprimands against the Western press. They warn that
such unnecessary acts of provocation (meaning the aforementioned
cartoons) only serve to make it more difficult for Westerners to
win the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims.
Then you read the sources many of the Mideasts Muslims read.
Consider, for instance, just a handful of published cartoons
extremely offensive to Jews that sparked not the faintest whisper
of rebuke in the Muslim world. All of the following may be seen on
the Palestinian Media Watch website:
* September 3, 2005: In Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, no minor fringe
publication but rather the official daily newspaper of the
Palestinian Authority, a cartoon appeared depicting Israel as a rat
with a Star of David on its back.
* February 5, 2005: A grinning Israeli soldier reaches out to shake
hands with a tentative, frightened Arab, who notices that the
soldiers hand is in fact a bears paw. (Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida)
* December 1, 2004: A bald man whose head is rendered as a globe is
shown on his hands and knees, holding a magnifying glass with which
he is scrutinizing the ground. The caption above him reads, The
search for terror is still ongoing. In the background is a large,
grinning ape with a human face and a Star of David on its belly.
(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* August 2, 2004: Titled The Settlers, this cartoon depicts
Jewish settlers as the monster Medusa: six ravenous, sharp-toothed,
serpentine figures (with blood dripping from their long tongues)
are shown sprouting from a single common trunk, like branches of a
tree; an Arab man stands by warily, fearful of being devoured.
(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* July 14, 2004: A hideous caricature of a rifle-wielding Jew (with
a large hook nose and a sharp fang) sports an outfit adorned
entirely with human skulls. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* April 20, 2004: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is depicted
as a bull slowly bleeding to death, his flesh having been pierced
by nine arrows, each one bearing the name of a Palestinian
terrorist group (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida). That same day, the very same
publication featured a split-frame cartoon picturing an
open-mouthed Jew with blood-dripping fangs, alongside a grotesque,
fanged, beastlike figure with blood dripping from its mouth and a
Star of David on its fur.
* March 22, 2004: Ariel Sharon is depicted holding a large bowl
filled with small, bleeding Palestinian children, whom he is
systematically piercing with a fork and devouring. (Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida)
* November 8, 2003: Israel is portrayed as a large serpent
preparing to devour a frightened man representing the European
Commissionership. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* October 11, 2003: An Israeli is depicted as a subhuman,
prehistoric caveman carrying a studded club, presumably in search
of Arab prey. His feet are bear claws, and his primitive garment is
adorned with Stars of David. (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)
* October 4, 2003: Israel is represented as a wolf with a Star of
David emblazoned on its leg, pursuing a small, bespectacled,
frightened man who symbolizes the new Palestinian Authority (PA)
government, which the drooling beast seeks to consume. (Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida)
* October 4, 2003: Israel and the United States are depicted as
worms busily eating an apple that represents the Arab world, Israel
starting from what the PA claims is Palestinian land, and the U.S.
starting from Iraq. Be strong, says the Israeli worm to its
American counterpart. Weve got a lot of work to do. (Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida)
Other recent cartoons alternately depict Israel as a large green
alligator that eats Palestinians (October 9, 2003); a
pitchfork-wielding Satan (March 22, 2000); an octopus with a star
of David on its head, reaching up from its murky swamp to grab a
dove with one of its tentacles (April 17, 2000); a rat (with a Star
of David on its head) gorging itself on a block of cheese that
represents the Arab world (August 1, 2001); a worm eating the
sacred scrolls of Islamic scripture (July 25, 2003); and the lice
on an Arabs headdress (April 23, 2003).
These are but a few examples of the type of disrespectful, venomous
garbage that gets published all over the Islamic world on a daily
basis. The targets are always non-Muslims mostly Jews and
Christians. Muslim culture does not even bat a proverbial eyelash
when its own publications, many of which represent the officially
sanctioned views of Islamic governments, print such things. But
when an outlet of a Western nations free press dares
independently of any governmental endorsement or instruction to
print a cartoon that Muslims may find offensive, all hell breaks
loose.
What makes this especially ironic is the fact that the Islamic
world generally treats the symbols of other religions with great
contempt. Recall, for instance, when the Taliban in 2001 used
tanks, explosives, and anti-aircraft weapons to destroy all of
Afghanistans ancient religious icons that were not of a Muslim
nature, the most notable being two colossal sculptures of Buddha
(175 feet and 120 feet high, respectively) that had been cut,
probably in the third and fifth centuries A.D., into tall,
sandstone cliffs.
In Pakistan, Muslim rioters have often driven Christians from their
villages, burned their homes, and razed their churches. In February
1996 in Egypt, a mob of 10,000 Muslim youths pillaged and burned
three Christian villages in the Nile Delta; such abominations have
occurred many times there. In Kuwait, conversion to Christianity is
a crime punishable by death. Over the past two decades, Sudans
Muslim government (which has made it a crime to convert to
Christianity) has bombed, burned, and looted many of the countrys
Christian villages, capturing and selling into slavery countless
thousands of the inhabitants including women and children. In
Saudi Arabia, possession of a Bible may result in arrest,
deportation, or in some cases execution; the Saudi government
desecrates and burns all Bibles that its security forces confiscate
at immigration points or during raids on Christian expatriates
during their private worship services. Saudi Arabia also bans the
importation or the display of crosses, Stars of David, or any other
non-Muslim religious symbols. Indonesia, Nigeria, and Iran too are
rife with anti-Christian hatred.
The multiculturalists of the West have encouraged radical Muslims
to preserve their culture in Western nations. Now we are
re-learning that tremulous appeasement cannot purchase the goodwill
of those intent on crushing infidels as evidenced by the deadly
arsons and riots that erupted all over France last November, when
angry Muslims turned their wrath on the land that had made
multiculturalism its highest ideal. We are not engaged in a
cultural dialogue in which we may seek to try to understand our
would-be murderers; we are engaged in a protracted struggle for the
survival of our way of life. The Islamists and the appeasenik
leftists are on the wrong side.