Insensitivity and ignorance in Denmark

Yesterday, our contributor Grace wrote a post on those Danish editorial cartoons that have unleashed such violence from the offended (see here).

I go back and forth on this one. I value free speech too much to condemn the cartoons (and those who published them) outright, but at best they seem to reflect insensitivity and ignorance (at worst, xenophobia and religious/cultural hatred).

In addition to Grace's post, I recommend one by Middle East expert Juan Cole at Informed Comment. Key passage:

Westerners cannot feel the pain of Muslims in this instance. First, Westerners mostly live in secular societies where religious sentiments have themselves been marginalized. Second, the Muslims honor Moses and Jesus, so there is no symmetry between Christian attacks on Muhammad and Muslim critiques of the West. No Muslim cartoonist would ever lampoon the Jewish and Christian holy figures in sacred history, since Muslims believe in them, too, even if they see them all as human prophets. Third, Westerners have the security of being the first world, with their culture coded as "universal," and widely respected and imitated. Cultures like that of the Muslims in the global South receive far less respect. Finally, societies in the global South are less policed and have less security than in Western Europe or North America, allowing greater space to violent vigilateism, which would just be stopped if it were tried in the industrialized democracies. (Even wearing a t-shirt with the wrong message can get you arrested over here.)

Look, I'm not saying that we need to place sensitivity over and above all other values. I'm no great fan of political correctness. But what was the point of these cartoons? Were they necessary? Could the same point have been made without resorting to such insensitivity?

Well, perhaps not. Perhaps ignorance trumped insensitivity. Perhaps the Danes who drew and published these cartoons are too ignorant to know what's insensitive. Perhaps they truly believe that Islam is fundamentally a religion of violence. Perhaps their political expression (which they must be free to make, of course) reflects not just ignorance of Islam but a wider xenophobia, fear and loathing of Europe's Muslim immigrant communities.

Yes, many of those who are now outraged are hypocrites. And many don't understand the West. Perhaps they don't realize that such expression is not necessarily sanctioned by our political leaders (or by "the people"). Perhaps they don't understand just what freedom of expression means, what diversity means.

In a free society, such as Denmark, news media should indeed be free to editorialize and to express their own points of view. I certainly don't want to see censorship, or the triumph of sensitivity over diversity.

But insensitivity and ignorance of this kind should simply not be excused.

Unfortunately, these cartoons make us all look bad. Precisely at a time when we need to be building bridges to the Muslim world, not stereotyping it.

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Joe Gandelman has more reaction over at The Moderate Voice.