The Narnia 3 Blog

The Convictions and Consequences of Cartoons

We are now better than a week into protests, rioting, and now the destruction of nations embassy facilities, in reaction to the publishing of some cartoons in a Danish newspaper that depicted Mohammand as, in one at least, a bomb coiffed terrorist. The drawings (calling them cartoons has a tendency I think to lend some comedic sense to them which clearly was not the intent) appeared originally last September and have since been reprinted in several other newspapers, mostly in Europe.

The outrage has been slow to build, but in the last week has been building to a climax. While there have been demonstrations, some peaceful and some slightly less so around the world, it is interesting to see exactly where these demonstrations and riots have been the most severe.

Politically, this has come at a very good time for Iran and Syria both of whom benefit from a diversion from scrutiny from the United Nations and the West. It will undoubtedly also help give both regimes a "rallying" point to pump up internal support. Syria, in particular, was facing a much higher level of internal opposition to the Baathist dictatorship. They also had been expelled from their de facto occupation of Lebanon; and, by all accounts, the highest levels of their government may well be implicated in the assisination of the former Lebanesse Prime Minister. That the emabssy burnings occured in Syria (with certainly government "approval" if not outright planning) and in today in Lebanon (probably also with the encouragment and support of Syria and their remaining surrogates in Lebanon) is hardly surprising. Geographically, most of Syria is uninhabitable and worthless desert; and for its size, it has a very small coastline on the Mediteranean. Absent an outright annexation of Lebanon, it needs a compliant and subservient Lebanon for its own economic benefit. It is also not helpful to their own internal control if a fully functional, successful, and pluralistic Lebanon exists immediately on their southern flank. Thus, if they cannot have either of the aforementioned options, their last hope is to keep Lebanon perpetually unstable. Syria is also immediately bordered by Turkey and Jordan (both allies of the west) and the colliation-controlled Iraq (and worse, the Kurdish area of Iraq). Even absent their ties to the West, there is also no love lost between Syria and any of these countries.

Iran will also certainly use the unrest to whatever advantage it can. Their current standoff with the West over their nuclear ambitions is a serious issue. None of the other Arab countries want Iran to have nuclear capabilities. The Islamo-Facist state there is the most well-entrenched and dangerous in the region and their current president, Mahmound Ahmedinejad, is clearly a clever manipulator (who has probably learned from Saddam Hussein's mistakes) and is firmly alligned with the Supreme Leader in Iran, Ali Khamenei and the ruling theocrat class. The moderate Arab nations do not want this brand of Islamic rule exported to their nations.

The unrest and rioting has been the most widespread in Europe and comes on the heals of the nearly month-long rioting in France by Islamic residents. The French riots underscored a major issue in Europe, that of virtually unrestricted immigration and poor integration. The populations of a number of European countries are becoming increasingly Islamic (by percentage) and of Middle Eastern dissent. I think several countries have begun to realize that a dynmaic Islamic leader in those countries, who could galvanize that population into a voting bloc, could begin the break traditional hegemonies of the established political parties.

As an aside, this would be an interesting situation, since that while there is generally "freedom of religion" in those countries, there is not a real "separation of church and state" in European tradition. Most have an offical state religion. I wonder, for instance, what would happen in England if Parliment had a majority or even significant number of Moslems, who were then in turn, charged with approving an appointment for a new Archbishop of Canterbury? France is an exception, being entirely secular by law since the early 1900's. Of course, France also has perhaps the worst problem. They have a large and increasing population whose worldview is centered in religion, not secularism, and they don't really know how to integrate that perspective into their community life.

The other problem in the European countries with relation to their Islamic populations has been, I think, their socialistic economic structures and lack of entrapenureal opportunities for their immigrants (and not just the Middle-Eastern ones). As the French riots demonstrated, many are locked into ghettos with little ability to move out of those confines. Bad immigration policy combined with socialistic welfare prevents these groups from gaining an identity within the culture they find themselves.

So, in a nutshell, there is legitimate offense at a set of boorish drawings that some editor should have seen were going to be needslessly offensive. In terms of the outrage, some is a legitimate outpouring of emotion against a view that ridicules their religious worldview; but perhaps a large part of the protests are being used as a front for other purposes.