"This is all political," the kids from the We Are Sorry website told me. Yes, the Muslim riots over those Danish cartoons were utterly cultivated, orchestrated and calculated. Those mobs were rent-a-mobs -- Bull Moose quotes Amir Taheri in the New York Post (free registration required) on the details of the plot, which Iran has tried to hijack from a group of Sunni-Salafi clerics (you may have noticed there's a Sunni-Shi'a "more-militant-than-thou" competition going on for the leadership of Islamofascism):
"The Muslim crowds that have demonstrated over the cartoons seldom exceeded a few hundred; the Muslim segment of humanity is estimated at 1.2 billion. And only three of Denmark's embassies in 57 Muslim countries have been attacked. [ . . . ]"Denmark is set to assume the rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council - at the very time that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to refer Iran to the Security Council and demand sanctions. What better, for Tehran's purposes, than to portray Denmark as 'an enemy of Islam' and mobilize Muslim sympathy against the Security Council?
"To regain the initiative from the Sunni-Salafi groups, Ahmadinejad quickly ordered a severing of commercial ties with Denmark, thus portraying the Islamic Republic as the Muslim world's leader in the anti-Danish campaign."
The Syrians are also making their bid:
"The destruction of Danish and Norwegian embassies and consulates happened in only two places: Damascus and Beirut. Anyone who knows Syria would know that there are no spontaneous demonstrations in that dictatorship. (Even then, the Syrian secret police failed to attract more than 1,000 rent-a-mob militants.) And the Syrian government refused the Norwegian Embassy's request for additional police protection. It was clear that the Syrians wanted the embassies sacked."
Yes, says the Moose, it is a "Vast Islamo-fascist Conspiracy (VIFC)." The cartoons were nothing but a handy pretext. It's an interesting question who played into whose hands here, but they'll find pretexts whether the West provides them in neat packages or not. The true value of the cartoons was that they baited the enemy out of his hole and exposed both his totalitarian intent and his strategy. I see now that we mustn't be confused by the smoke-screen issue of cultural respect and blasphemy. That is being used to try to disable our response. Yet neither must we let ourselves be baited into reactively playing precisely the role they've cast us in.
I'd love to see a contest for the best cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed (no, we're not going to observe their inconsistent taboo against depicting him) grieved by the mayhem and moronity being committed in his name. After all, this was a man who legendarily cut off the sleeve of his robe before rising rather than disturb a sleeping cat.
(Hat tip: Sisu.)
And speaking of cartoons, there is a great roundup, updated every day, of the best cartoons about Cartoonageddon at Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index, with related news at his blog. One of my absolute favorites is here. (Argh, I see there's no way to link to it directly. You'll be on Bulgarian cartoonist Christo Komarnitski's page, and you'll see a drop-down menu with a date. Change the date to 2/07/06 and click "Get Image.")
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