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South African newspaper’s cowardly reversal on cartoon
It turns out that the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian was not being the free-spirited paper that it seemed to be when it published Zapiro’s funny Muhammad cartoon. As Diana West disgustedly reports, the paper’s editor, Nic Dawes, ran a follow-up article in which he is quoted stating piously that the paper does not support the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” and that Zapiro’s cartoon “is not the Muhammad of the Danish cartoons, with a bomb in his turban and a wicked grin.” The M&G story continues:
Get the picture?The editor, along with Zapiro, were meeting with the Muslim Judicial Council on Wednesday to further the discussion. I don’t want to quote more of West’s piece, since it needs to be read in its entirety to get the flavor of it. But I cannot refrain from copying the ending. She writes:
Meanwhile, behold the dweadful old Danish cartoons (if you dare) that exposed the Free World for what it is.Most of these are images suited for a children’s book and wholly benign, just as Zapiro’s cartoon is. A couple of them are “scary,” but children’s stories have scary motifs too. Even the “worst” of the Danish cartoons, the one showing a dynamite stick in the turban of the man we are told is Muhammad, is about as hostile as a Road Runner or Bugs Bunny cartoon. But the dhimmi coward Dawes sees a fundamental difference between his paper’s “good” cartoon and the Danish paper’s “bad” cartoons. I repeat what I said yesterday: By regarding these essentially harmless or mildly critical images as an occasion for economic warfare, death threats, violent demonstrations, and jihads, the Muslim community has proved beyond a doubt that it is hostile to our way of life and does not belong among us. And as for the Nic Dawes’ of the world, I respectfully suggest that they relocate to Dar al Islam, where they can serve their Muslim masters without hindrance.
UPDATE May 27: Even when it comes to the cartoons with somewhat violent images of “Muhammad,” such as the fierce looking man wielding a sword, for what cause could Muslims find this offensive? Every page of the book Muhammad wrote breathes forth Allah’s sadistic fury against the unbelievers and his commands on the true believers to kill them—“Kill them wherever you find them.” And of course Muslims regard everything about Muhammad as exemplary and to be celebrated, including his military victories over non-Muslims, including his mass beheading of the entire male Jewish population of the Banu Qurayzah. Muslims, in short, revere Muhammad for his violence. On what possible rational basis, then (apart from the supposed prohibition on any images of Muhammad), can they claim to be insulted by the very mildly violent cartoon images of Muhammad? Well, they do have a reason: the sharia law prohibits non-Muslims from saying anything critical about Muhammad; in other words, when the Muslims show Muhammad as being violent, they are saying that his violence is good, so that’s ok; but when we show Muhammad as being violent, we are implying that his violence is bad, and criticism of Muhammad is a crime to be punished by death. Unfortunately for the Muslims, we in the non-Muslim world are not are not living under sharia law. And if the Muslims want to live in our societies, they’ve got to accept our non-sharia standards of behavior. And if they don’t accept them, then, once again, they’ve demonstrated that they don’t belong here. Email entry |
