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After months and months of Blogger not working (and their support staff not responding to my emails), today it suddenly works and I have no idea why. But whatever. I'm just glad to be able to blog again. On to more important things...

As a comics geek, I am a fascinated by all this hubbub over the polical cartoons depicting Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. I finally got a chance to read them the other day, and I can understand how Muslims might be offended by this, especially those moderate Muslims for whom Islam is a religion of peace. I do think that these cartoons are comparable to, for instance, cartoons that depict black people in offensively stereotypical ways. In this country, the publication of such cartoons would simply not be tolerated from mainstream publications, and mainstream publications would never do it in the first place.

Should the paper not have published the cartoons? I don't think it should have. Badly written and drawn cartoons which are meant mainly to offend don't have much merit, in my opinion. On the other hand, I fully support the right to publish anything, no matter how offensive — that's what free speech is all about. The government should not have any say in what is published, only the publisher should. But in light of some things I've read about Flemming Rose, the editor of the paper (this piece from John Sugg, for instance), it looks as though this was not about free speech for him. While he refused to publish some Jesus-mocking cartoons in 2003 (saying it would offend his readers), he had no qualms about offending Muslims, or least it looks that way. (He has subsequently claimed that he really rejected the Jesus cartoons because they were just bad — but then why publish these poorly-drawn, unfunny anti-Muslim cartoons?)

But what started out as just an example of an editor making an insensitive decision has become a battle over free speech. Because now, Muslims all over the world are protesting at Danish embassies, boycotting Danish products, and even comitting acts of violence. I'm not sure what they're trying to do; Danish companies certainly have no say over what's published in their country. And putting pressure on the Danish government suggests that what they want is to have the government put a ban on images of Muhammad or on anything anti-Muslim. It's obvious to me, at least, that such a thing would be pure and simple fascism, and that idea is offensive to me as someone who believes very strongly in democracy.

And that some people are commiting violence in response to these cartoons — some of which were portraying Islam as a violent religion — is very ironic, though not very surprising, I suppose. What I want to know is, what are those people who are commiting violence protesting against? It's not the portrayal of Muslims as violent, obviously, because they seem to think that violence is okay. Is it just the fact that Muhammad was pictured at all, which is blasphemy in Islam? But since when do non-Muslims have to follow Muslim laws?

I'm not a big fan of Islam, just as I am not a big fan of most organized religions. Islam is another one of those religions that professes to be the "one true religion", and I find that idea both absurd and offensive. And much of the response has been way out of proportion, in my opinion. I'm offended by cartoons all the time (and there have been a lot of offensive, anti-gay cartoons lately), but I usually just roll my eyes and move on to the next one. I've been known to write letters to the newspaper to ask that they stop publishing an offensive comic, but I certainly wouldn't complain to the government, and I definitely wouldn't resort to violence. Some cartoonists are ignorant, hateful bastards, and the best we can do is try to educate people and hope they change their minds. But I also think that Muslims, like everyone else, have a right to their practice and beliefs, and it is unnecessarily cruel to deliberately offend a religious group just for the sake of offending it.

Update: One of my favorite cartoonists/bloggers, Mikhaela Reid, has an excellent and in-depth analysis of this issue.