Note to my Turkish friends reading this: I have added defintions in brackets of the more unusual words and phrases used in the article.

The cartoons, almost all of them comically anodyne (not likely to be offensive), were published because the writer of a book could not find anyone to illustrate it for fear of offending Muslims. The protests are attempting to create a climate of fear to which the non-Muslim world must acquiesce -- in which case the non-Muslim world would have to agree to abide by Muslim demands and standards, which might later include the requirement that women be subject to the authority of men and treated as badly as they are (by Western standards) in the Muslim world, and to acquiesce to much else as well.

The essential principle of modern Western democracy is free speech. The wars of religion are long over. Blasphemy (speaking against religion) laws no longer exist. In the Western world, one may deplore the "Piss Christ" of Serrano and write letters. One may also suggest that there is no constitutional guarantee to be supported by taxpayers' money in one's exercise of free speech. But otherwise, unless one is attempting to incite violence (the Brandenburg test) in the United States other kinds of speech cannot be banned. As a matter of fact, if anyone can be accused of violating the Brandenburg test and breaking the law, it would be those “peaceful” protestors who carry signs and shout slogans demanding the punishment and/or deaths of the cartoonists and editors responsible for the cartoons.

What happened is clear: a Danish newspaper, written for a Danish audience, employed Danish cartoonists to make a series of cartoons around and about Muhammad. No one showed Muhammad in flagrante delicto with nine-year-old Aisha, although it would have been realistic.  No one depicted Muhammad smiling with evident pleasure at the sight of the lifeless body of the poetess Asma bint Marwan, who had insulted him, leading him to call for her murder. That certainly happened too. No one depicted Muhammad observing with pleasure the decapitation of the 600-900 helpless prisoners of the Banu Qurayza. Could he have actually enjoyed that? No one depicted much of anything, save for a few comic-opera scimitars and, in one case, a turban in the shape of a bomb, and a fuse on that bomb.

Now comes the temptation: the Temptation of Symmetry. There is "hate speech" perhaps here, but then there is "hate speech" on the other side, and both are to be deplored. Are they? Are we by sleight of word, and false symmetries, to give up the defense of free speech in the Western world quite so easily, by suggesting that "we are all guilty"? And that the embarrassed defense of Western principles should descend to the level so often used by Muslims themselves, that of "Tu Quoque (you also do it)"? Is that it?

What is shown every day in the Egyptian, Saudi, and other Arab and Muslim presses certainly ought to be reprinted here and there and everywhere, so that the Western public can get a good long look, and a look that is repeated at intervals. They should also read the hatred and hysteria poured out day after day, in official speeches, in khutbas (sermons), in editorials, on the airwaves, and in the fantastic depiction of Western "atrocities" that Al-Jazeera specializes in. They should look, if they can, at the recruiting sites for Islam -- the ones that provide videos of decapitation of Infidels (kafir). The Western public should ask again and again: what kind of people not only are not apologetic about such things, but put them up proudly, as ways to encourage others to join in?

What if the Islamic world, however, were not full of such things? What if it did not possess the satellite channels, the radio stations, the printing press? Indeed, for so long the world of Islam resisted the printing press, which finally came to it from Ibrahim Muteferrika, the Hungarian Jewish convert, in 1729 -- several centuries after Gutenberg had helped transform the West. In that case, we would not have on record all those examples of "hate speech" that Scott McClellan refers to. Then what? Would that mean that we in the Western world are therefore not to print pictures of Muhammad if we see fit, because we must tailor our freedoms to the demands of others who in every respect offer a world of despotism and cruelty that we would not tolerate one minute for ourselves?

Do we only possess our freedoms in the Western world if the Muslims give us the okay, or if by their own behavior we can point to "their hate speech" as being the only justification we can come up with for our own exercise of free speech? Since the Danish cartoons hardly amount, in any case, to hate speech, the false symmetry infuriates.

It would have been better to have dryly noted the hypocrisy of the Arab and Muslim world, rather than making that hypocrisy the main theme, and then gone on to say that "in a certain sense this is irrelevant." All that is relevant is this: Danish cartoonists, hired by a Danish newspaper, for a Danish audience, published some cartoons which were intended to both test, and reaffirm, the exercise of the right, recognized in Denmark and in the United States, of free speech.

That is the issue. Do Danes, and Italians, and French, and Dutch, and English, and Germans, and Americans, and all those who subscribe to the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, have the right of free speech, without death threats against individuals and institutions, attacks on embassies, and all the other horrifying displays of whipped up mass hysteria that offend -- and will not be forgotten by -- the civilized?

Last year I had to endure the book “Metal Storm,” the demented ravings of two hack writers who parlayed anti-Americanism and a good old fashioned nationalist war story into a bestseller in Turkey. I got tired of trying to refute the things in that book and finally just gave up. Since I don’t live in Istanbul anymore, I was saved from the latest go round. Since anti-Americanism and Turkish nationalism make for guaranteed sales, Serdar Akar went and made Valley of the Wolves-Iraq. You’ve got to love this movie. Akar went and hired two American actors to play-up every stereotype known about Americans and American soldiers.

In the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, American soldiers in Iraq crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother. They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he ten sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv. Then there’s the scene where some Americans detain some Turkish soldiers and insult their nationalism and manhood. There were Turkish soldiers detained, but I seriously doubt the incident occurred in any way like it’s shown in the movie. But hey, got to get everyone flashing the gray wolf sign somehow, eh?

So am I angry at the American actors who helped make this trash? A bit. Billy Zane and Gary Busey, the two American actors Alemdar got to play the evil Yankees in the story, are total whores. Gary Busey is an alcoholic drug addict who has been in rehab so much I think he must have a permanent room in the clinic. But at least he admitted that he only did it for the money. Zane on the other hand insists that he really is a patriot and that the movie isn’t anti-American at all. I think he must have been drinking too much of Busey’s “water” before he made that statement.

Am I angry about the movie itself? Not really. Some idiot columnist named Semih Idiz wrote an entire article on how it was now payback time for Turks for all the indignities they’ve had to suffer because of American policies. That’s a bullshit argument. But he did make specific mention of Midnight Express and how unfair it was in its depiction of Turks. That’s a better argument, but one that still really doesn’t hold water. The director of that movie, Alan Parker, has acknowledged that there were many things in it that weren’t true and has apologized for it. Good luck getting Akar to ever admit that maybe Jewish-American doctors really don’t harvest organs from prisoners. In the end though, only total nationalists and ignorant people in Turkey will actually believe what they see. And since this movie plays to all the stereotypes they expect, it will have no effect on their opinions anyway. Intelligent people will recognize it for the garbage it is.

But here are the things that make me angry. There was a special screening of this trash film for the Turkish Parliament. To Erdogan’s credit, he left without making any comments. Unfortunately, many of his ministers were not so tactful. They applauded the movie and praised it as “Fantastic” and said “It brought me close to tears because it touched my heart.” These are the men running the country? Run for the hills, foreigners! These are also the same men criticizing European countries for printing a few silly cartoons of Muhammad. So once again, hypocrisy reigns supreme. Just today, Bush made his first ever comments on all the violence occurring around the Muslim world. He said the violence should stop and was not the correct way to protest, but he also called for newspapers to be sensitive to others’ beliefs and asked that the pictures not be published anymore. He’s a lot nicer than I am, but that’s not the point. Here’s the hated leader of the USA asking for respect for Muslims, and here are the ministers of the Turkish government giving two thumbs up to a film that does nothing but vilify Americans and Jews. And that is very disappointing.

I will begin this post by assuming that most people have at least heard of the controversy recently stirred up by the printing in a Danish newspaper of cartoons that featured Muhammad. I suspect, however, that many of my friends and former students, especially in Turkey, may have been given a rather biased view of what actually happened. I have been researching this issue since it hit the news a week ago, and I wish to put the facts on the table so that people I care about can make an informed decision on how they stand without having to be subjected to the influence of negative propaganda. Below, you can see the cartoons in question, some photos of protests and some other cartoons I found amusing.

September 2005: The entire controversy started when Danish author Kåre Bluitgen complained that he could not find an artist brave enough to illustrate his upcoming book about Mohammed entitled The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Mohammed. Excerpts from the book can be found on the Internet and, judging by what I have been able to read of it, the book itself does not show Islam in a negative light. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten issued a call for submissions from any artists willing to take up the challenge.

The call for drawings of Muhammad angered Danish Muslims and they began localized protests in Denmark. This upset the editors of Jyllands-Posten who fired back at the protestors by publishing twelve cartoons that had nothing to do with Kåre Bluitgen’s book. Those cartoons are shown in the Muhammad Cartoons album on this page along with the original page from the newspaper.

October-December 2005: A group of imams and other Muslims led by Abu Laban and claiming to represent twenty-one different Muslim organizations from Denmark go on a tour of several Arab countries. However, while on this tour they display and complain about fifteen cartoons, not only the twelve published in Jyllands-Posten. The extra three cartoons are much worse than the twelve actually published. One shows Muhammad as a pedophile, another shows Muhammad with a pig’s face and the last depicts a dog sodomizing Muhammad while he prays.

Further misinformation spread among Arab Muslims during this tour included claims that Jyllands-Posten is a government-owned newspaper (it is privately owned). The spokesman for the Danish Muslim group, Muhammed al Samha, said in the Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram, "Jyllands-Posten, a newspaper belonging to the ruling Danish party - an extreme right-wing party - [was] publishing drawings and sketches of the prophet Muhammad." This false statement stirred the controversy among Arab Muslim countries.

January-February 2006: As the controversy grew, Jyllands-Posten decided to republish the cartoons in order to show that nobody could restrict the media’s right to free speech. Shortly afterwards, several other papers in Europe and Australia also published the cartoons to show their support for free speech. Each paper has apologized if they hurt people’s feelings, but they have not apologized for actually publishing the cartoons, claiming it was not and should not be a crime. Several editors have been fired for the decision to publish, but none have apologized for it.

February 3-5, 2006: Representatives from eleven Muslim countries, including Turkey, send a letter to the Danish government demanding that the offending editors be punished and the countries where the cartoons appeared apologize for the insult to Islam. First in Damascus, Syria, then in Beirut, Leban and most recently in Tehran, Iran the Danish and/or Norwegian embassies are attacked and burned. Several other European countries' embassies have also been attacked (most recently the Austrian Embassy in Tehran) even though they did not publish the cartoons. Several other Europeans traveling in those and other Arab countries were attacked and beaten. So far, the only confirmed deaths are of protestors who have either been burned or crushed by the crowds. Muslim countries have recalled their ambassadors from the offending European countries and many boycotts of Danish products have begun in Muslim countries. Protests across Europe and the Muslim world have demanded the heads and/or hands of the cartoonists. Today, as has been the case almost everyday for many years, Bahraini and Egyptian government owned newspapers published anti-Jewish and anti-American cartoons. There were no protests in the US or Israel, nor have there ever been for this "offense" against Judaism and America. Since the protests started, even more newspapers across Europe have published the original cartoons and new ones. No paper in the United States has published them yet, but there is growing sentiment to see it done just to prove a point.

Those are the facts as I have been able to determine from my research. Each statement has been documented by several sources, as I always encouraged my students to do before they blindly went off and believed something. However, I would encourage any skeptics to do the research themselves if they think anything I have written above is of questionable validity.

I kept my opinions out of that first section, but this second section is composed of my thoughts on the matter and what I consider to be the most important points in this debate. I would also like to preface these remarks by saying that most of my best friends are either Turks or other nationalities living in Turkey. I love the people and the country, but not all the practices. I use Turkey in some examples below because it is the Muslim country I know best, but it is in no way the main focus of my scorn.

Even after all my years in Turkey and traveling in the Middle East, I have a great deal of trouble understanding how a few cartoons in a small Danish newspaper can cause this many problems. I have defended Muslim countries for years when it was claimed by many I had discussions with that real democracy (which means freedom of thought and action, not just voting) in an Islamic country was impossible. I have had heated discussions in my classes here at UWM about that same topic, but I am not as sure as I once was that I was correct in my defense. To be sure, most Muslims would not agree that burning embassies is the answer to the problem, but the majority would probably also not disagree that those countries deserved it. And for what? A few cartoons? Daring to have free newspapers not controlled by the government?

By reacting the way that they have, these hooligan protestors have fallen into the trap set for them. By calling for apologies and limits on free speech, governments from Muslim countries have fallen into the trap set for them as well. The editor of that small Danish newspaper did what he did just to get a reaction. It worked better than he could have hoped. Muslims now appear to be more radical and undemocratic than ever. The cartoons were in bad taste, and I do not think that even many Danes would disagree with that. But by reacting in such a predictable way to these images, these Muslim reactionaries have turned this newspaper and its editor into a champion of free speech for much of the Western world. Even more moderate and sympathetic people like me now cheer when another newspaper publishes the cartoons again.   

This goes beyond religion now, and I am no longer convinced that the cultural base necessary for real freedom is present at this time in countries where there is a strong Islamic influence on the government. It pains me to say that. I consider Turkey to be the most democratic and modern predominantly Muslim country in the world, far ahead of Arab or central Asian countries in terms of human rights and freedom of expression. But even in Turkey it is hard to get a clear read on how people actually feel about real democracy. I used some data from the World Values Survey for a paper last semester and the numbers, although interesting, did not paint a very clear picture. (The World Values Survey tracks social, political and economic attitudes in many countries across the world. The data is free and I would encourage people to check it out for themselves. Go to http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ and click on DATA to choose countries and get lists of the exact questions asked). More Turks than Americans agree or agree strongly that democracy is better than any other form of government (87.9% to 87.3%), but when asked if it would be good to have a leader who could simply rule without parliament or elections, more than 60% of Turks said yes, while less than 30% of Americans agreed. Those are just a few of the contradictory statements you can find if you study those numbers, and that is quite indicative of the contradictions I felt during my time at Darussafaka. I can only guess those contradictions are the result of slowly changing attitudes maturing at different speeds. But if Turkey, after so many years of democratic development and greater than average attempts to reduce the influence of Islam on the government, is still not sure what real freedom is, then what chance do countries ruled by authoritarian regimes with much stronger Islamic influences have?

The hypocrisy of these protestors has reached all time highs. In the photo album below, I have included anti-Jewish cartoons published in Arabic newspapers. And they are much worse than anything that was published in any Western paper. Cartoons like those shown below are published on a daily basis across the Muslim world. Should Jews all over the world have the right to riot and burn down Saudi and Egyptian embassies? What about Iranian embassies? The new president of Iran has called repeatedly for Israel’s destruction, and surely that is more provocative than a few cartoons in a little newspaper. The truth is that those anti-Israeli cartoons and comments make only a small blip on the social radar of Jews. They can make a token protest, but who really cares? Let people print what they want. If the words or pictures are ridiculous or radical then intelligent people won’t believe them or pay much attention to them. But when a big deal is made of something, it automatically raises blood pressures and both sides become more intransigent. It is also telling that in the democracies of the West, every government and newspaper in which these cartoons appeared has attempted to make conciliatory gestures by apologizing if people were offended. None, however, have apologized for having free speech or for allowing newspapers to publish what they want to. But how many Muslim countries have ever apologized for the nasty anti-Jewish cartoons or for blaming the United States for everything bad in the world from tsunamis and earthquakes to the bird flu and AIDS?

Finally, it is inconceivable to me how a person can go to another country and expect everyone in that country to change just for them. I was offended all the time in Turkey, either by idiots in my own English department, by idiots who just did not like Americans in general and even my own school’s play when two American flags were painted on a backdrop and then crossed out and the words, “Fuck USA” written under them. That attack on my country was actually supported by the director of the play and by the school’s general director, both of whom had observed the painting of the backdrop but refused to do anything about it before it was displayed. Don't any of those highly personal attacks seem worse than the cartoons that were printed in Jyllands-Posten? I protested each of those attacks in a civilized manner without resorting to violence or threats, and when I felt it was becoming too much I exercised my right to leave Turkey. It was their country, and if that was acceptable behavior from the people in charge, then I wanted nothing more to do with it.  

If any person from a foreign country wants to live in another country, that is great. I think more people should do that. But if that new immigrant attempts to bring all of his old cultural beliefs with him, he will not integrate into the new country and, when there are enough of his own kind there, he may even attempt to change the culture to more suit what he was used to in his homeland. But if he wants to keep all of his old culture, customs and ideas, then why did he leave his old country? For a job? What so many immigrants to the West (from all parts of the world, not only Islamic areas) do not seem to understand about real democracy is that everyone has to be accepted for who they are. That freedom of choice, speech and belief is what makes democratic countries rich and attractive. If that democratic system is destroyed, all those jobs and the life that immigrants came for will disappear. Do these Muhammad freaks think that money in Denmark just magically appears because it is an EU country? They are so blind that they cannot see that by forcing fundamental changes in the democratic process of free speech and expression, they will destroy a key element that makes democracy function. In more concrete terms, an open democracy and free market equals money, and money equals power, influence and greater ability to make choices that will benefit both the individual and the group. I exercised my right to leave Turkey because I was no longer happy with the situation there. If Muslims in Western countries half a world away from their countries of origin cannot adjust to truly free speech and expression, in other words the basic element of democratic culture, then they need to put on their headscarves and leave.

I almost hope I did offend someone with my words or by posting certain cartoons in my albums. If I did, deal with it. I did not mean to imply that Islam stands alone in being a barrier to free thought and democracy though. All organized religions hurt freedom of expression to one degree or another. The more radical and devout the believers, the more repressive they seem to be. At this moment in time, however, it just happens to be that the most radical believers of one religion appear to be in Islamic countries. I cannot prove there is no God, but I sure can show you easily enough how Moses took a local Hebrew tribal god named YHWH and turned him into the central god of Judaism; I can explain to you how Jesus went from being just another Jewish street agitator against Jewish corruption and Roman rule to “the son of God;” and it is easy enough to prove how Muhammad mixed Judaism, Christianity and Arab pagan rites together with the tribal god of trade and fertility named Allah into the religion that he called Islam. Rules of organized religions are based on either false or altered history and fantasy, and those rules were created by power hungry religious and political leaders in order to control their subjects. If people want to adhere to those rules, that is their choice and right. But they had better learn to accept that not everyone is going to agree with them and they should respect the beliefs and rights of others if they want that respect returned to them. If a belief is strong enough, no matter what the unbelievers say or do, it should not matter.

As this controversy grows, more cartoons are now being published in response to the protests. I have included some of them in the Muhammad Cartoons album. One of my new favorite sites is http://www.jesusandmo.net/ and I have posted some, but not all, of those cartoons as well.

Blog Uno

I have been very lax in putting up a new posting. I’ve been concentrating more on the photos and less on this blog part. I realize this has led to a lack of quality literature available online, so I will make an extra effort to post more pith here in the future.

It seems that someone is visiting my site. As of this morning, there were almost 2000 hits since I opened this page at the beginning of December 2005. Not quite Amazon.com numbers, but much better than I ever thought I’d get. That’s right everyone, keep feeding the massive ego that is my curse and blessing. My next goal is to create a real webpage with a lot more buttons, bells and whistles. I’ve been looking into the software and it doesn’t seem to be that complicated if I get the “I’m an idiot with a computer Deluxe Edition” version 3.2 for Windows XP. Don’t hold your breath for that though. It’s definitely a work in progress, and I’m still in the research phase.

Speaking of research, school has begun again. I’m taking two classes at Marquette this semester and only the second part of stats at UWM. The professors in the Political Science Department at Marquette have impressed me so far. They’re much more personable than the qualitative (using math and statistics for support) research junkies here at UWM. The nice thing about going to Marquette is that it’s a Catholic school, so I get religious holidays off too. So with more enjoyable classes and more time off, life is as good as it can get while I’m stuck being a student. I find the idea that I went to a “Christian” school for my undergrad and am now attending classes with a bunch of Jesuits very amusing. Couple that with my enjoyment of studying Islam, and I probably have more religion than anyone else I know. Who would have ever guessed? Praise Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Buddha, Pat Robertson, pork and Mountain Dew. The holiest of  food and drink. And give a special blessing to Jose Cuervo.