Fanatics Without Borders

Abstract

Freedom of Expression and respect for the beliefs of others begins with a painful renunciation of the absolute authority of your own particular convictions. And it's against this renunciation that Islamic fundamentalist elites and masses raise their holy rage. The picture that lit the fuse shows Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. Insulting picture, they tell us. A hurtful connection, an offensive connection, a defamatory connection between the Prophet and terrorism. Certainly. But this link wasn't suggested by Danish cartoonists, it was forged by the Jihadists. Why were there no demonstrations in the Arab/Muslim worlds against the bloody attacks in New York, Madrid, Mombasa, Bali, and elsewhere? Moreover, the pictures of furious and screaming crowds sacking the Scandinavian embassies are infinitely more obscene, infinitely more caricatured than the sketches from Scandinavia. The believers who count themselves outraged and calumniated by such a representation of Muhammad respond by saying "Kill those who insult Islam!" And those who insult Islam, in their eyes, are not only the authors of these incriminating drawings, but the governments of the countries where the drawings were published and all those within the jurisdiction of these countries.