Seattle PI on the "good thing" about the cartoons

Some FLT (fuzzy liberal thinking):

The good thing about this controversy is that not only does it force some of us to learn more about Muslims (who knew they had a ban on satirical or critical representations of their prophet?), it's also bringing out the moderates in the religion, those, such as Egyptian writer Mohammed Abdel-Qaddous, whose voices often are lost in the screams of the fundamentalists.

"They committed a crime when they violated our prophet's sanctity. But if we set their embassy on fire, as happened in Syria or Lebanon, we will then be responding to their crime with another crime," said Abdel-Qaddous.

A person who thinks the cartoons constituted a "crime" and that embassy arson is merely responding in kind is a moderate? The author, D. Parvaz, goes on to describe the "tricky part":

The tricky part of this whole situation is this: Muslims want the rules of their religion respected, absolutely. Those protesting feel the tenets of Islam trump freedom of expression. But they live in countries where that freedom is valued far more than anything else. So, what do you do? On the one hand, the Danes want their rights respected, including the right to draw inflammatory cartoons about someone else's religion (I seriously doubt any of the cartoonists tapped for the project were Muslim). On the other hand, you have a population that thinks its beliefs are being spat upon for sport. What tips the scales (slightly) in favor of the Muslims (the ones protesting peacefully) in this dilemma is this tidbit from a Reuters story, which disclosed, with minimal fuss, "the Danish newspaper that first published the caricatures of the prophet has previously turned down cartoons of Jesus as too offensive." Uh-huh.

Sorry, that doesn't tip the scales in favor of anybody. The loony, free-speech threatening reactions, which would not have occurred with the other cartoons, were part of the prophet cartoons' point. The "peacefully protesting" Muslims have allowed their religion to be hijacked.

Tags: cartoons, Prophet-cartoons, Denmark, Islam, journalism