Letters
The Mohammed cartoon controversy
13 February 2006
Dear Sir
The recent outrage over the Danish cartoons is of course both selective and disproportionate. Moderate Muslims don’t condemn the ritual vilification of Jews in the Middle East while the West's perceived ‘slights' against Islam are judged more harshly than the genocide of Muslim dictators. The cartoonist’s basic point, that the religion of Muhammad is being usurped by violent jihadis, has only been reinforced by recent events. But just as the spectacle of sword wielding fanatics is horrifying, so too is the craven response of our Western leaders. The decision of Jack Straw and others to condemn the newspaper editors in more forthright terms than embassy burning fanatics is a pitiful and sickening form of appeasement. By calling on newspaper editors to show restraint, Western leaders have adopted the Muslim extremists’ own victim mentality. Now the aggressors have become innocent victims who misbehave because the real victims provoke them. The only response therefore is to explain violence and fanaticism as the understandable twin responses of a beleaguered minority desperately fighting for its rights. This is a dreadful perversion of truth, justice and common sense. Few Western leaders are prepared to defend the right of a progressive, secular society to satirize Islam and question its theological fundamentalism, which can only be a recipe for disaster.
Yours sincerely
Jeremy Havardi
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