Malaysia, Denmark: Clash of Civilities?
Written byJose Manuel Tesoro
Ktemoc Konsiders, a blogger from Malaysia, shares his thoughts on the controversy surrounding a Danish newspaper's decisions to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad: “why choose an offensive insensitive issue, as if it didn’t know that the cartoons would be highly blasphemous, distressing, insulting and provocative to Muslims throughout the world? But in reality, it did (know) because it admitted it was testing to see how Danish freedom of speech and expression had been curtailed?”
Written byJose Manuel Tesoro
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My sentiments exactly. No one is arguing that freedom of speech is not an ideal that should be embraced by the world all over, but it should be tempered with knowing what kind of consequences it may attract.
By ridiculing the violent response of hardline Muslims is to take away the blame from the provocateurs for stirring up the hornets’ nest in the first place.
Of course it knew there would be protests… that was the point of the entire article!!! To show that any critique of Islam and/or muslims, however justified or relevant, would be met by a barrage of angry replies and cries of “racism”.
The article wanted to show that, sadly, western media has introduced a self-censorship to such a degree that an author writing a childrens book about the life of Muhammed could not find an artist willing to illustrate it out of fear for the reaction of muslims in Denmark, let alone the world.
Asked to draw a caricature of Muhammed, one of the artists chose to illustrate how the majority of muslims in the west in particular, through their silence, have let a small group of fanatics dominate the image that the west has of Islam and arab culture.
Whether muslims like it or not, their silent acceptance (and condolence?) of terror in the name of Allah have created an image of Islam as a religion of intolerance and violence, which will not disappear easily and in the near future. The reactions of muslims around the world, radical and moderate alike, have shown that the followers of Isalm is not contemplating to right this image anytime soon.
The fact that muslims, to a much higher degree than any other minority in the western countries, are the source of numerous problems, both culturally and legally, is keeping them at odds with the west. In spite of what is proclaimed loudly again and again, the reaction of most western people is not one of racism, but rather one of dislike towards the characteristics of a particular culture, the doctrines of which seem utterly incapable of excisting in a modern society.
There seems to be only one viable solution to this conflict: Isalm needs to undergo a reformation in order to weed out the aged ideals of 1500 years ago and adopt a more modern way of viewing society and the rights of the individual.
In case someone is thinking “this idiot has no idea what he’s talking about – he knows nothing of Islam at all!”, I would just like to mention that I lived in Saudi Arabia for 4 years during the 1980’s and this has given me an insight into the basics of (radical) muslim culture that few other westerners can claim.