Muslims in Dire Need of Anger Management

It's déjà vu all over again.

Muslims protesting cartoons, ones that first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten months ago, are continuing their violent rampage.

INFLAMMATORY CARTOONS DO NOT JUSTIFY SETTING DANISH EMBASSIES IN FLAMES.

The Washington Post reports:

Thousands of Muslim protesters enraged over the publication of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad set ablaze the Danish Embassy on Sunday and rampaged through a predominantly Christian neighborhood, dangerously escalating sectarian tensions in a country whose mélange of faiths can sometimes serve as a microcosm of the world's religious divide.

The unrest was some of the worst in Lebanon in years, and leaders from across the political and religious spectrum appealed for calm. In vain, some Muslim clerics tried to step into the hours-long fray to end the clashes, which news agencies said left at least one demonstrator dead and 18 wounded.

I'd like to hear more about the Muslim clerics' efforts to quell the violence.

How many stepped in?

Are the majority of the Muslim clerics appealing for peace or are they in the minority?

We never get those details. These reports often toss in those bits about calls for calm, like some sort of obligatory disclaimer.

I want to know if those appeals characterize the majority opinion among Muslims. I hope so.

But in the streets, fistfights broke out between Christian and Muslim Lebanese, after protesters threw rocks at a Maronite Catholic Church, broke windows at the Lebanese Red Cross office and shattered windshields of cars. Bands of Christian youths congregated with sticks and iron bars, promising to defend their neighborhoods.

So, did the Catholic Church and the Red Cross paper their walls with the offensive images? Were they involved in the controversy? Did they hand out the cartoons?

Why target these sites? What were their crimes?

It certainly doesn't help matters for Christian young people to answer the Muslims' violence with violence; but I do think they have the right to defend themselves.

"Those who are committing these acts have nothing to do with Islam or with Lebanon," Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora told Lebanon's Future television station before the protests ended. "This is absolutely not the way we express our opinions."

Sorry, Siniora. "Those who are committing these acts" are part of Islam and Lebanon, the very ugly part.

Unfortunately, it is absolutely the way they express their opinions.

In their scope and vitriol, the protests say much about the state of relations between the West and the Muslim world in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The anger was ignited by 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were commissioned in September by a Danish newspaper to challenge Islam's ban on depicting the prophet. Along with picturing him, some lampooned him, with one artist rendering his turban as a bomb with a burning fuse. After protests began, other European papers reprinted the cartoons.

This attempt by the Post to be unbiased in the matter falls flat.

I don't think these protests reveal "the state of relations between the West and the Muslim world in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks."

Instead, I think they reveal the character of radical Islam. It's not pretty.

They declared it an issue of free expression, the cornerstone of Western liberalism; many Muslims cast it as another insult in a conflict that, in the Muslim world, is most often reflected through the lens of a religious struggle with an American-led West.

Why isn't the Post defending free expression in this instance?

Where's the Post's condemnation for militant Muslims' intimidation tactics to squelch the civil liberties of the European papers?

Where's the outrage?

"What are you going to do?" asked a leaflet circulated in Beirut that called for Sunday's protest.

"Bush and his group have invaded and are fighting wars by all means available," it added. "Their goal: destroying the Islamic nation ideologically and economically and stealing and looting its resources."

The protest drew as many as 20,000 people answering calls from mosques Friday and similar leaflets circulated in Beirut and other cities. Most of them stayed peaceful. But bands of demonstrators broke through police lines at the Danish Embassy, and hundreds of others surged through nearby streets, waving green religious flags and shouted, "God is greatest." Police shot into the air and fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters who threw stones, set ablaze fire trucks and overturned police vehicles.

What I don't get is why the thousands of peaceful protesters don't control the violent protesters?

Why don't the good people of the Muslim community exert some pressure on the "hundreds" that riot, destroy, and kill?

Why are the extremists being allowed to discredit the image of peaceful Muslims?

It is in the best interests of Muslims worldwide to completely distance themselves from these radicals, loudly and clearly.

The Danish Embassy was gutted and its granite façade scalded. Acrid black smoke spilled out of its windows hours later, as fire trucks tried to contain the blaze. Workers swept up glass that littered the narrow streets of the neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh.

The Danish Foreign Ministry urged Danes on Sunday to leave Lebanon and urged its citizens not to travel there. The embassy, bracing for the expected protests, was evacuated Saturday. It also housed the Austrian Consulate.

Enough is enough.

The protesters' violent outbursts have escalated into full-blown temper tantrums.

Death and destruction is no way to display upset over cartoons. The reactions of these violent Muslims are so utterly disproportionate to the offense that they look foolish. They are doing nothing to promote their cause.

Like parents dealing with an unruly two-year-old, it's time for the adults to take control and end this.

There should be consequences for all the damage that the militant protesters have done. Their completely unacceptable behavior should not be rewarded by efforts to appease them.

You can't reason with a two-year-old.

I initially felt some empathy for the Muslims on this issue. Having one's faith ridiculed is not pleasant. I know. However, their response has been so extreme that I no longer can identify with the protesters in any way.

Any attempts to frame what the protesters have done as an understandable response to the cartoons would serve to legitimize their violence. It would be a terrible mistake.

My advice to the protesters:

GET A GRIP!

TAKE A NAP!

Perhaps these Muslims that are causing so much damage should make an effort to understand the culture and beliefs of people in Western nations, in order to bridge the cultural gap.

Maybe they need to try anger management.

Maybe Oprah can go to a Danish Embassy and express her outrage and shed a few tears. That might prompt the Muslim protesters to reflect on their sociopathic behavior and change their ways.
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Tom Gross has assembled a very enlightening sampling of political cartoons from the "media of seven Arab countries (Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Syria and Egypt) and from the Palestinian Authority."

He points out, "A number of these countries are regarded as moderate or allied to the West. Most print media in the Arab world are under the full or partial control of the ruling regimes."

The fact that these cartoons circulate regularly in the Arab World shows that the militant Muslims can hardly be viewed as victims in this cartoon controversy.

Their cartoonists are free to spew anti-Semitic and anti-American vitriol, but they can't handle images that are not to their liking. It's an absolutely ridiculous double standard. It's totally irrational.

Some examples and analysis from Tom Gross:



The cartoon above, clearly depicting the railroad to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau – but with Israeli flags replacing the Nazi ones – is from the Jordanian newspaper Ad-Dustur (October 19, 2003). The sign in Arabic reads: “Gaza Strip or the Israeli Annihilation Camp.” This accentuates the widespread libel that Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians have been comparable to Nazi actions towards Jews. Jordan is supposedly a moderate country at peace with Israel.



In this cartoon, from Al-Watan newspaper in Qatar (June 23, 2002), Ariel Sharon is shown watching on the sidelines as an Israeli plane crashes into New York’s World Trade Center. The Arabic words alongside the Twin Towers are “The Peace.” This cartoon restates the widely held myth in the Arab world that Israel and the Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks which were in fact carried out by al-Qaeda.



In this cartoon, from Al-Watan (Oman) (August 10, 2002), Jewish acts are equated with those of the Nazis. This Nazi-type anti-Semitic caricature of a Jew has a hooked nose, a hunched back, has no shoes, and is sweating.




The cartoon above, from Arab News (April 10, 2002), shows Ariel Sharon wielding a swastika-shaped axe to chop up Palestinian children. Arab News is a Saudi-based English language daily which is supposedly one of the Arab world’s more moderate papers.



In the above cartoon, from Akhbar Al-Khalij (Bahrain) (June 10, 2002), the anti-Semitic caricature of a Jew on the right says: “Say: ‘I hate the Arabs!’” and American president George W. Bush, made to resemble a parrot, repeats: “I hate the Arabs, I hate the Arabs.”
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Some final questions:

How did so many Danish flags show up in the Middle East?

Do the militants keep stockpiles of the West's flags in the event that they need to trample on them and burn them?

If I tried, I think I'd have great difficulty getting my hands on a Danish flag.

I don't think they sell them at Wal-Mart, but I could be wrong.