Muslim Protest and Religious Censorship

Demonstrators continued to burn Danish flags this week, in response to a Danish newspaper's publication of several cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. News reports have described angry Muslims burning the red-and-white flags in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Gaza, Iraq, Kashmir, Lebanon, Nigeria, Syria, and elsewhere. Where do protesters get their Danish flags?

Do they buy them at the flag store or make them from scratch. Some journalist and other bloggers have cited the seemingly endless supply of Danish flags as evidence of premeditated government support for the protests. I don’t think that is the case. It couldn’t be that tricky to obtain Danish flags in the Muslim world.
First, many of the protesters are using handmade flags. (Improvisation is nothing new: Demonstrators in the Middle East often set fire to crude painted or drawn versions of the U.S. and Israeli flags.) I am currently looking at a picture in Time magazine of a home made flag being burned. The Danish flag happens to be especially easy to mock up on the fly, it's just a white cross on a red background. The flag I am looking at also seems to be wrapped around a wooden pole, where it might be nailed or stapled in place. A professionally produced flag would likely have grommet holes sewn into the fabric and not be made of Clifford the big red dog bedsheets.
Not all the homemade flags come out quite rightyou see, in some cases, protesters are using red banners with a centered instead of an offset cross. This makes them flags of Savoy, not Denmark. Other protesters have been seen burning what are apparently Swiss flags. (The Swiss use a smaller, fatter cross on a red background.) There are even a few rather confused looking fellows in the background burning what appears to me to be the national flag of Walmart.
Doing it yourself may save you some money, but you can also try to grab a Danish flag at your local flag store. I read in a Reuters reportabout a shopkeeper in Gaza who stocked his PLO Flag Shop with 100 Danish and Norwegian flags when he heard about the cartoons. If there is ever an unforseen boom in the Washington State flag industry I may hasten my plans to move to Portland. This merchant gets his flags from Taiwan and charges $11 for each. Flag manufacturers in China and Thailand might also be able to provide Danish flags on short order. Personaly I don't think the world as a collective has forgiven Denmark for it's part in the whole Vicking scourge thing yet. Also I find it ironic that capitalism abounds across the Globe even if America, capitalism's symbolic center, remains vilified for it’s propagation. That last point aside only plutonium 232 seems easier to obtain than Danish flags.
A determined protester with an Internet connection could even order a Danish flag from an American manufacturer. Even improvishedbut enthusiastic conmen in Africa mage thier way into our in boxs almost daily with pleas to aid various ousted politicians, nobility and the odd Tarzan type or two. Just as an exercise in curiousity, I hoped online and placed an order (Which I planned to cancle should my experiment go so far) for five high-quality Danish flags to be shipped from an American supplier to an address I pulled out of hat in Damascus, Total cost: $163. Or it would have been if my credit card had not been turned down. Other than my own inability to open credit card bills much less pay them there was nothing stopping me from obtaining proper gear for a good old fashioned moronic show of instilled brutal intolerence.
American flag dealers have, over the years, provided some fuel for protests at home. Back in 1979, the Associated Press learned about a sudden increase in the sales of Iranian flags; in 1991 the Chicago Tribune reported a similar run on the Iraqi stars-and-stripes and of course the sharp increase in the Blackmarket Canadian Flag trade after Cielon Dion hit the airwave in the 90's.
Another thing or two while I am rambling on, the US State Department issued a statement about all this that bothers me. The statement was a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegationas and was also incidently, accidentally accurate.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
Thus spoke the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement written in crayon. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does the statement mean "unacceptable"? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people. However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. States which are more often than not Theocrocies. In such lands ruled by draconian goverments violence and hate are common. Generaly these tyrant states do not speak for the whole of thier people nor are they represenative of the faiths they claim to weild authority through. However I find the leadership and guidence offered by the Islamic clergy out side of the passions and cultural conflict in the Middle East lacking, to say the least, reckless and confrontational at best. It is socialy irresponsible when in this modern age the religious leaders and thus the moral guides for the faithful, deliberatly encourge racial and philosophical violence. I am not religious but I expect better behaviour from such influincial people. It is inexcusable when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies in ta wisted propaganda of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.
Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and messianic Israeli settlers, and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.
Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. ( Though I would like to note that as a vegitarian I don't eat pork anyway) This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive" become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization. I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. I will not be told I can't eat certain foods or dance and enjoy what I choose to enjoy. I will not be told what to read or what to write and or draw. Period. Most importantly I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.
As it happens, the cartoons themselves are not very brilliant, or very mordant, either. But if Muslims do not want their alleged prophet identified with barbaric acts or adolescent fantasies, they should say publicly that random murder for virgins is not in their religion. And here one runs up against a curious reluctance. … In fact, Sunni Muslim leaders can't even seem to condemn the blowing-up of Shiite mosques and funeral processions, which even I would describe as sacrilege. Of course there are many millions of Muslims who do worry about this, and another reason for condemning the idiots at Foggy Bottom is their assumption, dangerous in many ways, that the first lynch mob on the scene is actually the genuine voice of the people. There's an insult to Islam, if you like.
The question of "offensiveness" is easy to decide. First: Suppose that we all agreed to conduct ourselves in ways to avoid offending the believers? How could we ever be sure that we had taken enough precautions? Is it not clear, then, that those who are determined to be "offended" will discover a provocation somewhere? We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.
Second (and important enough to be insisted upon): Can the discussion be carried on without the threat of violence, or the automatic resort to it? When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, he did so in the hope of forwarding a discussion that was already opening in the Muslim world, between extreme Quranic literalists and those who hoped that the text could be interpreted. We know what his own reward was, and we sometimes forget that the fatwa was directed not just against him but against "all those involved in its publication," which led to the murder of the book's Japanese translator and the near-deaths of another translator and one publisher. I watched on Crossfire at some point a debate some spokesman for outraged faith, wher in the exchange a secular represenative (Gore Vidal?)said that we on our side would happily debate the propriety of using holy writ for literary and artistic purposes. But that we would not exchange a word until the person on the other side of the podium had put away his metaphorical gun. (The menacing Muslim speaker on the other side refused to forswear state-sponsored suborning of assassination, and was of course backed up by the bigot Pat Buchanan.)
The same point made in that program holds for international relations: There can be no negotiation under duress or under the threat of blackmail and assassination. And civil society means that free expression trumps the emotions of anyone to whom free expression might be inconvenient. It is depressing to have to restate these obvious precepts, and it is positively outrageous that the U.S. Administration should have discarded them at the very first sign of a fight.
I do not distinguish between Christian extremism and Muslim extremism. To me they are both equally dangerous and equally wrong. No one religion or belief system can dictate to anyone but it’s own followers what is right and what is wrong. Neither has the right to exercise any control over the other. The events surrounding this controversy over cartoons strikes home with me as I am a cartoonist myself and fully believe that censorship is a grave wrong.