Also, I don't think this is quite the same as the Rushdie story, for reasons I suggest above. That Rushdie's book was a legitimate and very sophisticated attempt to reimagine Islam from someone from within the Islamic tradition. These cartoons - at least some of them - were half-assed attempts that were designed to offend. They weren't designed to advance discourse or to challenge fundamental beliefs in a serious way, and they weren't drawn by people who know much about Islam. While I stand with Denmark and free speech, I also don't think we should thus elevate these cartoons to the level of the Satanic Versus either.
Another thing I would point out is that the kind of Christianity that is ascendant in much of the world is also in many ways fundamentally illiberal and anti-modern. Especially in places like Africa. With the collapse of Marxism and related third world liberation ideologies, fundamentalist religiousity has come to fill the void. Islam in some places, Christianity in others.
Indeed, I'm skeptical of the ability of Islam as it is understood by a majority in the Middle East and liberalism to be compatible. The recent elections throughout the Middle East have proven this. The fact - it seems to me - is that more democracy means less liberalism.
Liberalism - broadly understood - is not on the march. It is embattled throughout much of the world. And this understandable in a situation of high poverty, political instability, and its attendant problems. When the lights are off and the trash is piling up and you don't have a job, freedom of speech becomes a less important issue - people will trade these luxuries for belief systems that can provide any semblance of order.
None of this thus means that we in nations with strong liberal traditions should thus compromise these traditions. Absolutely not. But it is also useful to take a step back and think of the big picture as well.
For a really good post that sums up my feelings, see Josh Marshall's latest.
That is the best proof IMHO of the fact that, in the greatest scheme of history, this is not "our" problem but an internecine Muslim fracture between enlightenment/reformation forces (which probably think the whole thing is beneath notice in the case of the cartoons and praiseworthy in the case of Rushdie) and obscurantist/stagnation forces who desire a progress-less, static world.
The flashpoint is the casrtoons today, but it could have been anything, in arts of science. A Mahometan shroud of turin-like discovery, dead scrolls things, anything really.
My point has less to do with freedom of expression, liberalism, etc. than it has to do with evolution vs stagnation. One might argue that the West has gotten itself willingly dragged into an unstated Islamic Civil War for the last decade or so.
I think many in the West, especially since 9/11, have tried to reassure ourselves that there really is a silent majority that wants "modernity," "liberalism," etc. in the Islamic world, especially in the Middle East. Indeed, I think in some ways this is the assumption many who favored the Iraq War believed. I'm not at all sure this is the case, and the nature of this conflict right now demonstrates that we are two civilizations speaking from different assumptions. Certainly, there are liberals/"modernists" in the Islamic world, but if recent election results are any indication, they are a distinct minority. I mean: who are the big shots in Iraq right now: the Iraqi Muslim brotherhood, Ayatollah Sistani, Muqtada Al-Sadr. Islamists consitute a super majority in the Iraqi parliament. Same thing in Palestine. Same thing in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood would have won a strong majority if a fully free and legitimate election were held.
Really, if you allow me to use a perhaps stretched analogy, what you have in the Middle East vis-a-vis the West is a situation a bit like you had amongst whites in the Jim Crow South during, say the first half of the 20th century, vis-a-vis blacks. There is/was, in both cases, a group of citizens who are "liberals" but they are weak and marginalized minority. What you have is really have in both situations are groups that disagree on tactics, but not on basic ideology.
