On a side note, JP is not a "populist right wing Danish tabloid" but a conservative quality newspaper (with a broadsheet format last I looked, but that may have changed for all I know and is irrelevant). Its world news coverage is franchised in my excellent local paper, and I've never had any problems with it as a progressive. This makes me inclined to believe the assurance of the cultural editor, Flemming Rose, that his intention was not to attack a "usually marginalized minority often viewed in distinctly racial terms by the host European society" but to stand up for the right to free speech in a provocative manner. I'm also prepared to accept his word that he did not ask for caricatures but for the cartoonists to draw Muhammed as they saw him, however that might be. (And speaking of cultural context, check out my mini-sketch of Scandinavian mutual stereotypes from a while ago. One of the Danish characteristics is of relevance here.)

We all know, by now, that the editor screwed up royally, and some of us could have told him that in advance. By his careless ignorance he failed as an editor. But this is all beside the point now. As I've put it elsewhere, the international firestorm has much more to do with the manipulation of this issue by islamist movements with an axe to grind about "the Western crusade against Islam," and by various dictatorial governments that unsuccessfully vie with them for popularity.

The protesting masses of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, etc. etc. are hardly preoccupied with the Danish debate about integration of immigrants. No, they are riled up over: (i) perceived acts of sacriledge against the Prophet, and (ii) perceived attacks on the Islamic Umma (global community of believers) by infidels.

In turn, (ii) has to do with a sense of being oppressed by sleazy dictatorial regimes backed by Western powers, and in the case of Iraq, directly by the USA. There is also Israel, which said regimes wave before their populations as a red cloth to divert from their own kleptocracy. One may feel some sympathy here. But (ii) is also related to a sense of global humiliation at the hands of the technologically, economically, and martially superior Western civilization, which is not supposed to be superior in these ways, being spiritually inferior. I admit to feeling much less sympathy for that.

In any case, this has now become a matter of freedom of speech, whatever its origins on a southern Danish island months ago. To ignore this is to commit the genetic fallacy. I appreciate your unambigious defense of such freedom.

Thanks for your diary entry.

The world's northernmost desert wind.