Was the publication of the cartoons which launched riots among Muslims the result of atheism? That seems too incredible to believe, but it's exactly the impression that some are trying to spread. Perhaps they hope to get conservative Christians to associate the cartoons with their own negative feelings about atheism and thereby acquire support for Muslim objections to the cartoons' publication.

Mustafa Akyol writes for the National Review Online:

Another interesting point in the whole cartoon hype is the difference of attitude between the ultra-secular continental Europe and the more God-friendly Anglo-Saxons. It is a notable fact that cartoons were published and, in some cases, officially supported in countries characterized by widespread atheism and deep-seated anti-clericalism. Yet neither the religious U.S., nor the not-so-religious, but still respectful, Britain joined them.

Akyol, a Turkish Muslim writer in Istanbul, Turkey, is trying to associate the cartoons with atheism. Why? Well, it might offend the NRO’s readers if he associated them with Christianity. The fact of the matter is, though, that many conservatives in America have been objecting to the failure to print the cartoons in America — conservatives who are anything but atheists or anti-clerical.

Of course, I’m an atheist and I also support the publication of the cartoons — both in Europe originally as well as in America later. Some believe that publishing them only serves the goal of offending Muslims, but the sad fact is that the commentary of the cartoons is, if anything, even more appropriate in the wake of the protests than it was beforehand.

The message of the cartoons was, at least in part, about how Muslims resort to violence and terror as part of their religious reactions to events, and this is precisely what we saw in their reaction to the cartoons. Usually, political cartoons do their job not through reasoned philosophical arguments, but through quick jabs, mockery, satire, and generalizations. Expecting the former in a single-panel cartoon isn’t just unreasonable, but disingenuous from anyone who has any experience with looking at them. It’s simply not a valid argument against the cartoons in question, but it’s one I’ve seen offered far too often (which is not to say that there aren’t any valid objections to or criticisms of editorial cartoons generally or these cartoons in particular).

The cartoons should not be published in order to offend Muslims or because they offend Muslims; the cartoons should be published, however, because Muslims’ religious objections to the cartoons have been riots, violence, and terror. So long as the dominant Muslim reaction to things they find objectionable is call for violence against and/or government suppression of objectionable material, it’s the duty of others to comment on this — especially when such commentary itself falls within the “objectionable” category.

 

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