Fear & Ignorance > Courage & Wisdom
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The Twin Tower attacks, assorted suicide bombers and global furor/death threats sparked by creative works have pretty sealed the perception of Islam for many Americans. Although the vast majority of Muslims denounce the terrorism and insist that Islam advocates peace and harmony between all people, a sizeable segment of our society believes that Muslims are out to kill non-believers and take over the country, if not the world.
I’ll be the first to admit that Muslims at the radical end of the spectrum are VERY EXTREME. But I have a frat brother who’s a Muslim, an award-winning journalist with a national cable network, and he’s as extreme as coffee with milk. So are millions of others. I guess that’s a common of description of many folks who eventually flip out and shoot up their office, but I think that’s more of a mental health issue than adherence to religious doctrine.
Because the truth is, you can cause mayhem and destruction in the name of any religion. It just depends on how you interpret and pervert the scriptures.
New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof illustrates the point perfectly in a pop quiz. He got the idea after a Pew Research Center poll found that religious people are remarkably uninformed about religion. Kristof asks 13 questions that focus on extreminism and fundamentalism, and readers must decide which religion is associated with particular beliefs and statements. “The point of this little quiz,” he writes, “is that religion is more complicated than it sometimes seems, and that we should be wary of rushing to inflammatory conclusions about any faith, especially based on cherry-picking texts. The most crucial element is perhaps not what is in our scriptures, but what is in our hearts.”
But fear of what’s in the hearts of select Muslims makes some of us cower at the mention of Islam. Or Muhammad. That’s what happened at roughly 20 newsrooms around the country when editors pulled a recent “Non Sequitur” comic strip that included a “Where’s Muhammad?” reference. Drawn by Wiley Miller, the strip was a satirical reference to the worldwide uprising that ensued in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad. Miller’s work was also in support of “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!” a free-speech protest against threats to “South Park” animators for depicting Muhammad in an episode of the TV show.
Here’s the kicker: The cartoon doesn’t even include a depiction of Muhammad! But The Washington Post was among the papers that chose not to run it anyway. Ombudsman Andrew Alexander took issue with the call, rightly so, concluding that editors “set an awfully low threshold for decisions on whether to withhold words or images that might offend.”
Miller put it best himself: “I have absolutely no information on why any of the editors chose not to run it,” he said. “All I can do is surmise that the irony of their being afraid to run a cartoon that satirizes media’s knee-jerk reaction to anything involving Islam bounced right of their foreheads. So what they’ve actually accomplished is, sadly, [to] validate the point.”
Chalk up another victory for Fear & Ignorance in its ongoing battle against Courage & Wisdom.
Sigh.
DS
