From Former Congressman Bob Bauman:
Four months ago, Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper published 12 caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. You know the rest.
A dictionary definition of "cartoon" describes it as a drawing depicting a humorous situation representing current public figures or issues symbolically, often satirically with irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.
Having served in the US Congress, I'm familiar with this form of American free speech. Hanging on my wall is a cartoon from The Baltimore Sun , a liberal newspaper that generally opposed me and my conservative views during my public service. The cartoon depicts me pushing down the plunger on explosive charge about to blow up the Panama Canal as a ship passes through. This was a crude reference to my position as ranking Republican on the House Panama Canal Subcommittee and my vehement opposition to Jimmy Carter's treaties that gave the US Canal to Panama.
Granted I am not on a par with the prophet Muhammad, nevertheless I did not try to burn down the offices of the Sunpapers on Calvert Street in Baltimore to show my displeasure. (In fact I was flattered that The Sun cared enough to gig me, and it pleased my conservative constituents). Unable to escape 24-7 TV coverage of anything morbid, destructive and sensational, by now most of the world knows that groups of irate Muslims have rioted in the streets of cities from Damascus and Beirut to Kabul and Lahore to Gaza. Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait withdrew their ambassadors from Copenhagen, calling for an apology and punishment of the editors. Danish products are boycotted in the Middle East, where state-run media talk about a conspiracy against Islam. Palestinian terrorists have declared Danes and other Europeans as legitimate death targets.
I love studying history. But I am concerned that most Americans (and others) these days do not realize the truth of Shakespeare's' observation that: "What is past is prologue."
These brainless street riots over what appear to be legitimate cartoons, (the "free press" wimps in the US media wont show them), were sparked because they depicted a certain segment of Muslims as advocating brutal violence and death to "unbelievers" -- non-Muslims. And it seems the majority of Muslims leaders openly encourage this insanity, passively allow it, or remain silent. The last time history saw rampaging street thugs advocating extermination of hated others it was on Kristallnacht , the Nazi prelude to the slaughtering of millions of Jews.
Yet the Bush administration and European governments, while paying lip service to "free speech" and a "free press," tut-tutted about the unfortunate offense of Muslims caused by with these truthful cartoons. Do these wimps recognize the wider issues here? Some things are just wrong and must be so described in uncompromising terms. Have appeasers forgotten the thousands of murders on 9-11, or the London, Madrid and scores of other bombings, all in the hijacked name of Allah?
The cartoon capers are just another skirmish in a clash of Western civilization and radical Islam that goes back centuries. The West finally won that bloody battle with the liberation of Vienna in 1683 from the Turks. Earlier at the Battle of Poitiers (Tours) in 732, Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a massive invading Islamic army. That battle stopped the northward advance of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula. Most historians view this as the end to the invasion of Europe by Muslims, preserving Christianity at a time when violent Islam was overrunning the remains of the old Roman and Persian Empires.
Historian Samuel Huntington, who popularized what has been called the "clash of civilizations theory," suggests that the struggle between Islam and Christianity has now lasted for some 14 centuries. He wrote: "It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations - the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both."
Put simply, certain Muslims don't like us, not because of what we do, (which is provocative enough; Iraq, oil, Israel) but because too many Muslims reject the West's love of freedom and perhaps because they have been on the losing side for 300 years.
Muslims' refuse to be ruled by infidels and to many of them all non-believers are infidels. Read history and you will understand why these street riots are another stark symptom of a much deeper, chronic problem that will torment the world for a long time.
It already has.
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