A Call for Civility: Both sides out of line over Danish cartoons

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

“A Danish newspaper delivered a totally insensitive insult with its call last fall for cartoonists to draw pictures of the prophet Muhammad. Such depictions violate Muslim law, and the newspaper had proposed the assignment to test whether cartoonists would censor themselves. Now, months after publication, radical Islamists have used this ridiculous cartoon experiment as an excuse to manipulate violent political demonstrations and destruction across Europe and the Middle East. The provocation – almost a "let's kick the anthill and see what happens" mentality – and the virulent, deadly protests that have followed show both sides at their worst.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

This editorial fails on many levels, starting with the headline. Asking cartoonists to refrain from provoking anger is a call for civility. On the other side, civility demands much more than merely refraining from burning embassies and killing Danes. Civility isn't even an option until one side quits calling for the deaths of the other.

We're not dealing with a case of wanton boys kicking at a peaceful ant hill here. We're dealing with a situation where the "ants" have been trying to kill us. The "ants" are not innocent. Cartoonists used their pens to point this out to the rest of us. Even if the cartoonists were set up to provoke Muslims, there is still not a balance of offenses. It's been said that the pen is mightier than the sword, but that's figurative, people. In real life, the pen stings one's feelings; the sword kills, literally.

There is a serious debate underway about the nature of Islam and jihad and whether suicide bombing and terror are compatible with the religion of Muhammad. It is the political cartoonist's job to find the crux of the debate and highlight that in a simple drawing. The cartoon of Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban is an effective work of satire. That it provoked such a visceral reaction among Muslims is a sign that it touched a raw nerve. Muslims themselves face an internal struggle to define the nature of their religion. They themselves are divided.

Asking artists to pretend the raw nerve doesn't exist, to choose subjects that don't provoke the mind and the heart, in short, to be civil, is to cripple art itself. The American press, of all institutions, should understand that and resist the calls for self-censorship over sensitive subjects in the name of civility.