If cartoons could kill….well guess they can….

The row that started with European newspapers mainly Danish, Norwegian and French ones publishing offensive cartoons of prophet Mohammed (allegedly with bombs in a turban) is slowly turning into a major reason for sounding the battle cry by Muslims (and not all fundamentalists….) to rally the Islamic world against what they see is yet again an evidence of the ‘crusader’ mindset of the western world, a world which insists on publishing the cartoons again and again in the name of ‘freedom of speech’. The Muslims are however crying out denigration of their religion and their sacred symbols. There have been rampages on Danish embassies, flag burning and gunmen threatening the diplomatic corps.

The newspapers however have taken a defiant stand, are standing their ground so to say and many newspapers have printed the cartoons gain and again, in the face of rising anger among Muslims.

I don’t understand both parties. Let’s see, ‘freedom of speech’ is a hackneyed modern ‘democratic’ term that no self-respecting ‘liberal’ democracy would be caught without and it is also a term that has been beaten to death so many times that it has lost its meaning. Modern empires and corporations have found out so many ways of circumventing this ‘freedom’ that it has ceased to hold any meaning. To the newspapers taking this defiant stand, as if publishing and republishing this cartoon is going to reaffirm their western liberal values, the question must be asked, whether the same yardstick is always used when it comes to human rights abuses by their own governments, when it comes to the refusal of their government to agree to low cost AIDS vaccines to the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America because it would hit the profitability of their own pharmaceutical companies, when it comes to the complicity of their governments in negotiating unequal trade agreements that are literally pushed down the throat of developing countries thus denying large section of the world’s population to increasing poverty and loss of livelihood?

Or is it because they know that they are not really dependent on the Muslims who are protesting for their economic viability whereas they are, on the corporates that provide them advertisement revenues? Is it because they know that by taking this pseudo liberal stand they have a chance of increasing their brand value among readers so that in the end it becomes just another marketing strategy? A bit of both I would imagine…..

And I have a question for those who are protesting against the desecration of Islamic religion and symbols. Where were they when the Taliban had taken over and were twisting the laws of Islam anyway they felt like? Why did they not burn the Saudi flag even in the face of the well known facts of their corruption and impotence in the face of western imperialism and their inability to provide their fellow Muslims especially women, their dignity of life? Why didn’t they storm the Pakistani embassy even though the terrorists sent by them have made a living hell for their fellow Muslims in Kashmir? Why do so few protest when Islam, which was arguably one of the most cosmopolitan among the major religions, has its tenets and customs twisted and misinterpreted by clerics and mullahs? Why is it that every form of desecration done by Muslims to their own religion is overlooked and every act of the western world is viewed with suspicion and animosity? Why is it that the Muslim world has not learnt to look within itself for the need to reform and reverse the retrograde steps so many regimes have, in the recent years, taken in the name of the Islam?

The answer, I believe, lies in the inability of the two faiths to find a common ground for reaching out. The reasons are many, rooted in history and the imperialism of the twentieth century, the most glaring being Palestine and the tragic fact is that none of the two worlds are even trying to find that common ground. On the contrary, the gulf is getting wider.