Respect or Submission?

Oh the horror, the shame, the shock, the outrage...somebody drew a cartoon and the world goes crazy. And is still going crazy.

Rage against caricatures of Islam's revered prophet poured out across the Muslim world Saturday, with aggrieved believers calling for executions, storming European buildings and setting European flags afire.

Thousands of outraged Syrian demonstrators stormed the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus, setting fire to both buildings.

Police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators at the Norwegian Embassy after the Danish building was burned.

But the protesters broke through police barriers and set fire to the second building, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" which is Arabic for "God is great!"

Well, that's true, God is great. But I have to wonder what He's thinking right about now. Probably looking for His "smiting and floods" recipe book.

A big tenet of the West is freedom of expression, and unfortunately that means the freedom to offend - and it also means that as free citizens we have to prepare ourselves to be offended. Look at the recent Tom Toles cartoon depicting a callous Rumsfeld classifying a dis-membered soldier as "battle hardened," or the limitless assault on Christianity that European papers engage in. What about pop culture's relentless tidal wave of sexually charged advertisements, Hollywood's pursuit of the strange, the vulgar and offensive? As it's "Big Game" time this weekend, what about Janet Jackson's half-time reveal? Aren't all of us offended at some time or another?

Of course. We all get offended. What makes all of these things different though is how we respond.

Christians have limited success in prompting newspapers or other publications, or Hollywood for that matter, from engaging their sensitivities because the protestations mainly consist of public voicing, letters, or mild boycotts. Consider the recent television show Book of Daniel that got yanked after just a few airings. Christians protested the show, but ultimately it was poor ratings and a dismal story that ended that mess. But that too is a form of protest, a protest by mainstream America that they really couldn't care less about the show.

Yet contrast that to the utter hysteria, the violence, the riots, the threats, the arson, the calls for national destruction, boycotts, and calls for holy war - over cartoons.

It's not that sympathy for religion is not in order. It's the response that causes the protest to become more than offense, and in a sad sense could be viewed to give credence to a few of the cartoons.

"The protests in the Middle East have proven that the cartoonist was right," said Tarek Fatah, a director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

"It's falling straight into that trap of being depicted as a violent people and proving the point that, yes, we are."

The militant and hard-line groups within Islam, intent upon increasing their power, have latched onto these drawings as proof of Western depravity, and those calls have struck a chord with mainstream Muslims. But I have news for them. Cartoons are the bare minimum of offenses here. Note this exchange between columnist Mark Steyn and radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt:

HH: ...the Muslim Mohammed cartoon fiasco scandal is exploding with seven European newspapers reprinting the cartoons judged offensive by many Muslims. And today, the editor, the publisher of one of those newspapers firing the editor of one of these newspapers. What is going on here?

MS: Well you know, this is a point I made in that very, very big piece that the Wall Street Journal website put up a couple of weeks ago, that there aren't a lot of good options when you have a very significant militant minority in your country that is determined, effectively, to demand that its own values be imposed on society at large. You only have to look at, for example, the difference...when a Broadway playwright writes a play about Jesus being gay, and having sex with Judas Iscariot, there are a couple of protests outside the theater, and people write letters. When you attempt to show a representation of Mohammed, you get people threatening to kill you, you get national boycotts, you get people burning down buildings. And at some point, Muslims living in Western Europe have to decide whether or not they're prepared to be offended, because that's what it involves in a free society. Every day of the week, you, I'm sure...every morning, I wake up to hate mail on the e-mail, and I shrug it off. And I'm sure you do, too.

HH: Yes, yes.

MS: And that's what Muslims have to learn to do in the Western world, if they're going to be citizens of the Western world.

HH: In fact, if you protest too much, there's a Will and Grace episode which has caught the attention of Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association. Evidently, they're viewing it as being very disrespectful to Christianity. And this stuff happens...and the Tommy Toles cartoon, which was very disgusting in the Washington Post, for which he's now apologized. But you know, you don't threaten to kill people over it.

MS: No, and in fact, Brokeback Mountain, for example, people said well, Brokeback Mountain, this film about these...this gay western, basically. They're two gay shepherds up on Brokeback Mountain having a gay old time. And people said well, this was supposed to be a controversial movie. Why is it a controversial movie? And a couple of websites started the view, this sort of conspiracy that in fact, the religious right had deliberately decided to kill the film by not making a fuss about it.

HH: I missed that. Oh, I see. Well, you can win from losing.

MS: And I think there's a lot of truth to that, that a few cartoons were published in a Danish newspaper, and the Muslims have decided to go on a worldwide jihad about it. Why not just...and I think they have essentially challenged every newspaper in the free world to demonstrate its commitment to freedom of speech now by publishing one of these cartoons. To the best of my knowledge, the only print publication in the United States to print them so far has been the New York Sun. But certainly, they're basically saying this is the choice. And I, in a sense, I sympathize with that owner of that French newspaper who fired his editor for publishing them, because he doesn't want those guys coming to his house and killing him.

HH: Yeah. Raymond Lakah.

MS: You know, you've got to draw the line. You've got to stand firm against that now. And if they are people who are going to kill you, then the sooner they learn that they can't kill you or you're going to kill them, the better.

Yet here it is, the crossroads. Does the West cave on freedom, and give in to exported Shar'ia law? Or does the Muslim world back down because we make it clear that this type of bullying will not be tolerated? Surprisingly, the European governments, and the EU, even after banishing poor Piglet and beating Burger King into submission because their ice-cream was offensive, have taken a harder line on this new furor than the U.S. State Department. It's possibly an effort by the U.S. to court Muslim sensibilities, but if so it's a foolhardy notion.

In my mind the line is clear, and you have to call it what it is. The protestors are not seeking respect, they're demanding submission - violently. And that is something we cannot and must not do.