you are about to read my seven cents on the current crisis concerning the Danish cartoons lampooning radical, terrorist Islam.

the two countries where the riots are happening are Iran and Syria. not at all coincidentally, I believe, these are the two countries in the Middle East whose governments are most at odds with the Western world. one important distinction between them is that Syria has an ostensibly secular government, which i'm sure wouldn't refrain from having others use religion to elicit certain reactions from Syrians, while Iran is unabashedly religious, and so can elicit those desired reactions openly. could it be that those governments pounced on such a small, insignificant issue to divert attention, both domestically and internationally, from the trouble that they are currently in, Iran with the nuclear issue and Syria with the Lebanon issue?

frankly, even if they have intentionally been whipped up by their governments, i can't empathize with the rioters. yes, the cartoons do in a sense blaspheme the central human figure in Islam. yes, religion might be the only thing keeping some of these people sane (or, it seems, insane) on this Earth. yes, religion defines for certain people the very core of their being. yet the myriad cartoons and other pieces of satyre directed against christianity do not drive me to go burn down a couple of embassies, nor do they suscitate in me a desire to do so. even if religion were all i had in this world, if i depended on it to make sense of this world, to define my role in it, to give me hope for a better life now or later, i'd like to think that someone insulting that religion would not incite me to burn shit or call for bloodshed and beheadings.

i do sympathize with the frustrations of the Arab-Muslim peoples about the way they are regarded by first-world countries. they have essentially been relegated to the status of annoying gnats buzzing around our source of oil, both by us and by the authoritarian governments that rule them. i'm fairly sure that in the back of a significant portion of westerners' minds is the question, "why can't they all be quiet for once, or just go away?" if not for oil and iraq, we wouldn't give more of a shit about this controversy than we do about darfur.
- posted by Maxime @ 1:32 PM