When the row broke over the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, I felt sympathy for the Muslims. Their religion bans such pictures, we have to be sensitive to their feelings.
But I could not help being curious about what was it that made them so upset. So when an RSS link mentioned a post in Bloggers Blog about where the cartoons could be seen, I decided to have a look. But Bloggers Blog did not have the cartoons themselves, it only said where the cartoons could be seen and posted a link to two sites -- a blog called The Bellman and Flickr. The Bellman post also didn't show the cartoons but only linked to the page where someone else had posted the cartoons on Flickr. I won't mention the URL, but one could follow those links to see the cartoons.
The cartoons are posted under the tags "cartoon", "comic", "denmark", "muslim" and the photoset is called Jyllands-Posten Muslim Cartoon, named after the Danish newspaper where the cartoons first appeared.
I wouldn't have mentioned the cartoons at all if I had found them vicious, hate-filled and inflammatory. I didn't. But I am not a Muslim. And, besides, I couldn't read the words of some of the cartoons in the set of 12 posted on Flickr -- only a few were in English.
The pictures are Western stereotypes of Muslims, much like the animated Disney movie Aladdin. But Aladdin is a fairy tale. The cartoons touch on religion. No wonder the Muslims are upset. They don't have to see the pictures to get riled up. The very idea of such pictures is anathema to them.
So am I adding fuel to the fire? I hope not. While the European newspapers did hurt Muslim feelings by running the cartoons, they were right when they said people were bound to be curious about just what was it that so upset the Muslims. Now, having seen the pictures, I have a better understanding of the issue. Muslims can be offended even by Disney-style cartoons when these go against their religion. The Western media have been talking of freedom of expression -- and they are also divided over whether it was right to run the cartoons -- but the Muslim response was best summed up by a poster mentioned in a news report: "To hell with freedom of expression."
And it's not just the Muslims who think there should be limits to such freedom. I shudder at the thought of what the consequences might be if Nazis and racists were allowed to run riot.
And, no, I only saw the cartoons; I did not download them.
