Iran has opened a display of cartoons making fun of the holocaust at a museum in Tehran. This is being done in response to the Danish cartoon controversy, and according to the Telegraph:
Organisers of the exhibition say they are testing the West's commitment to freedom of speech.
But what exactly are they testing? We have no authority to stop the exhibit from taking place in another country. And of course, the notion that "the West" is all of one mind on the subject is absurd. If such an exhibit was attempted in France, Germany or Austria, they would likely arrest the organizers and perhaps the artists as well under their laws forbidding holocaust denial. In the US, on the other hand, there would be a great deal of pressure brought by the public on the museum to shut down the exhibit, but the government would not prevent it from happening or punish anyone involved.
- Log in to post comments
I feel like I am missing something here. Why pick the Holocaust as the subject matter for some sort of reply to the previous cartoon controversy? Why not make the counter-cartoons about a Christian subject? Is this a matter of two cultures talking past one another or a crass attempt by the Iranian government to frame every disagreement with "the West" as being all about Israel?
Also, are the Holocaust cartoons available online, perhaps with translations? This is clearly a case where we need more speech, not less. Let the whole world see and comment on these cartoons.
I await with great trepidation the rioting Jews, the killings, the demonstrations calling for mass murder and Jews burning down mosques and embassies.
It's going to happen, right?
All the Muslims in Israel and Europe are in danger, right?
Jeff Rients wrote:
The latter, plus an additional motivation: the Iranian president is a holocaust denier and he's the one who called for the cartoons to be submitted and displayed.
Organiser Masoud Shojai said: "You see they allow the Prophet to be insulted. But when we talk about the Holocaust, they consider it so holy that they punish people for questioning it."
Unfortunately, he is correct, at least as regards most European nations. It remains, though, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
(Note: I do affirm the reality of the Holocaust, and I believe that people who deny it are uniformly either idiots or dishonest or both. I just wouldn't deny them the right to speak: It's only fair so that the rest of us may see how idiotic they are.)
Having known a number of neo-nazis, the surprising truth is that they are not holocaust deniers in private; in fact they joke about it quite a bit and lament that Hitler did not "finish the job." Holocaust denial is purely propaganda for public consumption, to muddy the waters a bit.
As for the Iranians, I imagine something similar is going on. Just as the elites in the Muslim world are well aware that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a hoax, they have read enough history to understand the Holocaust. But where a huge proportion of their constituents are barely educated, the Big Lie works.
If they did anti-Christian cartoons they would probably elicit a collective yawn from most of Europe (there would no doubt be more of a reaction in the U.S. but certainly no rioting).
Muhammad, Jesus, the Holocaust... who cares.
But if they dare satirize Alfred E. Neuman they'll have Me to contend with!
How stupid and childish. I hope the whole idiotic thing is met with a collective yawn.
Although I do agree that they have a point for countries that ban holocaust denial. Still, none of this has anything to do with Islam. The laws banning holocaust denial aren't there because Jews are more valued than Muslims. The laws are there because of the unbelievable horror and deep wounds the Holocaust caused so many Europeans. It's essentially there to protect Europeans from themselves, however misguided we might think it is.
Even though I don't agree with the laws, it seems completely self-centered and idiotic to me to that so many Muslims feel compelled to use this as an axe to grind.
Obviously it's not being done in response to the Danish cartoons, because the vast majority of Danes aren't Jewish. For that matter, the vast majority of Danes wouldn't bat an eye at anything you depicted in order to offend them. Holocaust denial is not illegal in Denmark. Good luck getting a Dane to call you a jerk for insulting his mother, let alone burn your flag and set fire to your embassies.
It's one of the things I love most about this country...the Iranians could stand to learn a lot from it.
Good luck getting a Dane to call you a jerk for insulting his mother
Pity. They seemed to have more balls in the past.
You mean back when they were raping and pillaging?
Not going into a fit over stupid things does not equate to lacking balls. Quite the contrary, actually.
The most the Iranians are going to get out of this is a few denunciations from American and European politicos. It won't elicit anywhere near the reaction the muslim world gave to the Danish cartoons, which I doubt they are stupid enough to expect.
In any case, the difference here is that the Danish cartoons actually made a valid point about the history of Islam. Now, I do believe that the rise of Pan-Islamism in the middle-east has a lot to do with our "White-Man's Burden" attitude and activities in the region. But still, I don't see any kind of point being made by these cartoons except to be deliberately offensive.