Seattle Times stands for a free press

This morning's lead editorial in the Seattle Times is something rare to see in the media these days: a paean to a free press: Cartoons Turn Ugly. They don't just defend a free press, they do so unashamedly and without the equivocations that have marred so many other editorials and government statements in the past few days. Bravo!

(Cross-posted to Sound Politics.)

These guys get it

A group of Arab and Muslim youth have put together a website apologizing to Denmark and Norway for the violent reaction to the Jyllands-Posten cartoons: sorrynorwaydenmark.com. The key paragraph:

Anyone offended by the content of a publication has a vast choice of democratic and respectful methods of seeking redress. The most obvious are not buying the publication, writing letters to the editor or expressing their opinions in other venues. It is also possible to use one’s free choice in a democracy to conduct a boycott of the publication, and even a boycott of firms dealing with it. Yet an indiscriminate boycott of all the country’s firms is simply uncalled for and counter-productive. We would be allowing the extremists on both sides to prevail, while punishing the government and the whole population for the actions of an unrepresentative irresponsible few.

Let me just say: the people who set up this website do not themselves have anything to apologize for. By their generous willingness to take responsibility for the appalling behavior of their coreligionists, they set themselves up as examples of how Western and Islamic civilizations can work toward an understanding of how to coexist. So does Tim Blair reader Ahmed: Islam Defended.

"They can't throw us all off!"

Growing up in Northern California in the '70s, I used to read Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Caen was a raconteur, his columns full of gossip and stories about the powerful, the famous and the not-so. One of his tales, which he claimed to be true, has stuck with me.

It seems that there was an airline employee, a Mr. Gay, who wanted to take a deadhead trip across the country. The gate agent told him to board the airplane, but that he would have to give up his seat if the flight was full. He was assigned seat 4C.

When he got to his seat it was already occupied by another man, so he took a seat a couple of rows back.

The flight was oversold, so a stewardess came down the aisle looking for him. She stopped at seat 4C and asked the man sitting there, "excuse me, are you Gay?"

The man looked surprised. "Why, yes I am," he said.

"Well," replied the stewardess, "you'll have to get off the airplane."

Overhearing, Mr. Gay spoke up. "Wait! I'm Gay!"

"I'm gay, too!" cried a third passenger, standing. "They can't throw us all off!"

Thirty years of standing later, gay people are well on their way to equality in this country. You can bet they will keep standing until they are fully accepted, and will speak up again if there is any backsliding.

The battle for press freedom has been going on for longer than for gay rights, long enough that some news outlets seem to have forgotten how to stand up for it. Michelle Malkin writes about the cowardly American media. Andrew Sullivan writes about the clueless Globe.

The mainstream press would risk much by standing up for press freedom. They have reporters in the field who could be kidnapped or killed, and they have offices that could be bombed. But they risk much more by remaining silent while the Jyllands-Posten is intimidated: their profession, their livelihood, their freedom. They should take a lesson from the story (and from European papers): if they all stand up, they can't all be attacked. Even if they were, it is no more than their predecessors suffered to create a free press in the first place.

Face of Mohammed, Face of Islam

Bravo to the Danes for standing up for their freedom of speech in the face of threats by Muslims extreme and not-so-extreme. The twelve cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten are tame by Western standards, as can be seen in the composite image below. Most don't equate Mohammed with terrorism or violence of any kind, and two in fact mock Jyllands-Posten for wanting to print images of Mohammed.

The new blog Face of Mohammed has full size versions of the images, as well as commentary about the controversy.

Some may argue that since Islam forbids any image of the Prophet, we should self-censor in order not to offend. Bill Clinton seems to lean that way. Sheer nonsense. In the first place, Islam is not a monolithic religion. Several sects within it permit or tolerate images of Mohammed as a matter of course, as proven by Zombie's Mohammed Image Archive. But secondly, the Western world is strong because is allows all viewpoints to be expressed, including controversial ones. Some of these controversial ideas will turn out to be true, better than the beliefs they supplant, and civilization progresses to the next level.

People who let themselves be intimidated into silence by those who threaten violence when their beliefs are challenged betray 2,500 years of progress. Those who encourage others to be silent are worse.

Muslims who are offended by the Jyllands-Posten cartoons should take note: as you ask the West to understand you, you must work to understand us. Westerners offend and rebuke each other as a matter of course, and we survive as a civilization because we have learned that a fist is not the correct response to a harsh word. A society where it is cannot be called a civilization.

So get over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. You may think they are bad, but it is much worse at the Dutch Amazing Mohammed Photoshop Contest.