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COMMENTARY
February 15, 2006
The test
Ezra Levant, a decent, honest, and courageous man -- and for those reasons much mocked by Canada’s smug political and media elites -- has explained clearly and unanswerably why the Western Standard magazine which he publishes (and in which I write), printed a selection of those Danish cartoons. It was the same reason they were reprinted by such prestigious European dailies as Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, and Die Welt.It was because those cartoons are at the centre of a huge news story. A tremendous fuss is being made over them right around the planet, and readers in a free country should be shown what the fuss is about. It is especially important in this case, where the original cartoons were, by any Western standard, bloodless, bland, boring. Readers should not be left to assume that the cartoons were instead vicious, nasty, and intentionally offensive. The Danish editor who originally commissioned the cartoons did not solicit attacks on Islam. He asked cartoonists to depict Mohammad as they imagine him. He asked because he was appalled by the self-censorship he smelled in the Danish air. It was not an anti-Islamic gesture; it was an act of freedom, against the fear of Muslim intimidation. Why, for instance, should we be repeatedly told in news stories that all the cartoons insulted Muslims when most of them did not? Why should we be repeatedly told that the satirical ones insulted Islam’s Prophet, when what they satirize is obviously the use of the Prophet to justify terrorism? And now that we know the international furore was inspired, not by the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, but by fakes insinuated among them by delegations of Danish Muslims, why should we hold the Danish editor and cartoonists, to say nothing of all Denmark, responsible for anything? It is to defeat such publicly-repeated lies, and to oppose public intimidation, that a publisher has the duty to show the original cartoons. On this latter point, I am reminded of Michael Davies, the last family publisher of the Kingston Whig-Standard, for which I once worked. I was a fill-in night editor one evening when I got a note from him. It said that a friend of his, a certain local worthy, had been charged with drunk driving. This man had asked Mr Davies to keep his name out of the paper. Mr Davies asked me, therefore, to make sure his friend’s drunk driving charge was prominently reported. That is how an honest publisher responds to being pressured. Not with “sensitivity”, which is the ancient vehicle for hypocrisy and deceit. A publisher need ask himself only one question. If the cartoons had been protested by Christians, would he have hesitated to print them? Did newspapers across the West hesitate to print photos of the “Piss Christ”, or the “Dung Madonna”? Why suddenly so sensitive to religious feelings? I wrote Saturday exculpating Muslims from the charge of hypocrisy in this matter -- for their double standard is plausibly written into their faith. But I cannot excuse the hypocrisy and cowardice of the Western media, who pose as fearless and impartial defenders of truth, regardless of consequences. All this self-congratulatory lip-service to the free press, until the moment it means something. Chapters and Indigo have banned the “offending” issue of the Western Standard, as have other distributors. There is clucking from the CBC and other mainstream media. Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress -- himself on record for saying that every adult Israeli citizen is a valid military target -- threatening action under Canada’s recklessly-written and selectively-enforced “hate” laws. And Canada’s new defence minister weighing in with the observation that Mr Levant’s publishing decision will endanger our troops in Afghanistan -- accentuating the danger by his very remark. I was impressed with Mr Levant’s rejoinder to all this. “I’m a little afraid myself,” he said, “but fine, so deal with it. Get security or just be careful. ... I'm not so afraid that I'm going to sell out our heritage of freedom." Let us call the biggest bluff, the biggest lie. It is being constantly argued, in defence of cowardice, that such cartoons must not be published because they might “incite hatred against Muslims”. I doubt even one disinterested person could believe this, after a moment’s thought. A cartoon cannot hold a candle on events like 9/11 in Manhattan, or 3/11 in Madrid, or the London tube bombings, or the many, many thousand acts of savagery that have been done in the name of Islam in the last few years. It is fear that makes people speak the opposite of the truth -- in this case, the fear that mere cartoons may further “incite violence by Muslims”. The whole point of Islamist terrorism has been to instil such fear in the “infidel dogs” of the West. The fear is forgivable. The cowardice is not. The hypocrisy and lying is contemptible. And then it is done smugly. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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