[Cowperson]

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer, whom I believe has a Montreal background in his formative years, writing in the Washington Post today:

What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity.

Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?

A true Muslim moderate is one who protests desecrations of all faiths. Those who don't are not moderates but hypocrites, opportunists and agents for the rioters . . . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...020901434.html

And Washington Post columnist David Ignatius compares the Muslim cartoon controversy, and newspapers refusing to carry the cartoons, to use of the "n word" in America.

Hoping to understand this blood-knot of rage and intolerance, I called Randall Kennedy, a prominent African American professor of law at Harvard University. He is the author of a 2002 book that explores the intense emotions aroused by the n-word, which he actually dares to spell out in the book's title. He says he's not surprised that a cartoon, like a taboo word, can become a focus for rage. For African Americans, he explains, "there are all sorts of indignities and insults, but they're momentary and ambiguous." But when white people say the hateful word, "it crystallizes something that's often hard to discern."

"When people feel they're being disrespected, they respond in all sorts of ways, including very self-destructive ways," Kennedy observes. That said, he finds the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons unacceptable -- just as he thinks people overreact to the n-word. "Are we going to bleep out Richard Pryor's album? Are we going to scratch out every reference to the word in 'Huckleberry Finn'? I would say with respect that's what is happening here with the reaction to the cartoons."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...020901424.html

Cowperson