Remember those Danish Cartoons?

Jyllands-Posten September 2005;
The face of Muhammed

Keeping with the theme of animation, I don’t think I could do a blog about Islam, media and current affairs without doing a post on the whole Danish cartoon scandal (check it out here), so brace yourself for a pretty controversial one.

Ok, so some may be torn between thinking ‘they were just cartoons’ and ‘those were really out of line’ but the reality remains that the aftermath of the cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed caused a global fever and resulted in a tidal-wave of a response.

So you may argue that hang on, in the 21^st century, what with all the freedom of speech and rights an individual has, why can’t anyone draw who/what they want to without a global scandal being created? …Yeah some may find it blasphemous and it’s going to annoy people, but I’m exercising my freedom of speech right?

For me, the cartoons themselves, I mean sure they were immature, scandalous, shockingly disrespectful and ignorant …but with all the media attention they got (and there was a lot if it!) I think it was the opportunity for the Muslims to show the world what Islam is really about; peace, love, compassion, mercy. All attributes of God and virtues Muslims try to emulate.
 
BUT… what happened instead? 

Chaos, violence, fighting, death threats and boycotting,  rows, demonstrations, fights, and of course, the ever symbolic flag-burnings. I mean sure, I understand, you have to stand up for what you believe in and those cartoons were mocking everything you believe in, but reacting in such a rash way kinda just reinforced every single negative Islamic stereotype there is out there. In the end the main cause i.e. anti-Islamic cartoons was forgotten and all that remained was a tirade of violent and extreme Muslim responses.
 

Yeah, the Danish cartoonists had freedom of speech on their side (a type of freedom of speech incidentally which appears to be biased). But in the bigger picture, surely re-education, being the better people and Islamically responding to similar displays of blatant Islamophobia would have been more advantageous? What would the prophet himself have done? (WWMD?) He came across abuse and trials in his lifetime and always responded in the most peace-generating way possible. There were no violent strikes back then, right? 

Did violent strikes change anything? No. Is this the end of them? Probably not.

What do you think? I dont think theres a right or wrong answer on this one. Do you reckon im being too liberal here? Does anyone agree that this whole situation could have turned out a lot better had the responses been different? Surely, violent protesting just casts Islam further into darkness? 
Looking forward to any comments, suggestions &/or observations.


P.S. If you want to read more on cartoons and religion, check out this blog.