The healing power of laughter

it's a funny world, when more people get killed over a satirical cartoon than probably read it in the first place and where an issue only really starts to escalate after a Muslim boycott of products from a country most famous for its bacon exports. Well OK, and bad blue cheese but really, WTF is that all about?

I have heard SO much opinion on the radio this week, from the Stoic Danish position of apologising for offence caused but not for having been so thoughtless in the first place, to several papers reprinting the cartoons to one woman calling in to say that, as Muslims, all they could do was complain politely because all Muslims respect all other religions and are never violent, oh no sir. See a couple of ex Budda shaped piles of rubble in Afghanistan and several countries' middle school curricula for evidence of the universality of this secular approach at government level. Closer to home, we have the placards in London streets calling for more bombings and beheadings and of course the sacking of embassies in Syria and Lebanon and several deaths (was going to say tragic deaths, but it seemed redundant).

Pundits and politicos are declaring a polarisation of opinion over this issue, something we are conditioned always to be fearful of. Move 2 sides of an opinion too far away from each other and bridges are no longer possible, all that is left is hate and mistrust and generations are needed to finally bring the two sides together again. You can be left with a festering situation, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where those involved can't even agree which part of what side of the fence they are standing on. So why do I think this drifting apart of two sides might be a good thing? Because the polarisation that I'm starting to see is within the land of Islam, not between it and any other group.

Yesterday there was a march in Lebanon related to the whole cartoon issue. What were they protesting about? Was it the denigration of their faith caused by some (frankly not very tasteful or funny) 'satirical' cartoons depicting their Prophet? Was it a general condemnation of the imperialist West? Was it a call to get the Israelis out of Palestine? No, they were protesting against the violence wreaked on their own city by people hijacking the Islamist cause as an excuse to burn things. The irony of such a march in Lebanon should be lost on no-one. The organisers of the weekend Lebanese protests that ended in violence on Sunday have also disavowed the "100 or so people" that turned that protest violent but, by the same token, there were individuals interviewed in the multi-religion peace march yesterday who spouted the same sort of threatening bile that escalated the problem in the first place. Check the ages on the nutters, all in their 20s. Bloody students, just ignore 'em.

On the radio and in the papers, increasing calls from what are being termed moderate Muslims but I would prefer to think of as the Muslim mainstream for calm and the right to be offended about the printing (and re-printing) of these cartoons without the need to actually burn anything. This type of polarisation I am down with. For far too long, the Land of Islam has been seen by "the West" as being fundamentalist in the mainstream rather than violently insane on the fringes. It's clear from opinions heard that Muslims will tend to support Muslims, and why wouldn't they? It's ridiculous to defend your own country/faith/opinions and then expect others not to. And when violence is used to answer violence (OK, chicken and egg there, but you get the picture) it's easy to sympathise with disenfranchised Palestinians fighting with whatever they have at hand, or with Far East and European Muslims to feel solidarity with their Arab brethren, caught between their own stupid dictators and a Western world greedy for oil and with the weapons to secure it. Palestinians throw a lot more stones than they detonate bombs, and that's all when they're not working for a living. Mostly for Israelis. Israel fro its own part puts more effort into getting on with their every day lives than airstriking refugee camps. The media tends to filter out the boring stuff and we get the impression that everyone is a rabid killer. The Palestinian conflict challenges the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter. Burning down buildings and killing people over a couple of cartoons in a Danish paper does not.

We need more of this kind of polarisation, it will bleed the middle ground of recruits to the lunatic fringe and isolate those who strive to create an atmosphere of violence and hatred. It needs the Islamic mainstream to stand up and be counted and choose a side in their own internal conflict, to stand up and clearly state "these guys have nothing to do with us".

For the record, I don't think these cartoons were very good (well, OK, the one about running out of virgins was quite funny). They were printed in Jyllands Posten, the most popular daily paper in Denmark and apparently a bit right wing, but still with a weekday circulation of only about 150,000. BNP monthly sells more* for fuck's sake. Their reprinting by over 40 publications in over 20 countries (mostly "Western" but including Jordan and Malaysia) seems like rubbing salt in the wound, frankly. Many of these publications ran parallel illustrations sending up other deities to re-enforce their point but why not just run the multi-religion cartoon alone? Why include a, pretty crude, illustration of Mohammed in a Turban with a fuse burning out the top of it? Fucking sales, that's why.

Meanwhile, it has been reported from Iran that some right wing paper is running a competition to satirise the Holocaust. This could actually be constructive, depending on how we react to it. Hopefully we can all have a good laugh then ignore the ignorant bastards.

Bomber out

*may not be true