Images of Muhammad Revisited

Surprisingly, my post of two days ago presenting Muslim images of Muhammad got this blog a lot of traffic, various links, and even several comments.

My obscurity has not gone unnoticed.

In retrospect, this shouldn't have surprised me, nor is the extra traffic unique to my blog. Also getting far more visits than usual are plenty of other blogs commenting on this crisis inspired by the satirical images of Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

For anyone who still hasn't seen the images, go to this LGF slideshow.

As the Image Shack photo in the upper right of this blog reveals, the Jyllands-Posten's satirical images of Muhammad have aroused very strong feelings, powerful enough for some Muslims to threaten Europeans with attacks on the scale of 9/11.

But what are Europeans saying on this issue? That depends, of course, on which Europeans one asks.

Paul Belien, in a Brussels Journal article, "Take Note Cardiff: We Are All Danes Now," has this to say:

Let it be known to the fanatics that today all Westerners are Danes. All across the Western world papers have begun to show the Danish cartoons.

Belien expresses pride in the European reaction, but some of these papers have since had second thoughts, as we know.

Der Speigel's Henryk M. Broder, in "Threaten One, Intimidate a Million," criticizes those who apologize for offending Muslims:

A couple of simple caricatures printed in a Danish newspaper has the Arab world outraged. Unfortunately, the paper apologized for the Muhammad-critical cartoons and democratic values lost out to totalitarian ideology.

Broder's criticism of the Jyllands-Posten's tepid apology for hurting Muslims' feelings seems too strong to me, unless he's referring to a more abject apology that I haven't heard about. But I'm glad that Broder is speaking out for free speech. We'll just have to see how this plays itself out.

For more reactions to the crisis, see stories in various media that I've seen from Europe, the United States, and even Egypt: Times Online, Sign and Sight, New York Times, Guardian, Guardian (again), International Herald Tribune, Independent, Times Online, Washington Post, Telegraph, Telegraph (again), Telegraph (yes, again), and Al-Ahram.

Such a list could go on and on ... just as this issue certainly will.