Cartoon Riots

Hi folks--saw Eric's post and thought I'd look into these riots a little more closely.

Here's an online conversation from the Washington Post that I found helpful.

A quote from it:

Arlington, Va.: Although I agree Chantilly did not word the question in the best way, I would like to rephrase if I may - what are Muslim religious leaders saying about the reaction to the cartoons? Do they point out the fact that while it is considered blasphemous to depict the prophet Muhammad it is also wrong to kill? Especially when the violent protests have killed people who have had nothing to do with the publication of the cartoons?

Philip Kennicott: I've read several stories in the Post recently in which Muslim leaders say essentially all the things so many people want them to say. If memory serves, one from Lebanon, and another from Afghanistan. One of the uglier dynamics about modern debate via the Internet and television is that everyone is always demanding that the other side say such and such. And often, they are saying exactly those things... but no one listens because they've already decided what the other man thinks.

Update: an article from Slate: "Cartoon Characters," by a British man on the topic of Islam and secular democracy.

A quote:

...the most depressing thing I have seen or heard this past week (which is saying something) was from someone who suggested that there was a fundamental incompatibility between Islam "and our democratic secular values." If that's a view that, as I have more than hinted here, I am close to sharing, why was it so depressing? Because the speaker was a leader of the brutal white-supremacist British National Party.