Something Rotten in Denmark?

I have more reason than most to be concerned about the Danish cartoon controversy.

I am in the Middle East. A visible minority, as it were.

I have been praying no major Canadian media outlet prominently republishes them.

But I feel I must comment. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding here, on both sides.

A lot of Western leaders and commentators are saying we should remember it is only a small minority of Muslims who are trashing embassies, burning flags and so forth; that we should not see this as reflecting on Islam.

This is not quite so. A reader poll by the local English-language newspaper here asked “Is violence justified as a means of protest against the offensive Danish cartoons?” Thirty-eight percent said yes. That's a lot of people. A few days later, 51.38% felt it was impossible to forgive those who published the cartoons.

The proportions in an Arabic-language medium would surely be even more dramatic.

Westerners complain that the Muslims plainly do not understand the Western value of free speech.

True.

By the same token, Westerners are missing the central position rhetoric holds in Arab culture. To Europeans, according to a tradition that dates back to Plato and ancient Greece, words are harmless and rhetoric is an empty, trivial thing. "That's just rhetoric."

Perhaps only because we believe this can we tolerate everyone freely expressing opinions.

To many other cultures, including the Semitic, a word is as important as a deed. It makes a substantial, material difference to the world.

This being so, it is as difficult to tolerate free speech as to tolerate the free swinging of fists and firing of guns.

God created the world, in the Old Testament and the Qur’an, by commanding it into existence. And an Arab curse cannot be taken lightly.

If we fail to understand this, we fail to understand much about the Middle East.

Remember “Comical Ali,” the Iraqi Information Minister, standing on a high-rise roof and declaring the Americans were all dead, incinerated in their tanks at the border? While they were visible fighting in the city below?

Westerners thought he was making a fool of himself.

Arabs did not.

Remember, he chose the location. It was his own careful decision to show the Americans fighting as he said his words.

To Arabs, it was an act of great bravery. He was expressing his defiance.

What shocked Arabs was that the Americans, once they took Baghdad, did not arrest and execute him; although I hear he even tried to turn himself in. He was not in their deck of war criminals. They did not see what he did as significant.

Can East and West ever reconcile on this matter?

I think so.

If words are deeds, it follows that words can be fully countered by words. There is no need to burn embassies or plant bombs or even boycott products. To Muslims, equally offensive words should be sufficient. Otherwise, they are hypocrites.

And to Europeans, this should be unexceptionable. Otherwise, they are hypocrites.

The Iranians seem to have the right idea: sponsoring a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust. Fighting fire with fire: fair enough.