| There can be nothing more demeaning than living down to the expectation of others. The recent mayhem here in Pakistan, in Syria, Libya and Iran ostensibly against the blasphemous cartoons has confirmed the worst fears of our detractors. In their eyes, we Muslims - no matter how modern we may be - are unpredictable, volatile, unstable, and violently reactive to the point of being reactionary. We agitate noisily in streets, we torch buildings, we scorch parked motors cars, we barbecue branches of McDonalds, we loot US-owned banks, and with every act of unbridled act of vandalism, we deliver ourselves voluntarily into the hands of our critics. Gratuitously, we put ourselves where a tactless Danish cartoonist and his equally culpable publisher ought to be - in the dock of international censure. |
| There are many today who wish that the reactions in different countries had been only against those infamous cartoons. Had that been the case, the furor would have died down as quickly as it had flared up, for daily cartoons like most such insults have a short-shelf life. |
| The eleven offending cartoons appeared originally almost five months ago, on 30 September, in a Danish-language newspaper - the Jyllands Posten - in a country that is physically and metaphorically the appendix of Europe. Whatever might be the readership of that paper, it surely cannot be much larger than the entire population of Denmark (5.5 million), which in itself is less than the population of just one city where such riots occurred - Lahore (5.9 million). |
| When in September the cartoons did not evoke the required response amongst Muslims, they were reprinted quite deliberately and with seemingly provocative intent in Norway on 10th January, in Germany on 1st February, and then carried like some insidious strain of bird flu across the rest of Europe. A sacrilege committed became a sacrilege compounded. If the Holy Prophet (PBUH) been alive today, he would not only have turned the other cheek: he would have simply turned the page. And that is what the rest of the world should have done. [EXTRACT] |
| Published in DAWN 3 Mar. 2006, titled: Confirming to Stereotype |
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