The Guardian, Muslim Rioting and ‘Cause & Effect’
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Photo Credit: Yori Yanover
An official Guardian editorial on Oct. 1, ‘In praise of the political cartoon,’ commended the Egyptian newspaper Al Watan for “publishing… pictures with the message that the west misunderstands Islam,” which the editorial contrasted with “Charlie Hebdo‘s senselessly inflammatory caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.”
Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical magazine which printed a set of cartoons on Sept. 19 featuring Muhammad which included more than one depicting him naked.
The magazine’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier, explained that they were “using its freedom of expression to comment on the news in a satirical way.” The news he’s referring to is rioting by Muslims throughout the world, beginning in mid-September, in response to the low-budget anti-Islam film ‘Innocence of Muslims.’
In addition to praising the Egyptian cartoons, about the West’s apparent misunderstanding of Islam, the Guardian editorial contrasted such attempts at greater understanding with “…Charlie Hebdo‘s caricatures which, “produced a week of protest, embassy closure, legal complaint and, most gravely, 19 dead [and 160 injured] in Pakistan.”
What the Guardian is referring to is violent rioting, on Sept. 19, in Pakistan’s largest cities – on a day of government-sanctioned protests over the film and cartoon. According to a New York Times report on the violence, most of the deaths occurred in Karachi, where “protesters burned effigies, stoned a KFC and engaged in armed clashes with the police that left 14 people dead and more than 80 wounded by evening.”
Regardless of the details of the deaths, however, to claim that the Hebdo cartoon – of a man who Muslims believe was a messenger and prophet of God – “produced” the Pakistani deaths is absurd.
The editors of a French satirical magazine do not have blood on their hands.
Citizens of Pakistan, Israel, America, or adults of any faith in any other nation in the world who possess moral agency, can freely chose to engage in senseless rioting over a religious or political insult - thus risking death or injury – or they can choose not to.
Is such an intuitive understanding of ‘case and effect’, and individual moral responsibility, even debatable?
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tell a friendAbout the Author: Adam Levick serves as Managing Editor of CiF Watch, an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), and is a member of the Online Antisemitism Working Group for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism. Adam made Aliyah from Philadelphia in 2009 and lives with his wife in Modi'in.
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There is no film. There is a trailer for a film that does not exist. In fact there is at any given time hundreds, possibly thousands of offensive videos on the internet. To think that the rioters needed something to start them rioting is ridiculous. They are 'self starting'. Like that dog food that makes it's own gravy, these rioters make their own outrage.