Coexist!

The basic message of my column last week was to condemn the violent response to the Danish cartoon controversy. One week and countless responses later, I can make a more detailed argument, even though the dust has not even come close to settling. Three more people died Wednesday at a protest in Pakistan, and the end of this nightmare is not even a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. \nIt is difficult to know what the "right" position on this whole escapade is, but it's fairly easy to point out some of the wrong ones (or at least the ones that are too full of it to be taken seriously).\nTo the radical Muslims: On what basis should leaders in the West acquiesce to the arson, death and general violence you have fomented in the past weeks? You seek not equal standing and respect for your religion, but superiority. Moreover, you hardly represent a bastion of respect for religion when state-controlled media routinely run anti-Semitic cartoons and columns.\nTo the religious right: Kurt Anderson sums it up best when he writes, "Where do American right-wingers get off insisting that we keep waving the cartoons in the faces of apoplectic Muslims, even though five minutes ago they were screaming about our culture's 'war on Christmas'?" \nWhile the reaction of the religious right does not even compare to the violence over the cartoons, in many ways, outrage you express each time a Christmas tree is referred to as a "holiday tree" is even less reasonable than outrage over the cartoons.\nTo the secular conservatives: Even Andrew Sullivan, with whom I tend to agree more often than any other blogger, gets it wrong. Just because free presses in a liberal democracy have the legal right to print cartoons insulting to a religion doesn't mean that they have to (or even should). Some, like Sullivan, are so eager to praise any reprinting of the cartoons that they don't pause to consider whether this is the best course of action right now. It would be an understatement to posit that such reprintings won't make the violence suddenly stop.\nTo The New York Times and Boston Globe: Why must you pander and feign such sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities when you so brazenly defend art that is blasphemous to Christianity? Are we to understand that any depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are off limits, but "Piss Christ" (a NEA-supported photograph of a crucifix submerged in the photographer's urine) is alright? It would be an overstatement to call this position remotely tenable.\nSo, what is my grand synthesis of all this? While it may be easy to identify double standards and hypocrisies, if my column were to end here, it would be a rather useless, even nihilistic exercise.\nWell, too bad. Sometimes there is no simple, easy answer, but it is up to us to find one. The fate of Islamic and Western peace and coexistence may depend on it.