Tolerance Towards Intolerance

Just a quick one this evening. I've unexpectedly had an important project crop up and need some time....

Via TIA Daily, I've learned of an article that names the central issue in the ongoing cartoon riots. It is the issue that reminded me, the other day, of an unpleasant encounter with political correctness several years back. The article was written by a European explaining why his paper published the cartoons of Mohammed.

Much of the U.S. reporting about the fracas made it appear as if Europeans just don't get it -- again. They struggle with immigration. They struggle with religion. They struggle with respect for minorities. And in the end they find their cities burning, as evidenced in Paris. Bill Clinton even detected an "anti-Islamic prejudice" and equated it with a previous "anti-Semitic prejudice."

The former president has turned the argument upside down. In this jihad over humor, tolerance is disdained by people who demand it of others. The authoritarian governments that claim to speak on behalf of Europe's supposedly oppressed Muslim minorities practice systematic repression against their own religious minorities. They have radicalized what was at first a difficult question. Now they are asking not for respect but for submission. They want non-Muslims in Europe to live by Muslim rules. Does Bill Clinton want to counsel tolerance toward intolerance? [bold added]

Read it all. It is especially illuminating how this whole affair started: "as a well-meaning attempt to write a children's book about the life of the prophet Muhammad ... to promote religious tolerance."

-- CAV