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By M. Zuhdi Jasser It seems the issue of cartoons is much in the news these days. As a devout moderate Muslim, I was just recently portrayed in the local Muslim newspaper, Arizona Muslim Voice, as a ravenous dog — on the leash of our state newspaper, and devouring an imam.
Despite the fact that being portrayed as a dog is profoundly offensive if not downright hateful in our Middle Eastern culture, there was hardly a ripple of outrage in the local Muslim community. It seems that in the local Muslim community it’s all right to make a vilifying cartoon of me, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and medical officer, but certainly not one of bin Laden or al-Zawahiri. I have yet to see them publish one cartoon against the enemies of America in this so-called Muslim newspaper.
Only a few weeks after my caricature, the riots around the Danish cartoons erupted across the globe. True to form, the eruption came months after their printing, only after many so-called imams acting as warlords took the cartoons to the Muslim mimbars (pulpits) of the Middle East.
As many this week have said, this is not about cartoons. This all got me thinking about what drives people. I was born in America, raised a Muslim and a conservative. I have long struggled with what it is that makes my own reflexive passions, and my primary mission, so different from those of the mobs and even from so many of my Muslim neighbors in America. What is the fuse that, once ignited, turns normal people into a mob clamoring for Islam and often for blood?
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Despite the fact that being portrayed as a dog is profoundly offensive if not downright hateful in our Middle Eastern culture, there was hardly a ripple of outrage in the local Muslim community. It seems that in the local Muslim community it’s all right to make a vilifying cartoon of me, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and medical officer, but certainly not one of bin Laden or al-Zawahiri. I have yet to see them publish one cartoon against the enemies of America in this so-called Muslim newspaper.
Only a few weeks after my caricature, the riots around the Danish cartoons erupted across the globe. True to form, the eruption came months after their printing, only after many so-called imams acting as warlords took the cartoons to the Muslim mimbars (pulpits) of the Middle East.
As many this week have said, this is not about cartoons. This all got me thinking about what drives people. I was born in America, raised a Muslim and a conservative. I have long struggled with what it is that makes my own reflexive passions, and my primary mission, so different from those of the mobs and even from so many of my Muslim neighbors in America. What is the fuse that, once ignited, turns normal people into a mob clamoring for Islam and often for blood?
Read the Rest