By Rene Ciria-Cruz,
Commentary, Pacific News Service
New America Media, Feb 03, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO–Why are some Western commentators casting the controversy over the Danish cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad as a challenge to freedom of expression and of the press? They should instead view the controversy as a challenge to journalists to renew their sense of respect for different cultures and religious beliefs.

A series of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad provoked protests across the Middle East after it ran in Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s largest selling broadsheet newspaper. One drawing shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Another shows him stopping the souls of suicide bombers from entering heaven, saying “Stop, stop, we’ve run out of virgins!” Non-Muslims may not understand the depth of the horror and outrage among Muslims against the cartoon — Muhammad is not supposed to be depicted in any likeness, much less lampooned.

The cartoons ran last September but were reprinted by other papers. They are Islamophobic, stereotypical — the stuff of provocateurs. In trying to discredit extremists they manage to tar all Muslims. Jyllands-Posten’s editors have apologized for the lapse in judgment. But the cartoons’ defenders in West seem to have lost all sense of proportion by responding to the explosive protests in the Muslim world as if to stand up for Western civilization as we know it.

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