Telos 134: Politics and Religion is available for purchase in our store
“Au secours, Voltaire! Ils sont fous.“ (“Save us Voltaire, they are crazy.”) With this cry for help, the French newspaper France Soir appealed to a national hero, the notoriously anti-religious philosopher of the Enlightenment, in the face of burgeoning Muslim protests against its reproduction of the Danish caricatures of Mohammed. As of this writing, European embassies in Damascus are in flames, and angry protestors have filled the streets from Jakarta to Jutland. The consequences are, as the Danish Prime Minister has put it, “unforeseeable,” at least as far as the political dimension goes. Suddenly it is Western Europe and not the U.S. that bears the brunt of Muslim anger. The contrast is telling, though hardly a reason to gloat. On the eve of the Iraq War, opponents warned that the “Arab street” would be up in arms if the U.S. were to invade. Nothing of the sort ensued; with few exceptions, demonstrations in the Muslim world in response to Operation Iraqi Freedom were few and far between. How striking the difference, then, is the scope of public outrage to the cartoons in the European press. When all is said and done, caricaturing the Prophet is worse than toppling Saddam. Reams of public opinion polling about anti-Americanism in the Arab world suddenly seem irrelevant in the face of this unpredicted explosion of anti-European sentiment. (The long-standing pro-Palestinian tilt of Denmark and Norway has not won them much sympathy, not even in Gaza.)
