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Let me offer many thanks to the Divine Ms. M and young master Daniel Pulliam for doing so much in the past few days to keep us in touch with the tidal wave of stories about the Danish cartoons. I literally do not know where to begin and, during five days of travel, I have felt somewhat stunned and confused by what I am reading. I am home again and starting to catch up.
Andrew Sullivan has been unrelenting in his criticism of The New York Times for calling the Muhammad cartoons “callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.”
One of the more interesting aspects of the controversy about Muslim cartoons is the decision of the vast majority of news outlets here in the States not to publish them.
With Danish and Norwegian embassies in flames this weekend, it is clear that Muslim outrage over a Denmark newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad is not going away. We previously highlighted some of the issues involved, namely that Islam forbids rendering Muhammad in visual media and the obvious tension between Western values of freedom of the press and a Europe with a growing Muslim population. Yesterday Terry covered the stateside media treatment. But this religion and media story is causing such an international crisis that I feel compelled to point out a few other things.
Earlier this week, the divine Ms. M weighed in on the escalating story of the cartoon caricatures of Muhammad and the raging reaction in the Islamic world. Frankly, I must confess that I am feeling overwhelmed with all the coverage of this out-of-control story.
I’m waiting for some smart person out there to dissect Bono’s sermon Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast for its theological implications and political ramifications.
I was surprised that Peggy Noonan did not do much with the echo of the “ending tyranny” theme in President Bush’s State of the Union address, the almost messianic theme that had been so controversial in the 2005 address.
Sometimes I wonder how often journalists covering Islamic terrorism actually get to interview a terrorist. That’s a scary proposition in many ways. One way or another, those responsible for giving the public a clear understanding of Islamic terrorism must understand the religious underpinnings of terrrorists’ worldview and moral philosophy.
Yes, Kanye West posed as Jesus Christ on the cover of Rolling Stone. And, like he’s a Pat Robertson-in-training, the grandstanding worked. Media outlets splashed the news everywhere. So it was nice to see the way Rashod Ollison analyzed young Kanye for the Baltimore Sun:
