Cartoons - Some Provocative to publish; Some Hypocritical not to!

Hamshahri, one of Iran’s main newspapers has launched a Holocaust cartoon competition, attracting entries from as far as Brazil and Australia.

Titled 'What is the Limit of Western Freedom of Expression?', the contest wanted to see the Western world, which has been bleating about the their non-negotiable ‘freedom of expression’ take up the challenge of printing the cartoons about Nazi slaughter of Jews in World War II.

As I mentioned in previous postings, no mainstream European newspaper dares to make fun of or deny the Holocaust in print. In 4 European countries, Holocaust denial is actually a crime. British Holocaust denier David Irving has been barred from entering several countries including Australia.

Davood Kazemi, executive manager of the contest and cartoon editor at Hamshahri for the last 15 years said:

“We don’t intend retaliation over the drawings of the prophet. We just want to show that freedom is restricted in the West” implying the West will lack the guts to print the Holocaust cartoons, thus demonstrating their hypocrisy.

The man responsible for the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Flemming Rose, had initially accepted the dare to publish the Holocaust cartoons, or so he claimed, but that’s not about to happen because the newspaper, Jylland-Posten claimed he had been sent on leave. Yeah, of course!

The sad and stupid thing is the publishing of the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was never about 'freedom of expression' or 'testing Danish censorship'. It was about deliberate provocation. There are suggestions that the provocation was not merely a punch in the nose of the Muslims but rather to make European Muslims react with violence. Whoever had planned that has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Look at the issue strategically and ask who emerges as the biggest loser? Who needs European financial support most of all? Who has the Europeans, especially the Scandinavians, been most sympathetic to?