Cartoons: What the outrage achieves

Ayn Rand always suggested that one should never bother to examine an absurdity, ask yourself only what it achieves. Melanie Phillips does the job as she recaps on those cartoons and related events. As Susan the Libertarian said when she sent me the link "Whoops, what a giveway! It's got very little to do with cartoons!"

• Denmark will soon assume the rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council, and at the very time that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wil be referring Iran to the Security Council for its reactor programme.
• Twelve cartoons were published in September 2005 in Denmark. No death threats.
  
• They were republished on the front page of the Egyptian newspaper al Fagr back in October. No death threats. No boycotts. No outrage.
• In November, Danish Imams including Ahman Abu Laban pass fifteen cartoons to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi -- three of which were added by the Imams themselves.
• Iran sees an opening: "to portray Denmark as ‘an enemy of Islam’ and mobilize Muslim sympathy against the Security Council" just as it considers their nuclear programme and their threats to "wipe Israel off the map."
  
• Syria sees an opening: the dossier on the Syrian assassination of Lebanese Premier Rafiq al-Hariri lands on the same Security Council desk, with Denamrk in the chair. "To portray Denmark as ‘an enemy of the Prophet’ would not be such a bad thing when the council, as expected, points the finger at Assad and his regime as responsible for a series of political murders, including that of Hariri."
• The Imams see an opening: the opportunity for street shows in favour of so-called 'hate speech laws' and for laws banning religious satire, such as that recently and only narrowly defeated in the UK.

"What to do?" cry the appeasers and the hand-wringers in the face of vile calumny, nuclar missile-rattling and attempts to club countries into censoring speech about Islam. "Give up at once," is the catchcry from Guardian wet blanket Polly Toynbee, as Scott Burgess acerbically reports. Not so fast, says John O'Sullivan in National Review Online:

Vile though it is, this trickery by radical Islamists at least demonstrates the uselessness of appeasing their demands for censorship. I f they are granted, our concessions will merely be the springboard for a further attack on Western liberty. And if we disobligingly refuse to furnish them with a pretext, the Islamists will manufacture one as Hitler used to manufacture border incidents in order to justify his planned aggressions. So we might as well fight in the first ditch rather than the last.

Who's up for it? More intellectual ammunition here.

LINKS: The cartoon jihad (3) - Melanie Phillips
Boycott Egypt! - Rantings of a Sand Monkey
If you weren't aware - this Muslim is to blame - Big News
A plea for understanding - The Daily Ablution
Thank the Lords for some religious sanity - Not PC
Not PC on those cartoons