This Mohammed Cartoon is Not an Incitement to Violence

There has been a very healthy debate here at Irregular Times about whether it is appropriate for Westerners such as myself to make cartoons of Mohammed. There have been many, including non-Muslims who have argued that, while the death threats by Islamic radicals are nasty, we ought to pull our Mohammed cartoons off the Internet, so as to avoid provoking the Muslim world into a new level of violence against Western nations.

In response to those arguments, I have created this bumper sticker, which features an image of Mohammed on it, and the message: There is a cartoon of Mohammed on this bumper sticker.

What’s the point?

It may seem that this bumper sticker is a purposeful incitement of Muslim violence against the Western world. In fact, the Bush Administration has made just that kind of claim, stating that “We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.”

I believe that such claims are based upon the acceptance a false premise: The idea that it is a reasonable and predictable result of the creation of a cartoon that the people whom the cartoon offends will engage in acts of violence to gain revenge.

I will not accept that premise. It is not reasonable for people to react to cartoons with violence, and it is not reasonable for us to refrain from creating images out of fear that someone might start murdering people after seeing those images.

In short, it is not the responsibility of a cartoonist to avoid provoking fanatics to murder. When fanatics commit acts of murder in response to cartoons, it is they who bear the full responsibility of their actions.

If the old NRA communications masters were dealing with this issue, they might have put it this way: Cartoons of Mohammed don’t kill. Fundamentalist Muslim fanatics do.

This bumper sticker is a political statement in favor of free speech. Yes, it will offend some people, but it does so in order to make a higher point: That no matter how much religious zealots may rant and rave, we retain the rights of free speech and freedom from the governmental establishment of religion.

The reasonable reaction to free speech is not violence. The reasonable reaction to free speech is more free speech.

When we surrender even one tiny bit of free speech in response to death threats, we lose the ability to exercise truly free speech against other threats as well. When President Bush called upon the cartoonists who created images of Mohammed to apologize for their art, he caved in to terrorists and supported the terrorist cause. President Bush sent a message to Islamic terrorists and their supporters that, if they make loud enough threats to attack us, we will gladly give up our liberty and comply with their demands.

What is the point of waging a war against terrorism when all the terrorists have to do is make death threats against us, and we comply? Yes, I am calling all Muslims who have called for violence against the cartoonists, or shouted chants like “Death to Denmark”, terrorists. They are using the threat of violence as a political tool, and there isn’t any better definition of a terrorist than that.

I created this bumper sticker because I think it’s wrong for Americans to sacrifice one bit of their liberty in response to terrorist demands. When terrorists tell us that they will kill us unless we stop our criticism, then the only proper response is to make our criticism all the stronger.

A bumper sticker is not violent. This bumper sticker is not calling for violence. It is not an attempt to encourage fanatics to engage in acts of violence. It is, plain and simple, a declaration that America will not allow its free speech to be sacrificed in order to mollify violent religious fundamentalists who are incapable of reacting to expressions of freedom in kind.

I have, time and time again, expressed my opposition to the war in Iraq. I believe that nonviolent political solutions have a power that is superior to the violent politics of war. However, my belief in nonviolence should not be mistaken for weakness. I will not launch any violent attack against Islamic fanatics, but neither will I run away when they launch attacks against my freedom. If they come to kill me for creating a cartoon, let them come, but I will not bow to their demands.

You can make the same strong stand against terrorism by putting this bumper sticker on your car. The more the terrorists demand that we be silent, the more we must speak.