Trevor Blake: Double Standards are Being Applied
BBC: An Arab organisation is to be put on trial in the Netherlands over its publication of a cartoon deemed offensive to Jews, prosecutors say. The cartoon, published by the Arab European League (AEL) on its website, questions the Holocaust. It said the decision to prosecute illustrated bias against Muslims. It said the same standards were not applied to the Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who made a film including cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Last month prosecutors said they would not put the far-right MP on trial for distributing the controversial Danish cartoons, which caused a storm of protest after their publication in 2005. However, he is still being investigated separately for inciting hatred against Muslims by making statements comparing Islam to Nazism.
But Dutch prosecutors said the AEL cartoon was “discriminatory” and “offensive to Jews as a group… because it offends Jews on the basis of their race and/or religion”. The cartoon shows two men standing near a pile of bones at “Auswitch” (sic). One says “I don’t think they’re Jews”. The other replies: “We have to get to the six million somehow.” A spokeswoman for the prosecuting authority said the group could be fined up to 4,700 euros (£4,100), though in theory a prison sentence was also possible.
The AEL says it does not deny the facts of the Holocaust but posted the cartoon as an “act of civil disobedience”. It said it had agreed to remove it from its site, but reversed that decision to protest over the failure to prosecute Geert Wilders. “Double standards are being applied,” it said in a statement. [...] Tensions over the Netherlands’ Muslim population have increased in recent years, notably since the killing of a controversial film-maker by a Muslim extremist in 2004.
[Article continues.] Although I often fail I try to speak well of Muslims for those deeds worth speaking well of. Posting a cartoon on a web page is a civilized act, even if the content of the cartoon is uncivil. In publishing this cartoon the AEL has shown it understands that the way to counter publication of what it doesn’t like is to publish what it does like. This is a mature (and, dare I say it, Western) response, or at least a more mature response than what Muslim groups generally offer when they claim to be offended (for a religion that claims to have Allah on its side Muslims sure are a sensitive group). What sort of response do Muslims generally offer? When the BBC writes of a “storm of protest” by Muslims in 2005, you should read that as ‘the murder of more than one hundred innocent people.’ When the BBC writes about “the killing of a controversial film-maker by a Muslim extremist” in 2004, you should read that as ‘the murder of someone who wrote a critical article about the Arab European League,’ or perhaps ‘the murder of someone who had just finished a film about someone else murdered by a Muslim.’ If it’s between killing people and publishing offensive cartoons, give me the cartoons every time. What a shame that the government of the Netherlands is inverting its own values by prosecuting this. Again, if it’s between killing people and prosecution in court, I’ll take the later. How much better the world would be if there were more people offended, more people offending, and less murder. They really are just words and pictures, they aren’t magic and they won’t hurt you. They won’t hurt your invisible monster that lives in the sky, and they won’t hurt whatever hate speech laws are supposed to protect.