Cartoon Chaos!
by David J. Rusin
Thu, 15 May 2008 at 1:01 PM
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Islamists can be rather sensitive about cartoons. In early 2006, worldwide riots erupted in response to caricatures of Mohammed that had been published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten several months prior. Recent cases in Canada and the U.S. demonstrate that lawful Islamists have taken up the burden of enforcing doodle dhimmitude.
At the behest of a local Muslim group, police in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have opened a hate crime investigation over a cartoon that mocks a couple demanding compensation for a terrorism probe.
The cartoon, published April 18 in the Chronicle Herald newspaper, depicts a woman in a burqa holding a sign that reads, "I want millions," and she says, "I can put it towards my husband's next training camp."
The cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon is a reference to Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, a woman from Nova Scotia whose husband was arrested in 2006 in an anti-terrorism raid. Qayyum Abdul Jamal was released from jail after charges against him were stayed on April 15.
An official at the paper rightly noted that the drawing does not take aim at all Muslims and therefore cannot be a hate crime under Canadian law: "The whole purpose of that cartoon was to comment on the outrageous demands of this individual for compensation long before any hearing into her case had ever been held."
The Chronicle Herald may have learned a lesson from the Columbus Dispatch. Last year, the Ohio office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations complained that the paper had published what CAIR-OH called a "Nazi-style" cartoon that shows cockroaches emerging from a grate marked "extremism" at the general location of Iran.
The Dispatch hammered CAIR for promoting a "false grievance," as the roaches are clearly not referring to Iranians in general. Those who wrote letters at the urging of the pressure group received this dressing-down in response:
CAIR also likens the cartoon to Nazi propaganda. This is a remarkable display of intellectual gymnastics. Iranian President Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of the Jewish state and questions the Holocaust, while his regime tries to develop nuclear weapons. If CAIR is truly concerned about the promotion of Nazi ideas and the use of Nazi methods, it should direct its attention to Tehran.
When CAIR and friends try to manufacture controversy, it's best just to "toon" them out.
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