Garbanzo Toons

Some in the MSM Do Get It.

Tim Rutten offers this piece in the L.A. Times. It's thoughtful, intelligent, and it doesn't pander to the "delicate sensibilities" of CAIR or other Islamic pressure groups who are determined to destroy our freedoms in order to avoid offending their "Religion of Peace."

Mr. Rutten begins with the Danish cartoons of Mohammed (sorry, but I can't bring myself, even jokingly, to call them offensive) and then goes on to look at the big picture.

Tolerance goes both ways

The West's current struggle with a murderous global Sunni Muslim insurgency and the threat of a nuclear-armed theocracy in Iran makes it clear that it's no longer possible to overlook the culture of intolerance, hatred and xenophobia that permeates the Islamic world. The hard work of rooting those things out will have to be done by honest Muslim leaders and intellectuals willing to retrace their tradition's steps and do the intellectual heavy lifting that participation in the modern world requires. They won't be helped, however, if Western governments continue to pander to Islamic sensitivity while looking away from violent Islamic intolerance. They won't be helped by European diplomats and officials who continue to ignore the officially sanctioned hate regularly directed at Jews by the Mideast's government-controlled media, while commiserating with Muslims offended by a few cartoons in the West's free news media.

The decent respect for the opinions of others that life in modern, pluralistic societies requires is not a form of relativism. It will not do, as Isaiah Berlin once put it, to say, "I believe in kindness and you believe in concentration camps" and let's leave it at that.

It's a great piece and so opposite almost everything else coming out of the MSM in their fear of offending Muslims.

Labels: Danish Mohammed cartoons, islam, MSM, Tim Rutten

posted by Harry @ 12:03 PM