European Presses Should Not
Print Cartoons of Mohammed
By Frank Weltner, Librarian of Jew Watch

St. Louis, Missouri, February 5, 2006 -- Europeans of Christian and Jewish descent embarrassed and degraded themselves greatly this week by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed whose life is sacred to one billion people, a few of whom live precariously within their midst, many of them unwanted.

The nations of Europe have long prided themselves as bastions of religious tolerance, marveling in their histories how persons of Catholic faith lived side by side with those of hundreds of Protestant faiths and how all of them lived for centuries with Jews within their realms, most of them spent in some sort of civil tolerance for each other, albeit with some more than notable flare-ups. Despite differences which included bloody wars over many faiths, Europeans mostly settled into the present tolerant approach in which war and terror are mostly  forgotten in favor of peaceful coexistence.

One of the methods used to keep the peace in Christendom has been the tradition of respect for other people's Christian and Jewish beliefs and an unwavering restraint in not disrespecting them in newspapers and other media. This was not always the case, but in recent years Europe progressed toward a tolerance in which the depiction of other people's religions in disparaging ways was met with instant revulsion, protest, and rebuttal. Persons and publications who violated this rule in any manner received derision instead of respect. In this way, the peace was kept, and people of differing beliefs living side by side led a rather reasonable existence.

If Christianity has been able to tolerate Jews for two thousands years, then there is no reason why an equally small number of Moslems, say less than 3 percent, cannot also be tolerated within our nations, but only as long as their numbers remain this small. However, if Moslem numbers never enlarge to become an overwhelming endangerment to the security of our Christian democracies, there is probably nothing wrong theoretically with the figure of less than 3 percent. However, should these numbers enlarge and threaten the very nature of these Christian democracies by tending to make them into Moslem nations, a national security threat would occur requiring good-byes and deportations. No nation has a responsibility to give away its lands to an invader who is not like them. In fact, they have always had a responsibility to make war on all such invasions, lest they as a religion disappear into the dust bins of history.

At this point, however, Moslems in Denmark and Norway are not in any numerical position to threaten the Christian aspect of these nations. As long as this continues and the status quo of Christianity is not endangered, then peace is the best method. However, Moslem numbers must be contained to non-culture threatening dimensions for their presence in Christian areas to be fair to the native population, because no one owes it to another religion or culture to give away their country to them in the name of blind, stupid tolerance.

Jew Watch is a part of the newly developed western tradition of religious tolerance. In fact, Jew Watch has always stood for total religious respect whether or not the believers singled out for discussion lived within a particular nation or thousands of miles distant. Jew Watch will always condemn anyone who slanders religious leaders or concepts based on faith issues. Political issues are something different. Politics is not religion, even though religions figure into politics, in which case they can be criticized for their lobbying practices as a part of the political turf on which we all live and play, but only as long as the discussions are civil and do not bring up religion except to identify the groups fostering political changes.

With all of this in mind, one has to ask, concerning the outrageous slandering of Mohammed in the cartoons published in Denmark by adolescent minded editors, "Of what possible positive purpose or outcome could the Danish and Norwegian newspaper editors have sought by this act of ethnic defiance, iconoclasm, and disrespect for the deceased leader and spokesman for an entire religion which has been in existence for 1,500 years?"

It is one thing to lobby politically for the exclusion of Moslem immigrants into Denmark and Norway. Jew Watch has no problem with that approach. These nations have a history of life as European Christians almost exclusively, so the emergence of a possibly unwanted population of Moslem believers might be expected to cause resentment and foster political movements to remove them from these nations. Christians might feel that they have a right to be protected from this sort of thing.

If the Christians want the Moslems out, they should face up to that fact and send them packing.

The unfairness of the cartoons, however, is an absurd lashing out that goes nowhere.

If these same newspapers had portrayed western religious icons in the same manner, such as Jesus Christ, Moses, St. Peter, Mary Mother of Jesus, Abraham, Billy Graham, or any other such personage in a disparaging cartoon, they would have been severely censured. Advertisers would have withdrawn their ads out of fear of supporting such hurtful acts. Other newspapers who had not printed these cartoons due to reservations about them would have castigated the culprits in their papers. Pulpits and synagogues throughout the nation would have reacted with protests in front of the offending presses and would have organized advertising boycotts to destroy them economically.

So, it should surprise no one that the Moslems, who are in many ways far better believers in God than are our own almost anti-Christian-materialist-atheist western trending decadent nations, would be terribly upset by the disrespect shown to them as people and as believers. In fact, I would have to assume that the newspapers understood that Moslems would indeed be hurt by the cartoons in question, yet published them simply to rebel against Moslem immigrants within their shores and show that Moslems could not tell Europeans how to act.

A better answer would have been to turn back the immigrants, if the Europeans disliked them and to deport them forthwith. Perhaps this will be the future course of these failed 20th century post modern colonial diversity experiments which have caused such hurt and despair among immigrants and indigenous native Christians alike during the last disgusting fifty years of open border policies.

The newspapers, in printing these ethnically disrespectful cartoons, not only disgraced themselves, but lost much of the clout they might have had in turning back the Moslems to their native lands where the tensions between themselves and Christians would never take root and turn into hate and possible future civil wars which I fear might well engulf Europe and the Middle East in a great genocide that could have been avoided by maintaining stronger borders.

We surely notice in our histories, that Moslems and Christians have warred against themselves wherever their borders have been opened to religious sharing.

For thousands of years, the Christians of Norway and Denmark stood as bastions in the North ready to fight the Crusades, to protect Vienna, to stop the progress of the Moslems into their nations' heartland. Many of these Northern people, understanding the threat of Moslem armies, might have properly considered Moslems in the 15th century to be an enemy which Christians hundreds of miles south of Norway and Denmark had been forced at sword-point to confront on the walls of Constantinople, Vienna, and Toledo.

Jew Watch disparages all religious slander such as that which occurred in the publication of these cartoons. A more proper use of newsprint would have been to say honestly and forthrightly that Moslems have not set well with the people of Norway and Denmark and should be removed. That would have been the honest approach.

Slandering religious icons is absurdly ignorant and cruel. It only fans the flames of hate which the mere presence of differing cultures already causes and exacerbates with each new Moslem who enters these realms where, obviously, they are not wanted.

Face the fact that the diversity myth is only a myth, that nations exist to keep themselves free of other religions, races, and languages. The childish depictions of Mohammed are a symptom of the illness of unwarranted diversity imposed on people who deserve better, and that includes both the indigenous people of Europe and the indigenous people of the Middle East who need to remain separate by oceans and borders and not inter-mixed into troubling situations which may well become deadly in the future.

Be that as it may, as long as these Moslems are guests in your countries, you must at the very least treat them well and respect their religions. If you don't want to respect their religions or if you don't want them there, then you should deport them or face the tragedy of another Bosnia where the diversity experiment did not work either.

It is better to admit it doesn't work for you or them, to be separated entirely, and to live free of hate than to live side-by-side in resentment, feel hatred for them wishing you were free of them, and to lash out in adolescent rage by mentally torturing and humiliating them in your presses.

Know who and what you are, and admit what you want, and make it happen, whatever it is.

But never stoop to humiliating anyone's beliefs. That is the nadir of dishonesty.

-- Frank Weltner, Librarian of Jew Watch, February 5, 2006