The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons

The latest terrorist outrage is the murders in Paris at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and the other related attacks in the Paris area. Like the riots in 2006, this attack was blamed on the publication of "offensive" cartoons. Here are at least some of those cartoons (from here, other Gateway Pundit posts, and elsewhere).

This one doesn't even qualify as a cartoon — no satire or humor or anything. I guess the terrorists are angry that Charlie Hebdo actually printed Mohammed's name.

The words on this one, from 2011, say "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter!"
There were more cartoons in the rest of the issue.

In this one, from 2006, the headline says "Mohammed stressed out by the fundamentalists." and his words say "It's hard to be loved by fools."

Here's the cartoonist's view of what would happen — at the hands of one of Mohammed's followers — if Mohammed returned today.

This one is the most provocative of all the Charlie Hebdo cartoons I've seen. The words say "The Koran is shit. It doesn't stop bullets."
This one looks pretty provocative to me, as well, but I don't know what the words say.

Of course, Charlie Hebdo mocks everybody. It's an equal opportunity insulter.

Its cartoonists even insult themselves.

The man in this one is the former French finance minister, not Mohammed or any Muslim.

All in all, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons seem pretty inoffensive — especially in comparison with some of the cartoons it has printed satirizing other religions, politicians, & etc. They are, however, clearly more offensive than the drawings printed by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark in 2005. Just to jog everyone's memories, here they are again.

The 2005 cartoons were really inoffensive — and yet (many of) Europe's Muslim leaders used them to foment riots in many parts of the world, five months after their publication. As I said in 2006, however, "It seems to me that someone was looking for an excuse that could be used to stir up trouble." In part, that was because even the rioters in 2006 agreed that the cartoons were not, themselves, offensive. Even so, they were used to create a lot of problems.

There seem to be a couple of root causes for these kinds of behaviors. (There are probably more, but this is the simplified version.) One is Islam's near-absolute lack of any sense of humor, especially about Islam itself. Like a five year old child, Islam takes itself far too seriously.

The other of these "couple of root causes" is that fundamentalist Muslims — the Islamists — have notoriously thin skins. They are always outraged about something. Perhaps the best comment in this arena, and its dynamics, is still from Daryl Cagle (before the start of his current website).

Probably no one thought the 2005 Danish drawings were of Muhammad until they were told so by their religious leaders. When they were told this, despite the evidence of their own eyes, they rioted. It is the same now as it was then. And isn’t that truly a fitting conclusion for this discussion of the ongoing “cartoon wars”?