Mohamed on the front page

For months, British and American mainstream media have been too scared respectful to re-publish the Danish cartoons. But now, The New Individualist will put the most controversial Mohamed cartoon on their front page.



The editor explains his reasons in the comment section in his own blog:

[. . .]You are concerned about my publishing the cartoons as being provocative to Muslim sensitivities. Funny thing: Did the mainstream press hesitate for a split second about publishing the Abu Ghraib prison photos? Did they worry then about Muslim opinion, or about "inviting trouble and inflaming an already tense situation"?

I wonder: Did YOU protest those photographs, which continue to be displayed 24/7 by the mainstream media, as they have been for months? Did you write any letters to the editor of any major publication? Did you e-mail CNN with indignant messages of protest?

Or is your gripe about this exercise of free expression not one of principle, but simply a complaint about WHAT is being expressed?

You ask what I wish to achieve. What I wish to achieve is very simple: I wish to make it clear to ANYONE who tries to intimidate journalists with death threats for publishing, or saying, or showing some "offensive" opinion or image that COERCION WON'T WORK. Some of us, at least, will NOT be intimidated into silence by fanatics. I don't care if it's Muslims, the KKK, street gangs, or Presidents trying to shut me up. The PRINCIPLE at stake here is that COERCION AND INTIMIDATION are not going to be the official currency of public discussion.

Not here.

Not in America.

Not while this writer still breathes.

It's not about Muhammad or Muslims, my friend. It's about the First Amendment. You may have heard of it. In fact, you may still be able to look it up online.

And if my colleagues and I have our way, you always will.

Hat tip to Sugiero: Most polemic Mohamed cartoon.

Added: I forgot that this is not the first time. In fact The Intellectual Activist not only featured Kurt Westergård's cartoon on the front-page, but the re-printed all twelve of them.



The Intellectual Activist explained their reasons for publishing the cartoons:

The central issue of the "cartoon jihad"—the Muslim riots and death threats against a Danish newspaper that printed 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed—is obvious. The issue is freedom of speech: whether our freedom to think, write, and draw is to be subjugated to the "religious sensitivities" of anyone who threatens us with force.

That is why it is necessary for every newspaper and magazine to re-publish those cartoons, as I will do in the next print issue of The Intellectual Activist.

This is not merely a symbolic expression of support; it is a practical countermeasure against censorship. Censorship—especially the violent, anarchic type threatened by Muslim fanatics—is effective only when it can isolate a specific victim, making him feel as if he alone bears the brunt of the danger. What intimidates an artist or writer is not simply some Arab fanatic in the street carrying a placard that reads "Behead those who insult Islam." What intimidates him is the feeling that, when the beheaders come after him, he will be on his own, with no allies or defenders—that everyone else will be too cowardly to stick their necks out.

The answer, for publishers, is to tell the Muslim fanatics that they can't single out any one author, or artist, or publication. The answer is to show that we're all united in defying the fanatics.

That's what it means to show "solidarity" by re-publishing the cartoons. The message we need to send is: if you want to kill anyone who publishes those cartoons, or anyone who makes cartoons of Mohammed, then you're going to have to kill us all. If you make war on one independent mind, you're making war on all of us. And we'll fight back.

This observation is very perceptive, since the Danish imams have since admitted on candid camera that they were deliberately singling out Jyllands-Posten in order to crush them.