Commentary: Draw Muhammad Day

May 21, 2010

I wrote an article for examiner.com about this protest – and it has drawn a lot of comments.  But there is one in particular I think needs to be addressed, mostly because it has invaded the free speech community as well. And that is the idea that what needed to be said could have been said in a less offensive way. It’s a very common sentiment.  The answer to the question – couldn’t this be done in a less offensive way?  is – no it couldn’t! Here’s why.

Everyone in the world should now realize that there are two types of Muslims: those who resort to violence and those who don’t. Non-violent Muslims aren’t the problem.  The violent ones are.

Violent Muslms have been using violence to bully everyone else into doing what they want for years now. Upset about a beauty pageant? Riot and kill people at random. Don’t like an academic work critical of Islam? Kill the author.  Don’t like the fact that someone made a movie about how poorly women are treated? Kill the filmmaker.  Afraid an animator might draw something you find offensive? Threaten to kill them. There is no other way to describe this behavior except to say that violent Muslims have collectively become the world’s biggest bullies.  

And, like all bullies, they try to justify for their violent actions. We who are not violent should not allow their excuses to cloud our response to them.  So what if people have been rude to them and done something offensive. Being rude simply isn’t a capital offense.  Only bullies respond to perceived insults with violence.

Bullies are bullies because they get what they want by being abusive. If they are really effective, they can get what they want just by making people afraid of what they might do. And that is where the global community is now.  We are afraid of them.  And by we, I mean just about everyone in the world who isn’t a violent Muslim: individuals, corporations, and governments. Even the UN is afraid of them.

The net affect of all this bullying is that we are self-censoring ourselves in order to not offend these global bullies so that we will not draw their wrath down upon us.  And it was exactly this fear driven self-censorship that was the target of the South Park episodes involving Muhammad, which is why so many people responded to the censorship of a show about censorship to say enough is enough.

The way we are going to end the violence is to start treating these violent Muslims like the bullies they are.  And you don’t stop bullies by giving in to their demands. That only encourages them. The more we are afraid of them, the more they get what they want and the worse the problem becomes. After all, it means their violent tactics are working!

No – you stop bullying by standing up to the bully and let them know through your words and your actions that you are not afraid of them. Nothing else works! This is why the Draw Muhammad Day protest was the exact right response to this problem regardless of how upset it made non-violent Muslims.  

And no, there is no less offensive way to deal with this. If we aren’t willing to risk offending them, what we are telling them is that we aren’t willing to risk offending them.  We have to offend them. There is unfortunately no other way to tell them that we are not afraid to offend them. Anything less and we aren’t sending them the message that we simply don’t care what they think, say or do anymore.  Anything less and we are not telling them that their bullying doesn’t work on us. Anything less and we are admitting we are still afraid.

I realize that in order to solve this problem non-violent Muslims need to be part of the solution.  And it doesn’t help draw them to our side if we are actively doing something we know will offend them. And if we could have offended violent Muslims without offending non-violent Muslims, that would have been the preferred course of action. Unfortunately, there was no way to do that.  And if there is, PLEASE share that information. Because as long as we keep acting as if we are afraid of them they will keep on bullying us. And seriously, it needs to stop.