The "Get Religion" blog has a post providing a detailed discussion of the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, and also of the media's coverage of them and the reaction to them. In particular, the blog discusses a recent essay in the Washington Post, "Clash Over Cartoons is a Caricature of Civilization," by Phillip Endicott, who writes:
No serious American newspaper would commission images of Jesus that were solely designed to offend Christians. And if one did, the reaction would be swift and certain. Politicians would take to the floors of Congress and call down thunder on the malefactors. Some Christians would react with fury and boycotts and flaming e-mails that couldn't be printed in a family newspaper; others would react with sadness, prayer and earnest letters to the editor. There would be mayhem, though it is unlikely that semiautomatic weapons would be brandished in the streets. Fortunately, it's not likely to happen, because good newspapers are governed, in their use of images, by the basic principle of news value.
When those now-infamous 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad were first published in Denmark, they had virtually no news value at all. They were created as a provocation -- Islam generally forbids the making of images of its highest prophet -- in a conservative newspaper, which wanted to make a point about freedom of speech in liberal, secular Western democracy. Depending on your point of view, it was a stick in the eye meant to provoke debate, or just a stick in the eye.
It is not clear to me that the cartoons at issue were any more provocative -- and intentionally so -- than ones that appear in American newspapers all the time. He continues:
Religious fundamentalism forced the issue; political fundamentalism inflamed it. An apology for giving offense is now capitulation to religious tyranny; the basic instinct of moderation is equated with cowardice. A little ink on paper is inflated to proof of a basic cultural incompatibility. So political leaders here speak of "the long war," a conflict with no sign of hope on the horizon between East and West. Now, rather absurdly, these cartoons may become part of the intellectual hardening of thought that will sustain the idea, on both sides of the cultural divide.
Gravity helps those who push people to conflict; moderation is a Sisyphean task that must always work uphill. Americans can do very little, and are in fact obliged to do nothing, about Muslim societies that don't respect the Western values of tolerance and freedom. They are obliged only to sustain religious tolerance in their own. Moderation, in this case, doesn't mean compromising on the defense of basic freedoms; it means demonstrating the exuberant value of freedom in a secular society. We need more blasphemy, exactly the sort of blasphemy that most challenges our own religious sensitivities. It needn't come in the form of tasteless cartoons but in the return of voices like those of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, voices that puncture the pretensions and sanctity of our own religious beliefs and leaders. We may cluck about the lack of freedom in Iran, but we have grown very orthodox about the way we speak of religion in our own public square. The curious thing about sacrilege is that it very often strengthens true religion as much as it reaffirms the right to challenge it.
I'm all for Mark Twain and tweaking orthodoxy, but is Endicott serious? Is it possible that he thinks that "we have grown very orthodox about the way we speak of religion in our own public square" in a way that is even remotely analogous to the widespread reactions to the cartoons depicting Muhammad? When an American paper runs -- as they regularly do -- a sharply critical or mocking cartoon regarding the Roman Catholic Church and the wrongs done by its members, does anyone expect the Secretary General of the U.N. to protest?
