Call for a “Muhammad cartoon a day

Daniel Pipes has come up with a novel idea to desensitize Muslims to the perceived insults to their religion. Lets face it; it needs to happen. Things were quiet in Australia over the weekend after Muslim clerics realized just how their lunacy on the previous one, had outraged everyone but the left and its apologists. As result they called for calm, which seems to have worked.

 Here is a short summary of what we saw, and why we are really pissed off:

Image (L) These signs have been around in other countries, especially in Europe where the population like authoritarians demanding that they comply, however this is the first time they have appeared here.  Aussies do not tolerate zealots who make threats; just having Gillard is bad enough.  Calls for beheading are vile.

Image (R) Jihad Girl 

SHE may be the youngest voice of Islamic fundamentalism to be broadcast in Australia. This is a recording of 8-year-old Ruqaya urging other children to join the fight for a global Islamic state. As she sees it, “nobody is too young”. 

Ruqaya delivered her speech to an audience of 600 at a conference called Muslims Rise, hosted by an Islamic group called Hizb ut-Tahrir. It was held in Bankstown in Sydney’s west on Sunday. Muslims Rise advocates the restoration of the Islamic caliphate - a global government for all Muslims, operating under strict sharia law. 

Ruqaya was one of nine speakers in a considerable line-up, which included a controversial keynote from Taji Mustafa, described by the Opposition as a "hate preacher".

Image (L) Mother radicalizing child

An Islamic mother is pictured taking a ‘happy snap’ to send to the folks back home to let them know the kids are being raised the right way.  She is claiming she isn’t dumb, she is ‘university educated’, but just didn’t know what ‘beheading’ meant. 

Breaking her silence almost a week after she created a national stir, the 28-year-old university educated woman claimed she did not know what the word "behead" meant. 

She insisted her eldest child picked up the poster from the ground and waved it above his head, so she took a photograph of him, not comprehending the sinister message portrayed on the sign. "I did not know what beheading was," she said. …

Daniel Pipes is suggesting that all publishers publish the Kurt Westergaard cartoon every day:

On the Islamist side, an individual or group took one of these perceived offenses and turned it into a reason to riot. Khomeini did this with The Satanic Verses and Ahmad Abu Laban did likewise with the Danish cartoons. Hamid Karzai goaded Afghans to riot over burned Korans by American soldiers and Egyptian preacher Khaled Abdullah turned Innocence of Muslims into an international event. 

In brief, any Westerner can buy a Koran for a dollar and burn it, while any Muslim with a platform can transform that act into a fighting offense. As passions rise on both sides of the democratized Western / Muslim divide, Western provocateurs and Islamist hotheads have found each other and confrontations occur with increasing frequency.Which prompts this question: 

What would happen if publishers and managers of major media reached a consensus, "Enough of this intimidation, we will publish the most famous Danish Muhammad cartoon every day until the Islamists tire out and no longer riot"? What would happen if instances of Koran burning happened recurrently?   

Would repetition inspire institutionalization, generate ever-more outraged responses, and offer a vehicle for Islamists to ride to greater power? Or would it lead to routinization, to a wearing out of Islamists, and a realization that violence is counter-productive to their cause? 

I predict the latter, that a Muhammad cartoon published each day, or Koranic desecrations on a quasi-regular basis, will make it harder for Islamists to mobilize Muslim mobs. Were that the case, Westerners could once again treat Islam as they do other religions – freely, to criticize without fear. That would demonstrate to Islamists that Westerners will not capitulate, that they reject Islamic law, that they are ready to stand up for their values. 

So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: display the Muhammad cartoon daily until the Islamists get used to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.

It might just work.