Blogburst backlash

It didn't take long for liberal columnist Antonia Zerbisias to find the real villians in the cartoon wars.

No, it's not the imams who spent months whipping up a froth of outrage across the Middle East; it's the scores of people who re-published the Jyllands-Posten cartoons last weekend on their blogs.

Zerbisias writes in The Toronto Star about Friday's Malkin-inspired "blogburst":

Follow their politics and you'll understand why they're on this particular blogwagon: they hate Muslims. In fact, if they were to write about Jews the way they sometimes do about followers of the Prophet Muhammad, they'd be denounced as anti-Semites or Holocaust deniers.

So it isn't surprising that some of their more eager acolytes have gone far beyond denigrating the fanatical rioting, which has, at deadline, claimed six lives and left hundreds of wounded.

I was one of the bloggers in question—and I challenge Ms. Zerbsias to find one word of hatred toward Muslims on this website. (I don't doubt my fellow blogbursters could all offer the same challenge; and certainly Ms. Zerbsias produces scant evidence to support her charge of Muslim hating.)

I do, however, draw a distinction between the millions of peaceful followers of Islam and the minority of jihadists who find a "sixth pillar" of their faith that calls for an unrelenting holy war against unbelievers. (For a view of Islam very different from that of the jihadists, go here.) It's hard be neutral about people who publicly demand your death and dismemberment simply because you venture an opinion in the context of a putatively free society.

Ms. Zerbsias also scapegoats a Christian publication in Norway, Magazinet, that was among the first to reprint the cartoons. "One explanation for the sudden resurgence of these offending drawings after their initial appearance last September," she writes in conspiratorialist tones, "was that a so-called Christian magazine in Norway republished them. Why it chose to do so is unclear." (In fact, the magazine's editor, Vebjoern Selbekk, made his motives eminently clear: "Just like Jyllands-Posten, I have become sick of the ongoing hidden erosion of the freedom of expression," he said.)

Moreover, as The New York Times—hardly a mouthpiece for conservative thought—correctly noted on its editorial page yesterday, "the cartoons were largely unnoticed outside Denmark until a group of Muslim leaders there made a point of circulating them, along with drawings far more offensive than the relatively mild stuff actually printed by the paper, Jyllands-Posten."

Personally, I find it difficult to view the cartoon wars through the prism of left-vs.-right, even if much of the left (apart from mavericks like Christopher Hitchens) has so far preferred to remain above the fray. To my way of thinking, either you believe in the right of individuals to express themselves in a democratic society or you don't. And if you do, you should be prepared stand with them, even in the face of violent intimidation.

Hence the blogburst.

"It is not necessary to agree with these cartoons," argued the editors of The Los Angeles Times last week, "to defend another's right to publish them." But it is hard to be entirely convincing in your defense when you're afraid to publish them yourself, even by way of illustrating a news story.

Ms. Zerbsias seemingly understands this. "I would hate to think," she writes (evidently during a brief attack of lucidity), "that newspapers are backing away [from reprinting the cartoons] to avoid angry protests, to prevent ad boycotts, out of political correctness or a sense that some communities should get special treatment or, most of all, because they fear violent reprisals." Certainly the reluctance of the mainstream media here in North America to stand firmly in defense of Jyllands-Posten's freedom to publish the cartoons would appear to confirm her misgivings.

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance," wrote the great Irish statesman, John Philpot Curran, in 1790,"which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

In our post-Enlightenment world, that vigilance must begin with freedom of speech—the guarantor of every other right, including the right to worship as one pleases.

There was a time when those on the left would have unhesitatingly defended this freedom of all freedoms—just as in the late 1970s the ACLU championed the right of American Nazis to march on Skokie, Illinois.

"To me, freedom of speech is something that represents the very dignity of what a human being is," Free Speech Movement founder Mario Savio once said. "That’s what marks us off from the stones and the stars. You can speak freely. It is really the thing that marks us as just below the angels."

Nowadays, though, liberals like Ms. Zerbsias would prefer to let conservatives fight their free-speech battles, as they hiss and jeer loudly from the sidelines.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin—the blogburst's, um,  godmother (and whom Zerbsias singled out in her column for a particularly petty personal attack)—remarks: "I've no more time to waste on Zerbisias and her ilk in the media who want to lecture us all about being hate-filled and misinformed--while spewing hatred themselves and refusing to fully inform." Glenn Reynolds weighs in here. Zerbsias, he points out, "isn't even good about being catty." The Anchoress, meanwhile, notes: "Michelle Malkin is being called a bigot, etc, again because she is unapologetic and direct. She links to (and excerpts) a particularly adolescent article which would like to, apparently, blame the blogs for unrest and deaths, and which is oooooohhhhh soooooo klever when it uses the phrase “Kartoon Karnage Kapers,” because, you know…Michelle is a conservative, so she must be the equivalent of the KKK. And liberals accuse conservatives of “writing in code!” What a punk." Finally, the irrespressible Sister Toldjah writes: "If you choose to call fanatical, hateful Islamists for what they are, you are an ignorant, repugnant right wing extremist to Ms. Zerbisias and furthermore have no moral authority to condemn the rioting and certianly should not support the reposting/reprinting of the Mohammed cartoons. We should show respect to fanatics who ‘don’t know any better’ (to paraphrase) — fanatics who would just as soon cut our heads off as show any respect in turn. I don’t THINK so!" (I'm breathless with admiration.)

UPDATE: A question for Ms. Zerbsias: Does she believe Ibn Warraq hates Muslims?