Canada: Foreign Policy: Peter MacKay, Canada's new Tory Foreign Minister, condemns cartoon violence; Canadianna's clarity

According to Kathleen Harris, reporter for the Edmonton Sun, Peter MacKay has made his first move on the national and international scenes as Canada's Foreign Minister, and also has made the first major move of any Minister (other than PM Harper himself) in the new Tory minority-government Cabinet. MacKay did so, says Harris, by enunciating a clear and forceful foreign policy on the abuses of press freedom which resulted in attacks upon religious sensitivities of the first order - to which abuses the Foreign Minister said, No good! Thank God that Canadian newspapers, magazines, and TV haven't been self-indulgent. Well, I add that a university student-run newspaper actually did do what MacKay opposes in mild language in his statement - namely, "cause offence to Muslims and non-Muslims around the world and in Canada" (my quote is from MacKay's own words). I don't quite like his wording here because he did not say this action itself was offensive or deplorable, as indeed I do say). MacKay did say the violence of the protests against the offence was "deplorable," and I strongly agree with him on that important point. The burning of embassies of countries that do not control press expression, and the murder of people over cartoons, lacks basic justice.

I want to thank blogger Canadianna at Canadianna's Place with a vigourous Hat Tip, for the reference to MacKay on this matter of the Cartoon Crisis, and even more I offer her a great big thankyou for her own blog-entry "Because we can?" Her piece is the most insightful that I've seem from a non-Muslim Canadian perspective. She manages to express the concerns I have had about the mainstream and marginal streams of discourse on other people's religions in both the USA and Canada in recent years. She has her own accessible vocabulary and style for making her piece very much worth reading.

But I would add some of my idiosyncratic way of thinking to the whole of our shared concern. For years, I have been hurt almost everywhere in the public discourse that either erases mentions of God and Jesus Christ (for instance, the atheism by silence that runs our government schools), or alternatively sneers (university professors far too often, the mainstream news media when not busy at erasure, the entertainment media and culturati). My secular humanist friends don't even notice their own casual bigotry. The movies: during a couple of years of studying contempoary film, watching hundreds of them on DVD that I would have otherwise "missed," I noticed how using the name of Jesus Christ as a casual curse was almost de rigeur. It would seem that a film-maker or actor who didn't abuse the Name would never gain creds in the biz. There's a whole psychosis in the film industry regarding the demeaning of our Lord Jesus Christ, even in the mouths of otherwise positive characters with whom the viewer may be led to identify. Not to (more than) mention HipHop of the negative sort, which has called forth an answer by younger HipHop artists in the form of a Christian HipHopping sound which many afficionados regard as inauthentic because the Christian variety does not curse and abuse the Lord. All that be as it may.

I immediately wondered when I heard about the insult-Mohammed cartons coming out of Denmark, first in the Forside Jyllands-Posten several months back, that I guessed, given how ideologically-defined many Eureopean newspapers are, J-P was probably a hotshot secularist Humanist anti-Christian atheist newspaper, and probably part of that viewstream which despises all religion equally whether Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Hindu. (Buddhism often gets a pass, being an atheism and denying both a Creation and creation which, after all, is illusion - but what of Bism's insistent doctrine of practicing a universal compassion? - a quality lacking in the J-P cartoons.) Such were my working hypotheses. What more could one expect of a newspaper of such ilk?

On the other hand, perhaps it was some horrid Christian newspaper, with a temperament akin to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who generalize about Islam and Muslims, now that Jews are no longer acceptable targets (not so in Europe where a new anti-Semitism has ridden the robe of pro-Palestinianism, whereas in North America rightwing Christianity is a place where the heresy of Christian Zionism is strong among us evangelicals, and among fundamentalists). I simply would like to know specifically what Jyllands-Posten stands for, and why its inner spirit produces the insult-Mohammed cartoons to the hurt of many Muslims whose personal identity as fine neighbourly constructive folk in Denmark is invested in reverance for the Prophet they consider greatest of all, and who carry postive understandings of their own regarding Moses and Jesus. I just googled up Jyllands-Posten, discovering an English section. Wow! the whole website seems well-endowed. Using the hermeneutic of suspicion I would hypothesize that this newspaper is based upon a free-market-absolutizing philosophy, and swims in the stream the Enlightenment where religion is mostly superstition, where Reason is an autonomous value above all others, and rational-pragmatic economics is rather much a law unto itself. Most free-market political parties in Europe answer to the same profile, with a Libertarian-like outlook (I think of Ayn Rand's atheistic free-marketeerism).

Denmark's flag is being burned widely thru-out the Islamic world, along with the nation's embassies. Semiotics: Consider the burning of the sign of the Cross in the context of Muslim fury at the action of a newspaper in one free sphere of the Danish societal totality, over which the executive branch of the Danish government has no control.

I can't see see any kind of referencing of the Danish Christian heritage in Jyllands-Posten; and I do know there is both a Christian-democratic political party (which is included in the Wikipedia write-up of Danish politics - and at least one Christian daily newspaper which I can't find on the Net (maybe it died, maybe it's alive and approving the J-P poshition. There's a Danish Christian Trade Union Federation with 170,000 members.

Wikipedia's list of Danish political parties
* A Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterne) The party's former name, "Socialdemokratiet", is still frequently used.
* B Danish Social Liberal Party (Det Radikale Venstre, literally: The Radical Left)
* C Conservative People's Party (Det Konservative Folkeparti)
* D Centre Democrats (Centrum-Demokraterne)
* F Socialist People's Party (SF or Socialistisk Folkeparti)
* J June Movement (Juni Bevægelsen)
* K Christian Democrats (Kristendemokraterne)
* M Minority Party (Minoritetspartiet)
* N People's Movement against the EU (Folkebevægelsen mod EU)
* O Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti)
* V Liberal Party (Venstre, litteraly: Left)
* Z Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet)
* Ø Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten, literally: Unity List)

Danish Muslims are placed in a horrible quandry by this superiour-attitude newspaper.

Oh, no! I find a case of Robertson-Falwellism in Norway.

Print sales at Norway's Magazinet, an Evangelical Christian newspaper, have been flat since it ran the drawings Jan. 10. But daily hits on its website have more than tripled, to about 800,000, said Vegard Kobberdal, a consultant for the thrice-weekly paper.

If you have a taste for Presocratic fragments of philosophical texts, perhaps you will enjoy the fragement I googled up a lead thru London UK's Independnent (which, however, wants money for access to the whole article, but I don't use credit cards). So, the relevant fragment from the Google entry:

Mohamed cartoons provoke bomb threats against Danish newspaper. ... a Norwegian Christian newspaper, whose editor, Vebjorn Selbekk, also said he "regrets if ...

Now, looking at the English pages online at Jyllands-Posten website, I come upon a most interesting article that needs to be added to the entire mix, and for your edicfication I quote at length to achieve a more just result than the foregoing of my judgments so far, can render, due to their acute one-sidedness. But without excusing the newspaper where it has indeed practiced harm of innocents, I present:

Republished from Copenhagen Post:

Egyptian newspaper printed drawings in October

Little stir was caused when an Egyptian newspaper printed the Mohammed drawings last October during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan

A popular newspaper in Cairo printed the much-contested Mohammed drawings already last October during the Muslims' holy month of Ramadan, reported an Egypt-based blog-writer.

The widely read independent opposition newspaper Al-Fagr printed the caricatures just a few weeks after they originally appeared in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten, but no protests were reported, noted the blog-writer, an Egyptian businessman who goes under the name 'Sandmonkey'.

Although Muslim protestors have attacked Danish embassies in a number of countries to protest the publication of the caricatures in Jyllands-Posten, there was no reaction from the Egyptian newspaper's Muslim readers indicating that they found the drawings insulting, Sandmonkey told The Copenhagen Post.

'This whole business has been driving me crazy for the past two weeks,' he said. 'Of all the countries to protest against - why Denmark? You guys have been a friend of the Arabs for years.'

The blog-writer said that he believed authorities in Egypt and other Muslim countries were using the case for political reasons.

'The drawings create a common enemy to distract people from political reforms. It's useful to have something outside the country to focus your anger on,' he said.

Finally, here's a good overview of press freedom vs religious ultimates among the populace around the Worldwide Cartoon Crisis today. - Owlb