Mr. Elberg, the Muslim Students Association agrees with you that Muslim leaders that added the three falsely attributed cartoons and the Muslim governments that promoted the issue served to agitate civilians, which led to the violent actions of some Muslims. Professor Masters spent time discussing how political heads in Islamic countries had a lot to do with encouraging civilian uproar.
Another point of yours: if the Wesleyan Muslim Students Association would like to conduct further teach-ins, I suggest they would do more good by touring the Middle-East explaining why free speech is good, violent anti-speech hate riots are bad, and what Muslims can do to improve their image in the eyes of the West is problematic for several reasons.
First, it shows your ethnocentrism as you call for the Muslim world to improve its image for you and not ask the same of the West. The Muslim world is exposed to images of dead Iraqi civilians killed by our secular democratic governments of peaceful and tolerant states while our free press does not show these images to us and gives us a false impression of what is truly going on in Iraq. Does not the West have the same obligation to improve its image in the Muslim world by pursuing the peace that they say they are committed to And please do not feed us this myth that the Western press represents free speech. The Western press censors images of war that they think you would find objectionable. Also, the same Danish newspaper that first published these cartoons refused to publish cartoons that portrayed Jesus because it did not want to offend anyone. Why did they not follow the same guidelines when deciding to publish cartoons of Muhammad?
Thirdly, in a multicultural, civil society we have venues to express what you termed the Danish attempt to illustrate an editorial arguing that some Danish Muslims were unwilling to adapt to a secular society. If the paper genuinely wanted to start dialogue why publish offensive cartoons that alienate the Muslim section of their population from the outset?
Lastly, we are the Wesleyan Muslim Students Association, and therefore our goal is to build a bridge with the Wesleyan campus to promote the understanding of Islam in America and around the world. We will continue to hold teach-ins regarding issues that we feel the campus should discuss, whether you like it or not.
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