Posted on February 15, 2006

Copyright © 2006 by Richard Warren Field

I am sorry, devout and sincere Muslims. But the world must see the cartoons. We must see all the cartoons, the cartoons originally published in a Danish newspaper months ago that have recently led to rioting and even deaths, the cartoons that were disseminated under false pretenses purporting to be the original cartoons, and the cartoons published in Muslim countries as retaliation for the original cartoons. This should be done by every print and television media outlet, from the Washington Times to Al Jazeera, as soon as possible. A free, open and democratic society craves the best, most accurate information available. That craving should always be satisfied to every extent possible. The media, charged with satisfying the craving, should never be censored, or censor itself, because of intimidation, by the government or anyone else. If intimidation stifles information, then freedom, openness, and eventually democracy, cannot help but be held hostage by the intimidators. 

Let’s not only publish all the cartoons. Let’s make sure we tell all the story. How did these cartoons come to exist? Were they originally published to offend a Muslim audience, or for another purpose? Why did it take months for their existence to become known? Who brought their existence to the attention of the world—the original creators and publishers of the cartoons, or an entirely different group of people, whose motivations differed radically from the original creators and publishers of the cartoons? And who called for “cartoon contests” to create retaliatory cartoons? What were their motivations? 

Sincere and devout Muslims, these questions are also asked for your benefit. The answers to these questions will help us determine who has really offended you. Because the information I have is that Muslims found out about these cartoons months before the controversy broke, and carefully orchestrated their distribution to the world until the optimum opportunity arose to generate the maximum furor. If that is true, then who really offended Muslims? A Danish newspaper editor who was not Muslim, and apparently did not understand that any image rendered of the Prophet Mohammed is considered a blasphemy by Muslims? They did not attempt to broadcast these cartoons to the world. Or could the offending parties be supposedly pious Muslims who chose to broadcast to a wide audience of fellow Muslims material they knew to be blasphemous by their own religion’s tenets? 

Even worse, there may have been Muslims who created their own false cartoons, even more offensive and blasphemous than the originals, solely to elevate the outrage. They sought to take advantage of the reticence of the worldwide media, a media afraid to broadcast the original cartoons for fear of repeating the offensive behavior of the original Danish paper. 

Blasphemies, some even originated by Muslims, may have been spread by Muslims to score political victories. When all the cartoons are shown, and all the story is told, the individuals who have truly offended Muslims may be closer to home than most Muslims realize.

We also need to run the contest cartoons, the cartoons created when Muslim media, immersed in their own outrage, asked their own audience to create cartoons to offend non-Muslims. We need to see those cartoons, side-by-side with the original offensive cartoons, and the false cartoons, so fair-minded people can decide who has really sought to offend. Which group has deliberately created inflammatory material in an attempt to cause distress? Which group remains imprisoned by festering hatred, remaining chained to unending hostility by a rabid intolerance? 

The primary scriptures of Islam call for religious tolerance and respect for “People of the Book” or “People of an earlier revelation”—Jews and Christians. If Muslims are behind any of the offending material or subsequent offending dissemination of the material, there should be an outcry among Muslims for the complete story, and for consequences to be leveled at the guilty parties. People died in these riots. Muslims alive last month are no longer alive today because of the riots triggered by the mass dissemination of the cartoons. If Muslims knowingly and deliberately took a faux pas borne of ignorance and bad judgment by a Danish newspaper and turned it into a worldwide sensation by spreading images they knew to be blasphemous among their own fellow Believers to provoke them, those Muslims have blood on their hands.

Sincere and devout Muslims, there is another compelling reason we non-Muslims need to see the offending cartoons. We need to see what has offended you. Surely you wish us to understand your perspective. Surely when some of you marched on foreign embassies and directed your wrath at “western” targets, you wanted to communicate your outrage to non-Muslims. To know what has offended you, we need the best possible information on the offense. Only then can we hope to avoid repeating the behavior.

To the media of my own culture, I ask you to have the courage and the insight to realize how imperative it is to publish all the cartoons, and all the story. Full disclosure, full information, full understanding—this is our way of life. A free society cannot thrive without a responsible and accountable public behaving based on a free-flow of the best information available. An educated public is necessary to a flourishing democracy so the electorate can express its will through informed choices. We are the example to the world of how this works. We need to stick to our principles for our own sake, as we continue to add to the success of the grand political experiment started over two hundred years ago by our founding fathers.

A free press functions without intimidation. Pick a day. Maybe March 16th, “Freedom of Information Day,” celebrated by the American Library Association. Or, maybe a day sooner than that. On the designated day, every media outlet in the world that honors the principle of a free press should release all the cartoons, along with all the story. This will strike a blow for freedom with a maximum sharing of information fostering a maximum mutual familiarity. Extremists will not be able to attack every media outlet at once. There is strength in numbers. There is power in a unified effort to stand by principles. Let’s see all the cartoons as soon as possible. Let’s shine the light of truth on this entire matter. That is the only hope of shining the light of understanding into the darkness created by the deliberate exploitation of the hate created by the deliberate manipulation of ignorance.

Richard Warren Field is the author of the upcoming novel, The Swords of Faith. For more information, go to RichardWarrenField.com.