Yale Sides With Dictators by Censoring Cartoons

Muhammad decision is short-sighted
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 29, 2009 10:57 AM CDT
Yale Sides With Dictators by Censoring Cartoons
Supporters of Pakistani Islamic party Jamat-e-Islami shout slogans and burn a Danish flag to show their anger over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, March 2, 2008 in Karachi, Pakistan.   (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

Yale University has “handed a victory to extremists” by deciding to pull images of the prophet Muhammad from its upcoming book on the Danish cartoon controversy, writes Mona Eltahawy in the Washington Post. Eltahawy is a Muslim living in Denmark, and she knows full well that the cartoons offended some Muslims like her mother. But she says the protests were mostly “an exercise in manufactured outrage.”

No one protested when the cartoons were published, or even when an Egyptian newspaper reprinted them a month later. The protests began months later, when radical leaders saw an opportunity to burnish their Islamic credentials. “Unfortunately, those dictators and radicals who want to speak for all Muslims—and yet care little for Muslim life—have found an ally in Yale University Press.” (More Danish Mohammed cartoons stories.)

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