Letters to the Editor
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The media is the message
The remarkable aspect of the cartoon is that it was suppressed. This indicates that coercion is successful, especially when used against weaklings, who have been sheltered from violence or the threat of violence, and are thus confused as to how to respond.
Originally, during the "Free Speech Movement," and "The Dirty Speech Movement," at UCBerkeley, the school adminstration was unable to cope with the unfamiliar contumnacity. Later, Dr. Hayakawa distinguished himself by "cracking down" on the "rebels," and consequently won election as US. Senator predicated on the reputation that he had established. He had set guidelines by action and so reduced anxiety induced by the previously amorphous situation.
Salon and some few other publications are not succumbing to the expressed supersensitivity of Islamic groups, which use their unbridled response as a form of control. What is remarkable is that the "respect" accorded Islamics is not reciprocated, and they are unbridled in their attempts to insult those who profess other beliefs, or who are not complicit in the Islamic movement to spread sharia to the West.
Democracy has been declared by sharia supporters as merely an instrument to help impose sharia and to be discarded once such goal is attained. Islam and the beliefs set forth in the Koran are antithetical to democratic thought as in Islam sovereignty is vested not in the people, but in the theocrats.
In Iran, the burkha is commanded and refusal to wear it, punished. Homosexuals are persecuted. Non-Muslims in all Islamic countries, are relegated to the role of dhimmis, second class citizens, whose "rights" are so restricted as to make them very vulnerable to deprivation of property and severe physical punishment on the whim of a Muslim. And if a person were to blaspheme, death is the consequence.
For me, the Opus cartoon illustrates the irony involved in a woman submitting herself to second-class status throught symbolic acceptance demonstrated by compliance with "rules" imposed for the purpose among others, of demonstrating inferiority. That a women, who had experienced the relative freedom of the West, could deliberately demean herself by subjecting herself to such restrictions in compliance with arbitraily imposed authoritarian guidelines, is the gist of the message.
The acquiescence of so much of the Western media in accepting constraints on the depiction of the servile role of women in (and other aspects of) Islamic societies, is distressing and a cautionary tale in that the West demonstrates its lack of vigorous belief in its values, and retreats when confronted. If we have nothing of value to us, we'll lose and be subject to those who promote their beliefs with such uncompromising zeal.