Daniel Pipes: Turning Muslims Into Jews

Just another observation regarding the subtle ironies of the cartoon that Daniel Pipes included in his article on the Danish "free speech" controversy. Please note that although this cartoon was drawn by J.J. McCullough, it obviously has received Pipe's stamp of approval, so he's just as guilty for buying into the racist stereotypes it subliminally presents.

That having been said, please notice that in his zeal to make a political statement, the artist who drew the cartoon allowed his racism to slip in. This becomes obvious once one notices the fact that J.J. McCullough, seemingly without even realizing it, gave the Muslim in the cartoon the same racist characteristics as the Jew that is being caricatured by the Muslim! Indeed, they both share a hooked nose, exaggerated teeth, facial hair and an angry scowl—all elements strangely reminiscent of Nazis caricatures. Also, notice the stark contrast between the Muslim's features and those of the cute and cuddly Dane. So what this cartoon seems to be trying to tell us is that Muslims are hateful anti-Semites that have double-standards, but this is how Muslims really are—then the same negative characteristics that Muslims are condemned for using are applied to them. I just wanted to bring attention to this glaring (and probably subconscious) oversight, which in the final analysis is really a double-standard within a cartoon intended to expose double-standards!

The above mentioned blunder is far from the only problem which undermines the cartoon in question. As I mentioned in my recent Danish Cartoons, Double-Standards and Daniel Pipes, the cartoon "gets the basic facts wrong" in regards to what's going on in the Danish cartoon controversy. This is because "no one is calling for laws which provide only Islam with special protection against being mocked and insulted. Additionally, and even more deceptively, his article's cartoon implies that Danish caricatures are rather soft and benign, while Muslim ones are outrageously offensive and over the top."

Reflecting on all of this made me recall S. Parvez Manzoor's article Turning Jews into Muslims: The Untold Saga of the Muselmänner. In this ground-breaking and insightful essay, we are informed that Jews in the Nazi concentration camps who had "lost all will to survive...were given by their fellow inmates the scornful epithet of die Muselmänner (the Muslims)! Leaving aside the morally intractable issues of genocide and anti-Semitism, what this grim and disquieting tale reveals is that, alas, the human propensity for despising the other takes precedence over our capacity to love, and that to the venom of collective self-worship neither the murderer nor the murdered, neither the 'Aryan' nor the 'Semite', is immune!"

Well it seems that J.J. McCullough and Daniel Pipes add the latest twist to this ugly human phenomenon, since in their fervor to expose the racism and double-standards of their stereotypical Muslim, they fell victim to the very vices they were attempting to condemn. Indeed, the outrageous irony in all this is that Daniel Pipes & Company have now turned Muslims into hook-nosed Jews!

Deen on, fellow Muselmänner...