OPINION
21
Yale Sides With Dictators by Censoring Cartoons
Muhammad decision is short-sighted
By Kevin Spak
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Posted Aug 29, 09 10:57 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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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.”