 "Photo: Reprinted with permission, www.dailyvanguard.com")
A day after the first Dutch Embassy was burned down, I received an e-mail titled, "If you believe in free speech, forward this to as many people as you can." Of course, the subject line was in all caps, as happens with all important e-mails. My first question was: "If I don't forward this on, do I not believe in free speech?" So I opened the email. It contained the Dutch comic depicting Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban, plus others making fun of Mohammed or putting him in a not-so-flattering light. I didn't forward the e-mail.
Meanwhile, as the violence in the Middle East increased, more papers published the cartoons in the name of free speech. More Muslims got mad and burned more buildings.
Plenty of non-Muslims couldn't figure out why Muslims were offended. Burning down buildings may have been an overreaction, but reprinting offensive comics, knowing how they were received, seemed instigatory in the least. The non-Muslim world didn't understand why Muslims were so offended. I mean, it was just a cartoon, right?
Last Thursday, the Portland State University Vanguard ran a comic depicting Jesus as a suicide bomber, with bombs wrapped around his waist. Guess what? People got pissed. People got offended. And those people were Christians. Surprised? Hardly.
The editor in chief of the Vanguard, Matt Petrie, and the managing editor, Leathan Graves-Highsmith, said they ran the comic to spark discussions about "freedom of speech and the nature of offensive imagery." From the moment I saw the cartoon on CNN, I realized the important point being made about who gets offended and who gets to do the offending. That point, however, seemed to be lost on many Vanguard readers.
The Vanguard received plenty of letters to the editor, some complimenting and some complaining. Why did it only take some people getting offended for this issue to reach the media, when the issue of the Muslim comics did not reach the mainstream media until some people got violent? Why didn't the Christians have to burn something down first in order for their concerns about this Jesus-as-suicide-bomber cartoon to make it into the media? Because the Jesus cartoon offended the majority while the Muslim cartoon did not.
We hold many misconceptions about people and ideas we do not understand. Mostly, we are content to absorb what we hear and rarely go out of our way to get to know someone else or her religion. We are comfortable sitting back and criticizing others' offense, rather than thinking about why they are offended. Kudos to the Vanguard for publishing a cartoon that forced the majority to squirm in the shoes of the minority.
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