I've seen a few people tout Robert Wright's NYT Essay 'The Silent Treatment' as providing excellent perspective on the current Muhammad cartoons controversy. I beg to differ.

Here is the text of my response to one e-mail discussion group to which I belong:

In some ways, the piece Pierre Joncas recommends is second-rate.

Robert Wright left out quite a bit and drew a very wrong conclusion. Allow me to explain.

Take this, for starters:

"The paper that published the Muhammad cartoon, it turns out, had earlier rejected cartoons of Christ because, as the Sunday editor explained in an e-mail to the cartoonist who submitted them, they would provoke an outcry."

That's partly true. Jyllands-Posten also said it rejects 90 to 95 per cent of the unsolicited material it receives, and that the Christ cartoons were unsolicited and in the opinion of the editor, not very funny. The editor in question has now said he should have told the cartoonist the truth.

Having worked in newspapers, I suspect the paper's claim it rejects the vast majority of freelance material voluntarily offered to it is valid.

According to a BBC story, Jyllands-Posten did run a cartoon in 2000 that has Joseph, quoting Bill Clinton at the time of Monica Lewinsky, saying about Mary: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." I leave it to you to decide whether Christians would find that offensive. But again, it's not in Wright's commentary.

The vast majority of the mainstream media in this country and in the United States did not reprint the cartoons. The Western Standard, the conservative news magazine, did reprint eight of the 12. Publisher Ezra Levant said they did it because the cartoons were central to the news story and because it was only by seeing them that one could see how "bland" they were.

But Mr. Levant also tried making the point in interviews that mainstream papers have run photos and cartoons that were offensive to Christians, but they don't think Christians will react violently.

Wright again: "Only after these activists were snubbed by Danish politicians and found synergy with powerful politicians in Muslim states did big demonstrations ensue. Some of the demonstrations turned violent, but much of the violence seems to have been orchestrated by state governments, terrorist groups and other cynical political actors."

The activists, who came from the most fundamentalist part of the Danish Muslim community, wanted the paper charged with hate crimes. The government at that time said this was purely a free speech issue, and that it was up to the Muslims and the paper to resolve the issue.

I'm not familiar with Danish law, but in this country, I suspect the Crown would have problems obtaining a successful conviction under the hate crimes provisions of the Criminal Code for the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. To my mind, that makes them offensive, not criminally hateful.

(Also, Wright doesn't touch on the background. A Danish children's book author wanted to do a book on the Prophet Muhammad, but couldn't find anyone to illustrate it. A newspaper wondered if that showed self-censorship on the part of artists on Islamic subjects. Keep in mind that the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh had been killed less than a year before by a Muslim fanatic. Jyllands-Posten then got the idea to ask cartoonists to draw Muhammad).

The use of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles is a ridiculous parallel, with the exception of this one point:

"The commission recognized the difference between what triggers an uproar (how police handle a traffic stop in Watts) and what fuels it (discrimination, poverty, etc.)."

Wright notes how Americans might wonder about how a single cartoon could have such implications.

Here's an excerpt from a Feb. 10 Globe and Mail story by Mark McKinnon from Beirut:

"'They are showing the Prophet in a sexual position with another man. We don't have this here. We don't have men sleeping with men, or women sleeping with women,' the bearded 20-year-old Shia Muslim said, as other young men listened and nodded their heads in angry agreement."

None of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons showed anything like that. But in case those didn't prove inflammatory enough, the Danish Muslim delegation did bring additional cartoons they say were sent to them by right-wing Danes showing Muhammad sodomizing a praying Muslim, or as a dog and a pig.

Those are the cartoons that have been particularly brandished by Muslim firebrands.

After a news conference by the cartoon agitators in Egypt, the Egyptian press reported that the Danish government wanted to censor the Koran. There was no such move afoot.

On the day of the riots in Syria, text messages were sent from Europe to the Middle East saying right-wing Danes were going to burn copies of the Koran that day. Such burnings never happened.

Organizers with loudspeakers in Tehran told demonstrators the cartoons are part of the "Zionist conspiracy."

I could go on, but hopefully you get my point: Some groups within the global Muslim community were working hard to inflame this situation. Wright brushes that off, in my opinion.

Personally, I wonder if the situation would have reached that point had there been widespread publication of the cartoons in the Muslim world. Maybe if people saw them, rather than had them described by radical preachers, they would have reacted less negatively.

(Addendum: I saw this in a BBC story: "On 17 October, a curious thing happened. Six of the cartoons were prominently reprinted in an Egyptian newspaper, al-Fagr. The paper said they were racist and would insult Muslims everywhere and predicted an outcry. However, at this stage, nothing happened on the streets. There was no public outcry. It took concerted action by the Danish Muslim leaders to effect a change.")

Anyways, Wright goes on to say:

"None of this is to say that there aren't big differences between American culture and culture in many Muslim parts of the world. In a way, that's the point: some differences are so big, and the job of shrinking them so daunting, that we can't afford to be unclear on what the biggest differences are.

"What isn't a big difference is the Muslim demand for self-censorship by major media outlets. That kind of self-censorship is not just an American tradition, but a tradition that has helped make America one of the most harmonious multiethnic and multireligious societies in the history of the world. "

Actually, it seems some Muslims in Canada appear to be hinting they would like to see some type of blasphemy law come out of all this. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has asked the European Union to ban blasphemy.

In Jordan, journalists Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi stand accused of insulting religion under Jordan's press and publications law by reprinting one some of the cartoons in their respective former publications (they were fired over this).

Momani wrote this about the uproar a few weeks ago:

"Muslims of the world be reasonable. What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"

I once thought, "good point," but after reading Mr. Wright's seductive ruminations on the value of self-censorship, I now think: "Stupid bastard: That's what you get for *not* self-censoring. Rot in your jail cell, agitator" (That *was* a sarcastic remark, if you're wondering).

This I found interesting, from a Feb. 17 Reuters story:

"'Every Muslim feels hurt by these drawings,' the Danish imam Niamatullah Basharat said at the small Nusrat Djahan mosque on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

"'But Denmark has talked more about Islam in the last few weeks than it has in the last 10 years, so I hope it will do some good.' ...

"'In the middle of the chaos I still think it will become a positive thing. Danes and Muslims are out now talking, telling each other things that could have been said years ago,' said Fathi El-Abed of the Danish Palestinian Friendship Association.

"Naser Khader, a Muslim member of parliament and founder of the new pro-dialogue Democratic Muslim Network, believes that 'in three to five years we will look back at this matter also and see that it has been a positive step in integration'."

In a Feb. 8 BBC story, here’s a related quote:

"’I didn't know there were so many Muslims in Denmark who are supporting Western values,’ said Soren Espersen, an MP for the populist Danish People's Party."

So honestly talking -- even though it was triggered by an offensive series of cartoons, even though it might have been ugly and confrontational at times -- might actually lead to healthier relations over time?

Appears to be somewhat counter to Mr. Wright's thesis, but draw your own conclusion.