"Being offended is part of living in a free society."

Excerpts from "Drawing Ire", via Boulder Weekly:

Flemming Rose is known... as the culture editor who commissioned the controversial Mohammed cartoons. Published in Denmark's largest newspaper, Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, the cartoons launched global debate that continues today.

...BW: I'm a card carrying left-wing nut cake, but I was surprised when I originally wrote about the cartoons to find that almost no one on the left wanted to comment. Why, in your opinion, are the issues surrounding the publication of these cartoons such an uncomfortable topic for the left? Few on the left want to talk about this.

FR: I think the left has betrayed its own ideals in this case, because the publication of the cartoons is exactly about what the left has been fighting for in the past 150 years—free speech and the right to challenge religious authority and to challenge a religion that, in fact, favors the oppression of women. [Muslim extremists] do not accept the equality between the sexes. They do not accept equality from representatives of different religions. They specifically say, "Our religion is better and should have favorable treatment compared to other faiths."

But I think it has to do with the fact that the left—at least in Europe, I can't speak about the left in the United States—views the Muslims as the new proletariat. They're the new oppressed minority that they have to defend. It shortcuts all rational thinking. [Islamic radicals] can say and do almost anything, and it will be explained away by saying, "These people are victims."

...By publishing the cartoons, by making satirical cartoons of the prophet, we were saying to the Muslims that we do not treat you differently. We treat you as we treat every other minority, every other group in Denmark. And we are not asking any more or less of you than we do any other group, but are asking exactly the same thing.

We make fun of Jesus Christ, and we make fun of Hindus and Buddhists and the [Danish] royal family and politicians. When you're saying, "No, you should be careful. You should treat them differently," this is, in fact, very humiliating, because you are saying, "You are so weak. You are so different that we have to treat you like small children and not grown ups who have to think and be responsible people."

...I think tolerance is the key concept for democracy. I may not like your point of view, but I have to tolerate it as long as it is being expressed within the limits of the law. But respect implies some kind of positive recognition, and that is not very important. Nobody can ask me to respect the point of view of [Ahmed] Abu Laban, the radical imam in Copenhagen, but I have to tolerate him, as long as what he's saying is within the limits of the law. And so this notion of respect—it's the way you talk in the Mafia. "You respect me! I want your respect, or I'll kill you!"