When it comes to speaking and writing on unpleasant matters, I learned a long time ago to stop apologizing. It is a waste of my breath, time, and energy to precede every political discussion with “I’m not saying all [X] are [Y].” Or: “Of course, I don’t hate all [Z] and please don’t misunderstand me, blah, blah, blah.”

Liberal guilt is a defect I don’t suffer. And, in these times, none us can afford.

Because of this unwillingness to preface my arguments with Kleenex-wetting clauses, I am invariably accused of being motivated first and solely by hatred, bigotry, racism, sexism, whatever-ism–whether the topic is the mechanics of immigration enforcement or national security profiling or the spread of radical Islam.

This hysterical reaction in the Toronto Star to the Muhammad Cartoons Blogburst is a shining example of what I’m talking about:

Hate behind right-wing blogburst
No need to publish offensive cartoons
Feb. 7, 2006. 01:00 AM
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS

Well that didn’t take long.

While Muslim religious extremists are rioting in the streets of Beirut, Gaza City and Kabul, Scandinavian embassies are being torched and Jordanians are deprived of their Danish feta over cartoons that were never actually published in any legitimate newspaper, the right-wing blogosphere has been staging its own “blogburst”: the act of reproducing the offending depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

It’s a “simultaneous, co-ordinated posting by a large group of webmasters and bloggers on a given topic,” says Israpundit who, along with Michelle Malkin, who is like Ann Coulter but not as funny and not so skinny, are leading the cartoon crusade. [MM: Ignoring the catty ad hominem attack, this paragraph shows you the kindergarten reading comprehension of the writer. Israpundit had nothing to do with the cartoon blogburst. I simply linked to an old post of his for the definition of "blogburst." Duh.]

Follow their politics and you’ll understand why they’re on this particular blogwagon: they hate Muslims. In fact, if they were to write about Jews the way they sometimes do about followers of the Prophet Muhammad, they’d be denounced as anti-Semites or Holocaust deniers.

So it isn’t surprising that some of their more eager acolytes have gone far beyond denigrating the fanatical rioting, which has, at deadline, claimed six lives and left hundreds of wounded.

No doubt, the Kartoon Karnage Kapers are inexcusable, and threaten to escalate into even more senseless death and destruction. That’s why the absolute glee with which this has been received by the online cons strikes me as so puzzling. Do they enjoy the blood sport of watching out-of-control Muslim mobs in the streets?

You show me one ounce of glee expressed on this website over the conflagration, and I’ll show you one ounce of genuine, unqualifed concern expressed by Ms. Zerbisias over the senseless Cartoon Jihad bloodshed of victims such as Father Santoro.

Yeah, there isn’t any.

I’ve no more time to waste on Zerbisias and her ilk in the media who want to lecture us all about being hate-filled and misinformed–while spewing hatred themselves and refusing to fully inform. Glenn Reynolds and readers dispense with her most effectively here.

I’m still wading through all the e-mails and will add and update the Muhammad Cartoons Blogburst later tonight. Feel free to join.

***

Iraqi Muslim blogger Omar at IraqtheModel weighs in:

You know that those cartoons were published for the 1st time months ago and we here in the Middle East have tonnes of jokes about Allah, the prophets and the angels that are way more offensive, funny and obscene than those poorly-made cartoons, yet no one ever got shot for telling one of those jokes or at least we had never seen rallies and protests against those infidel joke-tellers.

What I want to say is that I think the reactions were planned to be exaggerated this time by some Middle Eastern regimes and are not mere public reaction.
And I think Syria and Iran have the motives to trigger such reactions in order to get away from the pressures applied by the international community on those regimes.

However, I cannot claim that Muslim community is innocent for there have been outrageous reactions outside the range of Syria’s or Iran’s influence but again, these protests and threats are more political than religious in nature.

One last thing, even if the entire EU apologizes it won’t change a thing; fanatics in our countries here had always considered the west their infidel arrogant crusader enemy and no apology no matter how big or sincere can change that.

Iraqi Muslim blogger Zeyda at Healing Iraq:

I only saw these images of Muslim protestors in London today. For the life of me, I cannot understand how the British police let those demonstrators get away with it. The protestors are blasting free speech in Europe, yet they are using that same free speech to call for murder and bloodshed. I would strongly support deporting those people back to the miserable societies they originally came from.

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