Cartoon Inquisition

Islamic demonstrations sweep across Europe

European Muslims seem to have used this past weekend to add their voices to the general roar of indignation that has risen across Islamic states, which have reached the news of the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. In order not to look like white crows against the backdrop of violent co-religionists from the Middle East and Central Asia, who have been happily engaged in burning the flags of Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United States and pogroms of diplomatic missions for a week now, Europeanized Muslims came out after the traditional Friday prayer to demonstrate with thousands of people.

True, the years spent in the “depraved” countries of the European Union nevertheless had a positive impact on the behavior of the participants in the protests - there was a lot of shouting and flags were burning, but it did not come to outright pogroms. In Maastricht, the Netherlands, a crowd of young Muslims, who at times seemed quite aggressive, was controlled with just 40 police officers. Thousands of people held protests in Germany and Austria without incident. In the capital of France, where about 3 thousand people came to a demonstration organized by Muslim associations of the Parisian region of Ile-de-France, it seemed that the followers of the insulted prophet were ready for dialogue - in any case, the main slogan of the action was quite constructive: “ Respect for religions and freedom of speech without controversy.”

However, even the concessions of politically correct Europeans, sending resignations and unpaid leave to newspaper editors who published scandalous cartoons, and apologizing for the liberties of the press, cannot yet stop the wave of hatred that Muslims are splashing out today on non-believers. In European countries, where Muslim diasporas make up a significant part of the population, as in Russia, which considers Islam an integral part of its historical heritage and cultural layer, today there are debates about the need to draw the right lessons from the events that shook half the world in just a few days.