Customer Reviews

The Cartoons That Shook the World

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

One might think that a book titled "The Cartoons that Shook the World,"
especially a scholarly one published by an academic press, would contain
reproductions of the cartoons that are the subject of the entire book.
In fact, the original manuscript did, but the cartoons were removed
by the publisher, Yale University Press. The publisher censored its own
book because it did not want to offend anyone. The book was thus
"bowdlerized," robbing the reader of the most interesting and relevant parts.
The banned cartoons apparently can be found in a new book titled
"Muhammad: The Banned Images" by Gary Hull. Amazon deserves credit for
selling "The Banned Images" and for having more spine than
Yale University Press.

Unbelievably, for a book about the Mohammed cartoons controversy, this book doesn't reproduce the cartoons themselves. But that's not because of copyright reasons: that's because of cowardice on the part of Yale University Press.

Boy, we sure are learning a lot about the First Amendment these days, mainly that it only protects us from the government, not our own cowardice.

Bruce Bawer is right: "If the West is saved from jihad, it will be largely a result of the uninhibited nature of free speech on the Internet."

You can count Yale out of the fight.

America, welcome to your new First Amendment: freedom of speech, as long as it's okay with the Muslims.

The entire point of the book, I would have thought, is to show us the 'offensive cartoons' and thereby allow readers to understand the controversy. How can this be done without the cartoons? (Actually, they were there originally, by the publisher didn't want the controversy. So much for academic freedom, 'Freedom of the Press,' and facing the truth.)

The fact that the cartoons were censored is asinine, i hope they never sell another copy
One star because it wasnt the authors fault and the books uncensored content is very important

If Yale was selling cowardice, they could resolve the national debt.

How can you put together a book on cartoons that shook the world and NOT include the cartoons?? I refer specifically to the Danish cartoons that Islamofascists used as a pretext for trying to murder cartoonists. Apparently the ROP (Religion of Peace) has a very short fuse when it comes to depictions of terrorism - so naturally when you see a cartoon of Mohammad with a sizzling bomb as a turban, you prove you are the true ROP by murdering people.

Yeah, that works. For Yale Press, at any rate.

Yale Press, embracing its dhimmitude stature, actually tried to explain why they were too cowardly to do so.

So why publish the book at all?

Maybe Yale is trying to show us how the future will be navigated for those of the Yellow Stripe on the back and the yellow stain on the pant leg. That might work for them, but I'd love for some other publisher - maybe one that has men of character, courage, and cajones - to do the job and publish the cartoons as they were printed.

Yale Press should simply fold and sell prayer rugs like good dhimmis, and stop pretending they have anything to do with free, scholarly inquiry.

What an absurd farce!

The controversy of the Danish cartoons has been an unusual and fascinating one, but its premise lies at the heart of Western civilization: the problem of how the West perceives Islam, and how members of the faith feel compelled to defend their religion.

Klausen's book is thorough, thoughtful, and well worth the read. It manages to overcome the extraordinary barrier of having to speak about illustrations not reproduced in the text.

Jytte Klausen specifically published her book through the Yale University Press because they, of all the publishers interested in her book, were the only ones willing to reproduce the cartoons. It is neither her fault nor that of the Press that the cartoons were removed; the decision was made by Yale University itself, which has rarely if ever made such an aggressive editorial intervention.

To merely debate the matter does not advance knowledge. Instead, the book should be read in whole; its argument is worth the attention of the YUP critics. Yale's censorship is a travesty, yes, but the book is important enough that even its most vocal critics would be remiss not to read it.

While the written content is interesting, overall this book falls short for one obvious reason: It does not contain the cartoons that are the subject of the book. It was like reading Moby Dick, but because of political correctness and/or sheer cowardice, all of the whale hunting passages were edited out. If you happen to see this book at your local library, leaf through it if you have nothing better to do, but don't buy it.

What cartoons are you talking about? Oh, too afraid to put them in your book? Then write about something else---maybe a book about Snoopy.

A very informative book, diminished only by the omission of images of the Danish cartoons which caused the uproar.

In a free society, someone is always offended by political cartoons, but we don't stop the cartooning. The furor in the Middle East was created, intentionally by Imams in Europe, who added cartoons depicting people as pigs, which related to a French Festival, wholely unconnected with the Danish cartoons. Unfortunately, the Muslims in the Middle East did not know this, and exploded into violence. In Islam, to criticize is to blaspheam. We, in the West should not allow ourselves to be intimidated into compliance with Islamic beliefs.

It is difficult nowadays to get an objective, nuanced opinion on Islam, neither flattering nor biased against it. If I were to recommend a way to try and achieve that, I would suggest reading several good books on the matter, including this among them, for in my opinion in my opinion Jytte Klausen is as impartial as humanly possible.

The synopsis of the book provided by the "Product Description" is fairly accurate. Therefore, I will only point out that, pursuant to the author, her first objective became to unravel the sequence of events that produced the escalation of conflict. A conflict which -she states- did not pit an uncompromising western appreciation for free speech against a pious Muslim proclivity for censorship ("Westerners" guard their tongue in religious matters, and many Muslims believe in free speech). What was at stake was not what Islam forbids but what the West allows, an argument about the entitlements Muslims have in liberal democracies. The Muslim point was not that the Danes could not make pictures of the Prophet but that the pictures said inflammatory things about Muslims. As Roger Scruton (British philosopher) put it, "If we mock the religious taboos of Muslims we pour scorn on the icons of Christianity...The conditions of the public discussion that we need is respect...That means that we must respect the icons of the Muslim faith, even if we think them ridiculous, indeed specially if we think them ridiculous. The cartoons that have precipitated the current crisis were worse than a mistake: they were an act of sacrilege, like trampling on the crucifix of spitting on the Torah. This is not a contribution to free speech but an obstacle to it".

There is one point in which everybody agrees. None of the protagonists think they won.

All that is developed in 219 pages (footnotes included). Although the subject is very interesting, because of the author's style, the book, without being dry, is often not engaging (perhaps that is the price to be paid in order to achieve such a high level of rational analysis). So my rate is between 5 (content) and 3 (pleasure).

Other interesting books dealing with Islam and the West that I would recommend would be the following: a) "Muslims in the West: Redefining the Separation of Church & State" by Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh; b) "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think" by John L. Esposito & Dalia Mogahed; c) "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; d) "Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes" by Tamim Ansary; and e) "The West and Islam Religion and Political Thought in World History" by Antony Black.