Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Denmark: The REAL deal

I've been railing on about how ridiculous I think the whole controversy surrounding the cartoons in a Danish newspaper that allegedly depicted the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist and got people up in arms in protest of supposed sacrilege. One of the reasons I am particularly incensed at the whole controversy is the character assassination of a country I've been in love with since 1995.

Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said his country is being unfairly portrayed as being an "intolerant, closed society" and he's dead on. The Danes are about as open and accepting a people as any in the world. They certainly are aces better than many in the United States on certain issues. This is a country in which Rebilt National Park holds the world's only Independence Day celebrations not on U.S. territory. That's the American Independence Day. You read it right. If you're visiting Denmark and you're worried you'll miss the Fourth of July, don't.

He also condemned Sunday's vandalizing of Muslim graves, saying "the Danish government condemns any expression or any action which offends people's religious feelings." The truth of the matter is this: Danes have a sense of humor. They're a friendly lot. If the Danes who published the cartoons were guilty of anything, their worst offence was poor judgment.

The other thing that gets me is the propensity of many in the Muslim world to condemn the United States for what a Danish newspaper did. Of course, the people doing so would condemn the United States for coughing, but there's only so far that they can go before all Hell breaks loose.