Muslim Rage

By Salim Mansur.  Mr. Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario and a syndicated columnist in Canada and the United Kingdom . A Muslim native to Calcutta , India , and a noted Islamic scholar, Prof. Mansur has written extensively on Islamic extremism and the challenges facing contemporary Islam.

The furor in the winter of 2006 over cartoon drawings of Muhammad that appeared in Denmark was a repeat of the fury unleashed by Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses first published in 1988. 

Now, as then, Muslims, or a great many of them worldwide, expressed outrage over the irreverent drawings of the prophet of Islam published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, as they did with the fictional depiction of the prophet in Rushdie’s novel. 

Now, as then, Muslim outrage was part spontaneous and part organized, and in varying measures seized upon by religious leaders, dictators, political opportunists, demagogues and rascals of all stripes, turned into a witch’s brew and released into public space to go rampaging as demonstration of Muslim rage against those who profane what Muslims revere as sacred.

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