On the heels of the first deaths involved in the protests over the Danish cartoons, assuming the shooting of a Turkish Priest was not part of the protests and was just one huge coincidence, Der Spiegel interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali is a Dutch MP who wrote the film ‘Submission’ which was critical of women’s role in Islam. The film was directed by Theo Van Gogh who was found on a Dutch street with a knife protruding from his chest holding a note that read there would be more such killings for those that criticize Islam.There are many parts of Ali’s interview that are interesting to note, but perhaps her take on the cartoon row is the most interesting. A brief excerpt:

SPIEGEL: Why have the protests escalated to such an extent?

Hirsi Ali: There is no freedom of speech in those Arab countries where the demonstrations and public outrage are being staged. The reason many people flee to Europe from these places is precisely because they have criticized religion, the political establishment and society. Totalitarian Islamic regimes are in a deep crisis. Globalization means that they’re exposed to considerable change, and they also fear the reformist forces developing among émigrés in the West. They’ll use threatening gestures against the West, and the success they achieve with their threats, to intimidate these people.

While there have been a good number of regular Muslims protesting the cartoons, one cannot discount the role of Abu Laden and groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir in the violent outrage. It was, after all, Abu Laden who headed up the visit to draw sympathy in the Middle East using cartoons which were never published in the first place (a case in which hopefully The Daily Telegraph continues to explore) that are far more offensive than the dozen that appeared in Jyllands-Posten five months ago.

Jyllands-Posten Editor in Chief Carsten Juste said he decided to run the cartoons in September 2005 in order to address “an article of self-censorship which rules large parts of the Western world.” This “article of self-censorship” was the fear of criticizing Islam. In this context, there are only very few who know what can be the result of such criticism more than Ali.

SPIEGEL: Was apologizing for the cartoons the wrong thing to do

Hirsi Ali: Once again, the West pursued the principle of turning first one cheek, then the other. In fact, it’s already a tradition. In 1980, privately owned British broadcaster ITV aired a documentary about the stoning of a Saudi Arabian princess who had allegedly committed adultery. The government in Riyadh intervened and the British government issued an apology. We saw the same kowtowing response in 1987 when (Dutch comedian) Rudi Carrell derided (Iranian revolutionary leader) Ayatollah Khomeini in a comedy skit (that was aired on German television). In 2000, a play about the youngest wife of the Prophet Mohammed, titled “Aisha,” was cancelled before it ever opened in Rotterdam. Then there was the van Gogh murder and now the cartoons. We are constantly apologizing, and we don’t notice how much abuse we’re taking. Meanwhile, the other side doesn’t give an inch.

Using this model, Lebanon has given an inch. Lebanon has apologized to Denmark for the burning of the Danish embassy in Beruit. That inch is likely the only inch to be given.Protests are continuing from England to Malaysia. Another editor quit after the publishing of the cartoons, this time from the Malaysian newspaper Sarawak Tribune. Two Jordanian editors were arrested after they tried to put the cartoons in what I believe is the proper context and the editor of France Soir was fired last week.

One of the original hotspots for violence in relation to the cartoons was in Gaza. Protests are still happening in front of the EU office in Gaza, the same office that was stormed last week by gunmen. All of this over some stupid cartoons, or at least that is how much of the world views the protests and the violent aftermaths.

Why though are some Muslims viewing this differently? It is true depictions of Mohammed are considered blasphemous in the Muslim faith, though that hasn’t stopped Iranians from selling paintings of Mohammed before, and many Muslims are seeing this as an affront to their religion. The sacredness of religion cannot be discounted, but this is hardly a level playing field.

SPIEGEL: But Muslims, like any religious community, should also be able to protect themselves against slander and insult.

Hirsi Ali: That’s exactly the reflex I was just talking about: offering the other cheek. Not a day passes, in Europe and elsewhere, when radical imams aren’t preaching hatred in their mosques. They call Jews and Christians inferior, and we say they’re just exercising their freedom of speech. When will the Europeans realize that the Islamists don’t allow their critics the same right? After the West prostrates itself, they’ll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.

Even some of the more reasoned comments to one of my posts on this subject interject this feeling of superiority of Islam over other religions. It is that feeling of superiority that screams out with irony that the original case of the Danish cartoons was brought to the Middle East under the pretext that Danes felt superior to Arab Muslims.

Perhaps this feeling of superiority is the main difference between many Muslims in the Middle East and most of us in the West. The majority of Westerners do not view any religion as superior to the next, to each their own as I quite often say, but there is certainly a feeling of superiority among many Muslims that their religion is the only religion which should be practiced. Never questioning the fact that the four largest religions all worship the same divine power, nor that that the three Abrahamic religions are based upon the exact same religious contexts adapted and same basic moral principles, to many Muslims it is only Islam which should be practiced. It is a striking rebuke to what many of us have grown accustomed to.

I find it difficult to criticize those who are just protesting the cartoons peacefully exercising what I feel is a human right of freedom of speech and freedom of expression even though they are protesting something which I feel falls into the same category, but to discount the connections the furor of the protests to radical Islamic clerics and groups all the while “offering the other cheek” to the preachings that seemingly reverberate out of the Middle East and throughout Europe is not looking at this situation through and through.

Richard at Hyscience has a very good roundup of all things Danish . . . cartoons that is that occured today and over the weekend.

For a timeline of the events surrounding the Danish cartoon row, check out The London Times. Read the full Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview. Ali is a Muslim born in Sudan. She moved to the Netherlands after she was ‘forced’ into a marriage by her parents. Since her move, she has been sharply critical of Islam and has been forced to live under threat of her life for her criticisms.