Digging their own graves

You know how sometimes a person will overreact to something, and it seems like a completely expected reaction to that person, but not to anyone else? For example, once I and a few other people were late to holiday dinner (and I am working on my tardiness, seriously) - and the hostess lost it and shut down for the rest of the night. Oh, and she also stopped talking to me and cut off all ties. She obviously feels that it was a valid reaction, and while I don't discount her feelings, think it was a bit over the top.

This is how I feel about the violent protests in the Middle East and other Islamic countries over the recent Danish cartoon depicting the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. Sure, I get that it's an affront to Islam and that it's offensive on a deep level to Muslims because a) it's an artistic rendering of the prophet Mohammed, which is apparently not OK in Islam and b) it's Mohammed with a bomb.

But I wonder what the people protesting are truly mad about. Are they upset that a picture was drawn of Mohammed? Are they mad that a Western cartoonist seems to be mocking Islam? Or are they mad that there's a grain of truth in that cartoon that stirs feelings of shame and guilt (that then get translated into anger and riots)?

From what little history I can recall, violent protests have never really accomplished anything positive. The most successful movements have been peaceful: Gandhi and India's movement for independence, MLK Jr., Rosa Parks, et al. and the civil rights movement, women's suffrage, etc. Unless you're willing to wage all-out war (a la the American Revolution, Chinese Cultural Revolution), violence doesn't seem all that smart.

The dilemma for developing Middle Eastern and Islamic nations is that they have to find a way to develop while making a case for them to govern using Islamic law. Right now, all I see from that region of the world is violence, for example, over a cartoon.

In Speilberg's recent movie, Munich, the protagonist Avner by a strange twist of fate comes face to face with a group of Palestinian terrorists in the same safe house. Avner ends up talking to the leader of the Palestinian group about why the Palestinians use terrorism to advance their cause, to which the Palestinian explains that it's the only way they have to make the world take notice and pay attention to the plight of the Palestinian people.

Ultimately, I think this is a doomed approach. The very people you are trying to get the attention of see only death and destruction in the name of your religion and its God. They see seemingly soulless men and women who justify suicide bombings with false notions of martyrdom. They see the murder of thousands of innocent people around the world to avenge the deaths of allegedly innocent Muslims. None of this makes sense in a civilized sense. You don't get people to sympathize with you by killing their family, friends, countrymen. At best, they fear you. At worst, they turn against you and want to eradicate you and your religion off the face of the planet. It seems that the sentiment is somewhere between ambivalent and the worse option.

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that with each suicide bomb and terrorist attack that occurs, I have less and less sympathy for the very people and causes those attacks are meant to champion.