The ‘Cleverest’ Cartoons

rselves. The whole point of the exercise, supposedly, is to confront us in the West with our hypocrisy as we express outrage over these cartoons: see? – now you know how we feel when you draw pictures of Mohammed. [Pictures of Jesus – the obvious equivalent – might somehow fail to produce the necessary outrage, in a culture where desecration of Christian symbols has been a staple of avant-garde art for decades.] To be outraged, though, we need to see them, so I trust that the Iranian House of Cartoons will make them available. Then the Western press, who notably failed to distinguish themselves over the Danish cartoons, could – should – publish them as widely as possible. Of course there’d be protests from Jewish organisations, but the point would be made. No riots, no bombings. And people could see for themselves the level of anti-semitic hatred around at the moment. It could turn into a major Iranian own-goal.