Cartoons: Europe at a tipping point?

Today's web edition of The International Herald Tribune, a subsidiary of The New York Times published in Paris, has an unsettling story suggesting the fury over newspaper caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad is "A dangerous moment for Europe and Islam." Alan Cole of the Times reported:

As Islamic protests grew against the publication in Europe of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, a small Arab movement active in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark responded with a drawing on its Web site of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. "Write this one in your diary, Anne," Hitler was shown as saying.

The intent of the cartoon, the Arab European League said, was "to use our right to artistic expression" just as the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten did when it published a group of cartoons showing Muhammad last September. "Europe has its sacred cows, even if they're not religious sacred cows," said Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the organization, which claims rights for immigrants aggressively but without violence.

Such contrasts have produced a worrisome sense that the conflict over the cartoons has pushed both sides across an unexpected threshold, where they view each other with miscomprehension and suspicion.

"This feels to me like a defining moment," said Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford professor of European history. "It is a crunch time for Europe and Islam," he said, "it is an extremely dangerous moment," one that could lead to "a downward spiral of mutual perceptions, and not just between extremists."

Let's hope the controversy hasn't come to that, but Tuesday night there was a growing sense some kind of tipping point may soon be reached. Experts and ordinary citizens interviewed by the Herald Trib were pessimistic:

Ostensibly, said Garton Ash, the clash has pitted two sets of values against one another - freedom of expression and multiculturalism - with the latter demanded of societies in which Muslim immigrant populations, initially seen as a temporary labor force in the 1960s, have become permanent and expanding.

But beyond that, there is a seething resentment among some Muslims that they are treated as second-class citizens and potential terrorists in lands that deny the importance of their faith, even though the number of Muslims in Europe totals 20 million, and possibly many more.

"If you have black hair it is really difficult to find a job," said Muhammad Elzjahim, 22, a construction worker of Palestinian descent whose parents moved to Denmark when he was 2 and who said he studied dental engineering for three and a half years only to find that "it was for nothing because I couldn't find a job in my field."

That mistrust is mirrored by a gnawing sense among some Europeans that their plump welfare states have come to host an unwelcome minority that does not share their values and may even represent a fifth column of potential insurgents, who project themselves as the victims of Islamophobia and discrimination in housing, jobs and social status.

"The radicals don't want an agreement, they don't want the round table," said Rainer Mion, 44, an insurance agent in Berlin. "What they want is to spread their Islamic beliefs all over the world."

Given Europe's history of religious and ethnic conflict, it is all unsettling. Yet sometimes when enough people realize they're a tipping point, they sense the consequences and pull back.

And we can hope the memories evoked by pictures of Anne Frank and Hitler, ironically enough, might have that effect.

"We must de-escalate the situation," said Ayyub Axel Koehler, a converted Muslim who heads the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. "It might be easier to do that in Germany than in other countries. This is an experience we've had in Germany before, so we understand the dangers."