Lee Harris describes The New Iconoclasts:
The word iconoclast, when it is used nowadays, most often refers to a person who ‘attacks established beliefs, ideals, customs, or institution,’ as Webster’s Third puts it — a definition that turns the iconoclast into a cultural rebel or a free thinker, an individual willing to buck the establishment.By this standard, the Danish cartoonist who drew the controversial caricatures of Mohammed was an iconoclast in our modern sense, and was simply doing what many cartoonists have done before him, using his gifts to poke fun at sacred cows.
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The fanatic is the man who will not allow you to poke fun at his particular sacred cow. He takes his creed so seriously that he refuses to permit anyone else to treat it as a subject for humor or levity.The topic of fanaticism, however, takes us back to the original meaning of the word iconoclasm, a Greek word that literally means the shattering or destruction of an image, either a visual image, like the icons beloved by Greek Orthodoxy, or the kind of statues that were admired by Roman Catholics. Here the iconoclast is not creating an image designed to provoke irreverence, the way a cartoonist does, but he is intent on eliminating all offensive images completely and totally.
There were two great iconoclastic movements that shook the Byzantine Empire, first in the eighth century, and later in the ninth century, both of which exhibited the same fanatic zeal in destroying the thousands of icons that adorned Byzantine churches and monasteries. Why? Because the Byzantine iconoclasts argued that what were regarded by many as beautiful artistic treasures were in fact acts of sacrilege and blasphemy. They were not to be removed from the churches and monasteries, in order to be carefully preserved in a museum, as a government of zealous atheists might do — no, they were to be destroyed root and branch.
The new iconoclasts are winning:
It has been almost half a millennium since the last outbreak of iconoclastic fanaticism in the West. Yet if you try to discover a republication of the Danish cartoons on the reputable Internet sites, you will discover that they are not being posted. CNN on line noted that they would not be showing the cartoons “out of respect for Islam.” Nor does CNN’s stance seem to be exceptional. Meanwhile, profuse apologies are being offered to the Muslim world by men who had nothing whatsoever to do with either the creation or the publication of the cartoons, and who are denouncing the cartoons for being…cartoons.In short, the new iconoclasts are winning — they are realizing that they have the power to make us suppress any image that they find disagreeable to their stern and mirthless fanaticism — even if it is just a funny cartoon in a paper published in a cold corner of Europe, far far from Mecca.
Either Muslims need to begin to get a sense of humor, or we need to became a great deal more serious.