muhammad cartoon controversy

i'm exhausted and my head hurts, so my preemptive apologies if this periodically gets incoherent.

i'm only going to address the most pressing issue tonight due to the above.

achrafiyeh is about 3km from aub. in the early afternoon yesterday, thousands of people -- who were not necessarily all lebanese -- assembled near the danish embassy here to protest a danish newspaper's printing of cartoons of muhammad. the cartoons have inspired such fury in the middle east for two reasons:
1. islam forbids depicting muhammad because of the religion's very intense ban of anything even vaguely resembling idolatry, for example, iconism. there have, however, been portrayals of the prophet in the past that have not provoked such vehement and violent responses, thus this recent anger has been attributed to
2. the implication in the cartoon that all muslims are terrorists, which is obviously a sensitive subject nowadays. this is entirely logical taken out of context: the cartoon shows muhammad with a bomb in his turban, welcoming terrorists into heaven.
in context, though, the story is a little more reasonable. a danish writer, kare buitgen, had difficulties finding someone willing to illustrate his book on muhammad due to artists' fear of retaliation by islamic militants. in response, the editor of denmark's jyllands-posten commissioned cartoonists to draw satirical pictures to accompany an article on self-censorship and freedom of speech. essentially, there were no bad intentions here, but the editor showed poor judgment and taste, though nothing that would nearly merit the violence that the cartoons precipitated.

protestors here burnt down the danish consulate, damaged a nearby church, and clashed with the lebanese police and army who were trying to control the situation. the danish government has advised that all danes leave lebanon.

the rioting was over by the end of the afternoon and most people seemed to move on with their lives, believing that this was an unfortunate occurrence, but not one that would persist past yesterday. in the back of their minds, though, most people i spoke with were making a conscious effort to suppress fears that the day's events would be taken as an attack on christians and would then provoke christian retaliation and perhaps lead to another war. the extent to which the civil war scorched the soul of this country is profound. in its remains are bullet-ridden walls, decrepit buildings, and a paranoia that will surely take generations to subside.

my danish friend who arrived on the same flight as me is still here and nothing was different today except that i didn't go to dinner in achrafiyeh like as i otherwise might have.

beirut reminds me of a runner who smokes 2 packs each day and has to slow down a bit to cough up blood during a race, but still finishes lengths ahead of the competition without breaking a sweat.