Defense of Danish Cartoons Intolerant Of Muslims

To the editors:



If the “wonks of the academic left” choose to answer Travis Kavulla’s call for a seminar on the Danish cartoons (“Silences That Speak Volumes,” column, Feb. 13), I only hope he will be sitting in the first row. Kavulla obviously fancies himself a bastion of enlightened thinking, but his banal analysis strays far from Voltaire and merely highlights his inherent racism.

Tolerance is obviously absent in Kavulla’s vision of world affairs which is why he fails to understand the severity of these images for Muslims across the globe. As he correctly states, the offensive images did not warrant firebombing and violent protest, but neither has their publication encouraged intelligent debate, perhaps the only worthy justification for such an intentional act of offense.



BEN A. MORETON

Cambridge, Mass.

February 15, 2006