WHY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES IN THE WEST SHOULD STOP THE CARTOONS

...by drawing these cartoons, you are no doubt exercising your rights and freedom of expression which is a good thing. But today, people of all religions, societies and cultures are, unfortunately,  not on the same page in  their understanding of the motive behind  the drawings or the spirit in which it’s done.

The cartoons are leading to a lot of violence across the world and affecting the law and order situation. Innocent Christians and other non-muslims who had nothing to do with the cartoon publications are being killed in places which are no way connected to cartoons published in Paris.

One has to understand the differences between the mentality of people of developed countries and people of the countries where the people are reacting with violence to the cartoons. I expect the people in the developed countries like France to understand the people in the countries where the violence is prevailing; I have little or no expectations from the people of say Niger and Pakistan(and India and several other countries which are underdeveloped) about understanding the harmlessness of the cartoons.

To understand why I expect people in France to stop the publications, read the table below(I got the stuff from internet such as Wikipedia and other pages)

FRANCE	DENMARK	NIGER	PAKISTAN
Average literacy 99%	99%	28.7%	55%
Average IQ          98	98	69	84
Average income per month  is        3241.00$	3826.00$ per month	Less than 300.00US$ per year	255.00$ per month

Niger is a developing country, and is consistently one of the lowest-ranked in the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI); it was ranked last at 187th for 2013.

With this sort of a low average IQ, majority of the people in the under developed countries would have concrete thinking and not abstract thinking like the people with higher IQs, higher levels of literacy & greater exposure to a range of learning experiences.

For people to enjoy the cartoons and not take offence, to get the humor without suspecting that the Prophet is being ridiculed, it is vital that they have the following:

1.Abstract thinking and ability to see humour

2.To have grown up from childhood in a liberal culture  

3.To believe that God will not take offense if you draw cartoons of him(Not worry about Blasphemy)

4.To have all basic needs met i.e. one is not hungry, has a roof over one's head,  job, clothes, sense of safety, security about the future, good health, affordable & accessible health care, etc.

However the people in underdeveloped countries have none of the above.
The people who are reacting violently to the cartoons are from severely deprived backgrounds: they have very concrete thinking due to poor IQ, deprivation where learning is concerned,  punitive parents and teachers who governed them with violence since childhood and they grew believing that violence is the right way to express(instead of debates and discussions). They live in poverty and such miserable conditions that they literally have “nothing to lose”.  They have little or no food, clothes, little or no security in terms of jobs, food, shelter, safety, respect, etc. The people cannot bank on their governments to protect or provide for them adequately as the governments are either corrupt or inept .

The one single thing which keeps them going is their faith in God and when cartoons are made of their God, they are unable to see the benign humor behind the cartoons. They probably think the people in the west i.e. developed countries are mocking them and looking down on them and their Gods. They are used to the disrespect meted out to them by people in their day to day life. But when they see or hear of cartoons about their God, it is like, the west is disrespecting the one positive thing in their poverty stricken lives, God. And they react with fury by lashing out at the innocent people they can get their hands on, their poor Christina neighbors.

 

By defying the killing of the journalists by drawing more cartoons, the French are making a point about their refusal to be cowed down. But they also ought to think about the fact that you cannot change people’s thinking by doing the same thing over and over again. It is necessary to change the factors in the lives of these people who are reacting violently …..if these people (in Niger and Pakistan and all the countries) reacting violently to the cartoons had food, clothing, shelter, jobs, security, self-esteem, self-respect, education, a safe and fruitful future for their kids,  they would NOT  be reacting to the cartoons.

They would not indulge in violence as they would have so much to lose, if the violence damaged them. With the poverty they are living in now, they have really nothing to lose. They vent their pent up anger about their miserable lives by blindly burning the churches around them and attacking anyone they can.

Cartoons of Gods make sense  in the context of a literate, intelligent, well fed, secure society ; cartoons in the context of poor struggling societies is nothing but the mean act of rubbing salt into wounds.