Winning hearts and minds

It's the IRA's fault, you see, for ending the war in the North. British soldiers used to get such good experience in policing civil disorder and winning hearts 'n' minds, but now that the army lacks its local training ground for discipline and stoicism under intolerable stone-throwing, all hell has broken loose.

 Most of the British press don't quite see it that way, and have launched a hunt for the Bad Apples of Basra. Page 1 of Monday's London Times reported, with no evident irony, that "there had been no complaint to the authorities from any of the assaulted Iraqis", but the Royal Military Police were "trying to trace them".

Inside, the paper's pundits were helpfully explaining why indiscipline might have occurred uniquely in 2004, and reporter Anthony Loyd in Baghdad, while worried about "eroding credibility", seemed to think the Iraqis were being a bit jumpy. His report began: "Although the footage may be nearly two years old, the reaction of Iraqis ... was one of immediate outrage." Clearly the Iraqis should wait another two years before they comment.

Already some media are trying to turn the footage of soldiers battering children into a mark of "our free society", where these things are exposed and investigated. But there's no doubt that the story has somewhat softened the cough of Western Islamophobes, who thanks to the cartoon row had managed to convince even the Irish Times leader-writer that we're caught in a "clash of civilisations" with rabid clerics.

Problems and solutions

Leaving aside rare acts of terror, the problem with Islam in the Western world is that some of its representatives take grave offence at the expression of our freedoms, making people uncomfortable and sometimes fearful. The problem with the West in the Islamic world is that some of its representatives drop bombs on cities, towns and villages, occupy and plunder countries and inflict brutality at will, making people humiliated, injured and dead.

Lest there be any doubt, Meejit can't abide Islamic fundamentalism: check the Irish Times archive (if you're bothered and can afford it) and you'll find me lamenting its baleful influence even before 9/11. In the Village archive (you've got a shelf for that) is my wholehearted rejection of the "right" not to be offended.

But this column understands why some Muslims might get confused when they read, say, the British media. On the opinion pages they're lectured about how our values can tolerate no limits on freedom of expression, and on the news pages the British authorities are being denounced for not locking up Abu Hamza sooner to stop him shooting his mouth off.

Pundit Gary Younge usefully surveys the European free-speech scene for US readers in the Nation: "David Irving sits in jail in Austria charged with Holocaust denial over a speech he made 17 years ago, Islamist cleric Abu Hamza has been convicted in London for incitement to murder and racial hatred and Louis Farrakhan remains banned from Britain."

The Bloomsbury set

Meejit, happily, is not banned from Britain, and has just spent a couple of days in London. A quick tour of Bloomsbury is recommended for reflection on recent controversies.

Cartoons, anyone? An exhibition at the Political Cartoon Gallery, Misunderestimating the President through Cartoons, shows that while British cartoonists are savage about George Bush – Steve Bell shows him, say, fornicating with a camel – Americans are prone to lightweight jokes and lighter caricature. Their "freedom" is practically curtailed by the limits of US political respectability and unwillingness to cause offence, of all things.

Around the corner from that gallery is the British Museum, which has a permanent exhibition on the "Age of Enlightenment", centering on the intellectual advances of the 18th century. There, and indeed almost everywhere else in that great museum, it is clear that the most fundamental "right" of the enlightened gentleman was to steal the cultural treasures of other peoples, notably – though far from exclusively – in the Middle East. A certain abiding aversion there to the wonders of our rationality is not surprising.