I have to say at the outset that I dislike most editorial cartoons. And also that I read them.

The reason I dislike them is because they inject a point of view into the reader's consciousness without supporting argumentation. They're not really editorial comment; they're propaganda. But like almost everyone else, it's the second page I turn to, in any newspaper.

Now the international furor over Danish cartoons purporting to portray Islam's prophet, Muhammad, has exposed several ugly realities.

While Islamic states prohibit or discourage the practice of other faiths—in Saudi Arabia, for example, adherents of other religions cannot even pray to their own gods in the privacy of their homes; and in many other Islamic states, non-Muslims are officially dhimmi, or second-class citizens, subject to extra taxes and/or deprivation of civil rights, and/or random violence .

In the recent "cartoon wars", radical Muslims in the Middle East have made a calculated move to enforce their religious dogma in non-Muslim nations. And that's unacceptable.

The cartoons in question were published five months ago in Denmark—and in an Egyptian newspaper soon after, without any reaction at all. But radical Muslim organizations have carefully cultivated the phony "spontaneous" outrage of the Muslim street, even though most of the people rampaging and burning businesses and embassies have never seen the cartoons.

The drawings, which have been accessible on-line for some time, are actually bland, and not even funny. One Middle East newspaper faked some truly offensive cartoons to pour gasoline on the flames—but those two cartoons weren't part of the original series being protested.

It's quite clear that these protests have been deliberately inflamed, probably for political rather than religious reasons. After all, no one firebombed the Egyptian newspaper that printed the cartoons last year.

After the mass-murder terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, many Muslim spokesmen rightly urged the West not to condemn all Muslims for the actions of a few. But that standard went out the window when one Danish newspaper published the Muhammad cartoons: Iran, for one, talked of cutting off all trade with Denmark—thus punishing all Danes for the satirical sketches of a few.

It's very clear that a double standard is at play where those nations are concerned.

So when the Western Standard recently published the cartoons—ostensibly as a legitimate part of the story, to illustrate what all the fuss was about, according to publisher Ezra Levant—my first reaction was that the feisty Calgary magazine had shown up the pusillanimous mainstream Canadian media. After all, respect for the dignity of other religions is one thing; allowing them to export and enforce their dogma to our nations through violence and terror is quite another.

But Vicki Gunn, who holds the National Revenue portfolio in the CHP's shadow cabinet, has pointed out that printing the cartoons in a Canadian publication could put Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq at greater risk.

I'd like to hear from Canadians—especially from Canadian military personnel serving in the Middle East: is the principle of press freedom worth additional risk for those who are already in harm's way? Is it just shameless self-promotion? Or is the risk the necessary price of standing up to bullies?

Please send your comments to: leader@chp.ca