The New Yorker Magazine in the US has published an edition with a caricature of Senator Barack Husein Obama - US Democratic Presidential candidate - as a Muslim while he is at the Oval office, dressed in Muslim attire and looking at his wife who has a machine gun on her shoulder. Why is this not allowed in the US anymore when the Americans defended the Danish Newspaper that published the offensive anti-Islam cartoons?

The battle for slander and abuse has begun in the US on firm footing with the New Yorker magazine depicting Barack Obama as a Muslim, his wife as a gun toting terrorist and the US flag burning under a portrait of Osama Bin Laden. The cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker has inflamed the US, the country that stayed numb on the more inflammatory cartoons on Islam’s Prophet.

In a statement Monday, New Yorker editor David Remnick called the cover a "fantastical" satire that shows "obvious distortions" about the Obamas. Some blacks don't see it that way; most of America seems shocked by the cartoon.

Some black people condemned it as racist while others; white and democrats called it an attempt at disseminating false information. The main fact is the US is changing once again as it forgets that it is supposed to be the country where the freedom of the press is respected fully.

It was a time when the people in the US would rally together to claim that cartoons showing Saddam Husein and his children wearing ‘toilet paper’ on their head or the bereaved Iraqi leader’s portrait printed on toilet paper as ‘satirical’. But with Obama now the target of such satirical cartoons, the American people is offended and they want justice to be done their favorite son, Barack Husein Obama.

George Lockwood, who lectures on newspaper ethics and political caricature at Louisiana State University, said the magazine made "a damn-fool decision." In years overseeing comics at the old Milwaukee Journal, Lockwood says, he learned that "the one thing that most readers don't understand is satire. You do it at some risk," Reports USA Today.

The problem, says Elaine Miller, a former professor who gives talks on gender and race in political cartoons, is that "once you launch a work of art it belongs to the reader. The artist's intent is very interesting, but the reader owns the interpretation," adds the newspaper.

Satire is supposed to exaggerate reality, not reflect it, author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote at ta-nehisi.com. "Sadly, that picture exaggerates nothing — that's exactly what a slice of Americans believe about Barack Obama. Expect that image to be on T-shirts within two weeks," he wrote.

The Democrats and the Republicans showed their anger too. They dismissed the cartoon as an attempt to create confusion among the public. Both parties rejected the caricature of the New Yorker, refusing to accept the satire in it and blaming the US magazine for being irresponsible. It is clear that in the long run the Republicans will be using the caricature across the US to prevent Obama from being elected, the attacks against the New Yorker sound simply hypothetical. A little bit of hypocrisy will do no harm to the US is that what the Republicans will be thinking?

When the cartoon scandal was hitting the world from little Denmark, targeting the Muslims with vile cartoons showing one of the most respected human being in history as a terrorist with a bomb on his head, the US and its Democrats or Republicans were silent.

The critics who are now attacking the New Yorker’s satire were ‘satirically’ happy with the Danish cartoons against Islam and against the Prophet of Islam. They were also calling it ‘freedom of the press.’

What the fuss?

With the current situation regarding Muslims and Blacks in America, it is not surprising that Barack Obama’s opponents will use racist slurs, will call him a Muslim or will portray him as a terrorist. With that in perspective, it might be politically correct to say the New Yorker has the right to be satirical while it will be politically incorrect to the pro-Obama fans for the Magazine to portray Obama for what he is, a black man from a Muslim background - and that part is an open secret - a potential ‘terrorist’ on the list of the American Homeland Security office. Is that not true?

When the Muslims were crying foul and criticizing and even demonstrating – at times violently – to express their anger against the infamous and blatantly outrageous cartoons on the Prophet of Islam, the Americans be they democrats or republicans and from the press or otherwise, were calling the Muslims bigots.

They said Islam was intolerant, Islam was outdated and the Muslims were terrorists and emotional on top of that. They argued that for the sake of freedom of the Press, the Danish newspaper had the absolute right to portray a revered Muslim Icon as a cartoon of the vilest character. This was a campaign of character assassination not only against the Prophet but also against any single Muslims who respected themselves and respect their religion.

Yesterday the Prophet of Islam, today the Prophet of the American people! Obama is viewed as a holy figure and adored like no other Americans has been for a very long time. Portraying him as a terrorist with his wife toting gun and a portrait of Osama Bin Laden, the public enemy number 1 of the US after 911, is the right response that you can get when you failed to support the Muslims in their condemnation of the Danish cartoons.

The press is free to publish anything it deems sensational or satirical but publishing cartoons on the Prophet of Islam was way too out of the line. The western journalists hid themselves behind the sacrosanct 'freedom of the press' act of their countries, which is also part of the UN's own constitution. The New Yorker will do the same but one thing must be understood here. Obama is way out of the league when it comes to the personality of the Hazrat Muhammad Rasulullah - Peace Be Upon Him. There can be no comparison between the two personalities and there should not be any more attempts at portraying the Prophet as terrorists or as anything in silly cartoons that violates the Islamic principle.

More important to the Muslims are the tenets and guidelines of Islam, one of which is that we cannot draw portraits or even cartoon that suggests it is the Prophet of Islam and that is where the Westerners are wrong. They failed to understand the feelings of the Muslims but now the Muslims will fail to understand why satire is supposed to be 'satirical' when it is about Obama!

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