News is coming in that France Soir and Germany’s Die Welt have now reprinted the Danish cartoons from Jyllands-Posten. From the freedom of Speech point of view there is no doubt that they have every right to do this, whether the action is well- or ill-advised is obviously another matter altogether. I guess we are about to find out.
109 Responses
February 1st, 2006 at 7:11 pm
That’s your opportunity to support Free Speech with a simple purchease of a newspaper and a package of soft chease.
February 1st, 2006 at 8:01 pm
I’m flabbergasted gobstruck flummoxed (and other adjectives) by the global implications of this situation. There’s the suggestion that the Saudis may be remanded to the WTO if it’s proven that they back the boycott. The boycott itself is a perfectly good example of how purchasing power can affect world politics. Will the offended parties now boycott Mercedes and BMW? Will we see the revival of Freedom Fries, only with a new flavor? I’m on the side of free speech, but I doubt the motives of Sor and Die Welt. What’s next?
February 1st, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Not just France Soir and Die Welt but also papers in Italy and Spain.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4670370.stm
Personally, I welcome this gesture of European solidarity.
Was republishing these cartoons a gratuitous insult to Muslims? No. A gratuitous insult to Muslim belief? Perhaps - but so what?
Jehovah’s Witnesses are hardly ever mentioned in the press except to ridicule them, and they don’t threaten to bomb people in retaliation - or even hold beliefs about apostasy that in themselves are an inducement to violence.
Is it only because Islam is the creed of a historically humiliated culture that mocking Islamic icons arouses such venom?
February 1st, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Read this please:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398624,00.html
February 1st, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Some of the newspapers are being more subtle than the initial reports suggested:
“The front page of the daily France Soir carried the headline “Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God” along with a cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud. Inside, the paper reran the drawings.”
Obviously we are celebrating “the death of God”, or at least the twilight of the idols.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:35 am
remand saudi arabia to the WTO
Sanctions on Iran and Saudi Arabia would do wonders for crude prices. :o)
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:58 am
“The front page of the daily France Soir carried the headline “Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God”
Yep … and then the managing editor got sacked by the owner. Understandable, perhaps, in terms of fear of lost production due to bomb threats - or even actual bombs - but sad.
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:53 am
This has nothing to do with free speech. Protests are coming in not just from Muslim quasi-theocracies, Turkey and Bosnia are protesting as well. This is about a Danish PM being dumber than rocks. The whole crisis could have been easily averted, without any genuine action taking place, if Rasmussen had simply met with the concerned ambassadors from protesting Muslim states back in October, and then put out a statement condemning sectarian provocation in general, and saying his government was investigating if Danish hate speech laws were violated. There need not have been any genuine investigation, all he would have needed to do was wait for the diplomatic fuss to die down and then quietly let his “investigators” decide that it would be difficult to press charges under existing hate speech codes. That’s all that had to happen. Now, it’s too late.
The noises that seems to be emanating from most of the Muslim world are less about the fact that this stuff was published than that if Jyllands-Posten had published, say, a cartoon of Ehud Olmert wearing a Hitler mustache and an SS uniform, leading Arabs to gas chambers, the government could not have condemned it hard enough. Everyone would bow their heads in shame and have to talk about the “new anti-semitism” in Europe. But comparable content offensive to Muslims is shrugged off as protected freedom of expression.
The complaint that Europe responds instantly to the slightest hint of anti-semitism, but tolerates or even encourages gross Islamophobia is a legitimate concern, especially for states like Bosnia and Turkey which can claim to be at least as democractic as Denmark and aspire to acceptance within Europe.
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:26 am
Avoiding this would not have been desirable. It is very good to periodically reassert Free Speech, which recently had come under some attack.
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:44 am
Oliver, this crisis could never have happened in America, even though the US protects the right to publish such things without any shading or hesitation. You know why? Because everyone, from the newspaper’s advertisers to George W Bush himself, would have immediately, and most importantly credibly, gotten up and condemned hate speech against Muslims. The newspaper’s right to freedom of speech would not have been curtailed by the state, it would have been curtailed by the fear of losing readers, advertisers, and access to government officials from whom much of their information comes. It would have been curtailed by a fear of bad press from constant protests. Jewish groups would be out on the streets with Islamic organisations demanding an apology from the editors.
None of this has happened in Denmark as far as I can tell. Freedom of speech is not immunity from the consequences of speech, and for every right to publish hate speech there is a responsibility for public organisations to distance themselves from it. All this talk about “self-censorship” from the European right strikes me as a demand for speakers to receive immunity from the consequences of their speech. This is antithetical to freedom of expression.
Had Rasmussen come out clearly against sectarian provocation from the beginning, I strongly doubt this would be a crisis of similar proportions, and no state interference with freedom of expression would be on the agenda. Jyllands-Posten went out of its way to be offensive. They did so on purpose, saying it outright in the accompanying article. They have no right to hide under freedom of expression when people prove to be offended. But the Danish state failed to take even symbolic action to repudiate them. That is not freedom of expression. That’s stupidity.
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:02 am
Well, I suspect its going to be a busy day:
“Newspapers across Europe waded into a growing controversy over cartoons portraying the Islamic prophet Mohammed after a French editor was sacked for publishing them……The owner of the broadsheet France Soir, Franco-Egyptian Raymond Lakah, dismissed managing editor Jacques Lefranc in what he said was “a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual.We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication” of the cartoons, he said in a statement.”
and
“The French government earlier said the decision to reprint the caricatures was the “sole responsibility” of France Soir while also reaffirming its commitment to press freedom.
Morocco immediately banned copies of the paper.”
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:34 am
Because everyone, from the newspaper’s advertisers to George W Bush himself, would have immediately, and most importantly credibly, gotten up and condemned hate speech against Muslims
Yes, the US is not a fully secular society. Europe is. In fact Europe is to some extent actively hostile to religion, especially in public.
Freedom of speech is not immunity from the consequences of speech
Yes, the papers will lose Muslim readers. They’ll gain readers who do not value religion.
All this talk about “self-censorship” from the European right strikes me as a demand for speakers to receive immunity from the consequences of their speech
Europe has no tight alliance between the right and religion. You’ll find a lot of people on the right who favor the state tightly controlling the church. On the far right you find active neopaganism.
A permissible consequence to speech to us is counterspeech or a refusal to deal with the speaker. A demand for censorship is not.
They have no right to hide under freedom of expression when people prove to be offended
Of course they have. The core of Free Speech is to offend.
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:52 am
Scott, have you seen the cartoons in question?
There’s a facsimile of the page here. Admittedly, they’re a bit small. (Anyone have a better address?) By the standards of political satire, though, they are very mild indeed. This is not hate speech that is being published. In fact, the one of a cartoonist hiding a picture of a bearded man labelled “Mohammed” is all too approrpiate.
This is very much a freedom of speech question. The position taken by the manufacturers of outrage is that not only is Mohammed immune to satire, but no depictions of him should be printed in any publication, anywhere in the world. Not only does this view ignore many historical instances of depicting Mohammed (see here for examples that include Arab, Persian, Ottoman and Central Asian works, to say nothing of works from the non-Muslim world), it is an attempt to force non-Muslims to take the same view of Mohammed as a particular strand of Muslim thought does. Imagine if the Vatican tried to insist that everyone view the Pope the way that Catholics do. Twould go down a treat in Ulster, no?
That’s what’s happening here. Jesus turns up in political cartoons all the time (and ask your local iconoclastic Baptists about Christian prohibitions of “graven images”); Mohammed’s bound to turn up in them, too. And that’s a good thing.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Yes, I have seen the drawings, and they are indeed relatively mild compared to the treatment seated politicians get in daily newspapers in Europe. I have also seen the text that accompanied the drawings:
The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with temporal democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always equally attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is less important in this context. [...] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him. [...]” (translation from Wikipedia)
In short, they did something they knew would piss people off in order to prove that it was okay to offend them. Would you take the same position if I published a patently offensive post to Jews here on AFOE, and then said I was doing it to protest self-censorship and to show that Judaism enjoys no special immunity from ridicule? It is not the mildness of the images that counts, it is the foreknowledge of the participants at how people would respond that makes this offensive.
Every now and then, in some more isolated bits of America, you find people who honestly don’t know that anyone should be offended at the word “negro”. When they use it, you correct them, let them decide if they still want to use that word, and if they decide that they actually want to use terms designed to offend people, they have no right to plead “free speech” when they get called racists. If some editorial cartoonist had drawn Muhammed, genuinely in ignorance of the potential consequences and in the cause of purely political commentary, and then proved shocked at the response, I would be prepared to label this kind of response from Muslim states as overreacting. When someone goes out of their way to do it, offending a particular group of people specifically to legitimize offending them, they have the legal right to do it. But they get no sympathy from me, and should get none from the state, which, however much it tolerates their actions, should be prepared to distance itself from them.
The idea that Danish law should forbid the depiction of Muhammed formed no part of the statements made by any of the diplomats registering protests, at least as far as I know. The Arab League complained about the poor handling of the crisis by the Danish PM. Turkey and Bosnia are concerned about what this means for the treatment of Muslims in Europe when a state cannot even be roused to condemn it. If the publication in question had been some obscure newsletter, it would never have had this impact. Instead, the largest daily in Denmark published something they knew could create an uproar and did it with the intent to offend a visible minority in the state. That may be legal, but it demands a response. The unwillingness of the Danish state to distance itself from this publication, to make a simple statement decrying a newspaper going out of its way to offend a minority, is the root of the crisis. I suppose there are Muslims who think European nations should pass censorship laws protecting Islamic sensibilities, but I doubt very many of them hold diplomatic posts.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Hate-speech against Muslims, Scott? Is The Life of Brian hate-speech against Christians? Would portraying Mohammed’s mother saying ‘He’s not the Prophet, he’s a very naughty boy’ be hate-speech?
Context is all, I suppose. Is GWBush’s statement that
“I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God”
hate-speech against atheists? Any European President who made such a statement would probably have to resign, but a European newspaper would be free to argue that case. I suppose the real issue is whether this accusation could lead to acts of violence or discrimination against atheists.
I demand the right to mock the Talmud for containing prescriptions on what type of stone you can use as toilet paper and to point out the bizarre and ludicrous history of the cult of Mary. But if someone claims Jews, (Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus) are part of a world-wide conspiracy, that’s a dangerous lie, a kind of slander that is likely to lead to desecrated graves and worse, and I think it’s right that we have laws against it..
It’s really important to make this distinction if our Muslim minorities are to integrate properly into our societies. If Muslims demand special privileges for their religion, privileges that no other religion enjoys, that can only lead to antagonism.
The cartoons were childish, as any attempt to sum up something complex and deep in a superficial image must be. But childishness is not an offense.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:51 pm
John, try this:
Modern, responsible, civil society is rejected by some Mexican Americans. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own history and culture. This is incompatible with present-day democracy and equality before the law where you must be ready to take up the responsibilities of citizenship on equal grounds with other Americans. It is certainly not always just or pleasant, and it does not mean that we can just tolerate any kind of casual racism, but that is less important in this context. [...] We are on our way to a slippery slope where the southwestern states becomes essentially a different country. That is why the Ledger-Tribune has invited editorial cartoonists to draw Mexican American life as they see it.
(What follows is a number of images depicting Mexico as a land of bad water, unhealthy food, and a perennial loser of territorial conflicts; nothing that hasn’t been said about Louisiana or Mississippi in recent years.)
If this were published in, say, the largest daily in Texas, and the governor shrugged it off as nothing more than the free press in action, refusing to make any statement about its content, should the Mexican government lodge a protest? Should Mexicans boycott Texan companies? Should Mexican-Americans make lots of noise and demand the firing of the editor? Should they see this as an example of anti-Mexican sentiment in the US?
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:08 pm
I think Scott is right, this was carried out as a conscious experiment:
“we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end”
My own view is I wouldn’t have done this, but they - like Salman Rushdie - have a perfect right to say what they think. Since they didn’t ask a very precise question, they have only a very partial answer:
“They’ve won. That is what is so appalling. My guess is that no one in the next generation is going to want to draw the Prophet Mohammed in Denmark and therefore I must ashamedly admit it: they’ve won,” Carsten Juste (The editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten) told the Berlingske Tidende daily.
So what we know is where self-censorship might start, what we still don’t know is where it will end. It depends, I suppose, on whether or not you relish open-ended situations.
Incidentally, my guess is Jacques Lefranc has drawn the same conclusions as Carsten Juste.
Actually my real feeling is that much of this has been terribly immature, petulant even. If you want a dialogue with moderate muslims about the fact that we have different attitudes to charicature, maybe there would have been a better way to go about it.
Scott’s points about Turkey are very much to the point, although I’m not sure I can go along with this:
“especially for states like Bosnia and Turkey which can claim to be at least as democractic as Denmark”
They can claim to be, but I don’t think the claim would be well founded. But basically I think all of this will ultimately bring Turkish membership one step nearer, since as Scott intimates, we would then have at least one member state which took on the mantle of advancing the *opinions* of the extensive minorites who are citizens of our Union. This could only be to the good of European democracy.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Should they see this as an example of anti-Mexican sentiment in the US?
Yes, as it is. It is not entirely clear whether it is aimed at Mexiko as a country or Mexicans, or whether a distinction is made at all.
However, it is not “hate speech”. Nobody called for Mexicans to be harmed or condoned violence against them. Nor is the notion that Mexico is inferior to the US a proposition that is obviously ridiculous. By a lot of standards, it is. What standards to apply is a matter of oppinion, which is the core of the matter.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Incidentally, Denmark obviously isn’t a cultural monolith, and not everyone thinks like the writers of the Jyllands-Posten. Which reminded me that Ester Boserup was also Danish.
Now at the time of the ‘great population fear’ when people were saying that the planet couldn’t support so many people (in the present context this might be the equivalent of the ‘I say just ram the stick full bore and gauge the reaction’ brigade) Boserup remined us that there was a learning curve. That rapidly growing populations meant that we were ‘challenged’, but that being creative types we could use our brains rather than our boots to resolve the problem and develop technologies and institutions to deal with the challenge.
She was proved right,
We are again challenged, this time by the need to integrate people who come from a culture which is very different from our own. I, like Boserup in her day, feel that we will not be challenged and found wanting. Maybe we won’t get things right the first time, or even the second, but that evetually we will get there. There will be a learning curve.
Talking of which, I am most interested to see what the reaction will be in France.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:40 pm
If you want a dialogue with moderate muslims about the fact that we have different attitudes to charicature, maybe there would have been a better way to go about it.
Firstly, we have a disagreement on the role of religion, not just charicatures.
Secondly, what would you have a dialogue about? The positions are quite clear and we hardly can change ours.
But basically I think all of this will ultimately bring Turkish membership one step nearer, since as Scott intimates, we would then have at least one member state which took on the mantle of advancing the *opinions* of the extensive minorites who are citizens of our Union.
How so? I am afraid if Turkey really engages much in this it basically sinks its last chance, especially if you consider what de Villepin recently said about the negotiations.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:54 pm
“what would you have a dialogue about?”
Oh, nothing very important really, just about how we might all live together without all this tension.
“we have a disagreement on the role of religion”
Oliver, we Europeans don’t even agree among ourelves about the role of religion, you have almost as many versions as you have states. This is what the Constitution was in part about, but we couldn’t agree on that, remember?
Try this as an example:
A Rome court on Thursday ruled that a fugitive American priest wanted in the United States on charges of sexually molesting boys can be extradited home but his lawyer said he would appeal the decision.
Father Joseph Henn, wanted by authorities in Arizona since 2003, has been living under house arrest at the headquarters of his religious order in Rome.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Scott,
I have to disagree with you. First, this is not ‘hate speech’. Nobody is calling for killing Muslims, unlike the Palestinians that are calling for killing Danes, Norwegians and French people.
Secondly, it is also no libel or defamation. It’s just cartoons. I’ve always felt there is a lack of humour in this world. I know conservative Christians do have the same problems, but in general Western European society doesn’t care about them. So why should we care about the religious sensitivities of a religion? There is freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Both should be there.
Let me draw a comparison. Most mainstream Christian churches (Roman-Catholic, the Orthodox and most protestant ones) have medieval ideas about women in society. They are also opposed to gay marriage etc… It is their religious right to have opinions like that, as it is Islam’s right to ask from their BELIEVERS not to publish pictures about Mohammed. But it is other people’s ‘God-given’ right to criticise them and to draw cartoons about it. Gay people have the same right to criticize and insult the Church as the Church has to criticize and insult them. People have to learn to put things in the right perspective. Do not forget the first countries to protest were Saudi Arabia and Libya, both countries where all non-Islamic worship and proselytism is forbidden by capital punishment (as well as adultery and being gay). Those countries are the last ones to tell us how to behave.
I have also the impression we are using two measures, one for Christianity and one for other religions. Every day, you find cartoons about priests have sex with nuns, etc. A lot of them are insulting to Catholic people. Nevertheless they are probably true and Catholics should be aware of that. Pope Alexander VI is seen as perverted because he had a child with his own (then adult) daughter (true, although I tend to like this Machiavellistic guy - not that I think it’s genetically wise) and Pope John Paul II is considered as a genocide because he’s against using condoms, put we cannot depict Muhammed as a pedophile for having sex with a 9-year old, since that’s a cultural thing and not perversion. And nowadays, I don’t see a lot of Christians threatening to kill (or killing) people for the Life of Brian. I do see thousands of Muslims with mediaeval behaviour. Come on, you have to be intellectually fair: the same laws have to apply for everyone.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:59 pm
I should perhaps have made it clear: Whether or not this is hate speech is in the minds of the writer and the reader. I, personally, do not think it is useful or productive to define or ban hate speech in, oh, at least 99.9% of cases. I can only support such laws in places like, say, Lebanon, where the temptation is great and the immediate public safety consequences of such speech are considerable. When a nation is doused in gasoline, I am willing to accept a law forbidding the lighting of matches. This is not the case in Denmark.
Thus, it really isn’t very interesting to me whether or not this qualifies at hate speech. What I do strongly suggest is that Rasmussen should have intimated that he was looking into the applicability of hate speech laws because quite a few people are likely to see this as hate speech. The point is that this could have all been diffused - all the right things could have happened - if the Danish government had merely said something that could be interpreted among Danish Muslims and Muslims abroad as “we acknowledge your concerns”. Instead, what was actually said got interpreted as “Silly, thin-skinned Muslims! Have some balls!”. This is Politics 101, it’s not hard stuff for anyone in government.
Edward, I suppose I should have used a more subjunctive tense for that claim. Turkey and Bosnia certainly seem to consider themselves democratic enough, and appear to be accepted internationally on those terms. I was trying to undermine the response that “Denmark should not allow dictatorships to determine what it can publish.”
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:12 pm
“Yep … and then the managing editor got sacked by the owner.”
One salient, yet possibly irrelevant, detail: the owner of France Soir appears to be an Egyptian businessman. Saw this fact/insinuation(?)on a Flemish news site.
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Scott, I don’t know anything about the context of your example – except Edward’s illuminating ideas about the positive impact of Mexican immigration on the US economy. But it strikes me that there are too many different strands in your quote to give a coherent response.
It’s lies that are dangerous, not expressions of dislike and fear about the changing character of your homeland. For instance, the systematic presentation in the Greek media of the idea that Albanian immigrants are responsible for a percentage of crime in Greece vastly disproportionate to their numbers is valid ground for protest because it is a lie that fans antagonism.
But portraying Mexico as a dump? You should see what the Daily Telegraph regularly says about Greece and Greeks. I find it objectionable and the Greek Ambassador once sought to rebut a particularly extreme piece, but that was the full extent of the reaction. Offending people is not the same as harming them.
Minorities banding together to demand that the State accord their beliefs special status, inciting other nations to take measures harmful to their own country of adoption when those beliefs are ridiculed in the press, or threatening violence against premises and individuals is really foolish and a far greater – and this time unacceptable - form of provocation.
I agree that there was something capricious about eliciting these cartoons - but once the matter had escalated, a real issue emerged which, as Oliver says, we cannot avoid.
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:26 pm
This has become completely overblown. Of course European newspapers have every right to caricature Mohammed. And of course Muslim consumers have every right not to buy European products.
But if some other outcome than the one that has arisen is desirable, then maybe “rights” aren’t the proper framework for the discussion to take place in.
The issue of hate-speech is I think a red herring. Is this hate speech, or merely heavy-handed sectarian satire? In 1521, did it really matter?
http://www.kb.dk/luther/passion/index.htm
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:10 pm
What I do strongly suggest is that Rasmussen should have intimated that he was looking into the applicability of hate speech laws because quite a few people are likely to see this as hate speech.
No and again, no. A prime minister publically announcing that he’ll prove the applicability of criminal law is a threat. And publical it would have to be. Citizens must not be threatened for lawful activities.
Instead, what was actually said got interpreted as “Silly, thin-skinned Muslims! Have some balls!”.
This plainly and simply is nothing but the truth. He said so, because he meant it. This is a non-negotiable part of our culture. There’s no use hiding that. If you want to live here, come to terms with it. If you want to positively interact with our countries from abroad, the same applies.
-
Europeans don’t even agree among ourelves about the role of religion, you have almost as many versions as you have states. This is what the Constitution was in part about, but we couldn’t agree on that, remember?
There are differences in degree and a lot of relicts. But this very week introduction of new legislation only somewhat aimed in that corner spectacularly failed. The basic principle holds. Religion is secondary to the state in public life. There are differences in degree about what is public and what is private. We make allowances for religious concerns where practicable and this is only common decency, but no country in Europe budges on the principle.
In fact, in my personal oppinion, we have gone too far in that way by throwing away some moral principles which commonly are attributed to and historically grew out of christian teaching, but can well and often even better be derived from secular ethics.
As for the constitution it was voted on in the secular form and failed in secular states. Where is the connection?
Father Joseph Henn, wanted by authorities in Arizona since 2003, has been living under house arrest at the headquarters of his religious order in Rome.
Are you saying that Italian police would refuse to rescue him from the monks, had he asked for that?
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:29 pm
I keep reading the Jewish comparison. I have seen Judaism lampooned repeatedly in Cartoons. Maybe the Anti-Defamation league writes a letter but that is it…no death threats! This is crazy….everyday I become more surpised by the reaction.
Just this past week the magazine Rolling Stone put a picture of the rap/hip artist on its cover dressed as JESUS CHRIST! I’m sure some library in the southern US has pulled the mag, but no bomb threats!
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:41 pm
There’s a lot of different strands here, tending toward loose ends. First, there’s the question of whether or not the J-P had the right to publish the cartoons and the accompanying text. I think everyone here agrees that they did.
Second, there’s the question of whether a deliberate provocation was a smart or justifiable thing to do. Smart probably depends on what one thinks the goals of a newspaper are. Justifiable probably also depends on what one thinks of their claim, to wit, that there are demands to accommodate Islam in ways that, say, Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism are no accommodated within Danish (or other European) society. If there are demands that Mohammed never be caricatured, or even depicted (and from a glance at the coverage, this seems to be the maximalist position from outside Denmark), then I would say that the J-P’s claim is true, and that that is a problem.
The relationship between organized (or even disorganized) religion and the public sphere is not something that will be resolved easily. Just last week, a minister in Baden-Wuerttemberg was sacked for being cheeky to a Catholic bishop. Or on another front, I recently read a story that claimed in Britain, some women are forced to wear burqas to hide the evidence of physical abuse by their husbands or other male relatives. What is the public role in that kind of situation? There are a bunch of contested issues here.
Further, the abstract issues can’t really be considered apart from concrete instances. Cartoons about bomb-throwing Jews would be absurd, because people are not throwing bombs in the name of Judaism. Whereas people claiming the mantle of Islam are planting bombs, strapping on bomb belts and, most famously, flying planes into skyscrapers. When, in the US, so-called Christian activists were into bombing family planning centers, cartoons linking the two elements would certainly be legitimate. Publication of a full slate of those cartoons in a big Bible-belt newspaper would also have been a provocation. But it might well have been a good one.
Third, there’s the question of the proper response from the Danish government. It’s probably true that the course Scott describes would likely have made the problem go away. There’s the option that Rasmussen did not want the problem to go away; given that he’s right-of-center, he may just see things differently from Scott. There’s also the option that even if Scott’s prescribed course had been followed, outside actors might well have decided to whip up outrage anyway. Not everyone involved here would be mollified by “we appreciate your concerns.”
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Third, there’s the question of the proper response from the Danish government. It’s probably true that the course Scott describes would likely have made the problem go away.
For some time. Eventually something would trigger it. There’s little use in delaying the inevitable. It’s better for us if the trigger is a relatively clear cut thing. This issue must be resolved.
February 2nd, 2006 at 4:16 pm
From an exclusively Danish POV this is good news since it perhaps will help divert some of the heat; … and personally I think it is good and admirable that other newspapers (countries)are supporting the right to speak freely; i.e. the core values of our society.
But …
I am serioulsy wondering whether new re-prints of the cartoons are a good way to approach and essentially solve/redeem the issue.
I think Scott has some important points; although I hardly feel that Mr. Rasmussen could have reacted any different given the demands put forward.
For me it is pure and simple a question not caving in to the demands of a formal apology. I think Edward had a reasonable analogy in the other post about leaving the pub when you got offended to avoid conflict. Let me give you another …
This is like raising a child … if you are in the store and your child wants a candybar she will scream and shout until you finally put the candy in the basket … will you cave in? Most likely not! This is the case in a nutshell! If we do not stand firm here, we are sending a message that a roar from the Middle-East can make the West compromise on their principles.
However, as stated above I hardly doubt that reconciliation has come any closer with the re-print of the cartoons.
Perhaps Huntington was right after all?!
February 2nd, 2006 at 5:05 pm
However, as stated above I hardly doubt that reconciliation has come any closer with the re-print of the cartoons.
Perhaps Huntington was right after all?!
What did Huntington actually say? That there will be tensions? There already were when he wrote his books. So far, yes, he’s right. But tensions are a very normal state of affairs. They need not turn into anything truly nasty. IMHO peaceful coexistance is definitely possible and even quite likely. We just need to make clear that in Europe our laws are supreme and nothing else counts.
As far as a truly multicultural society is possible, I am more sceptical. That doesn’t mean that Muslim immigrants can not be integrated, but it means that religion must be curtailed to a point that is atypical and indeed repugnant to a traditional islamic society. If this is done, the result is no longer mutlticultural.
February 2nd, 2006 at 7:09 pm
I’m sure other world religions get very sensitve treatment in the Islamic media. (jews as cannibals etc.) I don’t read arabic so I dont know!
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:18 pm
There was an incident recently involving Alain Finkekraut’s comments in Haaretz over the riots in the banlieux. (Alain Finkielkraut is a philosopher and a disciple of Levinas.)
You can see when you read his interview with Haaretz that this very approach (Levinas) was informing Finkielkraut’s comments on the lack of personal responsibility as displayed by the rioters.
The comments were entirely ‘reasonable’ and might not have got him into trouble had he not made a specific point of further identifying the rioters as being Arab and Islamic.
But instead all that was happening or perceived to be happening then (as well as is now) is a cultural and relativistic finger pointing exercise which alienates communities and countries instead of building trust between them very much along the lines of a so-called ‘Clash of Civilisations’ .
I don’t see any communutarian or inter-communitarian initiatives in any country which is advocating a commonly shared recognition of rights and responsibilities under God which is present in American society and which is why this kind of thing would not have happened there as Scott has indicated.
As these kinds of bridge building initiatives, following David Novak we might refer to them as “covenantal ethics”, should be coming from Christians and the Christian community, I have my doubts as to how Post-Christian Europe will or can deliver.
Even when some kind of Enlightenment or secularist communitarian effort is attempted, it tends toward polluted forms of racial or cultural supremacism rallying around prejudice which has been the characteristic of much ‘right-wing’ political reactions in Europe in the recent as well as not so recent past.
Can Europe rise above its history of sectarain violence ? Or will it return ?
It’s a very tall order.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:37 am
The noises that seems to be emanating from most of the Muslim world are less about the fact that this stuff was published than that if Jyllands-Posten had published, say, a cartoon of Ehud Olmert wearing a Hitler mustache and an SS uniform, leading Arabs to gas chambers, the government could not have condemned it hard enough. Everyone would bow their heads in shame and have to talk about the “new anti-semitism” in Europe. But comparable content offensive to Muslims is shrugged off as protected freedom of expression.
Links, quotes, please, Scott.
I was born Muslim (”Dawud”) and Arabic was my first language. I haven’t heard any of the “noises” you refer to, just a lot of hypocritical bleating.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:38 am
The noises that seems to be emanating from most of the Muslim world are less about the fact that this stuff was published than that if Jyllands-Posten had published, say, a cartoon of Ehud Olmert wearing a Hitler mustache and an SS uniform, leading Arabs to gas chambers, the government could not have condemned it hard enough. Everyone would bow their heads in shame and have to talk about the “new anti-semitism” in Europe. But comparable content offensive to Muslims is shrugged off as protected freedom of expression.
Links, quotes, please, Scott.
I was born Muslim (”Dawud”) and Arabic was my first language. I haven’t heard any of the “noises” you refer to, just a lot of hypocritical bleating.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:44 am
I am still peering dimly across the screen, looking for reactions in France and Germany. So far response from the Muslim communities there have been pretty limited.
So we seem to have three groups of actors here:
Governments of predominatly muslim countries and their religious representatives.
Islamic extremists and terrorists.
Muslim immigrants in the EU and their descendants.
What we are seeing is pretty predictable, and maybe the original editors of the cartoons will later reflect on whether it was wise to go to such lengths to find out in their ‘experiment’ something we really already knew.
1/. The islamic extremists will use this ‘opportunity’ for all it is worth to them: death threats, bombings, kidnappings etc etc. Most of the violence will be outside the frontiers of the EU.
2/. Governments in Muslim countries are extremely sensitive to pressure from religious authorities. In this sense they are not that different from the governments of strongly catholic countries like Italy, Ireland and Poland, or orthodox ones like Serbia or Greece. So they will make a lot of noise, sponsor some limited boycotts and that will be the end of it. (In the rogue state type situations like Iran, Palestine or Anbar province in Iraq you can get a fushion of (1) and (2)).
3/. The response of those muslims, parctising and non-practising, migrant or native born, who live in our midst. What do they really feel about this? Well it is interesting to see that in France the situation is calm. All those who have been arguing that France was about to explode, and that the riots of last autumn had an underlying religious motivation may do well to reflect on this.
I think it will be really interesting to see the results of some opinion polls here.
Demark is perhaps a special case. It may be that there had been a certain lack of addressing multi cultural issues in Denmark. These drawings have put the question on the table. Initially the reaction might be polarising, but possibly the longer run outcome will be to open up a badly needed dialogue. The new Danish have finally arrived.
Again in Denmark itself another interesting thing would be to see an attitude survey which distinguishes between first and second generation migrants. Do both groups feel the same about this? Obviously there are always a minority of second generation migrants who go for a more radical version of their parents faith. This has received a lot of publicity in, say, the Netherlands. But the vast majority of young second generation European muslims may well feel rather different from their parents on this question. It would at least be interesting to see. If the extremists (on both sides) have won, it will be in this sense.
So my feeling is that the main impact of this ‘affair of the sketches’ will be in the foreign policy area, and that Europeans may now be a little less safe in some parts of the world than we were before.
Maybe there are some places where we used to travel, or go to work with NGOs were it will now not be so advisable to do so, we need to wait and see.
Anyway the limits of self-censorship have been tested. Peter Dirix who has “always felt there is a lack of humour in this world”, has been able to enjoy a long laugh (although whether the more comical part has been taking place in the offices of Jylands-Posten is an open question). Unfortunately Carsten Juste doesn’t seem to be laughing, he personally says he will exercise just a little more self censorship in the future and he cerainly won’t be publishing any more of these drawings for at least another 20 years.
You know, maybe there is a learning curve after all. (And, of course, as Scott and Claus have suggested, the Danish government has just been on a crash course in how to handle complex multi-cultural issues).
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:38 am
Rasmussen came in on a program of “getting tought,” or as they say in Texas “gittin tuff,” on immigrants. And as the film on the Danish EU presidency showed, he’s a canny fellow. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. I just happen to disagree that it’s a good approach.
February 3rd, 2006 at 10:35 am
“I just happen to disagree that it’s a good approach.”
Well precisely. New economist had a relevant post on Danish policy:
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2005/09/denmark_doesnt_.html
The post is about the decision of the Migration Policy Group to establish a European Civic Citizenship and Inclusion Index, and comments on their 2004 findings:
“More of a surprise were the laggards. Greece and Luxembourg did badly, but worst was Denmark - it was well below-average in all five policy strands. Third Country Nationals account for 5% of the Danish population. Their unemployment rate is more than three times as high as Danish nationals, and the gap has widened since 2002.
What this seems to suggest to me is that Denmark was well due for a shake up on this question. A very high reading on non nationals in the unemployment numbers is an indication that something, somewhere in the labour market, social policy and welfare system isn’t working and needs addressing. Maybe the most important outcome of these cartoons will be in this area.
Interestingly, in the light of what is happening, the report which accompanies the index comments:
“The 1992 Danish opt-out in the sector of Justice and Home Affairs – coupled with an opt-out on European citizenship – affects commentary on migration and inclusion issues considerably. While the Danish Presidency of the EU made a positive reference to the economic and social inclusion of TCNs in 2002, this remains an extremely sensitive area in domestic political debate.”
As we are seeing, this last sentence couldn’t be more valid and to the point.
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Edward, you rightly focused on the differences between various types of Muslim response – I was going to do just that myself, as it seems there’s a lot of confusion in the media discussion of the issue.
Another way of looking at it is to ask what the nature of the offense taken is, and what has prompted it.
Seems to me we have:
1) Some Palestinians and others in the ME who are reacting to an insult to Islam.
I’m guessing that part of this feeling of outrage is provoked by the three really gross depictions of Mohammed (as a pig, being buggered by a dog whilst praying, and as a paedophile demon) that were circulated by the Danish Muslim clerics. These very badly drawn sketches were not published in Jylands-Posten but were part of the material these clerics showed their co-religionists abroad. It’s important to remember that most people in the Middle East are probably reacting to material they haven’t seen themselves – as was the case with ‘The Demonic Verses’. The story of how these three ‘fakes’ came to be circulated needs to be unearthed.
2) A Muslim ‘commentariat’ in Europe who are proclaiming that they feel the drawings demonise all Muslims, and are likely to lead to immigrants being attacked or insulted in the street.
3) Ordinary Muslim immigrants who feel the whole matter is exaggerated but who lack any leadership that might say that it is far more provocative to threaten lives than to publish drawings. Perhaps we need to look at why being sensible is not a good career move for those who speak on behalf of our immigrant communities.
I think our immigrants have to adapt to a society in which it is acceptable to hold all organised religious belief up to ridicule. If they genuinely feel that these cartoons contribute to the ‘image problem’ of ordinary European citizens of Muslim faith, perhaps they ought to ask their leaders why there have not been more strenuous Muslim denunciations of threats to the lives of French, German, and Danish citizens.
Finally, one grievance expressed by Western Muslims is that Jewish sensibilities would not be treated so lightly. This argument, and Scott’s post, seems to miss a key point. The hypothetical cartoon he conjures up would not be anti-Semitic and should not be illegal – but it would be deeply offensive to most thinking people – not just Jews – in the West. That is why it would not be published in a major newspaper – it would be tasteless beyond belief because it would be a denial or minimisation of responsibility for events in European history. (BTW I am not Jewish and have been actively critical of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians for thirty years) The published cartoons may be a bit tacky but, to a Western sensibility, they are not in that category - although the fakes, in their gratuitous malice, are.
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:49 pm
“I’m guessing that part of this feeling of outrage is provoked by the three really gross depictions of Mohammed”
Yes, and part of the ‘outrage’ we are seeing on our screens are the ’soft fringe’ of radical extremist groups. The Palestinians may even be being motivated by the idea of pressurising us about the threat to withdraw funding. ie the cartoons are a good pretext.
“although the fakes, in their gratuitous malice, are.”
This is obviously part of the problem of living in a digital age.
I still think this weekend will be a test here in Europe. If there is no really big, peaceful demonstration in Paris then I think we will be able to draw some interesting conclusions. Either way we will learn something.
“I think our immigrants have to adapt to a society in which it is acceptable to hold all organised religious belief up to ridicule.”
I’m conjecturing John that many second generation migrants do - like we did in our day - precisely hold the religious beliefs of parents up to ridicule. But maybe going all the way, and going right in on Mohammed might not have been the best way to kick this off, I think even now in Poland you might have problems about caricaturing the Virgin Mary (according to how you chose to do it) and certainly (I would remind you) it wasn’t so long ago that James Kirkup went to prison in the UK for writing a poem which merely tried to explore the idea that Jesus could have had - like many of his priests today - gay feelings.
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Errr …. Satanic Verses of course (doh)
Yes, I remember that poem.
Actually, according to the site below it was the editor, not the poet who was sentenced - and the sentence was suspended. My memory is pretty hazy, but I surmise that I would have been even more angry about it if anyone had actually gone to jail.
http://www.petertatchell.net/religion/blasphemy.htm
But I take your point about Poland. And the Orthodox Church in Greece has a really ridiculously powerful position.
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=321
However, Poles and Greeks in England and France seem to have adapted to the local climate. I really think the key lesson from this whole furore is the need for Muslim community leaders in Europe to take a very different stance concerning their duties to their followers and to their fellow citizens of other faiths.
You and I disagree about multiculturalism, but when it comes to weighing up the loyalties owed respectively to one’s faith and to one’s neighbours, perhaps we can agree that it is in everybody’s interests for immigrants to be ‘plus royaliste que le Roi’ about coreligionists threatening the lives of conationals. That doesn’t mean not defending yourself, of course, and if humans were angels it wouldn’t necessarily be so, but it does seem to be the lesson to be drawn from succesful immigrant communities.
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:30 pm
“‘plus royaliste que le Roi’ about coreligionists threatening the lives of conationals.”
Well let’s just put it like this, the day we see a huge Sunday demonstration on a Sunday from French muslims rejecting this:
“Any citizens of these countries, who are present in Gaza, will put themselves in danger”
Simply this and nothing more, then that day I would say we are making progress.
That is when there is a recognition that our culture is based on at least two pillars:
I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend your right to say it (or believe it), and
If you threaten a friend of mine then you are also threatening me
Both of these need to be reciprocal. That is they apply to both muslim and non-muslim EU citizens.
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Actually, reading John’s point about false cartoons and noting that eg the Guradian has not actually published but only offered links to sites where the cartoons are available makes me ask one question: aren’t we operating with a very old-fashioned and limited notion of the press and the digital image here.
I mean, those muslim radicals who are circulating the false images, aren’t they also participating in the process of secularising Mohammed. Will he ever be the same again? Isn’t there a kind of double-bind here?
February 3rd, 2006 at 6:08 pm
There’s some interesting stuff on that theme in the interview with Oliver Roy pointed to by Scott’s Slate article on Hamas.
http://religion.info/english/interviews/article_117.shtml
But I think the situation calls for a more calculated intervention by Western governments than Roy proposes - otherwise the Salafists are likely to win too many teenage hearts.
February 4th, 2006 at 8:43 am
O boy, so many Chamberlains and so few Churchills.
Open your eyes.
Compare the muslim outrage about this :
“On 3 January, 18-year-old Nazanin was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court, after she reportedly admitted stabbing to death one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a park in Karaj in March 2005. She was seventeen at the time. Her sentence is subject to review by the Court of Appeal, and if upheld, to confirmation by the Supreme Court.
According to reports in the Iranian newspaper, E�temaad, Nazanin told the court that three men had approached her and her niece, forced them to the ground and tried to rape them. Seeking to defend her niece and herself, Nazanin stabbed one man in the hand with a knife that she possessed and then, when the men continued to pursue them, stabbed another of the men in the chest. She reportedly told the court “I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help”, but was nevertheless sentenced to death.”
Note for the dhimmis among you who forget or forgive the crimes by those “poor” muslim men in a blink of their eyes: when a woman is raped in Iran she is punished for being raped.
Bury the rag deep in your face, now it is the time for your tears..
With this:
“Yesterday (Thursday) Mullah Krekar, the alleged leader of the Islamist group Ansar al-Islam who has been living in Norway as a refugee since 1991, said that the publication of the Muhammad cartoons was a declaration of war. “The war has begun,” he told Norwegian journalists. Mr Krekar said Muslims in Norway are preparing to fight. “It does not matter if the governments of Norway and Denmark apologize, the war is on.”
Islamist organizations all over the world are issuing threats towards Europeans. The Islamist terrorist group Hizbollah announced that it is preparing suicide attacks in Denmark and Norway. A senior imam in Kuwait, Nazem al-Masbah, said that those who have published cartoons of Muhammad should be murdered. He also threatened all citizens of the countries where the twelve Danish cartoons have been published with death.
It is important, however, to stress again that there are Muslims of great courage. While it is risky to publish the Muhammad cartoons in Europe, it is even riskier to do so in the Middle East. Yet the Jordanian independent tabloid al-Shihan published three of the twelve Muhammad cartoons yesterday. The editor of al-Shihan, Jihad al-Momani, said he decided to publish the cartoons to show what the issue was all about. In an editorial under the headline “Muslims of the world, be reasonable” he pointed out that Jyllands-Posten had apologized for offending Muslims. He deplored that few in the Islamic world seem to be willing to listen to this. “What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?” the editor asked.
The spokesman of the Jordanian government, however, said that the editor had done a great mistake by publishing the cartoons and announced that the government is considering suing the newspaper. Before the day was over the paper’s owners had sacked Mr Momani.”
There is a big chance that the attention of the islamic hysteria will swift to the Netherlands.
A site, like the jihadis not well known for its good taste, published over 150 images that are insulting or very insulting to Mohammed. Unlike most of the pictures in the Danish newspaper. Most of these attack the ABUSE of Mohammed/Islam by muslim terrorism. One of them even attacked the NEWSPAPER for the very act of publishing the cartoons in his cartoon but is threatened by the islamofascists anyway.
February 4th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Mr. Churchill hastened the demise of his empire a lot and his actions killed a lot of his own citizens. Before I go Churchillian I want to be sure I need to. The cost is too high for anything else.
Some Iranian actions are barbarism and cannot be excused with cultural relativism, but are they a threat? Unfortunately the Iranian actions that are a threat, namely the nuclear programme, are not barbaric, but even rational and understandable. In fact barbaric actions by an enemy are happy news. They are usually inefficient and make good propaganda should it come to that. Iran cannot be sure of the loyalty of its young, female population.
The Norwegian government should probably take a hard look at what is acceptable behavior for refugees, but that’s a side show.
I am afraid at this stage we have to wait and spend more on the intellegence services. We cannot do much against mere verbal threats.
In the long run, many have argued that there needs to be an “Islamic reformation”. They may be right. But I have to point out that there’s no proof that outside interference will help. Furthermore, the christian reformation had consequences that cost a lot of blood.
Therefore I would wait, gather intellegence, seek confrontation only when we have to (like on Free Speech) and maintain overwhelming military superiority just in case.
And we need to integrate the immigrants. IMHO that means economic integration and at the same time, absolute and unyielding insistence on our core values, like Free Speech.
February 4th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Maybe you did not get my point. Sorry.
There is no muslim outrage on the worst of the worst behavior of the mullahs in the “islamic republic” Iran.
None. So the “religion” islam is not insulted by this acts in the name of allah and his prophet. They are not insulted either by the speech of Theo van Gogh’s murderer explaining that everyone suggesting that Mohammed was peaceful is a lyer and the best chance for reaching paradise is by killing infidels. Imams urged to declare that this killer is not a muslim did not. The best they come up with is that this murderer is not a good muslim.
There is a lot of racism and xenophobia in Europe nowadays. It comes from muslims.
“In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out.
The late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Muslims in 1989 to kill Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam in his book “The Satanic Verses.” Rushdie went into hiding and was never attacked.”
A dhimmi source in fact; in fails to mention that translators of his book were killed. But of course we can sacrifice some of our common people to the sentiments of muslims. Peace in our time.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060202/wl_nm/religion_denmark_cartoons_dc_12)
February 4th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
There is no muslim outrage on the worst of the worst behavior of the mullahs in the “islamic republic” Iran.
Public outrage in Iran is not a healthy thing. It may eventually happen, or it may not. But what conclusion do you want to draw from that?
There is a lot of racism and xenophobia in Europe nowadays. It comes from muslims.
With the reservation that this is not the only group where this is true, I accept that. But again, what to do? In fact, let’s face it, some muslims in Europe are terrorist killers. Those we’ll have to find and eliminate from our midst. But you cannot make racism a crime. The thought police would be worse than the problem it is to solve. IMHO the solution is assimilation. We know it is possible. There are examples. We know for example, that economic exclusion is bad. We also know that the task is easier the lower the numbers and the more educated the immigrants.
In addition I am glad to see that all over the world newspapers are refusing to be intimidated.
In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out.
He’s quite possibly right. We should be glad we haven’t found out for real.
February 4th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
On my
“There is no muslim outrage on the worst of the worst behavior of the mullahs in the “islamic republic” Iran.”
Public outrage in Iran is not a healthy thing. It may eventually happen, or it may not. But what conclusion do you want to draw from that?
Are you deliberately misunderstanding my words by suggesting I meant muslim outrage in Iran itself instead of the Gaza, Pakistan, Syria or Londonistan?
Is this some debating contest to you?
February 4th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Frans Groenendijk drags out the hackneyed neocon timewarp song and dance where every year is 1939 and everyone who does not see the urgency of bombing Tehran is Neville Chamberlain. Read something about Lord Halifax and the policy of the Foreign Office before you go banging about with Chamberlain. Unfortunately the threadbare Islamic terrorists can only be compared to the Third Reich (or for that matter the Soviet Union) in a fantasyland where Khomeini, Hizbollah and the death of Theo van Gogh are all connect to an ideology of Islamofascism. This hydra-headed concoction is an exaggerated ahistorical narrative where the struggle of Middle Easterners against Western Imperialism, Israeli appropriation of land, and just plain poverty and rootlessness play no part. In truth, the Islamic radicals are no different from the bomb-lobbing anarchists of the 19th century or the red brigades of the middle 20th century- unconnected historically, politically and institutionally. They do not form a unified front against the West, they have not capital, no army and no goal. As much as Mr. bin Laden would like it.
The cartoons are a classic propaganda technique and are nothing more than race baiting and provocation. They are handy in preparation for a more strident war against Middle Easterners. Through it, ALL Muslims, no matter how diverse that group of people may be, are cast as anti-liberal, anti-Western and in the eyes that are glued to the TV, violent sympathizes with terrorists who are in no need of understanding, compassion or human solidarity. This is good for nativist Euro-cons, Israel in its struggle against the Palestinians and other enemies in the region, and the United States. There is also an election this year in the United States in need of a theme.
February 4th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
“The cartoons are a classic propaganda technique and are nothing more than race baiting and provocation”
You did not see them I presume?
Here is the link: http://ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/log/4836121
Look at them and then tell me what you saw.
February 4th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Frans, I really don’t get what you wish to say. It reads like a description to me. I can’t recognise the conclusions you are drawing from your description.
It seems like you are saying that most places in the Muslim world are bad and backwards places. Yes, there’s a large amount of truth in that. But what are the consequences?
February 5th, 2006 at 8:35 am
A number of points.
@ everyone
Sorry, we have a tech glitch. Please type “F” not “A” to have your comments posted.
February 5th, 2006 at 9:00 am
@ Claus
I have been silent for the last 24 hours because I admit to being in two (or three, or four) minds here. I think the situation is extremely serious, and the utmost prudence and the clearest and camlest of minds is what is now called for. I think what is done is done, and now there are no easy answers.
When this is over Europe will be a different place. I just hope the getting there won’t be too painful.
“This is like raising a child … if you are in the store and your child wants a candybar she will scream and shout until you finally put the candy in the basket … will you cave in? Most likely not! This is the case in a nutshell! If we do not stand firm here, we are sending a message that a roar from the Middle-East can make the West compromise on their principles.”
I am not sure that this argument cannot be turned the other way round. Maybe it is Flemming Rose and his co-thinkers who are the children in the store wanting their candybar. Lets think about this possibility for a bit.
Are they not, basically, like those people who regard the law making it compulsory to fasten the seatbelt when you ride to be an infringement of liberty. Don’t they, after all, have the right to do dangerous things if they want to? They will only risk their own life, won’t they.
Well, OK. But in both cases someone else gets to come along and clean up the mess.
I never did have much time for this sort of argument in any event, but isn’t it the case that some people have been suggesting we are in a global war on terror? I resist using this vocabulary, but there is no doubt that we have an ongoing global terrorism issue, and it is impossible not to see the issue of the limits of self-restraint in this context. Hasn’t Flemming Rose heard about this up in Jylands?
Our own lives and the lives of others may be put at risk.
So in this sense as well as driving without a seat belt, Flemming Rose wants to smoke in a designated no-smoking zone. The noxious effects of passive smoking for others don’t seem to concern him.
Basically, as we all know, there is a huge debate going on right now about how to get the balance between individual liberty (eg e-mail surveillance, video cameras in tubes) and freedom of expression (Londistan) right. I don’t think we will do this at the first attempt, but I really don’t think the cartoons debate is a helpful new dimension.
The cartoons seemed to have been directed at a much more local argument about models of integration in Denmark, surely some much more local set of themes could have been chosen without anyone having the disagreeable sensation that they were being ‘gagged’.
Now Flemming Rose has woken up to the fact that the world is bigger than Jylands, and that he was intervening in a global debate, a debate where the other interlocuter isn’t Denmark’s muslim community, or even the religious authorities in the majority of muslim states, but non-state actors like OBL, Zarquawi etc, and rogue state representatives in places like Iran, Palestine, Darfur.
I think its high time he stopped eating candy grew up.
February 5th, 2006 at 9:25 am
“Frans Groenendijk drags out the hackneyed neocon timewarp song and dance where every year is 1939 and everyone who does not see the urgency of bombing Tehran is Neville Chamberlain.”
Well let me drag it out too.
And let me also remind Frans that one of Churchills great merits was that he knew when there was no alternative to an alliance with Stalin.
Basically I don’t think the Chamberlain/Churchill analogy is appropriate in the cartoons case (petulant schoolchildren comes more to mind as I indicate in my previous comment), but I do think the analogy will become increasingly more appropriate in the Iran context, with the provisio that the Churchill/Chamberlain debate will probably be going on inside the heads of each and every one of us (at least if we have any sense it will).
And just to be clear bellumregio I do not see any urgency in bombing Iran, I don’t even know whether bombing Iran would be a good idea, but I do fear that war with Iran, in one form or another, is now more or less inevitable.
Why is this? Well I would say that there are three issues which are fusing themselves together in my head:
1/. Iran going full tilt for nuclear armaments. These I think will be not bre used aggressively, but as an umbrella to prevent retaliation against other (eg energy related and local power-and-influence) activities. This regime could-well (and indeed due to its own dynamics, may well have to) become expansionary. Not only Southern Iraq, but equally Saudi Arabia, western Afghanistan, and, indirectly via these latter two channels, Pakistan may well come to feel threatened. Saudi Arabia will in all probabilty feel the need to develop a nuclear capacity for this reason.
2/. The arrival of Hamas. Enough said I think.
3/. The debate about the cartoons.
These three issues are intereacting and almost
fuelling each other.
The common thread is probably Iraq. The invasion has produced these offspring. The seeds of all of them were obviously there before, but Iraq (and here comes Zarquawi, so watch out) has been a catalyst for all of them, sending them off on new trajectories.
The Zarquawi issue is important since it is possibly he that he will provide the footsoldiers to try and have some of the anger we are seeing on our screens vented on European soil. Most of the people arrested in Spain recently were arrested for recruiting and organising people to go to Iraq. Iraq has been the training ground.
I think most European citizens have been in denial on the Iraq thing. Most people have spent to much time thinking about and talking about oil. I don’t think it is helpful to see all this with that emphasis. The issue of oil (and of course gas) is there principally in the context of the the fear (or the ambition) that it be used as a political leverage instrument.
But we have been in denial in the sense that most
Europeans didn’t see the implications of a US defeat in Iraq. Or the implications of shaking up the whole can of worms in the way which has been done.
Well now we are going to have to come out of denial. It’s funny, but Jaume Roure, the Catalan TV’s middle east correspondant, - who incidentally was a fierce opponent of the US Iraq adventure, for all the now evidently correct reasons - puts it like this : the US invaded the wrong country.
Of course now we are going to have to pick up the tab.
February 5th, 2006 at 10:08 am
Frans
“There is a lot of racism and xenophobia in Europe nowadays. It comes from muslims.”
This does seem to resemble the debate which took place in the United States around the declarations of say Malcom X. In another post (on the Catalan Statute) Robert C likens a lot of our ’secession’ debate to the US pre-civil war one. We do seem to be well behind the learning curve in all this.
“There is no muslim outrage on the worst of the worst behavior of the mullahs in the “islamic republic” Iran. None. So the “religion” islam is not insulted by this acts in the name of allah and his prophet.”
I’m not a theological scholar, but don’t the Shia seem to have a different belief about graven images of Mohammed? This should hardly be surprising since in Christianity Protestantism and Catholicism have historically fought it out over this very issue. Should we, or should we not, venerate images of the Virgin Mary, or of the numerous saints. The next middle east war could well pit muslim against muslim over exactly this sort of question.
“But of course we can sacrifice some of our common people to the sentiments of muslims. Peace in our time.”
Churchill would have said, I’ll talk with the devil himself if I have to to put a stop to Herr Hitler.
If war may be coming is it really adviseable to line up all our potential allies just a tad nearer our opponents?
I think what worries me most here is that moderate Europeans (like you Frans) seem to be getting embroiled in a war of words with extremist islamic factions and non-state actors (instead of letting our security services deal with them) rather than devoting their energies to the moderate muslims in our midst in an attempt to pull them as far as possible away from the terrorists (who they aren’t especially near) and thus make the work of the security services easier at the same time as making our societies more agreeable places to live in.
I think the priorities are wrong here.
February 5th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Oh, oh. Now the anti spam thing seems to be working on ‘A’ again. If in difficulty, please try both.
February 5th, 2006 at 10:10 am
I found it kind of odd of that those embassies were burned, in all places, Syria. That country is a genuine policestate! Why would the government let them take place at all and thenn let those riots get out of hand?
Aqoul has a very good post on them, it seems this incident might have been a bit international posturing…”leave us be, or look what might happen”
http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/02/why_do_the_syri.php#more
“Doesn’t anybody find it at least noteworthy that the Danish & Norwegian embassies were torched in - out of all places - Damascus? That there were only small demonstrations in Cairo? That there were almost no demonstrations at all in Iran? That the number of Muslim demonstrators in Europe was - given the overall numbers of Muslim inhabitants - ridiculously low? ”
….
“Syria
The news from Damascus, however, should’ve made many a regional observer to reach for the alarm button. Syria is one of the most tightly controlled societies in the region. The secret services (that’s a plural) either know everything, or at least the population thinks that they do. Either one is sufficient to keep 99.999997% from doing something the government doesn’t want them to do. There is NO demonstration in Syria that is not approved or even organized by the authorities. And there’s no way that anybody would get even close to an embassy without the security apparatuses (again - plural) consciously deciding to letting it happen. In other words - at the bare minimum, the Syrian government let an angry mob burn those two embassies. Others will even claim that there was no angry mob, but it was all orchestrated by the regime itself. In either case (or those others in between) the question is: Why would the Syrian government let this happen? I mean - protests are one thing, but burning an embassy is quite something else.
Again, I think that the answer lies in the local context. Syria is currently under “Western” pressure. Its ruling regime is afraid of “Western” attempts to end the “reign of the house of Asad”, maybe even through (military) force. The regime, and foremost its head - “Duktuur” Bashar al-Asad -, have argued that, should they be deposed, Syria would tumble down the path towards an Iraq-style chaos. They have also - using the latest elections in Egypt and Palestine - argued that “if we don’t hold the Islamists at bay, then they will take over Syria as well”. The Syrian public, while not particularly liking the regime, has embraced the regime’s shift from personality cult to patriotism (I blogged about it here) and one should also not forget that political brainwashing actually works, i.e. the vast majority of Syrians does believe that the “West” is bad & “out there to get them”. In this context, it is noteworthy that the slogan the protesters chanted was the generic one throughout the region - “Bil-ruh, bil-dam, nafdiik, ya (fill in the blanks: Bashar, Saddam, or - today - Muhammad), meaning “With (our) soul, with (our) blood, we defend you, oh …”. Anger at those “Danish cartoons” is as genuine among Muslims in Syria as anywhere else, but in Damascus it is compounded by a very locally-specific feeling of being under pressure and possibly attack any moment now. The Syrian authorities might very well have let the burning of those two embassies happen for a number of their very own reasons:
1st - By letting popular anger vent itself, the regime maintains (& maybe even gains) legitimacy. After today you can say what you want about Bashar al-Asad & his henchmen, but you can’t accuse them of protecting the “Western” blasphemers against “popular sentiment”.
2nd - By letting “an angry mob” burn those two embassies, the regime can show the “West” just how potentially dangerous “religious fanaticism” can be, even in such seemingly peaceful and secular places like Syria, and bolster its own credentials as “the secularist dam stemming the Islamist tide”.
“
February 5th, 2006 at 10:55 am
So in this sense as well as driving without a seat belt, Flemming Rose wants to smoke in a designated no-smoking zone. The noxious effects of passive smoking for others don’t seem to concern him.
No, very much no. This is like somebody declaring your living room a no-smoking zone and fining you for smoking at home.
If you let religious taboos determine discourse, then everything may be offensive.
February 5th, 2006 at 11:20 am
Does anyone here have good pointers to articles on the role of the imams from Denmark who apparently traveled to the Middle East to stir things up? That’s the catalyst here, particularly the three cartoons that the J-P did not publish, which are much cruder and much more offensive.
If they’re Danish citizens (or even residents), it’s hard to see how they would not be eligible for prosecution under “fomenting religious hatred” statutes. Whether that would be smart is an interesting question. And what the answer to that question says about mob rule versus the rule of law is even more interesting.
February 5th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Does this do any good? We can hardly have a secret press. What is published here will find its way to the Middle East from now on at least, no matter what is done.
If we want to have a consistent position on Free Speech, we’d better go through the books and strike most of these statutes. These laws are diminishing our credibility.
February 5th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
I’ve heard on TV news that there are two embassies that the Syrian mobs could not touch: France and the USA. That suggest to me that CapTVK is right when interpreting it as an advice to the “West” on not pressing Syria to democratise.
DSW
February 5th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Doug,
The best information right now can be found over at Aqoul (Abu Aardvark doesn´t have anything right now).
Check the comments on the other Aqoul threads . Lounsbury has a few words of his own to add about these Danish(?) imans “roadshow” in the ME. What I wonder about is the document these Danish(?) imans compiled about Denmark and what exactly they wanted to show off. From what I´m getting it included far more than just the original 12 cartoons plus the 3 “extras”.
No doubt we´ll be hearing more about this “roadshow” in the coming days.
February 5th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Doug, as CapTVK indicates, via Aqoul, there was an interesting article on the subject published in Spiegel
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398624,00.html
Jylands Posten also makes the point about deliberate distortion.
Other leading imams have also been accused of misleading Muslims outside of Denmark about the situation.Earlier this week, imam Abu Bashir appeared on BBC World showing a caricature of Mohammed with a pig’s snout and ears to representatives of the Arabic League. Bashir falsely claimed that the caricature was one of the 12 Jyllands-Posten drawings. http://www.jp.dk/english_news/artikel:aid=3533280:fid=11324/
Does anybody know what specific images have appeared or been described on Al-Jazeera? In Arabic?
The inclusion of the fakes indicates just how difficult it is to maintain a rational dialogue in a climate of hysteria. It’s going to be a pretty polarised world if European Heads of State are now going to be held responsible for every image that appears on the local equivalent of Stormfront.
February 5th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
This seems to be the original presentation. Unless you are very good at foreign languages it’s probably useless, but here it is:
http://www.ekstrabladet.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=329877
Still, the bone is already broken. Why would one still wonder whether protective clothing should be worn?
February 5th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
This regime could-well (and indeed due to its own dynamics, may well have to) become expansionary. Not only Southern Iraq, but equally Saudi Arabia, western Afghanistan, and, indirectly via these latter two channels, Pakistan may well come to feel threatened. Saudi Arabia will in all probabilty feel the need to develop a nuclear capacity for this reason.
Edward, I’ve read similar postings by you elsewhere, but I haven’t heard territorial aggrandizement as being a part of the Iran’s regime’s rhetoric. Regional influence, certainly, but as to actual conquest … Iran makes no territorial claim outside its present accepted borders, and it could not expand in any direction without exacerbating existing ethnic tensions, without acquiring more Arabs, Kurds, Baluchs, etc., people not already submitted to the yoke of Tehran, and probably better armed than the minorities presently living in Iran. At the present time, separatism is not a realistic option, but listening to the statements made by Tehran after the recent bomings in Khuzestan, it is something they worry about.
February 5th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Doug, as CapTVK indicates, via Aqoul, there was an interesting article on the subject published in Spiegel
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398624,00.html
Jyllands Posten also makes the point about deliberate distortion.
Other leading imams have also been accused of misleading Muslims outside of Denmark about the situation.Earlier this week, Imam Abu Bashir appeared on BBC World showing a caricature of Mohammed with a pig’s snout and ears to representatives of the Arabic League. Bashir falsely claimed that the caricature was one of the 12 Jyllands-Posten drawings. http://www.jp.dk/english_news/artikel:aid=3533280:fid=11324/
Does anybody know what specific images have appeared or been described on Al-Jazeera? In Arabic?
The inclusion of the fakes indicates just how difficult it is to maintain a rational dialogue in a climate of hysteria. It’s going to be a pretty polarised world if European Heads of State are now going to be held responsible for every image that appears on the local equivalent of Stormfront.
February 5th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
@ Robert
“Edward, I’ve read similar postings by you elsewhere, but I haven’t heard territorial aggrandizement as being a part of the Iran’s regime’s rhetoric.”
In a sense you are right. I don’t have a lot of evidence, and it is just a strong hunch. I do say “This regime could-well….become expansionary” rather than definitely will.
My reasoning is based on deduction, that they are creating so much internal energy, will not be able to do much materially to improve the lot of their home population, won’t really want to go beyond words with Israel, so the best outlet for all this is….
More evidnce would be that they have been extensively involved ’sponsoring’ factions in Southern Iraq and Western Afghanistan. What Iran does will in large part depend on the internal dynamic in those countries in the future.
Also remember that Iran has been in a long running dispute with Saudi precisely over Mecca. This could surface again at some stage. Who knows?
I’m simply saying that I am expecting trouble, and we shouldn’t be surprised if it happens.
One more salient piece of information that I read on Informed Comment.
It seems that the Iraq constitution provides for a 51% majority government from 2009. If the country holds together that long this virtually guarantees the majority to the Shia.
Secondly the
February 5th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
For those who haven’t seen it there is a wikipedia entry under the heading:
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
Claus has another post. He makes this point:
“The most scandalous about this is that this and other recent surges in violent protests are prompted by silly rumours of coran-burning at noon in Copenhagen and that the Danish government will begin to systematically cleanse the country for muslims. Even more scandalous … who is spreading these rumours?”
this links in with something John is saying:
“The inclusion of the fakes indicates just how difficult it is to maintain a rational dialogue in a climate of hysteria.”
I think the point is that the extremists don’t want rational dialogue, they want the ‘excitement’ (and I do use this word advisedly) of burning buildings down. They need this type of Catharsis, and the whole topic is now being driven by it.
As Claus points out some responsibility for the scandalous rumours seems to lie with one Denmark-based Iman who appeared on TV in Saudi. Claus calls on moderate muslims to speak out, and some in Denmark it seems are doing so:
In Denmark, a network of moderate Muslims condemned the attack on the Danish embassy in Damascus and urged restraint.”This is no longer about the cartoons, the situation is out of control,” said group spokesman Syrian-born Naser Khader.
Also muslims in the UK seem to be reacting:
In Britain, politicians and mainstream Muslims called for the police to deal with militants after a protest in London featured placards saying “Europe you will pay, your 9/11 will come” and “Butcher those who mock Islam.”
“The placards that were on display were quite disgraceful and in our opinion seemed to constitute a clear incitement to violence, even murder,” said Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain umbrella group.
February 5th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
A late entrance is always a good one
John asks …
“Does anybody know what specific images have appeared or been described on Al-Jazeera? In Arabic?”
Apparently it all has to do with the messages “Danish muslim society” campaigned in their round-trip to the Middle-East. I do not know exactly what the contents were but we do know for sure that some one amongst Danish Muslims are trying to stir up things. They have promised an internal ivestigation.
One concrete drawing (as you note)which ended up on Saudi-Arabia government’s table was a cartoon of Muhammed with a “pig-nose” (i.e. this was not a part of the initial cartoons). One nice view of it has been one particular Danish Imam’s tongue twisting; On Danish television he said that he condemned the reactions whereas on Al-Jazeera he said that it made him happy that people were defending Muhammed through for example boykotts.
The incident in Syria was apparently prompted by the infamous coran-burning campaign in Denmark, which obviously is not happening. I don’t know whether the recent events in Beirut can be pinned on this as well.
But seriously … where is little Denmark in all this? I mean, how can 12 cartoons stir up so much calamity? Denmark has (like the US has been/is) become a symbol of the West and I don’t see why an apology from a Danish cultur editor should mean anything at this point. Extremists feel strengthened and vindicated because Denmark is the weak nerd in the class which can be easily bullied, but this also misses the point that Western countries in general should feel targeted here although the next metro bombs most certainly or probably will fall in Denmark. My question still is though; would we really want a Danish PM or Mr. Rose to go down on their knees and beg on this one!?
@ Edward …
“So in this sense as well as driving without a seat belt, Flemming Rose wants to smoke in a designated no-smoking zone. The noxious effects of passive smoking for others don’t seem to concern him.”
I see your point and as the situation changes by the day (for the worse that is) perhaps it could be nice if Jyllands-Posten ate their pride and said sorry. I am not in doubt here though; no further concessions can be made! This is because I hardly think that Jyllands-Posten should apologize for embassys being burnt down.
One question though to get the discussion moving, although I hardly doubt that would be a problem …
Should we not also look inside the Middle-Eastern countries for reasons of this excalation? I.e. the structural dynamics which lead to riotings of this magnitude, governments unable to control the streets etc!
And also importantly is Iran’s role as they enter the scene re-calling their ambassador from Denmark and vowing to boykott all countries whose newspapers have published the cartoons. Surely this must have something to do with the fact that they have just been bullied in IAEA, right?
February 5th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
“Does anyone here have good pointers to articles on the role of the imams from Denmark who apparently traveled to the Middle East to stir things up? That’s the catalyst here, particularly the three cartoons that the J-P did not publish, which are much cruder and much more offensive.”
I do, and that one of several reasons why I am so angry.
I found them at Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/668)
One of the many absurd aspects is that the three fake images are of inferior quality. So at the very first sight you can see they are not by professional cartoonists.
So some muslims are now raising their voices about those.
But think one second longer. If infidels making just any picture (non-insulting) of Mohammed this raises hell. And now it turns out muslims actually draw intentionally insulting pictures of Mo. What hysteria would be required? A lot more. There is none.
My reference to Churchill was not like saying we are at, or should go to war.
It is about showing spine.
(in fact I never liked Churchill. Especially after I read what he wrote about his view on the spanish civil wat in the thirties).
A curious side-effect, amazing discoveries to some US-commenters like the ones at TCS, is that at this point it is “old-Europe” showing spine and the US and “new europe” showing none.
Of course old europe is more into law, justice etc as opposed to power and ego.
February 5th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Frans
You are making some valid points (in fact most people are, despite their differences in poi