Cartoon wars roundup(3)

The Danish cartoons controversy continues to generate stories around the world:

• 10 people were killed in Libya in clashes during a protest outside the Italian consulate, after an Italian minister appeared on TV wearing a T-shirt with one of the cartoons emblazoned on it. The minister concerned has since resigned, alongwith a Libyan minister.
• MEPs have condemend the violent protests and expressed solidarity with Denmark.
• Denmark has temporarily shut its embassy in Pakistan. There are now 5 Danish embassies closed since the row surfaced.
• The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign suspended the editors of its student newspaper after the paper published the cartoons.
• A student newspaper at Harvard University has published the cartoons, prompting anger amongst some students and a forum to discuss the controversy.
• The front doors of the Gallup Independent in New Mexico were smashed on the day the paper printed the cartoons. Messages on the stones demanded a public apology.
• Muslims demonstrated in front of the Danish consulate in Los Angeles.
• There were further anti-cartoons protests in London and in New York.
• In Nigeria, some Muslim rioters attacked Christians and burned churches, resulting in 15 deaths, during an anti-cartoons protest.
• In India, a minister of the Uttar Pradesh state government has offered $11.5 million to anyone who beheads any of the cartoonists who depicted Mohammed.

No wonder the cartoonsts are in hiding.

Flemming Rose in his own words.

In the Washington Post, Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who solicited the cartoons that much of the Muslim world is in uproar over, has defended his decision to solicit and publish the cartoons. His article is well worth reading in full.

Rose makes clear he was worried about the self-censorship people were exercising due to intimidation and fear of reprisals should they be perceived to have insulted or criticise Islam. Here are some passages which I found interesting:

We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity,Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.

—

One cartoon — depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban — has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet.

—

Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn’t intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

—

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak.

The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.

—

But tragic demonstrations throughout the Middle East and Asia were not what we anticipated, much less desired. Moreover, the newspaper has received 104 registered threats, 10 people have been arrested, cartoonists have been forced into hiding because of threats against their lives and Jyllands-Posten’s headquarters have been evacuated several times due to bomb threats. This is hardly a climate for easing self-censorship.

Clearly the fear of reprisals mentioned above has proven to be well founded, and it seems to me that publication of the cartoons by other papers is both an act of solidarity with Rose and defiance against this intimidation, despite the Jack Straws and Bill Clintons of this world condemning the cartoons.

I think the cartoons themselves are mostly innocuous and unfunny but also open to different interpretations as Rose points out.

One cartoon, which shows Mohammed at the gates of heaven and some suicide bombers outside with Mohammed saying “Stop! Stop! We’ve run out of virgins” did make me chuckle. It seemed to me this was lampooning a belief that suicide bombers are indoctrinated with, namely that they’ll receive 72 virgins in heaven for carrying out their “martyrdom” operation. This reprehensible belief, which provides a religious motivation for attacks like those of 9/11, 7/7, Bali and of course the blowing up of Israelis in their shopping centres and restaurants, deserves to be mocked and ridiculed. I think the cartoon was perfectly justifiable and should not be insulting to anyone but the likes of Osama Bin Laden.

Those who are claiming to be insulted by these cartoons are insisting on a particular interpretation of them to do so, and are also trying to control (whether via the violence and threats or via peaceful political means) what we can and cannot print in our newspapers. Indeed some them ask us, as non-believers, not to depict Mohammed at all or they will treat it as a deep insult and a deliberate provocation. That is intimidation, and it is an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Cartoon Wars roundup (2)

Some more links related to the Danish cartoon affair:

• This Dutch animation makes its point well. Note that “gevoelig” means “sensitive”. Spotted via Michelle Malkin’s blog.
• On the 7th February it was reported that an Iranian newspaper is running a competition to create anti-semitic cartoons and challenged Western newspapers to publish them in the name of freedom of speech. In response to this, an Israeli publisher decided to hold its own competition for anti-semitic cartoons to be created by Jews!Amitai Sandy, a graphic artist with the publishers Dimona Comix stated “We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” and “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”.

  Clearly these guys know how to take the piss with style, and somehow, I don’t think their response is quite what the Iranian newspaper expected… (Hat Tip: The Pub Philosopher).

• The Pub Philosopher notes that on Tuesday (yes, St Valentine’s day), the British Embassy in Iran was petrol bombed and that the attack was reported in Germany, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, but not the British media! I’ve been able to find this report from Reuters on the Yahoo UK website however. The original Reuters report is here. There was also a report mentioning this on an Australian news site. However nothing about it on the BBC, and no mention in any of the British papers as far as I can tell.
• Perhaps this site is aiming for its own fatwa, by lampooning two prophets in a daily cartoon! (Hat Tip: the Pub Philosopher again).
• Recent polls in the UK suggest the public supported publication of the cartoons, with the decision to publish and reprint the cartoons elsewhere backed by 56% and opposed by 29% of respondents.

Cartoon wars roundup

The row over the Danish cartoons continues to run and run, albeit at a somewhat lower level of intensity:

• There have been riots in Pakistan, after weeks of protests.
• A Pakistani cleric has announced a bounty of $1 million to whoever kills the cartoonist who depicted Mohammed. He appears unaware that there were several cartoonists! This is in addition to the Taleban’s bounty of 100kg of gold.
• There have been denial of service attacks and other attempts to hack/disrupt Danish websites and other websites that supported the cartoons. The hosters of Michelle Malkin’s blog have also been under this sort of electronic attack, and she has received threatening emails:

  From: naser jianpour (n_jianpour@yahoo.com)
  To: writemalkin@gmail.com
  Mailed-By: yahoo.com
  Date: Feb 10, 2006 12:04 PM
  Subject: we will kill you

  I am Iranian I am a mosleme .
  We will kill you( every )
  down with you( Crectian & jowe.)
  world is mine.

  ***

  From: monalisa monalisa (monalisa23h@hotmail.com)
  To: writemalkin@gmail.com
  Mailed-By: hotmail.com
  Date: Feb 4, 2006 5:55 PM
  Subject: you are filth

  the dishonourable the mean the prostitute I’am a müslim and turkish I kill
  you devil you are goto the hell shit the whore

  ***

  From: greatmastafa@web.de (greatmastafa@web.de)
  Mailed-By: web.de
  To: writemalkin@gmail.com
  Date: Feb 11, 2006 9:41 PM
  Subject: mohammed

  you have one day to delete all pictures of mohammed from your server, or i hack this site and delete all files on this server. ok

  mohammed have never a face. dou you now.

  for ever islam

• Bill Clinton has condemned the cartoons (twice). The reports do not indicate that he has said anything about those issuing death threats, rioting and burning embassies or the climate of fear and intimidation that has been created by Islamists who try to suppress any perceived insult or criticism of Islam.
• A female journalist covering an anti-cartoons protest in Turkey was stoned by the protestors who say they provoked her by not wearing a head scarf! Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin.
• Some interesting comments have been made on a BBC web page featuring a selection of commentators:
• Dr Yunes Teinaz of the London Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre states “Freedom of expression is not a licence to attack a culture or religion”. If we take this seriously, then he is suggesting that two huge areas of human behaviour and beliefs should be off-limits to criticism or ridicule. It seems to me that for freedom of speech to be worthwhile and to mean something, no area of human behaviour of beliefs should be held to be immune from criticism. I see no reason for privileging cultural and religious beliefs by holding them to be immune from criticism or even ridicule. I also disagree that the cartoons were in any way racist as he also suggests.
• Munira Mirza, a journalist, makes an important point:
  

  British newspapers should publish the images. Muslims should be able to see them and judge them for themselves, that’s why we have freedom of speech.

  Many Muslims want the same freedoms as everyone else to debate, criticise and challenge their religion.

  They want to be able to say: “Hey we’re not children, we can handle criticism, we don’t need special protection – we’re equal.”

• Karen Armstrong, an author of a biography of Mohammed, claims that the cartoons were “criminally irresponsible”, yet fails to make any mention of the responsibility, criminal or otherwise, of those who have sent death threats to anyone who dares to criticise or insult Islam or Islamists, those who have been rioting, those who have toured the middle east stirring up anger with extra pictures that Jyllands-Posten had not solicited or published, those who have been torching embassies or those who have been offering bounties for the heads of the cartoonists concerned. These cartoons are no worse then those that appear regularly about world leaders and politicians or figures from other religions in Western media. I don’t see why lampooning Mohammed should be held to be criminally irresponsible when these other cartoons are not.

British Muslim group calls for ban on depicting Mohammed

As I’ve reported at Magna Carta Plus, a group of British Muslims have called for a ban on depicting Mohammed. Thus this group wants us to observe a tenet of their religion. That’s both an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Cartoon wars: Murial Gray gets it.

Muriel Gray writing in last week’s Sunday Herald shows she understands the cartoon wars:

One of the biggest misunderstandings of the crisis caused by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printing cartoons of Muhammed is that the paper was merely satirising Islam and hadn’t realised that any image of the prophet, insulting or respectful, is utterly taboo to Muslims. This is quite wrong.

The incident arose from the fact that an author of a children’s book about the life of Muhammed wanted it illustrated but couldn’t find any artist brave enough to risk offending those who currently express their offence by murdering the offender. Hence in a deliberate test of freedom of speech, the newspaper, not Muslim and therefore not bound by this taboo, sought artists willing to draw Muhammed. The mild satire on the state of Islamic jihad was incidental.

So yes, it was a deliberate provocation, a massive shove in the playground, but they didn’t start the fight. The initial provocation came from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 when he pronounced a death sentence on the author Salman Rushdie for having a written a novel that contained another Islamic taboo, that of disrespecting the Koran. This was a stroke of genius. Whereas critics of repugnant ideologies were only in peril when they acted openly in the country guilty of the tyranny, and were free to express their disgust from the safety of a civilised country, Khomeini came up with the brilliant Mafia-like scheme of recruiting his foot soldiers everywhere.

Knowing that there are now Muslims in almost every country in the world, he removed that safety net once offered to people such as critics of the USSR or Idi Amin, so that even in safe, tolerant Britain, nobody would ever again dare write, paint, broadcast, film or lecture on anti-Islamic views for fear of their lives. Of course most Muslims, being sane, peaceful human beings, simply ignored the psychotic Khomeini. But tragically the subsequent brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh, the deadly riots sparked by journalist Isioma Daniel’s article about Miss World in Nigeria, and the threats to people like author Irshadi Manji for writing a witty book about reforming Islam, have had such an effect that they have bought Islam immunity from criticism, not through respect, but through fear.

This was what Jyllands-Posten was testing, and the result, as we can see, is that it has proved its point spectacularly. The other European papers which published the cartoons were, with a couple of exceptions, not trying to further provoke Muslims, but were engaging in an “I am Spartacus” moment, showing solidarity for Denmark and trying to gain enough similar support throughout Europe that it would make it harder for the extremists. What if everyone publishes? Going to kill everyone? Going to boycott goods from every European country? If only the Czech Republic would publish the cartoons then Hamas would have to boycott Semtex.

Unfortunately, though at least she’s honest about it, she and her paper have declined to publish the cartoons because of this very fear, as she states in her final paragraph:

This paper’s belief in freedom of speech is paramount. The decision not to reprint the cartoons, not to declare ourselves another Spartacus in support of our European colleagues, was taken, at least partly, out of consideration for the safety of the staff, and the safety of Scottish people here and abroad, and I fully support it. But the extremists, who created the fear that made that decision a foregone conclusion, must understand that if they think the UK press have done this out of respect, they are so very wrong. They have undoubtedly won this battle hands down. Well done. We are afraid. But do they think people neutered and silenced by fear are going to work at embracing their culture, their religion or their values? Clearly, they don’t care. The danger of this backlashing on to our innocent Muslim fellow citizens is a distinct possibility and the thought makes me sick to the stomach. It looks as though those of us aching for the misery of all this hatred to end are in for a long wait.

It is depressing that so many of our politicians have chosen to attack and condemn the people standing up to this intimidation rather than give them support. These actions will only encourage the extremists who carry the intimidation to continue.

Is the rage over the Mohammed cartoons manufactured?

Consider the following:

• The Mohammed cartoons were originally published in September 2005 in Jyllands-Posten, but it took 5 months for the issue to flare up internationally, during which the following things all happened.
• Apparently the Mohammed cartoons were published in Egypt (a Muslim country) in October 2005 without a peep of dissent. And this was during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
• Some Danish Muslims toured the middle east, showing the original 12 cartoons, but added three pictures of their own, one depicting Mohammed as a pedophile demon, one a photo of him with a pig’s snout and one showing him being sodomized by a dog!
• One of the three extra pictures, the pig snout one, was originally a picture of a contestant at a French pig squealing contest!

I also find it suspicious that embassies in the middle east, such as Syria and Iran, were torched. Many of the countries concerned are dictatorships with high degrees of social control being exercised by the state. I find it hard to believe the riots would have been allowed to get so far out of hand had they not had some tacit support from the authorities.

Has Jyllands-Posten been hypocritical?

It turns out that Jyllands-Posten, the paper which published the cartoons of Mohammed in Denmark back in September, had previously, in 2003, refused to publish a cartoon of Jesus, on the grounds that it might cause offence.

Some have suggested that the argument that Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons of Mohammed as a test of Danish freedom of speech and as part of a debate on freedom of speech is a hypocritical one in the light of this.

I don’t think this does necessarily show they’ve been hypocritical, though of course it’s not unknown for newspapers — or any other human organisation — to do so. There are several reasons:

• according to the article linked above, the editor who rejected the Jesus cartoon is a different editor from the one who commissioned the Mohammed cartoons. Thus we have different people judging the suitability of the cartoons in each case.
• the Jesus cartoon was submitted for publication, not commissioned by the paper.
• the paper’s ostensible reason for commissioning the Mohammed cartoons was that, in the light of the difficulties Kare Bluitgen had finding an artist to illustrate a children’s book on Mohammed, difficulties based on fear of death threats from militant Muslims at a perceive insult to Islam if they did, they wanted to test Danish freedom of speech and spark a debate about the issue. The fear of intimidation for depicting Mohammed simply did not exist with regards to Jesus. Thus the need to stand up for freedom of speech did not exist in that case and the possible causation of offence over an unsolicited cartoon would not be countered by the imperative to stand up to intimidation from some militant Muslims.

It is worth nothing that since publication the offices of Jyllands-Posten have been subjected to bomb-scares and that the cartoonists have faced death threats and have gone into hiding. Also, the remnants of the Taleban have put a bounty on the cartoonist’s heads, namely 100kg of gold.

As with Salman Rushdie, Theo Van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, the response of some Islamists to a perceived insult of Islam is to intimidate and threaten the death of those responsible. Indeed, where Salman Rushdie was famously the subject of a fatwa calling for this death, Theo Van Goh was murdered and a note pinned to his body threatened Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Their crime? To have made a film, Submission, highlighting the mistreatment of women in Muslim families.

It is this intimidation that threatens freedom of speech and it seems to me that Jyllands-Posten were trying to stand up for freedom of speech against such intimidation when they asked for the cartoons.

Now maybe JP aren’t perfect, maybe they’ve not always been so good at standing up for freedom of speech, maybe they were even trying to get some publicity, but that does not alter the fact that such intimidation occurs, they are now the recipients of such intimidation – along with anyone else who has published the cartoons and that there is a need to counter this intimidation of people who dare to criticise Muslims or Islamic culture.

If Islam is a religion of peace…

…then:

• those who send death threats to the cartoonists of Jyllends-Posten are betraying Islam.
• those who are torching embassies in the middle east are betraying Islam.
• those who marched in London calling for those who depicted Mohammed to be exterminated, annihilated or beheaded are betraying Islam.
• those who murdered Theo Van Gogh and drove Dutch MPs Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali into hiding are betraying Islam.
• those who called for the death of Salman Rushdie, including issuing the famous fatwa, are betraying Islam.
• those who carried out 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid bombings and the Bali bombings are betraying Islam.

I didn’t know Norwich had an embassy in Syria

From this news report:

Denmark and Norwich have begun to urge their citizens to leave Syria after their embassies were set on fire in the country…