Muslim
Hate of Cartoons
Pakistan shuts
down access to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites after days of
violent anti-French protests by radical Islamists over Prophet Muhammad
cartoons
Government
blocked access to social media sites including Facebook & Twitter
Comes as a
week of deadly anti-France demonstrations continue in Pakistan
Protests began
after Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party leader Saad
Rizvi's arrest
Two police
officers have been killed, 580 injured, and three protesters have died
By LYDIA CATLING FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 03:39
EDT, 16 April 2021
Dailymail.com.uk
Pakistan has
blocked access to all social media after days of violent anti-France protests
by radical Islamists over 'blasphemous' cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Facebook and
Twitter and other sites have been temporarily blocked on orders from the
country's interior ministry said Khurram Mehran, a spokesman for Pakistan's
media regulatory agency.
A reason for
the block has not been provided and comes as police officials prepare to clear
a large demonstration in the eastern city of Lahore.
It also
follows just hours after the government said the leader of the outlawed Islamist
political party, Saad Rizvi, at the forefront of the protests, had urged
his supporters to stand down.
The government
released a note it claims was handwritten by Tehreek-e-Labiak
Pakistan party leader Saad Rizvi, in the hope it would calm tensions after days
of violent protests, in which two police officers were killed and 580
injured.
Three
demonstrators also died in the clashes with security agencies and the
government has imposed a ban on the party.
A photo of the
statement was released earlier by an advisor to the prime minister on Twitter,
but neither Rizvi himself or any of his party leadership was immediately
available for comment.
In the
statement, Rizvi asked his supporters to peacefully disperse for the good of
the country and end their main sit-in that began Monday after police arrested
the radical cleric for threatening protests if the government did not expel the
French ambassador before April 20.
Some of his
followers insisted they hear or see the words come from Rizvi himself before stopping
and the Lahore protest continued after Friday prayers.
On Thursday,
the French embassy in Pakistan advised all of its nationals and companies to
temporarily leave the Islamic country, after violence erupted over Rizvi's
arrest.
Violent
protests have been going on in Lahore since Monday, damaging private and public
property and disrupting the much-needed supply of oxygen to hospitals.
Some of the
affected included COVID-19 patients, who were on oxygen support.
Rizvi's arrest
sparked violent protests by his followers, who disrupted traffic by staging
sit-ins across the country.
Although
security forces cleared almost all of the rallies, thousands of Rizvi´s
followers are still assembled in Lahore, vowing to die in order to protect the
honor of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
Rizvi became
the leader of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan
party in November after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi.
His party also wants the government to boycott French products.
Rizvi's
outlawed party has denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October
last year, saying he tried to defend blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad as freedom of expression.
Macron had
spoken after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown
caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
The images had
been republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of
the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original
caricatures.
That enraged
many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who believe those depictions were
blasphemous.
Rizvi's group
in recent years became known for opposing any change to the country's harsh
blasphemy laws, under which anyone accused of insulting Islam or other
religious figures can be sentenced to death if found guilty.
Islamic
leaders in India issue fatwa against cartoons
By Cheryl K.
Chumley
The Washington
Times
Thursday,
August 29, 2013
Islamic clerics in India have issued a fatwa against cartoons, saying the
animated shows make a mockery of what they say are Allah’s creations.
The ban stems
from religious leaders at Darul Uloom
seminary in the India community of Deoband, BBC reported. It encompasses all
animated shows, even those with comedic tones, such as cartoons, saying such
watching violates the basic principles of Islam, the Deccan Herald reported.
“A cartoon is
a picture,” said senior cleric Mufti Arif Quasmi in the Deccan Herald. “Besides, it is not for the
children. It should not be watched.”
Strict Islamic
law says nothing that Allah created should be mocked — and that cartoons
actually mimic what Allah created. At the same time, other interpreters of
Islamic law say photographs and real videos are
permitted.
The cartoon
ban already has been met with some skepticism.
One member of
the All India Personal Law Board said the Darul Uloom determination was
actually “making a mockery” of Islam.
“I don’t think
the muftis who issued the fatwa have any knowledge of
the subject or have applied their mind to understanding the art of cartoons at
all,” said one senior imam, BBC reported.
Darul Uloom in the past
has issued fatwas against women wearing perfume with alcohol, having tattoos,
donning jeans or adopting hairstyles similar to those worn by women in the
West.
Egyptian authorities detain Christian accused of posting image of Islam’s
prophet on Facebook
By Associated
Press
Published:
December 30
CAIRO —
Egyptian authorities have detained a Coptic Christian student accused of
posting a drawing of Islam’s prophet on Facebook that triggered two days of
violence in southern Egypt.
Gamal Massoud has been accused by fellow students of ridiculing
the Prophet Muhammad.
According to a
security official, the 17-year-old student denies that and says friends posted
the picture on his Facebook page. The official spoke Saturday on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Since
Wednesday, villagers have attacked Massoud’s house
while chanting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is Great.”
They have set
fire to other Christians’ houses.
Many Christian
villagers fearing retaliation have left their homes.
Security
forces intervened, using tear gas to disperse Muslim protesters.
Second man
charged with threats to 'South Park' creators in U.S. custody
By Paul Cruickshank, CNN Terrorism Analyst
updated 10:02
PM EST, Fri November 18, 2011
(CNN) -- An
American charged with communicating threats against the creators of "South
Park" is in federal custody on U.S. soil, a senior U.S. counter-terrorism
official told CNN.
Jesse Curtis
Morton was the co-founder of a radical New York City-based Islamist group
supportive of al Qaeda's worldview.
Morton, also
known as Younus Abdullah Mohammad, was taken into U.S. custody in Rabat,
Morocco, on October 28, according to court documents. He was first
arrested by Moroccan authorities in May after being indicted in the United
States. By October 31, he was back on U.S. soil, the official said.
In a detention
hearing at federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on November 4, Morton was
ordered detained until trial, according to court documents. He has yet to enter
a plea. In May, Morton, a former resident of Brooklyn, New York, became the
second person charged in the "South Park" case.
Earlier this
year, Zachary Adam Chesser, 21, who admitted to
posting online threats, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Chesser, a Muslim convert, encouraged violent
jihadists to attack "South Park" writers for an episode that depicted
the Prophet Mohammed in a bear suit, court documents said. Chesser
posted online messages that included the writers' home addresses and urged
online readers to "pay them a visit," the documents said. In an
affidavit accompanying the complaint against Morton, FBI special agent Paula R.
Menges said Morton, co-founder of the group called Revolution Muslim, worked
with Chesser on a "clarification statement"
after Chesser's postings.
The pair made
website postings that were threats -- despite their claims otherwise, Menges
said. The agent also contends the statement contained pages of justification
under Islamic law for the death of those who insult Islam or defame its
prophet.
Morton was
interviewed in New York by CNN in October 2009. In the interview, Morton, a
convert to Islam and one-time follower of the Grateful Dead, defended the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and argued that further attacks on
Americans were justified. But he told CNN he did not encourage violence on U.S.
soil.
A day before
Morton was taken into U.S. custody in Morocco, CNN's Drew Griffin was e-mailed
a nearly 6,000-word statement in which Morton disputed the case against him,
and denied he ever participated in any effort to promote illegal violence.
"On May
25, 2011, I was arrested for writing a clarification statement connected to an
admittedly inflammatory post on an Islamic website," Morton wrote.
"The post was a reaction to the announcement that the 'South Park' cartoon
was going to portray the prophet Muhammad, something considered sacrilegious
and part of an ideological accompaniment to a comprehensive Western war on
Islam. The clarification statement intended to reduce the sensationalist nature
of an initial overreaction but is now being utilized by U.S. law enforcement to
imprison me for something I am innocent of," he wrote.
Cartoons spark a class of
cultures
Some Muslim protesters have much to learn about free
expression in a pluralistic society.
European journalists are right to describe the confrontations over the
publishing of cartoons offensive to Muslims as a clash of cultures. Angry
protests by Muslims in Europe and the Middle East greeted the publication by a
Danish newspaper of such cartoons, including one showing Muhammad wearing a
bomb in his turban. Newspapers in France and other parts of Europe showed
solidarity with the Danish newspaper by reprinting the cartoons during the past
week.
An editor at the
Danish publication Jyllands-Posten told The New York Times: "This is about
the question of integration and how compatible is the religion of Islam with a
modern secular society - how much does an immigrant have to give up, and how
much does the receiving culture have to compromise."
Those are
important and serious questions, especially in Western Europe, where the
mainstream liberal culture and the growing conservative Islamic culture have
little in common.
Even some
Americans are a bit shocked by the libertine nature of some European locales,
with their legalized prostitution and drug use. Meanwhile, assimilation of
North African and Arab residents is slow or nonexistent.
Many of them
cling strongly to their culture and traditional religious practices.
The images
last fall of rioting youths in the squalid, mostly immigrant suburbs of Paris
and other French cities reminded Europeans of how explosive the situation has
become.
To those of us
who believe in freedom of speech, it's a simple issue. No matter how offensive
some religious groups might find the cartoons, it is the right of publications
to print them. Period.
Arab
governments - most of which protest not at all the routine depictions in the
Arab press of Jews as murderers and even cannibals, and which have few
free-speech traditions - have met with the Danish prime minister and demanded
an apology. But, "I can't call a newspaper and tell them what to put in
it. That's not how our society works," the prime minister said, according
to the Times account.
He might also
have added that in pluralistic societies people do not have the right notto be offended. In many Western nations, religion
is given special protections from government interference, but it is not
protected from the give-and-take of the marketplace of ideas.
Standing up
for freedom of expression can get scary in Europe these days.
As the Times
notes, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was fatally shot and stabbed in Amsterdam
by a Muslim extremist because Mr. Van Gogh made a film depicting Islam's
treatment of women, which also was viewed as too offensive to be shown.
To protest the
publication of the cartoons, a mob of 300 people in Indonesia, according to
Reuters, rampaged in the lobby of a building housing the Danish Embassy in
Jakarta. They smashed lamps with bamboo sticks, threw chairs, lobbed rotten
eggs and tomatoes.
Demonstrators
marched to the Danish Embassy in London, holding signs reading
"Exterminate those who insult Islam" and "Europe, your 9/11 will
come."
And government
ministers from 17 Arab nations asked the Danish government to "take
necessary measures to punish those responsible" for publishing the
cartoons.
Unfortunately,
such violence, threats of violence and attempts to use government force to
silence expression may well have a chilling effect. In a pluralistic society,
these are unacceptable ways to register one's disagreement with such
expression, even when you believe it to be blasphemous. Period.
Mohammed
was a tree hugger.
Muslim
embassies complain over Mohammed caricatures
A number of Muslim states with embassies in Denmark have complained to the government
after a newspaper published cartoons of Muslim prophet Mohammed
Daily
newspaper Jyllands-Posten's decision to print twelve cartoons featuring Muslim
prophet Mohammed has caused a stir among Muslim countries, daily newspaper
Politiken reported on Thursday.
A number of
Muslim countries with embassies in Denmark have sent a protest to Prime
Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs about the caricatures.
'We are hoping
for understanding about Muslims' feelings about Mohammed. And we're hoping for
an apology from Jyllands-Posten,' said Mascud Effendy
Hutasuhut, minister counsellor at the Indonesian
Embassy.
In addition to
Indonesia, a number of Arab states, Pakistan, Iran, and Bosnia-Herzegovina have
complained about the cartoons, which they see as a hate campaign against
Muslims in Denmark.
The newspaper
urged cartoonists to send in drawings of the prophet after an author complained
that nobody dared to illustrate his book on Mohammed. Twelve illustrators
heeded the newspaper's call and sent in cartoons of the prophet, which were
published in the newspaper last month.
Jyllands-Posten
has called the cartoons a test of whether fear of Islamic retribution has begun
to limit the freedom of expression in Denmark.
The
caricatures have caused uproar amongst the nation's Muslims, and security
guards were posted around the newspaper's Copenhagen office after a mentally
unstable 17-year-old boy sent death threats to journalists and the
illustrators.
Representatives
of the Muslim countries have requested a meeting with the prime minister, who
is also the minister of press issues, to discuss the cartoons.
The Prime
Minister's Office's press chief, Michael Ulveman,
said the ministry was preparing a reply, but would not give any further
comments.
Peter Viggo
Jakobsen, department chief at the Danish Institute for International Studies,
said the Muslim ambassadors should not get their hopes up.
'If they have
the faintest idea about how a Danish and democratic society works, they should
know that the Danish government doesn't have any say about Jyllands-Posten's
rights of expression,' Jakobsen said.
Mohammed
became bewitched or demonized.
Cartoons of
Muhammad draw Muslims' anger December 10, 2005
COPENHAGEN,
Denmark - Associated Press
It was a
provocative exercise: asking cartoonists to draw pictures of the prophet
Muhammad that were published in one of Denmark's largest papers.
But no one at
the Jyllands-Posten daily imagined the scale of the fallout: Death
threats against the artists, an alleged bounty on their lives from a Pakistani
group, protest strikes in Kashmir, and condemnation from Muslim leaders
worldwide. Now, even the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights is reviewing
the issue.
"I'm very
surprised that the reactions have been so sharp, very shocked, and I find the
death threats against the cartoonists to be horrible and out of proportion,"
Carsten Juste, chief editor of Jyllands-Posten
told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
The paper
refuses to apologise for publishing the drawings on
Sept. 30, saying it's a matter of freedom of speech. One shows the prophet
wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another depicts him with
a bushy grey beard and a sword in his hand, while his eyes are covered by a
black rectangular box.
"If we apologise, we go against the freedom of speech that
generations before us have struggled to win," Juste
said, adding the drawings were not meant to offend anyone.
The paper had
asked 40 cartoonists to draw images of the prophet. That idea alone would be
enough to offend many Muslims, since Islamic tradition bars any depiction of
the prophet, even respectful ones, out of concern that such images could lead
to idolatry. Twelve artists responded.
Lise Poulsen
Galal, an anthropologist with the University of Copenhagen who specialises in Denmark's Muslims, said many Danes would be
unable to understand why the cartoons might offend Muslims.
"It
likely would not have happened elsewhere," said Poulsen Galal. "In
other countries, (people) have a greater respect for other religions."
The idea came
about after the author of a children's book on religion told the daily that the
illustrator for the book demanded anonymity because he feared retaliation for a
picture he had drawn of the prophet.
"The
purpose of the (drawings) was to examine whether people would succumb to
self-censorship, as we have seen in other cases when it comes to Muslim
issues," Juste said.
The turmoil
comes a year after Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam by a
Muslim radical because he made a film critical of Islam. It also revives
memories of the 1989 death threat "fatwa," or religious edict,
against writer Salman Rushdie over his portrayal of Muhammad in "The
Satanic Verses."
Critics say
the drawings in Jyllands-Posten were particularly insulting because some of
them appeared to ridicule the prophet.
"Those
cartoons are very offensive to every Muslim feeling, and to Islam as a
religion," said Abdel Moeti Bayoumi,
a theology professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. "Do you expect
Muslims to remain silent or rise to defend their religion?"
Eleven ambassadors
from Muslim countries signed a letter of protest to Danish Prime Minister
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, but his government has refused
to enter the conflict.
"As prime
minister I have no tool whatsoever to take actions against the media and I
don't want that kind of tool," Fogh Rasmussen
said on Oct. 24.
Denmark is
proud of its extensive freedom of speech laws. The last slander conviction was
in 1938, when a group of Danes were convicted for agitating against Jews.
Eccentric painter Jens Joergen Thorsen, who died in
2000, escaped prosecution despite his deeply provocative work, including a
painting of a crucified Jesus Christ with an erection.
Many Danes
were caught off guard by the furore over the
drawings.
The Danish
Foreign Ministry said the youth auxiliary of Pakistan's largest Islamic group,
Jamaat-e-Islami, offered a 50,000 kroner ($6,700;
US$7,840) reward for killing the cartoonists. But spokesmen for the group have
told Danish media that they have not made such threats, which have also been
downplayed by Denmark's intelligence service.
In
Indian-controlled Kashmir, many shops and businesses shut down Thursday after
Islamic separatists and religious groups called a strike to "protest the
outrage felt by Muslims over the insulting cartoons," separatist leader
Syed Ali Shah Geelani said in a statement.
Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the drawings during a visit to Denmark
last month. "Any action that demeans other people's religious symbols
cannot be accepted," he said.
Muslim leaders
in the Organization of the Islamic Conference asked U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights Louise Arbour to raise the issue with
the Danish government, an OIC official said on condition of anonymity because
he is not a spokesman for the Organisation.
Danish media
reported that Arbour said she understood their
concerns and regretted "any statement or act that could express a lack of
respect for the religion of others."
Mohammed
had lice.
Thou Shalt Not Draw
FrontPageMagazine.com - December 21, 2005
Last September,
Danish author Kĺre Bluitgen
was set to publish a book on the Muslim prophet Muhammad, but there was just
one catch: he couldn’t find an illustrator. Artistic representations of the
human form are forbidden in Islam, and pictures of Muhammad are especially
taboo — so three artists turned down Bluitgen’s offer to illustrate the book for fear
that they would pay with their lives for doing so. Frants
Iver Gundelach, president
of the Danish Writers Union, decried this as a threat to free speech — and the
largest newspaper in Denmark, Jyllands-Posten,
responded. They approached forty artists asking for depictions of Muhammad and
received in response twelve cartoons of the Prophet — several playing on the
violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam around the world today.
Danish Imam Raed Hlayhel was the first to
react. “This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims,” he fumed. “Muslims will
never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in
the world. We demand an apology!” Jyllands-Posten refused.
Editor-in-chief Carsten Juste
refused: “We live in a democracy. That’s why we can use all the
journalistic methods we want to. Satire is accepted in this country, and you
can make caricatures. Religion shouldn’t set any barriers on that sort of
expression. This doesn’t mean that we wish to insult any Muslims.” Cultural
editor Flemming Rose concurred: “Religious
feelings,” he observed, “cannot demand special treatment in a secular society.
In a democracy one must from time to time accept criticism or becoming a
laughingstock.”
Certainly
Christians have had to learn this lesson: in the United Kingdom, the secretary
of an organization called Christians Against Ridicule complained in 2003 that
“over the last seven days alone we have witnessed the ridicule of the Nativity
in a new advert for Mr Kipling cakes, the ridicule of
the Lord’s Prayer on Harry Hill’s TV Burp, the ridicule of a proud Christian
family on ITV’s Holiday Nightmare and the opening of a blasphemous play at
London’s Old Vic Theatre — Stephen Berkoff’s Messiah….Rarely
a day goes by today without underhand and insidious mockery of the Christian
faith.” Christians Against Ridicule, however, issued no death threats at that
point or any other; some Muslims in Denmark after the cartoons were published
were not quite so sanguine. Jyllands-Posten had to hire security guards to protect its
staff as threats came in by phone and email.
Muslim anger
was not limited to threat-issuing thugs. In late October ambassadors to Denmark
from eleven Muslim countries
asked Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for
a meeting about what they called the “smear campaign” against Muslims in the
Danish press. Rasmussen declined: “This
is a matter of principle. I won’t meet with them because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon
that there is no reason to do so.” He added: “I will never
accept that respect for a religious stance leads to the curtailment of
criticism, humour and satire in the press.” The matter,
he said, was beyond his
authority: “As prime minister I have no tool whatsoever to take actions against
the media and I don’t want that kind of tool.”
As far as one
of the ambassadors, Egypt’s, was concerned, that was the wrong answer. Egyptian officials withdrew from a dialogue
they had been conducting with their Danish counterparts about human rights and
discrimination. Egyptian Embassy Councillor Mohab Nasr Mostafa Mahdy added:
“The Egyptian ambassador in Denmark has said that the case no longer rests with
the embassy. It is now being treated at an international level. As far as I
have been informed by my government, the cartoon case has already been placed
on the agenda for the Islamic Conference Organization’s extraordinary summit in
the beginning of December.”
Meanwhile, in
Denmark in early November thousands of Muslims marched
in demonstrations against the cartoons. Two of the cartoonists, fearing for
their lives, went into hiding. The Pakistani Jamaaat-e-Islami party offered five thousand kroner
to anyone who killed one of the cartoonists. The Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC), with a membership of 56 Muslim nations, protested to the Danish government. Last week
business establishments closed to protest the cartoons — in Kashmir. The Chief
Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Ghulam Nabi Azad, was reportedly “anguished” by the cartoons,
and asked India’s Prime Minister to complain to the Danish government. And last
Saturday the most respected authority in the Sunni Muslim world, Mohammad Sayed
Tantawi, Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, declared that the cartoons
had “trespassed all limits of objective criticism into insults and contempt of
the religious beliefs of more than one billion Muslims around the world,
including thousands in Denmark. Al-Azhar intends to protest these anti-Prophet
cartoons with the UN’s concerned committees and human rights groups around the
world.”
The UN was
happy to take the case. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, wrote to the OIC: “I
understand your attitude to the images that appeared in the newspaper. I find
alarming any behaviors that disregard the beliefs of others. This kind of thing
is unacceptable.” She announced that investigations for racism and
“Islamophobia” would commence forthwith.
While
solicitous of Muslim belief, Arbour did not seem
concerned about the beliefs of the Danes. Yet Jyllands-Posten had well articulated its
position as founded upon core principles of the Western world: “We must quietly
point out here that the drawings illustrated an article on the self-censorship
which rules large parts of the Western world. Our right to say, write,
photograph and draw what we want to within the framework of the law exists and
must endure — unconditionally!” Juste added: “If we apologize,
we go against the freedom of speech that generations before us have struggled
to win.”
That freedom
is imperiled internationally more today than it has been in recent memory. As
it grows into an international cause célčbre, the cartoon controversy indicates
the gulf between the Islamic world and the post-Christian West in matters of
freedom of speech and expression. And it may yet turn out that as the West
continues to pay homage to its idols of tolerance, multiculturalism, and
pluralism, it will give up those hard-won freedoms voluntarily.
Robert Spencer is a
scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad
Watch. He is the author of five books, seven monographs, and
hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions
About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and The Politically Incorrect Guide to
Islam (and the Crusades). He is also an Adjunct Fellow with the Free
Congress Foundation.
Mohammed
commanded his followers to drink camel urine.
Cartoons and Islamic Imperialism
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
February 7, 2006
The key issue
at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this:
Will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech,
or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no
compromise: Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.
More
specifically, will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are
free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and
Muslims enjoy immunity from insults? Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones . Are they
entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?
Germany's Die Welt newspaper hinted at this
issue in an editorial: "The protests from Muslims would be taken more
seriously if they were less hypocritical. When Syrian television showed drama
documentaries in prime time depicting rabbis as cannibals, the imams were
quiet." Nor, by the way, have imams protested the stomping on the
Christian cross embedded in the Danish flag.
The deeper
issue here, however, is not Muslim hypocrisy but Islamic supremacism. The
Danish editor who published the cartoons, Flemming Rose,
explained that if Muslims insist "that I, as a non-Muslim, should submit
to their taboos ... they're asking for my submission."
Precisely. Robert Spencer rightly called on the free
world to stand "resolutely with Denmark." The informative Brussels Journal
asserts, "We are all Danes now." Some governments get it:
·
Norway: "We will not apologize
because in a country like Norway, which guarantees freedom of expression, we
cannot apologize for what the newspapers print," Prime Minister Jens
Stoltenberg commented.
·
Germany: "Why should the German
government apologize [for German papers publishing the cartoons]? This is an expression
of press freedom," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble
said.
·
France: "Political cartoons are by nature excessive. And I prefer an
excess of caricature to an excess of censorship," Interior Minister
Nicolas Sarkozy commented.
Other governments
wrongly apologized:
·
Poland: "The bounds of properly
conceived freedom of expression have been overstepped," Prime Minister
Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz stated.
·
United Kingdom: "The republication of
these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been
disrespectful and it has been wrong," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
·
New Zealand: "Gratuitously
offensive," is how Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton described the
cartoons.
·
United States: "Inciting religious or
ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable," a State Department press
officer, Janelle Hironimus, said.
Strangely, as
"Old Europe" finds its backbone, the Anglosphere quivers. So awful
was the American government reaction, it won the endorsement of the country's
leading Islamist organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
This should come as no great surprise, however, for Washington has a history of treating Islam preferentially. On two earlier
occasions it also faltered in cases of insults concerning Muhammad.
In 1989, Salman
Rushdie came under a death edict from Ayatollah Khomeini for satirizing
Muhammad in his magical-realist novel, The Satanic Verses. Rather than
stand up for the novelist's life, President George H.W. Bush equated The
Satanic Verses and the death edict, calling both "offensive." The
then secretary of state, James A. Baker III, termed the edict merely
"regrettable."
Even worse, in
1997 when an Israeli woman distributed a poster of Muhammad as a pig, the American
government shamefully abandoned its protection of free speech. On behalf of
President Bill Clinton, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns called the
woman in question "either sick or … evil" and stated that "She
deserves to be put on trial for these outrageous attacks on Islam." The
State Department endorses a criminal trial for protected speech? Stranger yet
was the context of this outburst. As I noted at the time, having combed through weeks of State
Department briefings, I "found nothing approaching this vituperative
language in reference to the horrors that took place in Rwanda, where hundreds
of thousands lost their lives. To the contrary, Mr. Burns was throughout
cautious and diplomatic."
Western
governments should take a crash course on Islamic law and the
historically-abiding Muslim imperative to subjugate non-Muslim peoples. They
might start by reading the forthcoming book by Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale).
Peoples who
would stay free must stand unreservedly with Denmark.
Cartoon Rage
Grows Worldwide
by Robert
Spencer
Posted Feb 01,
2006
Muslim rage
over cartoons of Muhammad published in early October in a Danish newspaper
continues to grow worldwide. (See the images below.) These cartoons are less
offensive than what is routinely printed in every American newspaper about
politicians. Yet rage over them keeps growing:
• Gaza: On Monday,
gunmen seized an EU office, demanding apologies from Denmark and Norway (where
another publication later reprinted the cartoons). On Tuesday,
demonstrators chanted “War on Denmark, death to Denmark” as they burned Danish
flags.
• Arab interior
ministers declared: “We ask the Danish authorities to take the
necessary measures to punish those responsible for this harm and to take action
to avoid a repeat.”
• Libya and Saudi
Arabia recalled their ambassadors from Copenhagen, while in Saudi
Arabia, a mob beat two
employees of the Danish corporation Arla Foods, which has been
subjected to a crippling boycott throughout the Islamic world -- a boycott that
has been endorsed by, among others, the Sudanese Defense Minister.
• Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari complained to the Danish ambassador to
Baghdad, while Danish troops
were put on alert there after a fatwa concerning the cartoons was
issued.
Even Bill Clinton has decried
“these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam” and huffing self-righteously:
“So now what are we going to do? ... Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with
anti-Islamic prejudice?” Of course not. The cartoons are not a manifestation of
anti-Islamic prejudice: criticism of Muhammad or even of Islam is not
equivalent to anti-Semitism. Islam is not a race; the problems with it are not
the product of fear mongering and fiction, but of ideology and facts -- facts that have been stressed repeatedly by Muslims around
the world, when they commit violence in the name of Islam and justify that
violence by its teachings. Noting that there is a connection between the
teachings of Muhammad and Islamic violence is simply to manifest an awareness
of what has been repeatedly asserted by bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Zarqawi, and so
many others. Do all these men misunderstand and misrepresent the teachings of
Muhammad and Islam? This question, as crucial as it is, is irrelevant here. The
fact is, these and other jihad terrorists claim Muhammad’s example and words as
their inspiration. Some of the cartoons call attention to that fact.
Ultimately, then, the cartoon controversy is a question of free speech. Freedom
of speech encompasses precisely the freedom to ridicule and offend. The instant
that any ideology is considered off-limits for critical examination and even
ridicule, freedom of speech has been replaced by an ideological straitjacket.
Westerners seem to grasp this when it comes to affronts to Christianity, even when
they are as offensive as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or Chris Ofili’s dung- and pornography-encrusted Holy Virgin Mary.
But the same clarity doesn’t seem to extend to an Islamic context.
Yet that’s where it is needed most. The cartoon controversy is an increasingly
serious challenge to Western notions of pluralism and freedom of speech. The Danes have
already begun to apologize. But so far both the newspaper
Jyllands-Posten and the Prime Minister have limited themselves to saying
essentially that they are sorry if Muslims took offense, and that none was
intended. If they go farther and “punish those responsible,” as the Arab
Interior Ministers demanded, or treat the cartoons as a human rights violation,
as a Belgian imam
demanded, they will be acknowledging that lampooning Muhammad and
criticizing Islam is somehow wrong in itself. Such a notion is just as
dangerous for a free society as the idea that the Beloved Leader or dialectical
materialism is above criticism.
To take such offense, to withdraw ambassadors and call for boycotts, and above
all to attack innocent people because of some cartoons is not a reaction to
prejudice. It is madness. It should be denounced as madness. The fact that Bill
Clinton is the only American politician who has taken notice of this ongoing
controversy, and that on the wrong side, is a travesty.
The free world
should be standing resolutely with Denmark, ready to defend freedom of speech.
Insofar as it is not defended, it will surely be lost.
Muslim
death to free speech, press, satire, humor, and cartoonists.
Muslim Cartoons:
Publish or Perish
By Robert W.
Tracinski
The Intellectual Activist - March 7, 2006
The central issue of
the "cartoon jihad"—the Muslim riots and death threats against a
Danish newspaper that printed 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed—is obvious. The
issue is freedom of speech: whether our freedom to think, write, and draw is to
be subjugated to the "religious sensitivities" of anyone who
threatens us with force.
That is why it
is necessary for every newspaper and magazine to re-publish those cartoons, as
I will do in the next print issue of The Intellectual Activist. Click here.
This is not merely a symbolic
expression of support; it is a practical countermeasure against censorship.
Censorship— especially the violent, anarchic type threatened by Muslim
fanatics—is effective only when it can isolate a specific victim, making him
feel as if he alone bears the brunt of the danger. What intimidates an artist
or writer is not simply some Arab fanatic in the street carrying a placard that
reads "Behead those who insult Islam." What intimidates him is the
feeling that, when the beheaders come after him, he
will be on his own, with no allies or defenders—that everyone else will be too
cowardly to stick their necks out.
The answer,
for publishers, is to tell the Muslim fanatics that they can't single out any
one author, or artist, or publication. The answer is to show that we're all
united in defying the fanatics.
That's what it
means to show "solidarity" by re-publishing the cartoons. The message
we need to send is: if you want to kill anyone who publishes those cartoons, or
anyone who makes cartoons of Mohammed, then you're going to have to kill us
all. If you make war on one independent mind, you're making war on all of us.
And we'll fight back.
But the issue
of freedom of speech is too clear, and too well settled, in the West, to be
worth spending much time debating it. What is far more interesting is the fact
that such a debate is occurring, nonetheless.
This is a fact
from which the Western world can draw some crucially important conclusions.
The West has
long been aware that, while we hold freedom of speech as a centerpiece of our
liberty, the Muslim world does not recognize this freedom. Before now, however,
our worlds have rarely collided. The Muslims have not usually dared to extend
their dictatorial systems to control our own behavior within our own cities.
The Salman Rushdie affair—the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 death edict against the
"blasphemous" novelist—was an ominous warning, but Americans did not
take it seriously.
Now, seventeen
years later, the Muslim fanatics are making it clear: you don't have to come to
our country, you don't have to be a Muslim. Even in your own countries and
under your own laws, you will not be safe from our intimidation.
For the whole
Western world, this is an opportunity to learn an important truth about the
goal of the Islamists. Their goal is not to achieve any specific political
demand or settlement. Their goal is submission: our submission to their will,
to their laws, to their dictatorship—our submission, not just to one demand,
but to any demand the Muslim mobs care to make.
Europe
particularly needs to learn this lesson. The Europeans have deluded themselves
into thinking that this is our fight. If only Israel weren't
so intransigent, if only the U.S. weren't so belligerent, they told
themselves—if only those cowboys didn't insist on stirring up trouble, we could
all live in peace with the Muslims. And they have deluded themselves into
thinking that they can seek a separate peace, that having the Danish flag on
your backpack—as one bewildered young Dane described it—would guarantee that
you could go anywhere in the world and be regarded as safe, as innocuous.
Now the
Europeans know better. With cries of "Death to Israel" and
"Death to American" now being joined by cries of "Death to
Denmark", every honest European can now see that they are in this fight,
too—and they are closer to the front lines than we are. Threats against
American cartoonists, when anyone bothers to make them, are toothless; there is
no mob of violent young Muslims in the United States to carry them out.
European writers and filmmakers, by contrast, are already being murdered in the
streets. The first people to find themselves living under the sword of a
would-be Muslim caliphate are Europeans, not Americans.
The lesson
here is not just that the Islamist ideology of dictatorship is a threat to
Europe. It is also that the dictatorships themselves are a threat. The
advocates of cynical European "realpolitik" deluded themselves into
thinking that, if they just made the right kind of deals with Saddam Hussein,
or with the Iranian regime, or with the Syrian regime, then the dictatorships
over there would have no impact on us over here.
But we can now
see that the anti-Danish riots did not explode spontaneously: they were
instigated by the dictators, by the regimes in Iran and Syria. To their credit,
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and now US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
have been pointing out this connection. The lesson for Europe: if you
accommodate and appease the dictators, they won't leave you alone. Having
gotten some of what they want, they will come after you and take the rest.
Europe ought to have learned that lesson, at terrible cost, in 1939; this ought
to refresh their memory.
If we want to
know why these lessons have not been learned before now, the cartoon jihad also gives us clues to
the answer. Note that those who are supposed to help us learn those lessons—the
left-leaning intellectuals and newspaper editors, the people who have
traditionally posed as the brave defenders of free speech—have been the first
to collapse in abject submission to Muslim sensibilities. The New York Times, for example,
dismissed the cartoons as "juvenile" and explained that refusing to
publish even a single image of the cartoons "seems a reasonable choice for
news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious
symbols."
Note how the New York Times—like many
other left-leaning newspapers—hides behind the evasion that the Danish cartoons
are "silly" or "juvenile." On the contrary: the best of the
Danish cartoons provided a far more serious, hard-hitting, thought-provoking
commentary than has been provided in the pages of these same newspapers. While
the mainstream media has drooled that Islam is "a religion of
peace"—in the midst of yet another Muslim war—it was left to a Danish cartoonists to suggest that Mohammed himself, and the
religion he represents, might be the bomb that has set off all of this
violence. (To see these cartoons, go to the simply named website muhammadcartoons.com.)
But the prize
for most abject surrender to Muslim dictatorship has to go to the leftist
academics. The first to decry the Bush administration as a creeping
"fascist" dictatorship, they are, perversely, the first to fawn in
admiration before the world's actual fascists. If you think that's an
exaggeration, read an op-ed in Sunday's New York Times by Stanley
Fish, a famous "Postmodernist" university professor and defender of
"political correctness." Fish writes:
Strongly held
faiths are exhibits in liberalism's museum; we appreciate them, and we
congratulate ourselves for affording them a space, but should one of them ask
of us more than we are prepared to give—ask for deference rather than mere
respect—it will be met with the barrage of platitudinous arguments that for the
last week have filled the pages of every newspaper in the country….
[T]he editors
who have run the cartoons do not believe that Muslims are evil infidels who
must either be converted or vanquished. They do not publish the offending
cartoons in an effort to further some religious or political vision; they do it
gratuitously, almost accidentally. Concerned only to stand up for an abstract
principle—free speech—they seize on whatever content happens to come their way
and use it as an example of what the principle should be protecting. The fact
that for others the content may be life itself is beside their point.
This is itself
a morality—the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent
form. It is certainly different from the morality of those for whom the Danish
cartoons are blasphemy and monstrously evil. And the difference, I think, is to
the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal
editors.
For years, the
Left has told us that the foundation of freedom is subjectivism; if you are
never certain that you are right, you will never be certain enough to
"impose" your views on others. But will you be certain enough to
defend your mind against those who want to impose their beliefs on you? If Fish
is any indication, the answer is "no." Note how he bows with almost
superstitious awe before the fanaticism of the Muslim mobs, while describing
the old-fashioned liberals' defense of free speech as hypocritical,
superficial, "condescending."
And now the
"hate crimes" laws pioneered by the Left in the name of political
correctness, are being invoked by Muslims to suppress publication of the Mohammed
cartoons by a Canadian newspaper. The intellectuals of the Left, having built a
reputation as defenders of free speech by striking a pose of defiance against
innocuous threats at home, have now become the leading advocates for
self-imposed submission to the Muslim hoards abroad.
Interestingly,
intellectuals on the right have now become the loudest, most strident voices in
defense of free speech, for which they deserve our admiration. Blogger Michelle Malkin has waged a particularly effective crusade on
this issue. And she is not the only one; I linked to many good articles on the
topic in last week's editions of TIA Daily.
But the right
has its own contradictions, it own source of sympathy
with the enemy. For years, conservative intellectuals have been demanding
greater "sensitivity" to "religious sensibilities"—at
least, to the religious sensibilities of Christians—and calling for a great
role for religion in the "public square." They have waged a long crusade
to allow religion to serve as the basis for laws against abortion and
homosexuality, and for the subordination of science to religion, demanding that
this be a "nation under God" rather than a "nation under
Darwin."
And so we have seen a few prominent conservatives falter badly
in the cartoon jihad.
Prominent neoconservative scion John Podhoretz wrote a column in last Friday's New York Post that sounds an
awful lot like Stanley Fish's column quoted above:
For many
people, the way to grant Muslims the recognition they crave is to patronize
them—to give them nice little nods and winks and talk about what a nice
religion they have. That kind of recognition is unsatisfying and condescending.
The impulse behind the original publication of the cartoons in Denmark last
September was to cut through the condescension. They were literally
provocative—designed to provoke discussion about how to deal with the
phenomenon that Carsten Juste, the editor of the
newspaper that published them, called the "self-censorship which rules
large parts of the Western world."
Well, as Juste and his staff have learned to their sorrow, while
some of that self-censorship may be the result of cowardly political
correctness, some of it is clearly due to simple prudence. Juste
and his underlings have been in grave physical danger for months, ever since
the cartoons were published. And it would not be too much to say that they and
the world would have been better off if they had exercised a little more
self-protective caution in the first place.
Meanwhile,
Hugh Hewitt—a much more dedicated religious conservative—practically squirms
with discomfort at the idea of someone criticizing religion. He echoes the idea
that the Danish editors were "irresponsible" for printing the
cartoons because they could have predicted that it would "provoke" a
violent reaction—but he adds a more pro-American gloss to it. He says that the cartoons were
irresponsible because the enemy will use them as propaganda to incite riots and
try to gain support among Muslims.
In a wired
world, there aren't any inconsequential actions, and everything is grist for
the propagandists among the jihadists. That doesn't mean censorship, or even
self-censorship. Only a bit of reflection before rushing off to start new
battles which divert attention from those already underway. There is a chasm of
difference between serious commentary on the Islamic challenge facing Europe
and the West…and crude, sweeping anti-Muslim propaganda. It isn't necessary to
defend the latter in order to uphold and praise the former.
(See more of Hewitt's commentary
on this issue.)
The weakness
of the conservatives is that they think the essence of the West is our
religion, our "Judeo-Christian tradition"—rather than our
Enlightenment legacy of individual rights and unfettered reason. Conservatives
try to evade the clash between religious authority and freedom of thought by
claiming that religion provides the moral basis for liberty. But the clash
cannot be avoided, and conservatives are forced to choose where they will draw
the line: where respect for religious prohibitions, in their view, takes
precedence over respect for the individual mind. On this issue—involving a
religion alien to American traditions—most conservatives have had no problem
drawing the line in favor of freedom. But will they draw a different line when
their own religious
dogmas are challenged?
This is the
final lesson of the cartoon jihad.
The real issue at stake is not just censorship versus freedom, but something
much deeper: the need to recognize the real essence of the West. The
distinctive power and vibrancy of our culture, the source of our liberty, our
happiness, and our unprecedented prosperity, is our Enlightenment tradition of
regard for the unfettered reasoning mind, left free to follow the evidence
wherever it leads.
And this
controversy has given our minds plenty of evidence to follow, and plenty of
fearless conclusions to draw.
Muslim Group
Pledges Violence Against Cartoon Offenders
February 04,
2006
By Sher Zieve – Another Muslim group has pledged violence against
citizens of all countries who published Muhammad cartoons. On Saturday, global
Muslim riots over the ostensible offense of publishing caricatures of the
Muslim prophet Muhammad are said to be continuing.
The
Muslim group Abu-Rish Brigades stated: “We'll abduct
and hurt all citizens of the European countries who hurt Islam's feelings and
honor!” Although the cartoons represent an application of free speech, the EU’s
Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini officially entered the controversy when he
said that it was “imprudent” to publish the cartoons “even if the satire used
was aimed at a distorted interpretation of religion.”
Pak cleric
offers reward on cartoonist
Amir Mir &
Agencies
Saturday,
February 18, 2006
Lahore/Peshawar:
A Pakistani Muslim cleric and his followers have offered rewards for anyone who
kills Danish cartoonists who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Maulana Yousef Qureshi said he had personally offered to pay a bounty of
Rs5,00,000 (US$8,400) during Friday prayers, and two of his congregation put up
additional rewards of $1 million and Rs1 million plus a car.
“If the West can place a bounty on Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, we
can also announce a reward for killing the man who has caused this sacrilege,”
Qureshi said.
A Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten,
first printed the cartoons by 12 cartoonists in September. The newspaper has
since apologised to Muslims.
Denmark closed its embassy in Islamabad on Friday and Pakistan decided to
recall its ambassador from Copenhagen.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani government put Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of the
Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT),
under house arrest on Friday.
Saeed was served the order at his Johar Town
residence in Lahore ahead of protests planned by his organisation,
the Jamaatul Daawa, and the
LeT, its former military wing.
Police said Saeed was detained to avoid any untoward incident in the city
during the Friday protests.
In India, violence erupted in parts of Hyderabad on Friday during protests by
Muslims. Two persons were injured in stone-throwing as protesters ransacked 10
shops and damaged or set on fire dozens of vehicles at Charminar, Murgi Chowk, Chhatrinaka,
Darussalam, Mehdipatnam and Vijaynagar.
Police said the situation was tense but under control. They have arrested 10
people, including a corporator of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul
Muslimeen.
Cleric puts
$1m bounty on Danish cartoonists
18/02/06
ISLAMABAD - A
Pakistani Muslim cleric and his followers have offered rewards amounting to
over US$1 million for anyone who killed Danish cartoonists who drew caricatures
of the Prophet Mohammad that have enraged Muslims worldwide.
The cleric offered the bounty during Friday prayers as Muslim anger against the
cartoons flared anew in parts of Asia. Weeks of global protests over the
cartoons have gained momentum and fears of a clash of civilizations
between the West and Islam have led to calls on all sides for calm.
About 10 people were killed in violent clashes between Libyan police and
demonstrators today at a protest over the cartoons, Italian Ambassador to
Tripoli Francesco Trupiano told Reuters.
"The number of dead is not official, or definitive, because until the
clashes are over, it's hard to say. But there are certainly about 10
victims," Trupiano said, clarifying that by
victims he meant dead.
Trupiano said he had met Libya's interior minister
about a half hour earlier to discuss the clashes outside Italy's consulate in
the northeastern city of Benghazi.
On Friday, thousands rallied in Pakistan, police in Bangladesh blocked
demonstrators heading for the Danish embassy in Dhaka and in the Indian city of
Hyderabad, police fired teargas shells and batons to beat back hundreds of
protesters, who had stoned shops and disrupted traffic.
Protests in Pakistan this week have resulted in at least five deaths and
hundreds of detentions, and on Friday it became the latest country where
Denmark has decided to temporarily close its embassy.
The Danish foreign ministry also issued a travel warning for Pakistan, urging
any Danes to leave as soon as possible.
In the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, cleric Maulana Yousef Qureshi
said he had personally offered to pay a bounty of 500,000 rupees
to anyone who killed a Danish cartoonist, and two of his congregation
put up additional rewards of $1 million and one million rupees plus a car.
"If the West can place a bounty on Osama bin Laden and Zawahri
we can also announce reward for killing the man who has caused this sacrilege
of the holy Prophet," Qureshi told Reuters, referring to the al Qaeda
leader and his deputy Ayman al Zawahri.
The cleric leads the congregation at the historic Mohabat
mosque, on street known for goldsmith shops in the provincial capital of North
West Frontier Province -- a stronghold of Pakistan's Islamist opposition
parties.
The cartoons were first published in Denmark last September, but last month
newspapers and magazines in Europe and elsewhere began republishing to assert
principles of freedom of expression.
Muslims believe images of the Prophet are forbidden.
EMBASSY SHUTS
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said it was recalling its own ambassador from
Copenhagen for consultations. It did not elaborate further.
The Danish ambassador in Islamabad said, however, that relations had not been
broken off because of the furor.
"I'm still in Pakistan and in a secure place," Ambassador Bent Wigotski told Reuters.
"There is no question of broken relations or anything like that," he
said, adding that the German embassy was looking after Denmark's consular
affairs.
Denmark has already shut its missions in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Indonesia as
a result of violence or threats of violence.
Protests in Pakistan have been large and violent and many have taken on a
distinctly anti-US tone. Demonstrators, in addition to burning Danish flags, have
attacked US fast-food outlets and burned US President George W. Bush in effigy.
Islamist parties have called for a nationwide strike on March 3, around the
time President George W. Bush is expected to visit Pakistan, despite the
unrest.
Western leaders have been calling for calm.
Former US President Bill Clinton and French President Jacques Chirac both said
on Friday that it was a mistake to publish the cartoons.
Clinton, on a private visit to Pakistan, said he saw nothing wrong with Muslims
around the world demonstrating in a peaceful way, but he feared a great
opportunity to improve understanding had been squandered.
"This is not a time to burn bridges; this is a time to build them,"
he said, adding, "...I can tell you that most people are horrified that
this much misunderstanding has occurred."
Chirac was more blunt.
"I am appalled by what happened as a result of the publications of these
cartoons," Chirac told India Today news magazine which published an
interview with him on Friday.
"I am, of course, in favor of the freedom of the press, which is a pillar
of democracy. But I am equally for respecting everyone's sensibilities... So I deplore the situation," said Chirac, who visits
India next week.
- REUTERS
New Muhammad comic printed
April 16, 2006
ROME (Agence France-Presse) -- An Italian
magazine close to the influential Catholic conservative Opus Dei group has
published a cartoon showing the prophet Muhammad in hell, sparking outrage
among Muslim associations here.
The drawing in Studi Cattolici's
March issue shows the poets Dante Alighieri and Virgil on the edge of a circle
of flames looking down on Muhammad, whose body is cut in half down to his
buttocks, according to a description by the Italian news agency ANSA.
"Isn't that Muhammad?" Virgil is shown asking Dante.
"Yes, and he's cut in two because he has brought division to
society," Dante replies.
Opus Dei distanced itself from the magazine, with spokesman Giuseppe Corigliano telling ANSA that Studi
Cattolici is not an official publication of the group
even though it is edited by an Opus Dei member.
However, he said Opus Dei members "are free to have all the opinions they
want."
Studi Cattolici editor
Cesare Cavalleri told ANSA: "I hope the
publication of this drawing won't lead to attacks, because if that happened it
would only prove the idiotic positions" of Islamic extremists.
Cartoons by 12 artists first published in a Danish newspaper in September and
later reprinted in a number of other mainly European dailies sparked Muslim
riots worldwide.
"Sometimes a politically incorrect satirical cartoon can do some good.
It's only a reference to a passage in [Dante's] Divine Comedy," Mr. Cavalleri said.
"In any case, Muhammad was sent to hell by Dante, one of the greatest
Italian poets," he added.
Opus Dei, which has a chiefly lay membership, has aroused controversy over
charges that it is secretive and socially conservative. It came to wider
attention when it was heavily and unflatteringly featured in the best-selling
novel "The Da Vinci Code."
The cartoon in Studi Cattolici
drew immediate fire from Italy's Muslim community.
"With all the efforts made in the Christian and Muslim world for
interfaith dialogue, there are nevertheless always minorities that inflame
things and cause provocations," said Roberto Piccardo,
an official of the Union of Italian Muslim Communities.
Souad Sbai, president of an
association of Moroccan women in Italy, called on the magazine to "step
back, stop and lower the tone."
"Wouldn't it be better to sit down around a table and talk about it,
instead of provoking things? What can such an initiative mean?" she asked.
Muslim cleric wants shutdown of
Danish paper
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Egypt's top Sunni Muslim cleric
on Friday called for the editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish daily that
published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, to be imprisoned and for his
newspaper to be closed down.
The cartoons were first published in Jyllands-Posten
last September and then reprinted by other media in Europe and the United
States after Muslim protests began early this year.
"The satirical drawings of the Prophet Mohammad
are one of the most serious crimes ever committed. The editor should be
imprisoned for one, two or three years," Grand Sheikh Mohamed Sayed
Tantawi told Danish newspaper Berlingske in an
interview.
"In addition, one should forbid the paper from
being published for a number of years," he said.
Many Muslims regard any depiction of the Prophet as an
offence against their religion.
Denmark's government declined to apologise for the
cartoons, saying the country's media are free and independent.
Tantawi, the Sheikh of al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, one
of the oldest and most revered seats of Islamic learning, said the prophets,
Jesus, Moses, Abraham and Mohammad were God's chosen.
"The West must understand that you can't treat
prophets the same way as presidents or regular people."
The row over the cartoons sparked attacks on Danish
embassies in parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East in which more than 50
people died.
Jyllands-Posten has expressed regret over the offence
that was caused.
Jylland-Posten's editor
Carsten Juste was not immediately available to
comment on the interview but Flemming Rose, the
paper's culture editor, told Berlingske Tantawi's
views underlined the need for dialogue.
Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist
The arrest of a controversial Dutch
cartoonist has set off a wave of protests. The case is raising questions for a
changing Europe about free speech, religion and art.
By ANDREW HIGGINS
The Wall Street Journal
July 12, 2008; Page W1
On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed
policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor's office closed
in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist
with a rude sense of humor. Informed that he was suspected of sketching
offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered
without a struggle.
"I never expected the Spanish Inquisition," recalls the cartoonist,
who goes by the nom de plume Gregorius Nekschot,
quoting the British comedy team Monty Python. A fan of ribald gags, he's a caustic
foe of religion, particularly Islam. The Quran, crucifixion, sexual organs and
goats are among his favorite motifs.
Mr. Nekschot, whose cartoons had appeared mainly on
his own Web site, spent the night in a jail cell. Police grabbed his computer,
a hard drive and sketch pads. He's been summoned for further questioning later
this month by prosecutors. He hasn't been charged with a crime, but the
prosecutor's office says he's been under investigation for three years on
suspicion that he violated a Dutch law that forbids discrimination on the basis
of race, religion or sexual orientation.
The cartoon affair has come as a shock to a country that sees itself as a
bastion of tolerance, a tradition forged by grim memories of bloody conflict
between Catholics and Protestants. The Netherlands sheltered Jews and other
refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, and Calvinists fleeing persecution in
France. Its thinkers helped nurture the 18th-century Enlightenment.
Prostitutes, marijuana and pornography have been legal for decades.
"This is serious. It is about freedom of speech," says Mark Rutte, the leader of a center-right opposition party. Some
of Mr. Nekschot's oeuvre is "really
disgusting," he says, "but that is free speech."
The saga has turned the previously obscure artist into a national celebrity.
His predicament reprises, with a curious twist, a drama that debuted in Denmark
just over two years ago. Then, Danish cartoonists published a series of
cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the nation's Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The
drawings set off a tempest of often violent protests across the Muslim world
and a fierce debate in Europe about how to balance secular and sacred values.
One of the Danish cartoonists fled his house and went into hiding late last
year after the state security service uncovered a murder plot against him. (The
elderly artist is now back at home, guarded by police.) Last month, a suicide
bomber killed six in an attack on the Danish Embassy in Pakistan.
The Dutch scenario involves similar issues but has followed a very different
script. This time the state has stepped in to rein in the artist, rather than
protect him, and it is secular champions of free speech who are angry. They
haven't resorted to violence but have stirred up a political storm. Parliament
held an emergency debate on the affair and cartoonists have bombarded the Dutch
Justice Ministry with a blizzard of faxed protest caricatures.
"Denmark protects its cartoonists. We arrest them," says Geert
Wilders, a populist member of the Dutch Parliament famous for his dyed-blond
bouffant hairdo and incendiary denunciations of the Quran as an Islamic version
of Hitler's "Mein Kampf." The arrested
cartoonist, says Mr. Wilders, is "a bit obsessed" with Muslims and
sex, but "it is not bad for artists to have a little obsession."
How to handle Muslim sensitivities is one of Europe's most prickly issues.
Islam is Europe's fastest-growing religion, with immigrants from Muslim lands
often rejecting a drift toward secularism in what used to be known as
Christendom. About 6% of Holland's 16.3 million people are Muslims, and nearly
half of Amsterdam's population is of foreign origin. Some predict the city
could have a Muslim majority within a decade or so.
The contrasting Danish and Dutch responses "show that there is a serious
struggle of ideas going on for the future of Europe," says Flemming Rose, a Danish newspaper editor who commissioned
the drawings of Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten. At stake, he says, is whether
democracy protects the right to offend or embraces religious taboos so that
"citizens have a right not to be offended."
In Britain, a local police force got caught up recently in a flap over its use
of a German shepherd puppy to promote an emergency hotline. A Muslim councilor,
noting that dogs are viewed as unclean in Islam, complained that the puppy
could turn off believers. The police force apologized and regretted not
consulting its diversity officer.
In Switzerland, meanwhile, a bombastic anti-immigration political party is
campaigning to ban all Muslim prayer towers, known as minarets. This week it
gathered enough signatures to force a national referendum on the issue. The
Swiss government says such a ban would violate freedom of religion and pose a
security threat by provoking Muslims.
Afshin Ellian, an Iranian-born history of law
professor at Holland's Leiden University, says he fled Tehran to escape
religious taboos and now worries that Europe is "importing problems from
the Middle East." He understands why Muslims, Christians and other devout
believers might take offense at certain cartoons, paintings or texts, but he
calls it "a matter of aesthetics not criminal law."
The inquiry into Mr. Nekschot's case is being led by
an Amsterdam prosecutor unit that specializes in combating neo-Nazis and other
hate-mongers. The cartoonist denies any links to fascist or other extremist
groups. He says he loathes all ideologies and all religions as recipes for
tyranny.
Mr. Nekschot, who calls the investigation
"surreal," says, "Not even Monty Python could have come up with
this." (His pen name, Gregorius Nekschot, is a
mocking tribute to Gregory IX, a 13th-century pope who set up a Vatican
department to hunt down and execute heretics. Nekschot
means "shot in the neck" in Dutch.) Some Muslim groups have voiced
dismay at his arrest as well. The head of an organization of Moroccan preachers
in Holland said authorities seemed "more afraid" of offending Islam
than Muslims.
"We are led by the law," says Franklin Wattimena,
a spokesman for the Amsterdam Public Prosecutor's Office. He denies any attempt
to squelch free speech and says locking Mr. Nekschot
up overnight was probably a "mistake."
If formally charged and taken to court, Mr. Nekschot
risks up to two years in prison and a maximum fine of €16,750, or about
$26,430, says his Amsterdam lawyer, Max Vermeij. He
thinks the odds on his client being prosecuted are better than even but draws
some comfort from recent Dutch court rulings in discrimination cases that
mostly came down on the side of free speech.
Mr. Nekschot himself is very worried. "I'm
afraid of getting a judge who doesn't have a sense of humor," he says.
He's also worried that his identity will get exposed if he goes to court. This,
says the cartoonist, could make him a target for attack like Theo van Gogh, a
polemical filmmaker and foul-mouthed celebrity murdered by an Islamic extremist
in November 2004. Mr. Van Gogh was a fan of Mr. Nekschot's
work and posted his drawings on his own Web site, The Happy Smoker.
Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin, when grilled about
the cartoon affair in Parliament, promised to protect Mr. Nekshot's
anonymity so as "to guarantee the suspect's safety." (The Wall Street
Journal also agreed not to publish Mr. Nekschot's
real name.)
But the minister, a devout Christian, added fuel to a mounting political furor
by revealing the existence of a previously secret bureaucratic body, called the
Interdepartmental Working Group on Cartoons. Officials later explained that the
cartoon group had no censorship duties and had been set up after the 2006
Danish cartoon crisis to alert Dutch officials to any risks the Netherlands
might face. The group examined Mr. Nekschot's work,
say officials, but played no part in his arrest. Headed by a senior bureaucrat
from a national agency coordinating counterterrorism, it draws from the
intelligence service, the interior minister, the prosecutor's office and
various other government bodies.
Until his brush with the law, Mr. Nekschot was barely
known outside a narrow circle of Internet-savvy aficionados. Newspapers shunned
his caricatures. "They all said 'no way,' " he recalls. "They
thought I was too offensive, too explicit and too strong on sensitive issues
like religion." He set up his own Web site, at www.gregoriusnekschot.nl/blog,
in 2003 to break the blockade. He published two books, "Sick Jokes"
in 2006 and "Sick Jokes 2" earlier this year, but sales languished. A
big book distributor refused to touch them.
Today, he's a cult phenomenon. Hits on his Web site went from a few thousand a
day to over 100,000 a day when news of his arrest broke, he says. Newspapers
that wanted nothing to do with him now print his work. He's been interviewed on
television -- with his face hidden -- and his work is currently on display in
the Parliament building, where Mr. Rutte, the
politician, has set up a "free-thinkers space." Other exhibits
include poems by Mr. Van Gogh, the murdered filmmaker, and abstract paintings
of seminaked women that were banished from a town
hall in central Holland after complaints from Christians and Muslims.
Guessing Mr. Nekschot's true identity has become a
media parlor game -- to the chagrin of one prominent cartoonist who was named
in print, wrongly, as the mystery man. The case has also stirred much
speculation in the media and Parliament about why an apparently dormant
investigation first launched in 2005 suddenly became so urgent that Mr. Nekschot had to be snatched from his home without warning.
The prosecutor's office says it simply took a long time to figure out Mr. Nekschot's true identity and then find him.
Others say the timing of his arrest suggests an attempt by authorities to
soothe Muslims angry over the March release on the Internet of "Fitna," a short film by Mr. Wilders, the Dutch
legislator. The film, which denounces "hateful verses from the
Quran," infuriated many Muslims and also Dutch leaders, who had urged that
it not be released.
Officials deny any connection. The prosecutor's office notes that it has also
taken action against Muslims suspected of discrimination. A Moroccan-born
Dutchman was recently convicted of discrimination for writing in a blog that
homosexuals should be tossed from rooftops and thrown down stairs. A court
ordered him to do community-service work.
Mr. Nekschot makes no apologies for causing offense.
"Harmless humor does not exist," he says. "I like strong
stuff."
But, eager to stay out of prison, he's pruned his Web site of eight cartoons
that prosecutors say are the focus of their investigation. Deleted were
cartoons of a Muslim at the North Pole engaging in deviant sex, and of a black
youth waving two pistols at a left-wing do-gooder wearing a peace sign.
Among the cartoons that survived his cut is a drawing of Mr. Van
Gogh's jailed killer naked on his prison bed. It shows him leering salaciously
at a copy of the Quran and lamenting that the holy book doesn't have any
pictures.
The cartoonist blames his woes on what he calls Holland's "political
correctness industry," a network of often state-funded organizations set
up to protect Muslims and other minority groups. One of these, an Internet
monitoring group known as MDI, says it received dozens of complaints about the
cartoonist's mockery of Islam and first reported him to the prosecutor's office
in 2005.
"We're not sure what he does is illegal, but there is a possibility that
it is not legal," says the group's head, Niels van Tamelen.
Many of the complaints, he says, came from followers of a controversial Muslim
convert called Abdul-Jabbar van de Ven.
Mr. Van de Ven caused an uproar after the 2004 murder of Mr. Van Gogh, when he
seemed to welcome the killing on national TV. He said Mr. Wilders, the
anti-immigrant legislator, also deserved to die, preferably from cancer. Mr. Nekschot, appalled by the outburst, caricatured the convert
as a fatwa-spewing fanatic.
Mr. Van de Ven says he's glad to see Mr. Nekschot in
trouble. The cartoonist deserves prosecution, he says, for "disgusting
cartoons about our beloved prophet Muhammad, may Allah's peace and blessings be
upon him." Politicians who cry about free speech, he says, "shouldn't
stick their noses into judicial matters."
Mr. Nekschot says everyone is entitled to their
opinions. "If people say my cartoons are disgusting that is fine by me. I
see lots of things I don't like. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."