The cartoon that set the world upside down
There is no room for humor
By Dick Tunison
Great masses of the Islamic world have gone nuts over a political cartoon published in a Danish newspaper last September that depicts The Prophet Mohammed. No matter how he’s depicted – in this case not favorably – some Islamists believe it’s sacrilegious to depict the father of their faith in any way, because it could be considered idolatrous. So, literally thousands of “offended” Muslims have taken to the streets in several European and Middle Eastern countries, overturned cars, smashed windows and burned Danish and Norwegian embassies.
The Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, published Tuesday, February 7, made an interesting observation. “There is something exceedingly odd in the notion that Denmark – which has made a national religion of not being offensive to anyone – could become the focal point of Muslim rage.” From a Muslim theological perspective, The Prophet Mohammed is not to be ridiculed or portrayed. But, curiously, violating the sensibilities of persons of other religious beliefs is not taboo to Muslims.
I watched a TV news broadcast the other night that showed several kids holding a hand-made poster with a Christian cross marked on it. A fourth person had set a match to the poster. I don’t know the location of the incident, but it was clearly somewhere in the Arab world. The kids seemed gleeful, but that was not true on the adults that crowded around them. Their faces were filled with rage.
All this has made me think about how different our culture is when compared to that of the Middle East. This is particularly so when we view our reactions to perceived religious slights and slurs in our own country and the way people in the Muslim World view similar situations.
Do you remember Salman Rushdie? He is the India-born English novelist who wrote The Satanic Verses in 1988. Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the former Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 14, 1989. Naguib Mahfouz, the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, criticized Khomeini for 'intellectual terrorism' but changed his view later and said that Rushdie did not have 'the right to insult anything, especially a prophet or anything considered holy.'
In America, turmoil surrounded the exhibition of photographer Andres Serrano’s depiction of a small plastic crucifix in a glass of the artist’s urine. Many people of the Christian faith found Serrano’s work offensive, while others, along with a few in Congress decried the use of public funds, through the National Endowment for the Arts, to underwrite the display of such works.
But in this case, no one took to the streets. The Brooklyn Museum of Art was not fire bombed, nor were riot police called to quell crowds of delirious protestors. Finally, the dispute shifted to a discussion over freedom of speech and artistic expression and eventually faded into the haze of the past.
This is not to say people of faith in America are not sensitive to religious affronts. They are quite cognizant of slights and slurs, perceived and real, that they note on television, in films and in the press, but the redress they seek comes in far more moderated ways than what we’re seeing among a substantial element of the Islamic culture.
Earlier this past week some Muslim rabble rousers in England wore fake bomb belts strapped around their middles to evoke the fear of terrorism. Damascus has gone wild – which is a mystery in itself, because nothing happens in Syria without being condoned by the secret police. Khaled Mash’al preached the following message at the Al Murabit Mosque in Damascus last Friday, “Today, the Arab and Islamic nation is rising and awakening, and it will reach its peak, Allah willing. It will be victorious. It will link the present to the past. It will open up the horizons of the future. It will regain the leadership of the world. Allah willing, the day is not far off.”
The Islamic Army in Iraq, a Sunni Arab insurgent group urged followers to “catch some Danish people and cut them into pieces.” Nine people have been killed in Afghanistan by rioters and trouble in the streets has extended all the way to Indonesia and New Zealand. How many of these people have even seen the cartoons in question?
This whole emotional uprising was fomented by a radical Muslim cleric who took his message of hate from his mosque in Denmark to Cairo, Egypt where he played his tune to receptive ears. Many of the local crowds in the Middle East knew nothing about the political cartoons until their ire was aroused by firebrand clerics who unleashed pent-up fury. The much maligned Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or even militant Zionist Rabi Meir Kahane wouldn’t have that kind of clout in this society.
Supporting these religious protestations is a clever political ploy on the part of many secular Arab governments that need to show their people they are good Muslims. This is certainly true in Syria and Lebanon where strong Syrian influence is at play in both countries. This is intended to counteract the radical religious leaders’ call for a return to the golden days of Arabian prestige and the dominance of the Islamic faith. In the clerics’ view, Christianity and Judaism are what stand in their way. Little needling is required to bring restless people into the streets to protest almost anything, least of all a perceived attack on their religion.
But there is likely another twist to this fuss that has not yet shown itself in full bloom. The terrorist agitators working desperately throughout the Muslim World and in Europe couldn’t help but have their hand in the soup. It’s part of a vast attempt to create divides between peoples wherever such hegemony can be accomplished.
The Bush administration has attempted to make the point from the very beginning that the threat from Muslim extremists is not really a response to anything, but a constantly present danger that can be triggered by anything or nothing. Leaders of the European countries have had a hard time getting this notion through their heads. Like it or not, they are now seeing themselves hostage to Islamic perceptions. The cartoonists and the publishers are not the focus of Muslim anger. Whole nations are in the sights of the throngs. Now we see clearly the Europeans are neither in control nor are they immune from attack: train bombings in Spain and Great Britain, mass rioting in France, an assassination in the Netherlands.
Despite the continued division between America and Europe that has so frequently gotten in the way of our achieving goals perceived to be important, we may be at a turning point. If, indeed, Europe begins to see the radical Muslim offensive as indiscriminately applied against their own homelands and their people, they may be more willing to establish alliances with us. This, of course, would be at odds with the extremist Muslim purpose.
But there lies the big question: Are we unknowingly seeing the first stages of the “Clash of Civilizations”? Samuel P. Huntington, writing in his book (1996) on the same subject, includes a fascinating note. “In 1991, for instance, Barry Buzan saw many reasons why a societal cold war was emerging ‘between the West and Islam, in which Europe would be on the front line.’”
This is not a matter to be taken lightly!
By Dick Tunison
Great masses of the Islamic world have gone nuts over a political cartoon published in a Danish newspaper last September that depicts The Prophet Mohammed. No matter how he’s depicted – in this case not favorably – some Islamists believe it’s sacrilegious to depict the father of their faith in any way, because it could be considered idolatrous. So, literally thousands of “offended” Muslims have taken to the streets in several European and Middle Eastern countries, overturned cars, smashed windows and burned Danish and Norwegian embassies.
The Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, published Tuesday, February 7, made an interesting observation. “There is something exceedingly odd in the notion that Denmark – which has made a national religion of not being offensive to anyone – could become the focal point of Muslim rage.” From a Muslim theological perspective, The Prophet Mohammed is not to be ridiculed or portrayed. But, curiously, violating the sensibilities of persons of other religious beliefs is not taboo to Muslims.
I watched a TV news broadcast the other night that showed several kids holding a hand-made poster with a Christian cross marked on it. A fourth person had set a match to the poster. I don’t know the location of the incident, but it was clearly somewhere in the Arab world. The kids seemed gleeful, but that was not true on the adults that crowded around them. Their faces were filled with rage.
All this has made me think about how different our culture is when compared to that of the Middle East. This is particularly so when we view our reactions to perceived religious slights and slurs in our own country and the way people in the Muslim World view similar situations.
Do you remember Salman Rushdie? He is the India-born English novelist who wrote The Satanic Verses in 1988. Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the former Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 14, 1989. Naguib Mahfouz, the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, criticized Khomeini for 'intellectual terrorism' but changed his view later and said that Rushdie did not have 'the right to insult anything, especially a prophet or anything considered holy.'
In America, turmoil surrounded the exhibition of photographer Andres Serrano’s depiction of a small plastic crucifix in a glass of the artist’s urine. Many people of the Christian faith found Serrano’s work offensive, while others, along with a few in Congress decried the use of public funds, through the National Endowment for the Arts, to underwrite the display of such works.
But in this case, no one took to the streets. The Brooklyn Museum of Art was not fire bombed, nor were riot police called to quell crowds of delirious protestors. Finally, the dispute shifted to a discussion over freedom of speech and artistic expression and eventually faded into the haze of the past.
This is not to say people of faith in America are not sensitive to religious affronts. They are quite cognizant of slights and slurs, perceived and real, that they note on television, in films and in the press, but the redress they seek comes in far more moderated ways than what we’re seeing among a substantial element of the Islamic culture.
Earlier this past week some Muslim rabble rousers in England wore fake bomb belts strapped around their middles to evoke the fear of terrorism. Damascus has gone wild – which is a mystery in itself, because nothing happens in Syria without being condoned by the secret police. Khaled Mash’al preached the following message at the Al Murabit Mosque in Damascus last Friday, “Today, the Arab and Islamic nation is rising and awakening, and it will reach its peak, Allah willing. It will be victorious. It will link the present to the past. It will open up the horizons of the future. It will regain the leadership of the world. Allah willing, the day is not far off.”
The Islamic Army in Iraq, a Sunni Arab insurgent group urged followers to “catch some Danish people and cut them into pieces.” Nine people have been killed in Afghanistan by rioters and trouble in the streets has extended all the way to Indonesia and New Zealand. How many of these people have even seen the cartoons in question?
This whole emotional uprising was fomented by a radical Muslim cleric who took his message of hate from his mosque in Denmark to Cairo, Egypt where he played his tune to receptive ears. Many of the local crowds in the Middle East knew nothing about the political cartoons until their ire was aroused by firebrand clerics who unleashed pent-up fury. The much maligned Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or even militant Zionist Rabi Meir Kahane wouldn’t have that kind of clout in this society.
Supporting these religious protestations is a clever political ploy on the part of many secular Arab governments that need to show their people they are good Muslims. This is certainly true in Syria and Lebanon where strong Syrian influence is at play in both countries. This is intended to counteract the radical religious leaders’ call for a return to the golden days of Arabian prestige and the dominance of the Islamic faith. In the clerics’ view, Christianity and Judaism are what stand in their way. Little needling is required to bring restless people into the streets to protest almost anything, least of all a perceived attack on their religion.
But there is likely another twist to this fuss that has not yet shown itself in full bloom. The terrorist agitators working desperately throughout the Muslim World and in Europe couldn’t help but have their hand in the soup. It’s part of a vast attempt to create divides between peoples wherever such hegemony can be accomplished.
The Bush administration has attempted to make the point from the very beginning that the threat from Muslim extremists is not really a response to anything, but a constantly present danger that can be triggered by anything or nothing. Leaders of the European countries have had a hard time getting this notion through their heads. Like it or not, they are now seeing themselves hostage to Islamic perceptions. The cartoonists and the publishers are not the focus of Muslim anger. Whole nations are in the sights of the throngs. Now we see clearly the Europeans are neither in control nor are they immune from attack: train bombings in Spain and Great Britain, mass rioting in France, an assassination in the Netherlands.
Despite the continued division between America and Europe that has so frequently gotten in the way of our achieving goals perceived to be important, we may be at a turning point. If, indeed, Europe begins to see the radical Muslim offensive as indiscriminately applied against their own homelands and their people, they may be more willing to establish alliances with us. This, of course, would be at odds with the extremist Muslim purpose.
But there lies the big question: Are we unknowingly seeing the first stages of the “Clash of Civilizations”? Samuel P. Huntington, writing in his book (1996) on the same subject, includes a fascinating note. “In 1991, for instance, Barry Buzan saw many reasons why a societal cold war was emerging ‘between the West and Islam, in which Europe would be on the front line.’”
This is not a matter to be taken lightly!
posted by Dick Tunison @ 3:51 PM
1 Comments:
At 5:11 PM,
Jim said…
"The Muslim Fury," one newspaper headline screamed. "The Rage of Islam Sweeps Europe," said another. "The clash of civilizations is coming," warned one commentator. All this refers to the row provoked by the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper four months ago. Since then a number of demonstrations have been held, mostly--though not exclusively--in the West, and Scandinavian embassies and consulates have been besieged.
But how representative of Islam are all those demonstrators? The "rage machine" was set in motion when the Muslim Brotherhood--a political, not a religious, organization--called on sympathizers in the Middle East and Europe to take the field. A fatwa was issued by Yussuf al-Qaradawi, a Brotherhood sheikh with his own program on al-Jazeera. Not to be left behind, the Brotherhood's rivals, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba), joined the fray. Believing that there might be something in it for themselves, the Syrian Baathist leaders abandoned their party's 60-year-old secular pretensions and organized attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut.
The Muslim Brotherhood's position, put by one of its younger militants, Tariq Ramadan--who is, strangely enough, also an adviser to the British home secretary--can be summed up as follows: It is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. Both claims, however, are false.
There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. As a result some Muslim theologians, at a time when Islam still had an organic theology, issued "fatwas" against any depiction of the Godhead. That position was further buttressed by the fact that Islam acknowledges the Jewish Ten Commandments--which include a ban on depicting God--as part of its heritage. The issue has never been decided one way or another, and the claim that a ban on images is "an absolute principle of Islam" is purely political. Islam has only one absolute principle: the Oneness of God. Trying to invent other absolutes is, from the point of view of Islamic theology, nothing but sherk, i.e., the bestowal on the Many of the attributes of the One.
The claim that the ban on depicting Muhammad and other prophets is an absolute principle of Islam is also refuted by history. Many portraits of Muhammad have been drawn by Muslim artists, often commissioned by Muslim rulers. There is no space here to provide an exhaustive list, but these are some of the most famous:
Read the whole thing at http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007934
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