Outraged Islamic hardliners in Beirut and Damascus have burnt down the embassies of Norway and Denmark in protest against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet of Islam, Mohammad (pbuh), by Western newspapers, first in Denmark, then in Norway, France, Germany, New Zealand, etc. The Islamic protests have spilled over into boycotts of goods and services, and in some cases (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya etc) to the withdrawal of Muslim ambassadors, from the offending countries. The original Danish paper, Jyllands-Rosten, which sparked the row has since apologised for its indiscretion, ignorance, arrogance, provocation, what you will, in hurting the sentiments of over one billion Muslims. But other newspapers in the West have dug their heels in on the grounds that they are defending “freedom of expression”, one of the pillars of the secular state. Who is right and who is wrong?
After the Salman Rushdie affair over fifteen years ago, Western editors certainly cannot plead ignorance of Islamic law and passion regarding the Prophet Mohammad. If moderate Muslims in secular and democratic India could object to a fictional narrative involving the Prophet of Islam – the Satanic Verses controversy was sparked in Bombay and went on to light a prairie fire in Pakistan, Iran and the rest of the Muslim world – Western newspaper editors acted no less deliberately in publishing the blasphemous cartoons as Western book publishers who have since desisted even from printing a visage of Prophet Mohammad from Islamic miniature art expressions of many centuries ago. So if “freedom of expression” is not an issue with Western book publishers in so far as depiction of the Prophet Mohammad is concerned, why has it become one with some Western newspaper editors? What, we might ask, is the status of the notion of “freedom of expression” when Western journalists are blithely “embedded” with invading imperial armies and truth is the biggest casualty? What about “freedom of expression” when self-censorship is applied to enshrine new notions of “political correctness”, as for example in not describing blacks as “niggers”, or Jews as “Shylocks”? What about “freedom of expression” when the law of defamation is slapped on publications which unfairly taint someone’s reputation? What about “freedom of expression” when entrenched notions of “The Holocaust” are challenged and challengers are accused of anti-Semitism, as would doubtless happen if a rabbi had been shown in the cartoon instead of Prophet Mohammad? How can they say that their “freedom of expression” is curtailed if they are asked to desist from demonizing the Prophet of Islam when it is not curtailed by the defamation of a lay Westerner? Since when and under what law has “freedom of expression” become an absolute and sacred right regardless of responsibility, truth and the fundamental rights of other peoples? Nor do we need to reproduce the offending cartoons to determine whether it is right to print them or not under the guise of “freedom of expression”, as some newspapers have argued, when we can describe the nature of the offence (as we have done here) perfectly adequately in words and leave it at that.
If all this is clear enough, what is the “freedom of expression” fig leaf all about? The answer must lie in what is meant to be conveyed by the cartoons. In brief, the cartoons depict the Prophet of Islam as a “terrorist” (his turban is shaped like a missile), like Osama bin Laden, meaning thereby that the 1.5 billion followers of Prophet Mohammad are also terrorists against whose “religious civilization” an unremitting war must be waged by a “secular civilization”.
It has now been revealed that Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the anti-Mohammad cartoons, once refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ. It transpires that in April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten. Mr Zieler received an email back from the paper’s Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: “I don’t think Jyllands-Posten’s readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them.” So if this is not about “freedom of expression” and Secular vs Islamic civilization, what does it signify?
The cartoon controversy comes in the wake of an Islamic resurgence in West- supported dictatorships in Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Pakistan etc. This is unfortunate and dangerous because it effectively adds “civilisational insult to civilisational injury”. Ultimately, however, if the publication of the cartoons is an act of deliberate insult meant to humiliate and frustrate Muslims all over the world, its defenders would do well to recognize the fact they have also demeaned the West’s lofty ideals and exposed the designs of its new crusaders.
Equally, it must be admitted that the violent reaction of the Muslims all over the world has been unfortunate. It is one thing to protest the word and quite another to burn down embassies and threaten to kill people. Once again the image on television screens feeds into the stereotype of modern day Islamic terrorism and plays into the hands of its agents-provacateur .