The Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad

By Enver Masud

Al-Jazeerah, February 10, 2006

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that first published the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, has ignited a firestorm akin to that during the Salman Rushdie affair.

It's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, had in the past rejected Jesus cartoons saying: "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."

The paper's culture editor, Flemming Rose, said in an interview: "This is about the question of integration and how compatible is the religion of Islam with a modern secular society."

It is not. It is about civil society. It is about double standards. It is about hypocrisy. It is not about a free press - which we support.

"Islam," said HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales, in a speech some years ago, "is part of our past and present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart."

"What we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment, wrote Christopher Hitchens, in his review of Maria Rosa Menocal's, "The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain."

The Christian reconquest of Spain in 1492 CE led to the expulsion of its Jews and Muslims, their forced conversion to Christianity, or death.

In India - the country with third largest Muslim population (Indonesia is first, Pakistan is second, Bangladesh is fourth), the Muslim Emperor Akbar [1542-1605 CE], according to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, laid the foundations of a secular state.

Written in 622 CE, the "Constitution of Madinah," a treaty among Muslims, non-Muslim Arabs, and Jews of Madinah has been compared with the Mayflower Compact of 1620 CE.

Islam is compatible with a modern secular society. The West's double standards, hypocrisy, and injustice fuel Muslim anger. For example:

On March 6, 2001 the European Court of Justice ruled that "the European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties."

Article 5 of the Basic Law, the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, "sets out the possibility of limitations on the freedom of expression."

A challenge in 1990 to the publication of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" on the grounds that it contained "a blasphemous libel concerning Almighty God (Allah) the Supreme Deity common to all the major religions of the world" was rejected because Britain's blasphemy law was restricted to "scurrilous vilification of the Christian religion."

A Paris court on February 27, 1998, fined Roger Garaudy, former Deputy Speaker of the French parliament and a convert to Islam, $40,000 for statements made in his 1996 book "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics." The European Court of Human Rights declared inadmissible his appeal lodged in the case of Garaudy v. France.

Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf and David Irving are serving time in jail in Europe for their views about the holocaust.

It has been reported that Jyllands-Posten's Rose traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, whose web site Campus Watch works to undermine free speech. President George W. Bush nominated Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

It has been reported that changes to the Patriot Act sought by President Bush would make illegal at certain gatherings signs that have not been previously approved.

Would a U.S. president invite Zundel, Rudolf, Irving, or Garaudy to dinner at the White House as then President Clinton invited Salman Rushdie? Why doesn't the press support Zundel's, Rudolf's, Irving's, or Garaudy's right to free speech?

"The principle of secularism, in the broader interpretation endorsed in India, demands symmetric treatment of different religious communities in politics and in the affairs of state," writes Prof. Sen in The Argumentative Indian.

Muslims are fed up with the double standards, and the almost daily attacks on Islam. "Muslims live their religion. We do not," writes veteran, Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.

The violent demonstrations - which, it is reported, followed months of peaceful protest, and rejection of requests by Muslim ambassadors to meet with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen - may not be the path Prophet Muhammad would have chosen, but they are understandable.

These demonstrations may be compared to the 1965 riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles. The riots, said the Commission set up to investigate them, "weren't the act of thugs, but rather symptomatic of much deeper problems."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the cartoons were "offensive," but that "we vigorously defend" individuals' right of expression reports the Washington Post. Why didn't the U.S. object when France banned headscarves in schools?

Freedom of expression is not the message President Bush sent to Muslims when he bombed Al-Jazeera's news staff in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable," said President John F. Kennedy. The virtual, and sometimes violent, exclusion of Muslims' views from mainstream debate risks "violent revolution."

Civil society requires more than merely observing the law. Language acceptable in a book or tabloid is not necessarily acceptable from society's leaders - be it from the head of state, or in a major newspaper.

"All freedoms, including the freedom of speech, come with responsibility. . . . Having the right to cause offense does not make it right to do so," said Terry Davis, the head of Europe's leading human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe.

Enver Masud, http://www.twf.org