I don't think we have any discussion about the Danish Muhammad cartoons....

Note the difference between the reaction of Muslims worldwide to these inept cartoons and the reaction of the head of Sweden's Lutheran church to the trend of buying anti-Christian jeans.

But dude, nobody's arguing that; nobody's defending the frothy-mouthedness; that goes without saying. I don't see how anyone's treating the content of other cultures as being value neutral. I think what's being said is that these cartoons exploit a particular religious proscription in order to manufacture (Muslim) outrage and then counter it with (western) outrage. And that's stupid. Give me a major newspaper and a half-decent cartoonist and I can accomplish that with any group in the world; Muslims might win in terms of strength/violence of response, but why exactly do we need another empirical demonstration of that?

I guess my problem is that I don't want editors to fear what Muslims (or any group) might say to the point of self-censorship. I enjoy heated polemics and the issues they raise and if they are sometimes impolitic, crass, and occasioanally more productive of heat than light, that's a small price to pay.

I don't really think there's any danger of that. If the Danish newspaper had published an article saying that Muslims are overly sensitive about the publication of images of Muhammad, there would be no uproar. The uproar happened because of the images. How does actually publishing the images add to the discourse something that couldn't be said in words? It's like saying, oh the NY Times is censoring my article about the use of obscenities on TV because they won't let me publish the actual obscenities in their pages. Publishing the obscenities wouldn't add anything to the story. In the same way, if newspapers voluntarily refrained from publishing images of Muhammad, it's not like they'd be limiting what they could write or the ideas they could express.

In Holland this intimidation took the form of the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the placing under constant police protection of two members of parliament who received credible death threats for their criticism of aspects of Islamic doctrine. So, in Europe's most tolerant state members of government are reduced to sleeping in prison cells for their own protection, and an artist is nearly beheaded as he rides his bicycle down the street, solely as a consequence of the introduction of Islam in that country.

And nabisco thinks the proper way to respond to this is to avoid any criticism of Islam because that will only alienate the moderates?

xpost

I love all the blasphemous depictions of him in the old Persian paintings where, out of respect, his face is covered in a veil of flame.

I also don't think these cartoons were designed to be as offensive as possible to Muslims. And the Islamic Society of Denmark must agree since according to the Wiki page on this affair they added more offensive illustrations, such as images of Muhammad with a pig's nose, to the propaganda they handed out to help goad the mobs into righteous ire.

http://www.uriasposten.net/pics/JP-011005-Muhammed-Westerga.jpg

I am not so certain about the former; one would have to see the theoretical piece with and without obscenities and in context. Arguments which simply assert that X "would add nothing to the discourse" without a little more specificity rely on a fortune-telling ability that doesn't give much comfort.

As to the latter, aside from the problems of these reactions, is there some reason why newspapers should refrain from publishing images of Muhammed? Why, of all religions in the world, should this one be show some voluntary deference that the others probably don't receive? This is to close, to me, to people arguing in favor of the press ban on photographing soldiers' coffins as they return from Iraq. Why do we need pictures? Can't they just write about it? Obviously, there's something in imagery, whether photographed or drawn, that can convey meaning in a different way or at a different level.

x-post: Compared to what one regularly sees concerning Jews in the Arab-speaking media, that's practically a Disney cartoon.

That it does offend, of course, there can be no doubt.

that's something that bugged me on the thread about google and china, the idea that freedom of speech and free expression are "western" values that cultural imperialists want to ram down the throat of the chinese government, or the world in general. i don't think of human rights as "western" values, and positioning them that way is a huge disservice to dissidents and reformers in lots of nonwestern countries who have gone to jail or even been killed trying to exercise or secure those rights. i have no more sympathy for muslims outraged about a political cartoon than american fundamentalists outraged about 'the book of daniel' or whatever.

xpost: yeah, i don't think the main point of the cartoon was "to offend muslims worldwide." for one thing, who would expect that muslims worldwide would see a cartoon in a danish newspaper? i imagine the audience the cartoonist had in mind was primarily the paper's readership. that's not to say that they are particularly insightful or thought-provoking cartoons, but no, i don't think the cartoonist was sitting there chuckling going 'oh, this'll really piss off the towel-heads.'

(a) It is a deliberate provocation, insofaras the paper has absolutely no everyday course-of-business reason to be publishing images of Mohammed; they were printed not in the course of free speech but as a specific form of free speechintended to cause offense to a minority. Casting this as "we're not going to be intimidated into losing our freedom of speech" is one of the most insane things I have heard all month, and probably says something really interesting about the people behind this: precisely what sort of made-up seige mentality do you need to have going to fear that bold measures need to be taken to keep Danish freedom of speech from falling to radical Islam? Lookit: there is a difference between boldly speaking your views in defiance of some people's offense and boldly speaking views intended solely to provoke that offense. And I'm not even saying the latter is wrong -- I'm just saying that in this case it's stupid.

(2) People with rudimentary English reading skills will probably notice that I have at no point said that we should "avoid any criticism of Islam" -- in fact I think I've offered some criticism of Islam on this thread. I've said that going out of one's way to provoke or draw out the worst sides of the Muslim world do nothing practical to help anyone (except the worst sides of the Muslim world).

(3) Both of you have the cause and effect here absolutely backward, championing this thing as some kind of noble response to the threats it knowingly provoked! This thing wasn't nobly and incidentally published in the face of opposition -- it was published with the intent of creating that opposition and then being outraged by it.

(4) Nemo I don't know who the fuck you think you're arguing with but quit calling him "Nabisco," because there's already someone named that on this thread. I haven't said a damn thing about Western carelessness or insensitivity, and I haven't said a damn thing approving of the fact that some Muslims will go frothy-mouthed about this. What I've questioned is what anyone gains by provoking that frothy-mouthedness. Anyone? All I see is the supposed enemies of radical Islam making common cause with it -- two sets of suckers suckering one another into provoking the same confrontation.

(5) I'd be interested to see someone explain to me what the point of these cartoons was, if not to deliberately provoke Muslim sensibilities. Keep in mind the "deliberate provocation" can include plenty of positive or noble things. Plenty of the non-violent tactics of the civil rights movement involved deliberate provocation, even a particularly dignified form of nose-thumbing. You can try and explain it on those grounds -- and then somehow try to justify how that provocation serves anyone's ebst interests -- but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that these images were printed in the incidental everyday course of the paper, and not intended to create a very specific effect.

I think I'm going to join some other folks I know in trying to avoid reading/posting on this board, even if keeping up with I Love NFL/I Love Games/I Love Music happens to require a bit more investment than just mouthing off at fucking dipshits who don't know how to fucking read or put themselves in any other shoes besides "size 10 privileged whiteboy"

I will concede this at least, but I'm still more pissed at the outraged Muslims than I am by the daft editors.

In an effort to not deliberately misread you, nabisco, is this but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that these images were printed in the incidental everyday course of the paper, and not intended to create a very specific effect a sugestion that they did it to increase circulation? I cannot believe a newspaper would ever sink so low as to do that.

As I said above, I too can be an intemperate fundamentalist: dick around with the right to free speech and I'll likely get pissed off. They're stupid cartoons. That happens in a free country. Get over it and before you look for examples of Western intolerance toward Islam to get outraged about, free your own media and hold them to the same standards.

TOMBOT, I don't think your analogy is exactly appropriate to the situation.

Sorry for the vehemence and typos above, too.

Plus I'm riled by Nemo's mention of an Islamic Society exaggerating the slight, because that's exactly my point here. Every Western action that can be spun as disrespect of Islam gets used for exactly these purposes: those events get used as bread and circus, a way to radicalize people, to justify that radicalism, even to prop up horrid governments and distract their citizens from the issues in their own lives. We know all this very well, and the fact that it's often effective isn't due to any toddlerish qualities among Muslims -- it's due to the same human qualities that allow western leaders, now and in the past, to mobilize their populations the way they want. This sort of thing doesn't, on a practical level, benefit anyone, and if anything it's yeast for the bread and tents for the circus -- it contributes to and bolsters exactly the sort of thing it's meant to oppose.

they were printed not in the course of free speech but as a specific form of free speech intended to cause offense to a minority

a.) they were too printed "in the course of free speech," no matter how you care to qualify it

b.) they were printed in a complex cultural and political context that goes way beyond 'ha, let's piss off the dirty muslims,' and i wish people would stop ignoring that context

c.) it's easy to see why people got offended, and i can imagine being offended myself

d.) but i am bothered by the hyperbolic overreaction to what are JUST A COUPLE OF CARTOONS IN ONE FRIGGIN' NEWSPAPER IN DENMARK, FOR GOD'S SAKE

e.) and i've worked for newspapers all my adult life, and i take this shit seriously. i don't like when the american major media caves to bullying from christian groups -- which it does too often and easily -- and i'd rather not see newspapers cave to the out-of-all-reasonable-proportion outrage of islamic groups either. writing angry letters to the editor, fine. demanding meetings with the editor and publisher to outline the concerns of the islamic community, fine. but hundreds of thousands of people marching in international protests and even the odd death threat because of a couple of cartoons?

f.) 'the satanic verses' was a deliberate provocation too, right? i remember being disgusted when bush sr. and dan quayle joined in the bashing of that book (which they hadn't read) on the grounds that it was 'insensitive.' how is this different?

I find it intersting that the first people that I thought about were not the Danish editors even though I'm a quarter Danish by descent but the Muslims. I have several at least nominally Muslim Arab and Persian friends and what I have said here I have said or would say to them.

Are people seriously arguing that a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad where his turban is a bomb is clever satire?

I don't think I can follow you on the "just a couple cartoons" part, which is still exactly what I meant when I said there was something "underhanded" about the technique (cartoons to westerners are "just" cartoons). Most of us here are in a position where we don't much care about other people's disrespect of our values, not unless it comes from our own government, the only people with real power over us. But "just a cartoon" masks the reality of the way some people are bound to see this: as people in the west kinda smugly going out of their way to print images that are deemed blasphemous in another belief system. (Notice how the reaction isn't about the blasphemy so much -- it's about the perception that this is a deliberate insult, an actual message of disrespect.) Don't get me wrong -- the reaction is not something I approve of. It is, in fact, fucking horrible. But it's not a reaction to "just a couple of cartoons," you know?

well the immediate context is in that wikipedia article linked above:
Jyllands-Posten commissioned and published the cartoons in response to the inability of Danish writer Kåre Bluitgen to find artists to illustrate his children's book about Muhammad, for fear of violent attacks by extremist Muslims. Islamic teachings forbid the depiction of Muhammad as a measure against idolatry (see aniconism), however, in the past there have been non-satirical depictions of Muhammad by Muslims.

but more broadly, yeah, this whole issue of european countries adjusting to being more diverse and multicultural is very complicated. there's a huge amount of racism, on the one hand. and of course serious economic divides on top of the cultural schisms. but there is also the issue of increasingly militant islamic fundamentalism, and after theo van gogh, the question of media intimidation by those factions is a serious one. in addressing it, the newspaper obviously chose stridency over sensitivity (although i haven't seen a translation of the essay that accompanied the cartoons, so i don't know the full context of the presentation). i think the wisdom of that approach is a good subject for a journalism ethics debate. but i don't think western media -- or any media -- should be constrained by the strictures of islam. and to whatever degree they feel intimidated into doing so, i think that's a problem.

xpost: nabisco, i know "just a couple of cartoons" is a simplification, even though it's literally true. but i think what needs to be recognized is that they were a reaction to a sense of being initimidated -- in some cases, physically (from what i've read, i don't think we as americans understand the shock of the theo van gogh case) -- and refusing to buckle to it. and also, in a confrontation between shrill defense of free speech and shrill defense of religious fundamentalism, i just default to free speech. that's my own belief system, fine, but i'll defend it.

I agree.

I want to say something else but I'm probably going to fumble it. Those cartoons would piss off most Muslims who were meaningfully Muslim, I think. Beyond the Muslims=terrorists stereotype and smearing of the Prophet Muhammad, there's something galling about the recent appearance in Western discourse of a certain kind of knowingness about what's wrong with Islam and the Muslim world, when for years and years, though many Western nations had all sorts of investments in the Muslim world, most Westerners had no knowledge of Islam as a system of belief or as lived by its practitioners. I realize that to some extent this is just the inevitable result of September 11th in the US and shifting demographics in Europe (which are the fallout of European imperialism, by and large), but, full disclosure: I was raised Muslim, and it bugs.

The muslim world, complain against the drawings because they, hurt there feelings ?, well what about ?the burning of the danish flag in Gaza, as a Christian i know that the white cross in our flag (Dannebrog), is an symbol of christianity so one could claim that the Muslim society`s in wich, the flagburnings took place should apologize to the worlds christian-society.

But what is this all about, i`ll say it loud and clearly - it`s the beginning of world war three or one might say the beginning of the War of Religion.

For far too many years, we have let fundamentalistic and radical muslims infiltrate our society`s, and giving them the room and space to, practice there systematic brainwash of illiterats and spreading false propaganda in the muslim world as an example i can refer to Imam Abu Bashar who works at the prison where i work as an Prisonguard and Cognitve skills Teacher, he has knowingly twisted the facts on his tour to the middleeast in fall 2005, where he have shown pictures or drawings of there prophet with a pigs snout and ears, but those pictures or drawings never occured on any danish media.

I think the wawe of sympathy, the danish people are getting, from around the world especially from the United States, shows the impor-tance of the western world standing up for not only our, freedom of exspression but standing up for our democratic rights to live in a free and openminded, enlightend society, where no one can claim the right to impose his cultural or religious opinion or believe on me, he has the right to speak his case and make arguments for his case through reason not through violent acts, threats or economic pressure.

In my 7 years of employment within the Danish Judicial system,i none the less have to admit, that some of my otherwise openminded and re-spectfull thoughts of the country`s muslim population has been degraded because of these facts :
90% of all street muggings and violent attacks in Copenhagen and other bigger cities are committed by gangs of young 2. generation immigrants.
70% of all rapes are committed by immigrants although they only make up 8-10% of the danish population.
30% of all murders are committed by immigrants.
80% of youths (age 15-25) charged with committing a violent crime is 2. gen. immigrants.
The drug market in Copenhagen is controlled by 2. gen. immigrants.
90% of all group rapes are committed by 2. gen. immigrants.
Aproximatly 30-40 percent of the danish inmate population, are persons with another ethnical background than danish, at my section we currently have 78% inmates with ethnical background in countrys like Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Iran, Somalia, Iraq and other arab countries
Etc etc.

I think the numbers, talks for themselves it ain`t a coincidence and can`t be explained only by picturing the muslim society as the weak and marginalized, socially and economically outcasts of the western world, it has to do with the structure within the islamic society, where they give the Imam`s the privileague of religous power, in-stead of letting the holy Quran and Islam as religion, speak for it self.

As a last comment, i`d like to thank all the muslim`s that practice Islam, in a way that don`t cloud there mind`s and prohibit them from thinking clearly.

My deepest thanks for your sympathy with my country

Prisonguard and Cognitive skills Teacher

Michael Overgård Madsen
Nyborg Denmark

I have books on Islam that I bought back in the 80's but I studied the Crusades a lot as a kid (I highly recommend Amin Maloouf's 'The Crusades as seen by the Arabs' btw). However, and I'm sorry to state the obvious, much of what I don't like about Islam is the same as what I don't like about Christianity and Judaism.

I am reminded of Gore Vidal's warning that we have entered a period of fundamentalism and theocracy in the global cycles of history.

I also highly recommend the 3 volume 'Venture of Islam' by Marshall G. S. Hodgson, which was, incidentally, given to me by a Syrian friend.