Jan. - March 2006 
Year 12    No.114

Cover Story


The Cartoon Controversy

 

Way to protest

BY JAVED ANAND

You do not have to be a particularly devout Muslim to feel deeply hurt or offended by the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that have inflamed the entire Islamic world. The contention that any depiction of the prophet is per se unacceptable in Islam is debatable. But some of the controversial 12 cartoons originally published by a Danish paper several months ago and now being published all over in a rare gesture of media solidarity are undoubtedly grating on religious sensibilities.

One of them shows the prophet with a bomb tucked in his headgear. Another shows him entreating his followers, "Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins!" Yet another goes with the legend, "Prophet, deaf and dumb, keeping women under thumb". And another shows him on the go, blinkered, sword in hand, leading two burkha-clad women; all you can see of the women is the terror in their eyes.

Taken together, what do these cartoons add up to except an image of the prophet of Islam as a bloodthirsty misogynist tyrant? An original Osama bin Laden if you please, whose followers today are bent on forcing all Muslim women behind the veil and who show not the slightest qualm in blowing up ‘infidel’ men, women and children to bits, all in pursuit of the 70 virgins, per male, in the supposedly promised paradise.

Enraged Muslims across the globe protesting against such "insult to the prophet" fail to recognise that what they are dealing with here is not blasphemy but worse: demonising. It is in the same league as the proclamation of a prominent Bajrang Dal leader from UP some years ago that there could be no peace in the world as long as the Koran was around. The same sentiment continues to be reiterated in different words by other prominent members of the sangh parivar every now and then. Here, as in the case of the Danish cartoons, the issue is not blasphemy per se but the insidious demonising of an entire community: it is not just individual Muslims or sundry Muslim outfits; violence lies at the very heart of Islam.

Were the Danish cartoons a depiction of Osama or his ilk, no one could or should have complained. But when terror and the enslavement of women are projected as synonymous with Islam, the entire global community of its adherents stand demonised as a dangerous multitude of bloodthirsty vermin. Faced with such hate propaganda, Muslims have every right to, and they must, protest. But Allah help them, for the forms of protest that many Muslims and even governments of self-proclaimed Islamic states have chosen – mindless economic boycott of Danish products, snapping diplomatic ties, torching embassies, issuing death sentences against all Danish and Norwegian citizens, raging mobs taking to the streets with banners and placards calling for the butchery of the "enemies of Islam" – can only earn them enormous self-damage. Through such misguided deeds, Muslims only end up affirming the very image of their community that they are ostensibly outraged about.

What do the agitating Muslims want? In an open letter addressed to "Honourable Fellow Citizens of the Muslim World" dated January 30, Carsten Juste, editor-in-chief of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, has explained that "we are strong proponents of the freedom of religion and because we respect the right of any human being to practise his or her religion, offending anybody on the grounds of their religious beliefs is unthinkable to us. That this happened was, consequently, unintentional".

This obviously is not enough for the agitators. Ideally, they would like to see the cartoonists and the editors and proprietors of the newspaper hanged, in public. At the very least they want an exemplary government crackdown on Jyllands-Posten. Some have reportedly also called for new international legislation making the death sentence obligatory for all blasphemers, blissfully unaware that many western democracies have done away with capital punishment altogether, even for the worst crimes imaginable.

Fortunately, unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria or Egypt, Denmark is a functioning democracy. Like other democracies, it too does not hold the right to freedom of expression as absolute. Last August, for example, the same Danish authorities withdrew the broadcasting licence of a Copenhagen radio station for three months because it called for the extermination of Muslims. That, according to the authorities, was clear incitement to violence (against Muslims) and therefore actionable.

We may argue with the Danish on where the Laxman-rekha should be drawn between freedom of expression and its abuse for incitement to violence against targeted groups. But we must also ask ourselves why we remain silent when any number of mad mullahs and assorted jihadis (Fadi Abdullatif, spokesman for the Danish branch of the militant Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation, is one such) shamefully misuse the hospitality and the freedom of western democracies to openly incite Muslims to violence against fellow citizens. And we must thank Allah that in countries like Denmark the state cannot have laws like Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law that is such a curse for the country’s religious minorities and it cannot muzzle the press at will.

Addressing a gathering of the faithful during Friday prayers last week, the Qatar-based Shaikh Yusuf Alqarzadi, a highly respected religious leader, condemned the burning down of the Danish and Norwegian embassies. Exhorting Muslims to eschew extremism, he appealed to them to express their unhappiness over the offensive cartoons in a "decent" and "civilised" manner. "I cannot condone destruction and arson because they are against basic human decency and the teachings of Islam," he added. May Allah add power to Alqarzadi’s voice!

(This article was first published in The Times of India.)


[ Subscribe | Contact Us | Archives | Khoj | Aman ]
[ Letter to editor  ]

Copyrights © 2002, Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd.