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.)