Danish cartoons and journalistic responsibility

Great Debates
21

So? The belief is the cornerstone of their culture and being. It’s as important as any actual, factual historical event to them.

First off, I’m not claiming that anyone doesn’t, or ought not to, have the right to print those cartoons. I’m saying that they ought not to have printed them anyway. I’m not saying anyone has any special rights.

Christians have the same rights to be offended as anyone else.
The reason they haven’t been so offended has something to do with the differences between the religions (you can draw Christ), but mostly it has to do with the context of the mockery. Most anti-Christian ridicule comes from within the Christian culture, from a minority position. Christians, although some bitch and moan otherwise, know that they’re religion and values are safe and aren’t really under attack.

Muslims, on the other hand, are being insulted by a more powerful exterior force. It wasn’t that long ago that European powers controlled Muslim lands outright, and the West still meddles in that area.

Basically, it’s the same reason that Black people can call each other “nigger”, but a White person should be careful with that word.

Freedom
Democracy
Women’s Rights
Capitalism
Secularism
And a big heaping helping of Western culture on the side.

These are values, Western values, that Europe and the United States is attempting to make the world adopt. Pretty much by gunpoint in the case of Iraq. The fact that these are good values, values that we may agree that they should adopt doesn’t change the fact that the West is seeking to alter the culture and makeup of the Muslim World. This fact makes insults more pointed. And the insults make the work of changing Muslim culture for the better more difficult.

22

Marley23, yours is a valid comment about the 7th century. However, killing every man in an entire neighbouring village is something that both Buddha and Jesus somehow managed to avoid in their lives, and is an act which is both terrible and terrorizing in any age …

And the response of the Muslim world to the cartoon has been “Muhammad was not a terrorist”, so they see what happened 1400 years ago as quite important.

Nor is it an unfair comment to link Islam with suicide bombings, as with the exception of a few Tamil Tigers, virtually all of the suicide bombers anywhere on our lovely planet are Muslims … coincidence? I don’t think so.

One tragedy of this, which mostly escapes Western comment, is that the majority of the victims of Muslim violence are Muslims. I read the other day about a Sunni who loaded a truck with bombs, covered them with watermelons, and when the women and children of a Shiite village had gathered around him because his prices were so low, he set off the bomb … and it happens all the time, in both directions.

If the Muslims of the world are really that desperate for something to be “outraged” about, they could forget about the freakin’ cartoons and start with that … but that seems to draw no Islamic outrage at all, no official denunciation, no threats to murder the imams that authorize the bombings, nothing …

I have wandered slightly from the OP, so let me complete the circle by saying that yes, Muhammad was a terrorist, and yes, a huge number of his followers approve of suicide bombings. Making that comment in a cartoon is an important statement, one that we should be free to publish and discuss. By screaming about it so hard, by threatening the cartoonists and publishers with death, the Muslims have only succeeded in making it into what will likely be an enduring symbol of a religion whose adherents spend far too much time blowing each other’s women and children to bits … not to mention threatening their neighbours, and blowing them to bits as well.

w.

23

Not at all, I do not think death threats are acceptable, no matter where they’re made. Merely for being an infidel I’m sure I’m subject to various generalized death threats, too. What I’m questioning is that, because of a death threat made by a fanatic in a distant country, you are influenced enough to indulge in behaviours that will almost certainly upset people closer to you, who are only tangentially related.

I’d hazard that, given the history of the past few weeks, publishing even more inflammatory pictures is quite equivalent to eating a ham sandwich in a mosque. If you could target the Saudi cleric, get your cartoons direct to him, then I’d say go for it. However, if you publish you’ll probably end up further pissing off some people who do not share the raving opinions of the extremists. As we agree, it’s your right, but it would also be somewhat disrespectful.

It’s not clear from your original post who “they” is. The Saudi cleric, or your Muslim neighbours? I’m guessing here that the burglary is a figure of speech designed to conflate the rantings of an extremist in another part of the world with your near neighbours, thus casting suspicion on them?

Fair enough. Substitute “beaten to a pulp” if you like.

Well indeed, but that is post ex facto. You miss the point of my statement. The point is that before the massive and potentially murderous overreaction, a book was published that was necessarily blasphemous to the religion it was trying to portray.

On preview: Jesus did no harm, but His dad smote Soddom and Gomorrah; also if you’re pleading historical accuracy, Mohammed’s followers would probably have not used bombs.

Finally, and something that I’ve been arguing for years on this board “the Muslims” to whom you refer tars with a vastly wide brush. “The Muslim fanatics” would be more accurate and less problematic - but then your argument would fall flat, since who expects logic and PR considerations to emanate from the mind of a fanatic?

24

Regarding my comment that the Muslims have made the “Turban in a Bomb” an enduring icon, I find that the “terrorist” cartoon with the bomb in the turban is now for sale as a T-shirt, as I find out from a Pakistani newspaper.

Perhaps it was a slow news day in Karachi, because the Pakistani newspaper reported in full to the Pakistani people the subtle, secret motives of these T-shirt forces of evil, which it quotes as:

“Our primary mission is to build and deploy effective retail counter measures against Hollywood leftist wussies, Democrats, liberal college campus girly-men, and the anti-American media conglomerates. Our goals are achieved through the strategic placement of conservative messages on your body, on the street and in yer mamma’s house.”

Wonder what your average Pakistani reading this over coffee in Karachi makes of all of that? Probably cause him to choke on his coffee just trying to make sense of it … The Pakistani paper’s conclusion, of course, is ‘move along folks, no real issues to discuss here, they’re just doing it to provoke the Muslims’ … and the campus girly-men and the leftist wussies, one presumes …

25

I don’t think there are any cows so sacred as to be above the occasional goring. I don’t see how the cartoons can be called hate speech unless you think any cartoon lampooning or insulting a group of people is hate speech.

Marc

26

jjimm, as before, an interesting post.

You seem to think that Muslim terrorists, for example the Muslims who believe in suicide bombing, for example, are only a small bunch of extremists.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project recently did a survey in a number of countries about Muslim attitudes. They asked a revealing question about belief in suicide bombing. They asked if the people believed that “Suicide bombings against civilians are sometimes or often justified.” Their results were as follows:

Palestine: 69%
Lebanon: 69%
Jordan: 57%
Pakistan: 25%
Indonesia: 15%
Turkey: 14%
Morocco: 13%

The numbers are higher in the Middle East, as we might expect, and lower elsewhere. Then I took the population of each country, and multiplied it by the percentage who believe in suicide bombing. The result?

In these countries alone, which contain only about a third of the Muslims on the planet, there are about a hundred million Muslims who think it is justified to send suicide bombers against civilians … so the real number is likely twice that.

A couple hundred million people is not a few “extremists” or some scattered “fanatics”. Terrorism is a major and a recurring strain in the Islamic religion. In addition, it is tolerated without much questioning by the rest of the Muslim world, despite the fact that most of the victims of these bombings are Muslims.

So yes, I tar with a wide brush, because suicide bombing is a very wide streak in Islam, and the rest of the religion doesn’t say much about it.

To be fair, this lack of complaint on the part of the more moderate Muslims is in part because (by their own numerous reports) they are terrorized out of saying anything by the more violent members of their own religion … but that’s what we’re discussing, isn’t it? Whether we should allow ourselves to be terrorized out of commenting, or cartooning, as moderate Muslims have been?

w.

27

I’m not making excuses for anything, or saying that slaughter isn’t terrible. I’m talking only about the term “terrorist.” I don’t know what the purpose of that slaughter was, and as I said, I don’t really like comparing it to events that are occurring 1400 years later for different reasons.

You’ve missed the point, I think. The implication in the cartoon that Muhammad was a terrorist is not based on the incident you’re talking about, or any other incident during his lifetime. It’s based on today’s suicide bombings.

28

Crud, I forgot to re-paste this:

Of course. My point was that violating a religion’s commandments shouldn’t be called hate speech in and of itself. That was the most common example I could think of.

29

I fear you are correct, I must have missed the point, because I commented on the “today’s suicide bombings” issue in my reply. Could you restate your point?

Thanks,

w.

30

I admit that hate speech (unless we’re talking about the laws that exist in some countries, which I don’t support, btw) is a subjective term, and utterly dependent on context.

Could we perhaps meet halfway at intentionally insulting and insensitive?

31

The point is right in the bit you quoted.

32

Please don’t be coy. If I had seen the point “right in the bit I quoted”, I would certainly have discussed it. Thus my request, not to point to the general part of the landscape where your point is located, but to restate it so it can be clear.

w.

33

I’m not being coy. The bit you quoted WAS the point I was driving at in my longer post, I’m not quite sure how to boil it down further. I disagree with your assessment that Muhammad was a terrorist (just as I don’t think it’s accurate to say Jesus was a Communist or a punk). In general, I don’t like to put historical figures into categories that did not exist until centuries after they died. Regardless of my feelings about the use of the word “terrorist” in this case, I don’t think you adequately supported the idea that the cartoon was accurate (making Muhammad a terrorist) because the cartoon is dealing with the issue of suicide bombing, not whether or not Muhammad did anything that could be called terrorism during his lifetime.

34

There are a lot of Muslims who think they have a right to kill or maim people because they don’t believe as Muslims do. Fuck 'em. Cartoon away. Offend, offend, they deserve every bit of it. Not long ago in historical terms the religious right in America instituted a code of censorship here (the Hayes Code). Americans finally got rid of the damn thing. We don’t knuckle under to to the Great Sky Fairy Patrol. If you wanna knuckle under, you’re something, but you’re not much of an American. A lot of American soldiers died in vain for freedoms you don’t cherish.

35

Some conservatives I’ve read are comparing mainstream newspapers’ unwillingness to publish the cartoons with their apparent willingness to print the latest Abu Ghraib photos uncensored. I haven’t decided yet whether there’s a good point here or not.

36

Thanks for clarifying what you were saying, Marley. The point I thought I had made was that the cartoon was accurate because 1) Muhammad was a terrorist, and 2) a huge number of his followers are supporters of terrorism.

Now you say putting him in a category that didn’t exist at the time (terrorist) is inaccurate. Fair enough. Let me just call him a man who killed people in order to terrify other people, a category which did exist at the time. I am quite sure that, despite the fact that Muhammad wasn’t called a “terrorist” at the time, the wives and children of the helpless captives who were slaughtered were certainly terrified, as were other Jews who heard about the massacre.

And I have also demonstrated that hundreds of millions of his followers approve of terrorism.

To summarize without using the word “terrorist” at all, Muhammad killed helpless captives in order to terrify. A depressingly large number of his modern followers also kill in order to terrify, and hundreds of millions of his followers think that’s justified.

Which is why picturing him with a bomb in his turban is quite accurate, it is a terrifying image, and rightly so …

w.

37

I don’t think you have. Many people have implied that, and there are too many for comfort, but hundreds of millions? I don’t know who can say that with certainty.

Not seeing the terror, myself. By the way, I don’t think that’s the cartoon that’s caused the most outrage. I think that honor goes to the images the imams faked: the ones showing Muhammad as a pedophile demon, having a praying Muslim being screwed by a dog, and the one with a man in a pig mask.

38

Marley, I cited the poll which showed that millions of Muslims support suicide bombing of civilians, and gave the country by country numbers. If you don’t think that establishes it, I don’t know what to say. That’s what we have polls for, and at this point in history, although of course no poll can give “certainty”, they’re fairly accurate.

And you are absolutely right, the images faked by the imams were much worse, and were heavily involved in the overall worldwide outrage … although having said that, the overwhelming majority of those rioting/burning/threatening have never seen any of the cartoons, they can’t be shown in Muslim countries … rioting over drawings you’ve never seen, threatening people for drawing something but you don’t know what, gotta love that …

In any case, mea culpa, I should have said the one of the actual Danish cartoons that caused the most outrage.

All the best,

w.

39

I think the newspaper was correct in publishing the cartoons. Whenever free speech is threatened in this manner, as many media outlets as possible should be supporting speech being threatened. However, the editors should have involved the full board in their decision and they can certainly be criticized for not doing that.

As for everyday depictions of Mohammed, of course there is speech which one can legally engage in, but you’d be an asshole if you did so. But that shouldn’t rule out all depictions of Mohammed, reverent or not.

The prohibition is not in the Koran and it is not even shared by all Muslims (though its pretty common). Muslims have depicted Mohammed in their art, for instance in this 16th century Persian painting.

(I wonder if there are currently and plans to cut off the hands of those associated with Wikipedia, considering that it publishes that image?)

It makes absolutely no sense to expect non-Muslims to observe the prohibition on depicting Mohammed. Why should this be the only tenet of Islam that non-Muslims should follow?

Should posters in this thread refrain from criticizing Mohammed?

Should people stop practicing Christianity?

There is absolutely no reason for non-followers of a faith to practice the tenets of that faith, and save for issues of politeness when in the company of members of that faith, there is no reason to restrict our freedoms to satisfy the more extreme members of a faith.

While this does have a lot to do with religion, it has just as much to do with politics and culture clash. Whether rightly or wrongly, much of the Islamic world feels threatened by the encroachment of the West, and rightly or wrongly, some of them have chosen to make a stand over these cartoons. Newspapers kowtowing to that stand should not be under the impression that religious sensitivity is the sole, or even the primary, issue here.

Similarly, it should be pointed out that some parts of Europe are experiencing a culture clash of their own due to Muslim immigrants, and Europe’s fervent support in favor of the cartoons should not be seen entirely as a defense of free speech; I’m sure already existing tensions some people have with the Islamic community influence their opinion on this issue. There are mitigating factors on both sides.

40

There’s a big difference. The Abu Ghraib photos, while potentially even more inflammatory than the cartoons, are also evidence of the actions of the US military. That’s of vital interest especially to the people of the US and its allies. We deserve to know what’s being done in our name.

In this case, the offence is in the actions themselves, not the depictions. Torturing Muslims pisses them off too, should we continue doing it just to prove we can?