By
now we are all familiar with the cartoons commissioned
and published by the Danish magazine Jllands –
Posten which aroused such anger in the Muslim world
and in Muslim communities worldwide.
Published
at a time when Denmark is in the process of a debate
over immigration the reaction to the cartoons seemed
to exemplify the so called ‘clash of Civilisations’
between Islam and the West. In the red corner: a
European magazine standing in the tradition of the
Enlightenment and defending the right to free speech.
And in the blue corner: backward superstitious Muslims,
the beheaders of hostages and the oppressors of
women. As the debate spread things seemed to become
even more polarised. Dick Cheney took the opportunity
to remind us of the dangers of Islamo-fascism, European
consulates and embassies were attacked in the Middle
East and radical Islamists took to the streets of
London calling for non believers to be executed.
However
just as the cartoons simplified and obscured the
reality of Muslim attitudes, the media coverage
caricatured and simplified the debate. The real
world was much less black and white then the media
portrayal. Jllands-Posten was eventually revealed
not to be a brave defier of censorship but a source
of anti immigrant rhetoric, whose owner had campaigned
for Muslims to be expelled from Denmark and who
had, in 2003, refused to publish cartoons depicting
Christ on the grounds that they were offensive!
The ‘defenders of free speech’ in Ireland
– people like Kevin Myers and a collection
of hacks from the Sunday Independent turned out
to have no sense of either irony, history or their
own hypocrisy. These same people were often the
loudest and most strident supporters of the anti
republican Section 31 censorship when it was in
force in Ireland. They are also the most vocal cheerleaders
of the various wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and potentially
Iran… curious eh?
On
the other side it emerged that hardline Danish imams
had toured the cartoons around the Muslim world
for months, and even added their own! They were
welcomed by the religious right and Muslim governments.
Undemocratic states in the Middle East used and
encouraged the protests in an attempt to legitimise
their dictatorial power. Questions began to be asked
about how demonstrators managed to set fire to embassies
in countries like Syria where anti government protestors
are regularly arrested, tortured and ‘disappeared’.
In a move which reminded us of ‘freedom fries’
the Iranian president declared that ‘Danish
pastries’ were to be renamed ‘flowers
of Mohammad’. Possibly he hoped that this shallow
populist gesture would distract from the fact that
his government was at that time engaged in a ferocious
crackdown on striking bus drivers in Teheran. Setting
up an illegal independent trade union and defying
the paramilitary police oppression the struggle
by the bus workers of Teheran shows that the Muslim
world is not some homogenous block but that it does
in fact contain a diversity of views.
Not
all the protests were orchestrated or whipped up
by the religious right or state tyrants. The cartoons
were racist and offensive – they stereotyped
Muslims (and especially Arabs) as suicide bombers
and lunatics. In the context of the ‘war on
terror’ and the debates in Europe over Islam
and immigration it’s not surprising that a
community under attack took offence to something
which would have been better ignored.
However
we should also be clear that religious ideas, like
any others, are fair game for critique, criticism
and attack. In Ireland we have fought and are still
fighting against the religious right for basic freedoms
such as divorce, birth control, the acceptance of
homosexuality and the provision of abortion. These
are things we demand, and it doesn’t matter
whether or not they conflict with anyone’s
religious beliefs.
