In an article in The Washington Post, Mr Flemming Rose, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, has made the breathtaking claim that after the publication of the Prophet Mohammad cartoons in his newspaper on September 30, 2005, there has been a ?constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people'sbeliefs.? Claiming that several Danish Muslims have participated in a public dialogue through town hall meetings and debates on radio and TV, Mr Rose said the radical imams who ?misinformed? their counterparts in the Middle East have been marginalised because moderate Muslims have spoken out against them.
Frankly, this would be credible if The Washington Post had invited such moderate Danish Muslims to write in its pages, especially as the cartoons continue to inflame passions across the Islamic world. Mr Rose admits the newspaper has received threats and the cartoonists are in hiding, but still congratulates himself for testing the ?limits of self-censorship? by inviting the cartoonists ?to challenge a Muslim taboo? against portraiture of the Prophet.
Mr Rose says he decided to commission the cartoons because of several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by a feeling of intimidation in dealing with Islam. Obviously a dangerous form of visual abuse is being propagated to get a reaction from the Muslim community, and then lambaste it for narrow-minded bigotry.
The actual controversy is said to have begun with a Danish children'swriter (unnamed), who could not find anyone to illustrate a book about the life of Mohammad. It seems the writer had poor imagination; the book could have been illustrated with pictures of well-known mosques, Koranic verses, historical paintings and so on. There was no need to insist on portraying the Prophet, especially in the contemporary volatile atmosphere in the Muslim world. Indeed, this is the reason why the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by avant-garde artist John Latham showing the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. Prior to this, a museum in Sweden removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.
Mr Rose, however, states that having observed these instances fear of Islam, Jyllands-Posten decided to ask Danish cartoonists ?to draw Mohammad as you see him.? He defends the cartoons saying Denmark has a tradition of satire which covers the royal family and other public figures, and that Islam was treated at par with Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. In this way, he alleges, he showed Danish Muslims that ?we are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.?
Few impartial observers can agree that the cartoons do not demonise or stereotype Muslims. Worse, they are not honest enough to link Western arms, training and funding, and the nomadic jehadi groups that are terrorising the civilised world. The complete black-out of the fact that Europe has given asylum to some of the most notorious Islamic terrorists, and that the pigeons have come home to roost, makes the claims of challenging self-censorship ring hollow. European nations that have been cold to India'spleas against sheltering wanted terrorists should tell us why they expect the world to weep when they weep, but ask us to weep alone.
The Jyllands-Posten insults our intelligence when it tells us the cartoons were not intended to disrespect Islam, for there can have been no other motive once the decision to publish what was drawn by the cartoonists was taken. To claim that forcing a Christian to respect the Islamic taboo on portraiture is incompatible with secular democracy is tantamount to saying that aggressive religions have the right to use vituperative language against other faiths, which must put up with this to prove that they are tolerant. This is a peculiar argument.
Mr Rose points to Western resentment that Christians cannot wear the cross or carry the Bible in Saudi Arabia, while Muslims in secular Denmark have their own mosques, cemeteries, schools, television and radio stations. But that does not give Denmark or other European countries the right to publish offensive material about other religions. It is true that Osama bin Laden is offensive, but he is a creature of the West, and Western journalists would do well to introspect on policies that create such monsters. I agree that the Iranian President raises hackles when he says Israel should be removed from the Gulf region, but it is also true that the Holocaust was the handiwork of European Christians, and not of Islamic radicals. Yet Western Christians salvaged their conscience by carving out a Jewish state from Muslim territory, which is unprecedented in the annals of history, and we must find the courage to say this also.
Mr Rose defends the cartoons as legitimate dissent, on the lines of the resistance of Soviet activists and writers like Boris Pasternak, Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Natan Sharansky. The comparison is invalid since the cartoonists were not Muslims operating out of a Muslim country. A genuine Muslim dissenter would be someone like Tasleema Nasreen, who wrote her book, Lajja, on atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh while living in that country, and was then forced into exile. Someone like Salman Rushdie, living in the safety of the West and receiving a huge advance for his diatribe against Islam cannot be called a dissident. If Europe wants to confront its Muslim citizens and make them conform to its socio-cultural and political ethos, and not crave for the Sharia as the UK Muslims do, it will have to be far more honest in its dealings with them. The cartoon controversy suggests that it wants to hide behind subterfuge.
