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Home >> Europe >> Culture The Right to Offend: Putting the Muhammad Cartoons in Context Nicholas M. Guariglia - 10/4/2007 Pity Sofia Karlberg, the spokeswoman of the Swedish foreign ministry, who was tasked with the highly weasel-like chore of expressing regret for something she was not responsible for; for something that need not be regretted. It seems that Lars Vilks, a cartoonist for the Swedish paper Nerikes Allenhanda, drew unflattering depictions of the Islamic prophet and seventy-century general Muhammad. Karlberg eulogized to the BBC that the Swedish government “expressed regret that the publication of the cartoons had hurt the feelings of Muslims,” but continued that the government “can’t apologize for the cartoons because (the government) did not publish them.”
Reagan: We do not have any ban on your movies. The film industry is a free business, and if someone wants to show your films he can do it. Gorbachev: I see that the President avoids this question and goes into talk about business. Reagan: Our government cannot control the film market. If you want to inundate us with your movies go right ahead. How our movies get to your country, I do not know. Gorbachev: It is an interesting situation… in your country, the most democratic country, obstacles arise to showing our movies, while in our country, a totalitarian country, almost half the movies being shown are American. How can you reconcile this? Reagan: There is a difference between free enterprise and government ownership. You have no free enterprise, everything belongs to the government and the government puts everything on the market. In the United States we have private industry, and other countries have the right to sell their goods, movies and so on. You have the right to set up a rental organization in our country to distribute your movies, or to lease some theater. But we cannot order it. Sound familiar? Take note of how Gorbachev completely and utterly misunderstood the nature of an open system. His future reforms aside, this child of the motherland could not fathom the inability of a government official to influence the film market. It simply did not resonate, making Reagan look like a father didactically explaining to his son how to ride a bicycle without training wheels. The same disconnect can be seen in the cartoon melodrama. The 57-member state Organization of Islamic Conference has demanded the cartoonist be “punished.” The Pakistani autocracy has insisted upon an explanation and contends the Swedish diplomat to Islamabad, shamefully acquiescent, “fully shared the views of the Muslim community and termed the publication as unfortunate.” Not only is the government of Sweden not accountable for the “inflammatory” scribblings of an independent business – a concept Leninists and Islamists are apparently equally incapable of comprehending – but the continuity of journalistic freedom and the right of free expression, insulting or not, is never something a Western envoy or foreign ministry spokesperson should capitulate over. A cynic would have you believe “defending our way of life” is just an unsuitable platitude, an unwelcome cliché used by misguided politicians and bogeymen neocon policymakers alike. But take a look at what has happened the past few years: Islamic clerics in London have lambasted the British use of piggy banks (ham, porcelain or not, is unclean after all). Filmmaker Theo van Gogh’s documentary cost him his life; a manifesto promising to kill others was stabbed into his heart. Salman Rushdie is still in hiding for the offense of writing a novel, and now, for the crime of accepting British knighthood. Pope Benedict XVI recounts an accurate take of Islamic history; fatwas and attacks on innocents in Gaza, Turkey, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere ensue. A Newsweek story details the flushing of the Qur’an down a Guantanamo Bay toilet; the Mideast subcontinent goes berserk, and scores are killed (Newsweek later admitted the story was false). Three teenage Christian girls have their necks sliced in Indonesia. And what was the head-loppers’ grievance? International humanitarian Sergio Vieira de Mello hastening and overseeing the independence of East Timor from its Muslim occupier a few years prior. (Mr. de Mello, after the Indonesian withdrawal, was later killed when jihadists destroyed the U.N. headquarters in Iraq.) Nor should we forget the visceral reaction to previous doodlings. The publisher of the first Muhammad cartoons in 2005, Jyllands-Posten of Denmark, had also published satirical cartoons of Jesus and (what were Iran-sponsored) Holocaust-denying cartoons. Nobody killed anyone. But once the Danish newspaper violated the “sanctity” of Islamic aniconism, embassies went aflame, civilians were butchered across the world, diplomats cowered and then were attacked for their perceived passivity, countless death warrants ordered by old men in robes were issued, and suicide bombs were discovered all over Europe. The charade was entirely manufactured and stoked by the Iranian theocracy and various loose-end clerical theocrats jockeying for power. Boycotts on the small pacifistic European democracy were intended to destroy its economy. The majority of Western papers whimpered away from reprinting the drawings in solidarity with free expression (and one that did, Free Inquiry out of New York, was banned from Borders bookstores). Apologies, mea culpas, and soft-spoken confessions continued for months, underscoring the necessity for a bit more stoicism and a lot less sentimentality in our society. “Perhaps the cartons were tasteless? Maybe they were a tad too insulting? Was their publication really prudent?” The sniveling, self-loathing masochism entirely missed the point. It doesn’t matter that Muhammad’s wife Aisha lovingly brought him pillow cushions with pictures of animals sewn into them. It doesn’t matter that Muhammad, upon coming home, stood in the doorway starring at the animal cushions in horror. It doesn’t matter that Muhammad then scolded his wife, declaring “The makers of these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection” (talk about touchy). It doesn’t matter that this bizarre story, alone, is the crackpot theological excuse for the absurd and bloody responses to all of the Muhammad cartoons. All of that ridiculousness is unimportant. Tastelessness is still allowed. Blasphemy is still protected under the law (our man-made law, not the deity-mandated Qur’an). Cries and moans of “that’s offensive” are not good enough. Western diplomats abroad ought to defend vivaciously, not hide from, the values derived from the Enlightenment. Other faiths are ridiculed and mocked daily, and their adherents refrain from reprisal. The mockers correctly feel exempt from threat. But I feel no inclination to even raise this point. Exposing that double standard is not necessary; this argument can be, and should be, conducted entirely from a secular and democratic orientation. Defending free expression and the right to offend Muslims is justification enough. If others do not understand this liberality, then they, not we, will have to change. |
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