Cole on Danish Caricatures in Salon.com
My article on cartoongate is out over at Salon.com.
Excerpt:
' After the cartoons were published on Sept. 30, right-wing Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen reacted to the angry response by refusing to meet with ambassadors from Muslim countries and sternly lecturing Muslims on their need to put up with the caricatures. He finally sounded a more conciliatory note this week, complaining of a global crisis. He was clearly worried, like another Dane, Prince Hamlet, about what would happen "if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me."
Muslim touchiness about Western insults to the prophet Mohammed must be understood in historical context. Most Muslim societies have spent the past two centuries either under European rule or heavy European influence, and most colonial masters and their helpmeets among the missionaries were not shy about letting local people know exactly how barbaric they thought the Muslim faith was. The colonized still smart from the notorious signs outside European clubs in the colonial era, such as the one in Calcutta that said, "Dogs and Indians not allowed."
Indeed, the same themes of Aryan superiority and Semitic backwardness in the European "scientific racism" of the 19th and early 20th centuries that led to the Holocaust against the Jews also often colored the language of colonial administrators in places like Algeria about their subjects. A caricature of a Semitic prophet like Mohammed with a bomb in his turban replicates these racist themes of a century and a half ago, wherein Semites were depicted as violent and irrational and therefore as needing a firm white colonial master for their own good.
(It is worth noting that in 2004 the Danish editor who commissioned the drawings, Flemming Rose, conducted an uncritical interview with the American neoconservative and Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. Pipes, an extreme right-wing supporter of the Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, has warned of the dangers of Muslim immigration into Denmark, claiming that "many of them show little desire to fit into their adopted country" and that male Muslim immigrants made up a majority of the country's rapists.) '
An English translation of Flemming Rose's interview with Pipes is here. Rose deliberately sought the caricatures.
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/09/2006 12:40:00 AM
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9 Comments:
I went to Daniel Pipes' website, via the translation of Rose's interview, and found a brief entry there in which Pipes debunks the 'conspiracy theory' he says is making the rounds of despicable websites to which he will not link, not wanting to sully his readers' eyes. What conspiracy theory, you ask? That he is the cause of Flemming Rose's publishing the cartoons. Now I just bet that the next blogospheric iteration about this will be focused on this 'false accusation' which he himself seems to have sucked out of cyberspace.
Give me a break Mr. Cole. I am a confident Indian and I have left European colonisation of my land behind.I along with my fellow countrymen looking at the future with hope.
For your kind information and broadcasting most Indians do not look at European colonisation as being necessarily evil.It's a balanced approach they follow. I get speechless when you attribute Pakistan's failures to European colonisation.
The colonized still smart from the notorious signs outside European clubs in the colonial era, such as the one in Calcutta that said, "Dogs and Indians not allowed."
No. We do not. We regard European racism during the colonial era was our wages of sin(treatment of lower castes).Thankfully caste biases are getting eradicated and now confined to only far flung rural places.
You arguments on current backwardness of Islamic societies are hollow. Blaming European colonisation for all their ills will be counter productive considering Arabs are past masters of colonialisation
I am an Indian too. The King of Spooks is not speaking for me, and I certainly do not subscribe to the right-wing nationalist-fascist alliance with the Bushiites that some Indians touted as modernism.
And if you remember, the nationalist fascists lost the last general election in India, despite all their modernist militaristic propaganda of upper middle class bliss.
And blaming European racism on OUR wages of sin - Well that is spectacular self loathing! Colonialism is responsible for the most divisive carving of third world lands and creating circumstances for long-term conflicts, which they then exploited to fight their farce of a Cold War...
If you don't remember, India voted AGAINST the creation of the state of Israel PRECISELY because our newly-freed partition-bloodied leaders saw the stupidity and inherent colonialism behind the partition of Palestine.
The nationalist-fascists who preach a nuclear-powered alliance with Israel and the Bushiites against a larger ill-defined Muslim enemy are hate mongerers with no rational sense of history.
Sex.
Lies.
And Howard Dean.
Http://howarddean.cf.huffingtonpost.com
KoG is no doubt an ardent bjp supporter.
How can KoG claim that Arabs were "past masters of colonialism" when Arab lands were occupied the Turks for roughly 5 centuries? And what "sins" did Africans commit that justified Europe's rape of that continent?
Irony is not in the dictionary. On the one hand we have Christian literalists who believe Adam and Eve existed and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. These same non-thinkers maintain that GOD will never allow global warming (climate change) to disturb their Sunday picnic even though their denial of the effects of CO2 emissions hinders attempts to bring the US into Kyoto.
Irony because when CO2 concentrations pass the tipping point, we will have discovered too late that this is the Garden of Eden; when we are cast out we will feel the effects of catastrophic climate change.
On the other hand we have Western vilification of the vast Muslim world. Some call them violent (Prager comes to mind), yet as Dr. Cole and many others have shown, by comparison, the Muslim world is far more pacifist than our British and American "civilisation."
What we should worry about is not whether there is now some Islamic drive to destroy the West, what we should worry about is whether we are creating one. Is it possible the Muslim version of King Arthur is just now entering puberty? Why would we thrust a sword into a stone (ok, present the challenge of neo-colonialism driven by the corrupt Republican-Likud joint venture)? Could it be because we are really, really, really stupid? Perhaps. We did elect Bush the Lesser. Twice.
So... one abrasive editor and one brain dead PM are responsible for this kerfuffle?
Or... one abrasive editor and one brain dead PM under the coaching of a central neocon figure are responsible for this kerfuffle?
Your comment in Salon that "The standoff between Iran and the United States and its Israeli ally over Tehran's nuclear energy program was also clearly part of the dynamic" seems promising to me.
I see this as being important only because a number of political interests saw it to their advantage to publicize what would otherwise be written off as foolishness. The European right sees a means to push back against immigrants. The pro-interventionists in the US see this as a way to portray Arabs/Muslims as violent and irrational. The Iranians and Syrians see this as a way to force the US hand at a moment when the US Army is otherwise occupied. And of course, ordinary Muslims and Arabs see this as a way to assert national and religious pride.
It's a bar fight waiting to happen.
I've read your article at Salon.com with great interest. You makes many good points.However I think that you put too much emphasis on the role of Arab governments in the wide mobilization of Arab and Muslim crowds. The movement is so widespread and so huge that it doesn't only reflect the manipulation of a westernized elite trying to cope with the mounting islamist feelings of the Arab masses. For me this wide mobilization mirrors a much wider social movement, a reaction :
a) To the new agressive US imperialism at work since Bush took power and invaded Iraq
b) To the contempt which Western cultures show toward Arab and Muslim cultures and to the humiliations and discriminations they suffer due to the US declared "global war on terrorism" (the false pretense that Islamism=terrorism);
c) To the continuing xenophobic discriminations of which Muslim and/or Arab immigrants are victims in EU.
As a side note, it's also interesting to note that the French suburbs didn't get inflammed by this new controversy, despite the reproduction of these caricatures in two large newspapers (France Soir and Charlie Hebdo). This proves that that the real issue of the French/Arab/African immigrants of the second generation is neither religion, nor civilization clash, but a question of social exclusion.
Its important to point out what you do about the history of colonialism. Its also true in large swaths of the globe. Yet we don't necessarily see the kind of violent outbreaks we are seeing as a result of some doodling on a piece of paper. Its also good to be considerate of other people's feelings, no matter how irrational. But we have to come down on the side of reason on this one. Protecting free speech is a noble principle. Believing cartoonists should die for drawing a guy is not. Blind faith in anything is simply not a virtue, and I'm not sure we should be making excuses for it. We should be frightened and appalled. I agree with the likes of Chomsky that it has no moral value to condemn someone wlse for what they do, but neither should we defend it when its wrong, and, like all religious claims, based on absurdities.
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