More on the Hypocrisy of the West and Cartoongate
The Danish newspaper that published the caricatures of Muhammad refused to carry cartoons lampooning Jesus of Nazareth, The Guardian revealed on Monday.
' In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.
Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."
The illustrator told the Norwegian daily Dagbladet, which saw the email: "I see the cartoons as an innocent joke, of the type that my Christian grandfather would enjoy."
"I showed them to a few pastors and they thought they were funny." '
I've gotten a lot of comments by email which have the structure, "Yes Europeans would be offended by X, but would it cause violence?" I presume these readers somehow consider the Irish not really Europeans.
As late as last September, we have an item like this from Belfast:
September 14, 2005
' Priest says Catholics live in fear after Protestant riots
After successive nights of extensive rioting by Protestant mobs in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland, Catholics are living in fear, said Fr Aidan Troy of Holy Cross Parish in Belfast.
CLICK HERE"When rioting is taking place, members of this parish can't leave the area, because access to the main roads is blocked. We're supposed to be having a novena here this week, but speakers can't get in to us because of the violence," he told Catholic News Service.
Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde said the rioting was organised by Protestant paramilitaries - the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force - with disturbances breaking out in seven different locations in Belfast and five different locations outside the city in an effort to stretch police and army resources to the maximum. Protestant leaders deny the charge.
Rioting started last Saturday after the Independent Parades Commission ruled that a parade by the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternity, could not pass through a Catholic district.
SOURCE
Priest says Catholics live in fear after Protestant riots (Catholic News Service 14/9/05)
ARCHIVE
Irish Church leaders respond to renewed violence in Belfast (CathNews 13/9/05) '
Or let's just consider this BBC item from 1986:
'
1986: Orange Parade sparks riots in Northern Ireland
Dozens have been injured in the second consecutive night of violence in Portadown, County Armagh.
Violence flared when Orangemen converged on the town yesterday evening after their annual marches to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne.
Protestant youths began throwing missiles at the police as they attempted to section off Catholic areas.
Disturbances are expected into the night with nationalist and loyalist rioters directing their anger against the security forces and each other.
Vehicles have been overturned and police have been attacked with darts, bottles and stones. Four were seriously injured including one who was dragged from his car and stabbed in the neck.
Dozens of casualties
RUC officers responded with baton charges and about 150 plastic bullets. A total of 127 police and civilians have been injured over the two nights.
Yesterday evening there were skirmishes between Catholic and Protestant factions as they hurled petrol bombs over wasteland in anticipation of today's parade.
The march in the Portadown area passed off peacefully this afternoon after the Orangemen accepted a compromise from the RUC late last night.
The authorities expected trouble after sealing off the Tunnel section of Obins Street yesterday. This is the traditional outward route of the Portadown parade to Drumcree church.
When the RUC allowed Orangemen down Obins Street last Sunday there were angry scenes between police, loyalist marchers and Catholic residents.
Today, hundreds of troops joined the 1,000-strong force of officers lining the re-routed parade.
It took the 400 Orangemen from eight lodges 25 minutes to walk down the mainly Catholic Garvaghy Road. '
And that was over a Protestant Pride parade with reference to a historical battle, not something sacred like scripture! (And, yes, the Protestants were being deliberately provocative.)
There have also been clashes over rightwing religion in Europe. How about a riot at the Vatican in 1999 over the Pope meeting with a far rightwing Austrian politician, which left dozens injured?
' Riot breaks out as pope greets Haider - Pope John Paul II - Jorg Haider - Brief Article
National Catholic Reporter, Jan 5, 2001 by John L. Jr. Allen
Protesters, police clash, ending Holy Year in blast of teargas
When Pope John Paul II opened this Holy Year on Dec. 24, 1999, in St. Peter's Basilica, no one anticipated it would end in a hail of smoke bombs and tear gas canisters a few hundred yards away. As it turned out, while the Jubilee year officially ends Jan. 6, many Romans will remember Dec. 16 as the day the year's holiness evaporated in two hours of ferocious urban warfare.
The late afternoon melee on the Via della Conciliazione, the broad avenue that leads into St. Peter's Square, was triggered by the pope's welcome of Jorg Haider, Austria's enfant terrible on the far right. By far the most violent protest directed at the Vatican in modern times, it left more than 30 protesters, 26 police and two journalists injured.
Haider, unofficial leader of Austria's far-right "Freedom Party," is Europe's most controversial figure, in part for ambiguous statements about Nazism, in part for championing an anti-immigrant platform that many consider xenophobic. His party's entry into the Austrian government nine months ago sparked wide international outrage and sanctions from the European Union, lifted only in September (NCR, Feb. 18).
The pope received Haider as governor of the southern Austrian province of Carinthia, whose turn it was to present the annual Christmas tree for St. Peter's Square.
While Haider's visit was the immediate cause of the tumult, participants insisted that it had deeper roots, reflecting mounting anger at the Vatican among some Italians who see it as an oppressive force. Many of the demonstrators believe the Jubilee Year of 2000 will be remembered more for a string of controversial political and theological moves from the Vatican than for any spiritual uplift.
In the moments before the violence exploded, many of the approximately 3,000 protesters, the majority in their 20s and 30s, voiced their anger in conversations with NCR. Some spoke of the Vatican's staunch opposition to this summer's world Gay Pride festival, which the pope called an "insult to the Grand Jubilee of the Year 2000." Others said they regarded the Sept. 3 beatification of Pope Pius IX, controversial for his treatment of Italy's Jewish minority in the 19th century, as a revival of Catholic anti-Semitism.
Still others voiced outrage over the treatment of women by the church, targeting especially the church's opposition to the so-called "morning after" pill, which prevents implantation of a fertilized ovum. The Vatican has recently attempted to overturn the Italian government's decision to make the pill available in pharmacies. Many objected also to what they see as high-level Vatican support for proposed immigration policies that would exclude Muslims. Such policies, proposed by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi of Bologna, have received support from Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state.
Some protesters pointed to the recent Vatican document Dominus Iesus, which stressed Christ as the unique savior of the world, as an example of religious intolerance.
"The visit of Haider to Rome is the logical conclusion to this Jubilee year, that has seen the Vatican embrace the right and discriminate against homosexuals, against immigrants, against women, against other religions," said a young woman who addressed the crowd.
The protesters, a mixture of communists, university students, Jews, Greens and progressives, had planned to carry a large portrait of Auschwitz detainees with the slogan "never again" up the Via della Conciliazione to place it next to Haider's tree. They were interrupted by a police line at the beginning of the avenue, in a small space named for John XXIII.
The violence broke out when a group of the protesters attempted to break through police barricades, using the portrait as a battering ram. The response was swift, with teargas blasts followed by waves of police swinging nightsticks moving into the crowd.
Some observers claimed the force was excessive. One man bleeding from a head wound told NCR he had been ordered by police to stop and had complied, only to be clubbed anyway. '
For those waxing holier than thou over the Muslim caricature riots, it is worth looking at the (very incomplete) Wikipedia list of riots for the late 20th century and early 21st century. The answer is obviously "yes" to the question of whether Westerners riot. Mostly over race.
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/07/2006 12:30:00 AM
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21 Comments:
Dr. Cole,
It is interesting to note that in this original post on this subject The Agonist wrote this: "What would you do if a Saudi paper published a cartoon caricature of Jesus wearing a US army uniform, carrying a machine gun and walking atop the bloodied bodies of dead Iraqi women and children?"
Of course, every one said, they do it all the time. They burn the US flag, etc. . . but they missed the point: those were national symbols not religious symbols and Isa is considered a holy man in Islam.
Such relativization of religious violence would be fine, of course, except for the niggling fact that the riots in Ireland were also about race, not religion, as they are so often painted. They come down to Protestant/Catholic lines because those lines are the distinguishing characteristics of the Ulster Scots and Irish populations fighting over occupation of the land...
Irish may riot about religion, but would they kill a filmmaker for making a film critical of their religion? Would an Irish religious leader call for an author who supposedly denigrated a religion to be executed? Would the Irish government execute a religious scholar for critiquing the Bible, as Sudan did to Mahmoud Mohammed Taha for suggesting that the Meccan and Medinan verses of the Qu'ran should be taken in context?
In your posting on Monday, you argued that the Muslim threats, rioting and violence were exaggerated, but unfolding events proved that argument wrong even as you were making it. Now you drag out the “So’s your old man” defense: western condemnation and revulsion of Muslim religious extremism, you claim, is mere chauvinism because there are plenty of examples of extremism and violence in the West, too, particularly, you argue, with respect to race. But I bet that when racism takes place in the West, you don’t ask “What’s the big deal?” I bet you don’t mock those who condemn the racism and spend your time and energy ferreting out examples of wrongdoing by those who condemn racism so that you can argue, “Who are you to cast the first stone?”
At this moment in history the West is faced with a challenge to its values of free expression and religious toleration by violent religious extremism from the Islamic world. You have admitted (or come close to admitting) that there is more of a problem in the modern world with religious extremism in Islam than in the West and you can hardly deny that the West values and practices free expression more than Islamic culture does. I am less interested at the moment in engaging in self-criticism so as to blunt my criticism of Islam than I am in defending good things in the West that are now under assault from bad things in Islam.
I have a proposition for you. The next time someone in the Third World accuses the West of imperialism, I want you to research all the bad things that person’s culture has done – all the examples of militarism and aggression – and write a Who-are-you-to-cast-the-first-stone article that deflects attention from the wrongdoing that he believes the West has engaged in.
We both know you would never write such an article. And I believe your posting of today is equally misplaced. I know that you value freedom of expression and religious toleration. I know that you are against violent religious extremism. Now is the time vigorously to defend – without qualifying timidity – what we value.
Comparing the orchestrated rioting in the Muslim world with Northern Ireland is silly, The current wave of unrest, stoked by charlatans in Damascus and Tehran lacks proximity to the alleged offense - both temporal and geographic. Northern Ireland's Protestants and Catholics live side-by-side and the friction between the two communities os a daily experience. Most of the "outraged" masses that we have seen burning Danish flags and throwing Molotov cocktails at the Austiran embassy in Tehran have little or no experience with Europeans and probably did not even know where Denmark was prior to last week.
I read your stuff almost daily because it is insightful; on this, however, you are way off base.
Ignore the causes for a moment - Rioting by Christians is nowhere near what Muslims do.
They sure have many reasons, clear and unclear, for every known riot in the recent past by Christians (protestant or catholic) you can easily find a 100 times more riots by Muslims.
A cartoon of Jesus? Why not. What about the infamous 'piss Christ'? It has happened before several times - how about aspersions on Mary and doubting Christ's nativity? I don't see why the comparison is even being made. Just to prove that Christians are capable of taking offense and indulging in violence? The crusades prove that anyway. As of today, the comparisons are irrelevent, that's all.
Of course there will be hypocrisy. Which culture doesn't indulge in it? The point then is to expose it, and demand impartial observance of the principle of free speech applicable to everything - even to the Holocuast. Violence in response to anything, by the state or groups or religions - can never be justified. Is it just understanding and not justifying? Then I guess the proof of that is in the pudding - the understanding followed by a call to blow everyone's cover.
Freedom of speech is too hard-won to compromise on for the sake of religion.
The example of Ireland is revealing in so many ways, isn't it. It's interesting how very little is written about this situation nowadays. Yet it would be very worthwhile to develop a clearer understanding of the forces at work there if only to gain insight into the American unwillingness to judge or act officially in this instance.
As for the publication of cartoon caricatures in Arab media, if memory serves, there have been instances where Western media takes up the cudgel against the attitudes displayed therein, but that happens mostly when the subject is Israel and/or Jews.
tripper..
yes, and would they distribute a call for submissions of cartoons intended to offend before excercising their innocent and just freedom of expression?
Hundreds of people have been killed or injured in Europeans in riots over football. Nobody has the monopoly on inexplicable violence.
Any apologies for intolerance, or contorted claims of equivalency, are very disappointing. Only intolerance should be intolerable. There may be no perfect balance betwen freedom and compulsion, but Denmark presents a better case than most.
Cartoons which use images of Jesus to parodize supposed Christians are widely available, but generally ignored. It also appears that Muslims themselves are capable of authoring cartoons even more blasphemous than those penned by tasteless infidels.
Jesus himself mocked and reviled the clergy and self-loving (Re?)publicans of his day, although this also gets ignored.
People tend to prefer the cartoonish mimicks and distortions of Christianity presented by slick televangelist$, talk radio bullies, and political demagogues. In effect, they worship themselves.
Yet all these forms of expression must be protected.
The Orangemen parade in Belfast precisely to taunt the Catholics and invite name-calling and worse. Likewise, anti-war protestors who burn effigies of W. painted with swastikas also engage in excess, distortion, and bad taste. However, the right of peaceable public assembly must be protected, even if the civil boundaries are often tough to define and uphold.
Freedom of publication must be freer still. A book, movie, or cartoon--unlike a parade--receive only voluntary attention. Even profanity and blasphemy must be permitted, provided the author and publisher agree, is limited to adults, and entails no use of public funds. No one is compelled to see either "Brokeback Mountain" or Jimmy Swaggart's revival meetings.
Denmark's standard of religious freedom and expression correctly requires that people allow, even if they do not like, occasional cases of bad manners or insensitivity. This is greatly preferable to a world where any sort of dissenting expression or faith is illegal.
At 12:39 PM, JWS said... In your posting on Monday, you argued that the Muslim threats, rioting and violence were exaggerated, but unfolding events proved that argument wrong even as you were making it.
You miss tne point of real time conflict analysis. Just a couple of days ago, it was not that bad. But situation changes fast, cartoongate gets worse and worse.
Number of victims is still low, but now, according to GU, Iranians link everything together: cartoons, Iranian crisis and I/P.
At this moment in history the West is faced with a challenge to its values of free expression and religious toleration by violent religious extremism from the Islamic world.
More pointless generalizations. What we really have is a conflict between neocons and different Islamist factions.
Whether or not it would cause violence is secondary to the issue of why the cartoons were printed in the first place. The fact that they wouldn't print similar cartoons that might incite Christians (whether in a violent fashion or not) demonstrates that they clearly printed the cartoons as a way of inciting Muslims. The free speech issue was not the real issue. Christians are in the majority, they represent the establishment in Denmark, Europe and the U.S. So you basically have Christians in authority deliberately mocking Muslims who are already angry about a number of issues in the Middle East as well as discrimination they are facing in Europe. Free speech is just a dodge of the real issue here, which is racism. I don't believe that the violent reactions are warranted or helpful, but if you poke a stick at a hornets' nest, don't be too surprised if you are stung a few times.
I don't think muslims are a threat to free speech in the west. What's disturbing to me is to see all this "we're so free and they're so violent" attitude towards muslims in the west. It looks like things are getting primed up for the next set of bombs to drop muslim heads.
The orchestrating rioting over months-old cartoons somehow makes me think of the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.
The opportune timing as Dear Leader's saber-rattling over Iran increases particularly invokes a Company feel about the unrest.
The key thing is that these monotheistic religions -- even (would you believe it?) the Baha'i -- are prone to mass craziness.
We managed to stop monotheism in the West in the 18th century, and then again the avenging ghost of monotheism in the 20th. Thank God.
But "freedom of religion" is absolutely no excuse for craziness. These riots are just the Muslim world saying, "Ah, you think we can't get crazy? Just watch us. We have a right to religious craziness."
Well, I say "No" to monotheism in the States and I say "No" to monotheism in the Third World. Or everyone can be happily martyred; why, frankly, should I care?
Dr. Cole,
In light of your comments regarding 20th and 21st Century riots, let me take you back even further to the initial agitation in the run-up to the foundation of the American Republic - the Stamp Act Crisis. As is outlined in many tomes outlining the tumult surrounding the Stamp Act in the colonies, many riots occured, with the houses of royal officials such as Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchison being torn down, and the physical intimidation dealt to any potential stamp distributor/ customs collector, as well as actual violence of the sort dealt to John Robinson by Rhode Island's populace. There is also the burning of the Gaspee, and of course the Boston Tea Party. In other words, the very base of America's revolutionary heritage is marred with mob violence to actions from overseas, and while said actions are not in and of themselves comparable, the reaction - mobs and rioting leading to property destruction - are indeed similar. In other words, we Yanks shouldn't be so quick to point fingers at the rioting in the Iraq and elsewhere, because our own origins lay down a similarly violent road.
Prof. Cole,
Obviously riots over ethinic, national, or religous insults are not specific to any time, place, or people. The interesting question is how common are riots to such MEDIATED insults. A cartoon published in a distant place prompts protests across the globe. You don't have to be holier than thou to wonder if this is new and curious. And if it is, what makes it possible?
"Iranian WMD" and cartoongate
For those who tracked the Iraqi WMD developments, this WaPo language is quite familiar. Make no mistake, it is IWMD-2! The design of current "Iranian WMD" PR is pretty much the same as with Iraq in 2002-2003.
Now those who want to explain the cartoongate by generic "muslim intolerance", need to learn that it is just an innocent joke compared with all that we can expect from the Khomeinists in response to black anti-Iranian PR campaign.
What happens is that Iranians on the highest official level link the cartoons with "Iranian WMD" hysteria and I/P. Knowing their influence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and WBG, there is little doubt that "Iranian WMD" are going to backfire in the most nontrivial ways.
In fact, current situation around Iran and Syria (not to mention the Oil for Food hysteria) explains why Muslim diplomats and protesters target Denmark directly rather than going through regular UN and EU dimplomatic channels. The problem is, with Iran and Syria under fierce pressure, these channels lose effectiveness and credibility.
1. WaPo. Dafna Linzer. Strong Leads and Dead Ends in Nuclear Case Against Iran
In the three years since Iran was forced to acknowledge having a secret uranium-enrichment program, Western governments and the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, have amassed substantial evidence to test the Tehran government's assertion that it plans to build nothing more than peaceful nuclear power plants.
2. Cartoons 'part of Zionist plot'
The furious international row over the publication of cartoons satirising the prophet Muhammad intensified today when Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed it was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over Hamas' win in the Palestinian elections.
Iran today also announced it was suspending all trade and economic ties with Denmark in protest of the caricatures. The move came after the EU had warned Iran that boycotting Danish goods would place further strain on already frosty relations.
Speaking to Iranian air force personnel, Ayatollah Khamenei said the cartoons were a scandal, particularly as they came "from those who champion civilisation and free expression".
3. IWMD news blog
To be fair: Ireland IS an island off the coast of Europe, not actually *in* Europe per se.
A cartoon published in a distant place prompts protests across the globe. You don't have to be holier than thou to wonder if this is new and curious. And if it is, what makes it possible?
It's fascinating to me that Americans can say this without any apparent sense of irony.
Who's threatening free speech in the U.S. - is it really Muslims? In, say, the Iran-U.S. relationship, which side is a greater threat to the other?
Riots? Here? In America? Never. We are human beings, not Muslims. /sarcasm
Kee-rist. What do you think happens in the U.S. after many pro-sports championships?
What do you think happens every New Year's Eve in some cities, just for the hell of it.
How would you described what happened the day after Thanksgiving at effing Walmart, for eff's sake?
Would we riot over some cartoon? Hell no. We choose other, equally stupid, reasons for our riots.
Personally, I think that anybody who so much as furrowed a brow over the cartoons, or over the response in the MidEast, has been had. The cartoons weren't worthy of more than a snort of disinterest. The violent response isn't worthy of more than a snort of disgust.
There are people who seek to gain something by manipulating the reactions of others. If you are reacting, you are one of the puppets.
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