Cartoonesque 14 – Muhammad Cartoons and Dutch media
One of the most pressing issues in todays secular pluralist countries is how to prevent escalation in conflicts. Many conflicts pertain to religious people being offended by representations of their religion by others. The Muhammad Cartoons are one such case and they are in the center of attention again after the arrests of Jihad Jane and others for plotting an attack on Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. Dutch newspaper AD reported about the death threats against Vilks and in that same article also showed the cartoon he draw. This led to complaints in some Muslim circles.
So far nothing new, except those complaints. Not the complaints itself but the fact that is was done in a much more professional way than in the past. In the past there have been a few individual complaints combined with public statements from imams and in the case of the Muhammad Cartoons in 2006 three badly run demonstrations. During the affair with Fitna the Movie almost all imams (including Salafi imams) only called upon people to remain calm. This is not to say that people were not angry, offended or whatever. They were. And they turned to the imams for advice on what to do. The advice to remain calm helped in most cases but was not sufficient for a large group who saw the imams as acquiescing when they should stood up for their interests. This time however the Dutch site Islaam.tv (a Salafi media site) launched a small campaign with the film ‘Everything but the prophet‘ while Al-Yaqeen (a Salafi site belong the As Soennah mosque with imam Fawaz in The Hague) published a statement (as they did before). Both Islaam.tv and Al-Yaqeen framed the article of AD as ‘disgraceful’ and a ‘new provocation’ and ‘mockery’ against Muslims in the name of journalism. Under the guise of freedom of speech ‘they’ keep offending and hurting the prophet by depicting him in the most awful ways. According to them by using the freedom of speech as an instrument for deliberate insult journalists do not unite society but attack its social cohesion. They called upon the newspaper to remove the cartoon and asked Muslims and sympathizers to send an email to the AD with the request to take the cartoon of the site. The content of this message shows a classic blasphemy approach whereby the protection of holy symbols is aimed at protecting social cohesion in society. The protection of holy symbols is twofold: first of all the symbol itself that should not be desecrated but second (and in modern times more so) the feelings of believers that should not be offended. The accusation of offense in this sense is a way of protecting the status quo within a group and of protecting the status of a group within society. There is reason however to doubt the framing of the newspaper as deliberately offending and provocative. My idea is, also based upon earlier experiences with this newspaper, that they did not really think about it that much. They published it without thinking about the possible consequences just because they needed a picture with the article and not with the intend to offend people. More on that below.
The newspaper AD, after having received several complaints, removed the cartoon from its site. With a very interesting logic. According to them the complaints direct our attention to a sensitive topic but they are not the reason for removing it. After internal debate the newspaper came to the conclusion that they had decided too quickly that this was a fitting illustration. Now they think the picture is not relevant. Earlier they did show the cartoon when ‘it was functional.’ Apparently giving in to such complaints based upon offended religious feeling and maybe also statements of solidarity by non-Muslims, is not the correct way of handling this. Decisions should be based upon relevance and functionality which appear to be neutral and rational arguments instead of the irrational and one-sided complaints by Muslims. Although this particular frame is easy to criticize because they probably would not have removed the cartoon if they received no complaints. That has been picked up by others as well, such as Elsevier, who severly criticized AD for being cowards, bowing for radical Muslims, another step back, and complaints were seen as the birth of an Islamic vice police and ‘mail from talibanistan‘. All these sites and newspaper De Pers use the cartoon in their articles except shocklog Geenstijl in an article about ‘wining Muslims‘. What do these comments along with the publishing of the cartoon mean? Does the defense of the freedom of speech mean that those cartoons have to be published because otherwise one is a coward and giving in to Muslims?
The Salafi websites Al-Yaqeen and Islaam.tv in turn responded to the publications in De Pers and Elsevier. Al Yaqeen sees at the last straw for De Pers (a newspaper in trouble) and an attempt to do something with so-called ‘real journalism’. Their hate against Muslims is so big that they seize every opportunity to hurt Muslims (again, I doubt this). They call upon people not to read this free newspaper. Islaam.tv published another film called ‘Do we remain silent?‘. The title is I think chosen very well because it mirrors the feeling among many Muslims (not only Salafi) that there are limits and that it is about time to speak up. The fact that Al Yaqeen and Islaam.tv are both at the front of this campaign seems to indicate that also the imams have slightly shifted their stance from harsh condemnations in the past (until 2002-2004) to acquiescence and calls for restraint (2004-2009) to moderate collective action via the internet. The content of the last video (in which I’m also giving my similar view on the whole thing) does show this. Imam Fawaz is calling for action based upon the principle of commanding good and forbidding evil: “If one of you sees something wrong, let him change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue, if he cannot, then with his heart” based upon a hadith. The way Fawaz does this is open for interpretation. At FrontaalNaakt (criticizing shocklog Geenstijl.nl for publishing the cartoon out of solidarity) it stated that Fawaz and others such as rapper Appa appear to be agitated in the film while Elsevier interprets it as ranting. In both cases emphasizing the idea that when going public one should do that in a moderate way withouth screaming. In the film the writer Fawaz calls upon people here to change things with their hand. If Muslims cannot change things, such as in a minority situation, they should express their disapproval. This is important because as a real social movement the Islaam.tv network and Al Yaqeen network do not only frame the particular grievances: in the caption belonging to this film on the site, again reference is made to publishing this cartoon as a provocation. They also direct the focus to those against whom claims for compensation should be made. And, very important in the process of politicization, they seek allies among Muslims and non-Muslims for example by publishing sympathy statements on Al-Yaqeen of Maurice Berger, professor of Islam in the West at University Leiden, lawyer Gerard Spong and spokseman of the national organization of employers Roelf van der Kooy. Furthermore they also provide people the ‘correct’ way for expressing their grievances; correct in their view about Islam (not necessarily shared by other Muslims) but also suitable for the Dutch political culture.
The second action has led to response (of course). This time shocklog Geenstijl.nl states its solidarity with De Pers and Elsevier and does publish the cartoon. One of the reasons for publishing it this time is that they also got criticized for being cowards a day earlier when they did not publish the cartoon. It seems that the Muhammad Cartoons have become icons for the freedom of speech. Usually icons are religious artifacts or more broadly objects that are more than just representations of a particular person; it represents the person itself and it becomes the person itself. It seems that the discussion is not about the content of the cartoons itself anymore but the cartoons represent the freedom of speech and have become the freedom of speech itself. The importance, value and meaning attached to the freedom of speech passed over to the cartoons during the affair in 2006 and now the meaning attached to those cartoons (and the idea that they are under siege by angry Muslims) transfers back to the freedom of speech. We can see God as a transcendent concept, it is not ‘really’ here in the sense that we can touch, see or smell. The same goes for the freedom of speech: a concept of secular societies with transcendent qualities. The cartoons make this elusive concept ‘real’, imaginable and concrete and therefore open to signification. The concept of freedom of speech has been sacralized and (as with blasphemy) accusing others of threatening the freedom of speech can therefore be seen as an attempt to preserve the status quo of society; in this case against the perceived islamization of society. The freedom of speech has become a disciplining frame and the repeated publishing of the cartoons after complaints against it by Muslims, can be seen as an attempt to teach those Muslims who is boss here. A conflict such as this reveals the moral underpinnings of dealing with religious feelings and of secularist and believers going public in a time of islamophobia and the rise of religious movements that do not without conditions surrender to the secular truce.
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[…] want to go into that because I think I have clarified my position already in a previous post (Cartoonesque 14), where you also can find more information about this whole event. I want to adress a few issues […]