C L O S E R – Cartoonesque Politics

One important thing of every affair of course is the battle for definitions. Different views of what is at stake here.

Arabist.net for example refers to an article of Olivier Roy in Le Monde:

The conflict over the Danish cartoons is often presented as the manifestation of a clash of civilizations between a liberal West and an Islam against freedom of expression. Believing in this thesis requires a lot of ignorance and even more hypocrisy. Freedom of expression in Western countries is already limited by two things: the law and social consensus. Anti-semitism is legally banned, but attacks on other communities too: in 2005, the French Catholic Church managed to have an ad featuring scantily clad women as the apostles withdrawn. This is exactly the same action that Muslim organizations are trying to carry out today. What newspapers published the banned ad back then in the name of freedom of expression?

And adds to that:

His basic point: religious conservatives are not only concerned about blasphemy, but a whole range of issues such as bioethics, gay marriage or abortion — human freedoms that they want to limit in the name of moral values. This is the biggest debate of our times. It does not oppose West and Islam, but exists inside the West itself. He says that the current storm draws strength in the West partly from hostility to Islam, which is really a hostility to immigration. In the Middle East, the violence that took place was largely organized by regimes that do not care about religion (he mentions Syria and the 1982 Hama massacre of thousands of Islamists.) But Arab governments want to use the large diasporas living in Europe in their diplomatic tactics. Here Europe is paying the price of greater diplomatic activism, a shift away from the non-interventionist “old Europe” that existed before the Iraq war to a Europe that is leading the charge against Iran and Syria. But this change in foreign policy is not publicly debated.

In the Netherlands yesterday there was demonstration in Amsterdam. A small one (100-200 people) that went well (although it was illegal) until afterwards a small group turned against the police and wanted to start rioting

The main Dutch Muslim organizations where against the demonstration, fearing that it would not be an effective manner to adress the issue.
Meanwhile the Danish muslims are divided over the cartoon affair.

Rabih Azad-Ahmad, chair of the Multicultural Association, said the row had become too confrontational.

“Now, we have to demonstrate that we are proud of being Danish and that we are supporting Danish values,” he said.

In an unexpected turn, the reaction to the attacks on Danish embassies could help promote integration in Denmark.

“I didn’t know there were so many Muslims in Denmark who are supporting Western values,” said Soren Espersen, an MP for the populist Danish People’s Party.

Politicians and the media have a tendency to see Muslims only as criminal, anti-social elements and as potential rapists
Open letter by Danish writers

His comments mark a turnaround for the party, which has grown to be the country’s third largest on a political platform of nationalism and xenophobia.

However, some of the strongest protests against the cartoons have come from imams who are part of the government’s integration think tank.

“We want the newspaper to promise that this will never happen again, or this will never stop,” said imam Ahmad Akkari of the Islamic Faith Society.

Ahmad Akkari says a similar incident must never happen again

For the Danish integration minister, Rikke Hvilshoj, that stance is a wake-up call.

“It is very clear that we cannot trust the imams any longer if we want integration to succeed in Denmark,” Mrs Hvilshoj says.

Another way to gain a little more indepth insight into the matter is to compare with other groups
Mohammad cartoon protests aren’t unique to Islam

The violence linked to cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad is not unique to Islam, experts say, and the protests reflect political and cultural passions more than the faith’s core values.

Looking for distinct features that would make Islam liable for the cartoon-related violence around the world does little to explain it, said the Rev. Patrick Gaffney, an anthropologist and expert on Islam at the University of Notre Dame.

“There are parallel behaviors in every tradition,” he said. “Buddhism has a violent strain despite its pacifism … You think about Hinduism and nonviolence but (Mohandas) Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu.”

Other examples of religious violence involving various faiths abound in recent and past history. But attention has focused on Muslims this year as at least 11 people have been killed in protests in the Middle East, Asia and Africa after the publication of cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammad in newspapers in Denmark and elsewhere.

“You can’t say Islam has a gene for violence,” Gaffney said. “It has to do with the dynamics, political and economic, that are at play right now,” especially in Europe where there has been a long history of anti-Islamic prejudice that represents “an underlying kind of powder keg.”

“It is often said in the media that Islam prohibits images of the Prophet,” Seesemann said. “This is not correct. Muslims themselves have portrayed the Prophet.

“The problem here is not the image but the way it has been published — as a terrorist with a turban shaped like a bomb. This is what Muslims direct their outrage against.”

Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, said in a commentary on his Web site that the current controversy “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 helpmates among the missionaries were not shy about letting local people know exactly how barbaric they thought the Muslim faith was,” he wrote.