C L O S E R – Cartoonesque Voices of Reason

Posted on February 9th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News, Public Islam.


“Muhammad (c. 570–632) The Prophet of Islam. He is depicted holding the Qur’an. The Qur’an provides the primary source of Islamic Law. Prophet Muhammad’s teachings explain and implement Qur’anic principles. The figure above is a well-intentioned attempt by the sculptor, Adolph Weinman, to honor Muhammad and it bears no resemblance to Muhammad. Muslims generally have a strong aversion to sculptured or pictured representations of their Prophet.” on the south wall of the Supreme Court of the US.

Well time for another small update. It makes no sense to give an overview on what’s happening on the WWW, but you might use Virtually Islamic for that. For example he refers to an interesting article in the Washington Post:
E-Mail, Blogs, Text Messages Propel Anger Over Images

Mohammad Fouad Barazi, a prominent Muslim cleric here, received a text message on his cell phone last week. It was a mass mailing from an anonymous sender, he said, warning that Danish people were planning to burn the Koran that Saturday in Copenhagen’s City Hall Square out of anger over Muslim demonstrations against Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Hundreds of people — Muslims and ethnic Danes — turned out in response to the messages and the rampant rumors they sparked, and by the end of Saturday, police had arrested 179 people. In the end, no Koran was burned.

The messages, which were received as far away as the Gaza Strip and recounted on al-Jazeera satellite television, illustrate how modern digital technology — especially cell phones and Internet blogs — helped turn an incident in tiny Denmark into a uniting cause for protesters around the world in days or even hours.

Look again at the picture in this entry and read the lines below. It’s taken from the information of the Surpreme Court and states that it bears no resemblance to the prophet. A little bit strange of course. Another blogger (sorry sorry i forgot the name and lost the link) made the same point about the cartoons. Why does everyone just accept that they depict the prophet Muhammad while no one knows how he looked? Or in the US case, how can you say that it’s not him, if you don’t know how he looks?

But really, it doesn’t matter of course. On Opinionated Voice it is stated that everyone makes their own use of this affair and that’s probably correct.

In the ongoing affair of the cartoons that offensively depict Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), we have the usual anti-Muslim suspects such as Michelle Malkin, Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs and Little Green Footballs using it as an excuse to continue their defamatory commentary of Islam. There’s even an online petition that argues for the publishing of the cartoons even after agreeing them to be unacceptable. I can only view this as Islamophobic support for Jyllands-Posten who happilly slandered Islam, but would not do the same to Christianity and Judaism, recently confirming it “in no circumstances will publish Holocaust cartoons from an Iranian newspaper”. I’m not surprised that many Danish Web sites have been hacked in protest. The trend in their reporting is that they only quote western blogs and articles that unfortunately mostly report on the bad guys. Sabbah refers to one such article which states; “We have some advice for the PR department of Islamic fundamentalism: Get yourself some bloggers”. Although Sabbah highlights the articles ignorance of the presence of the Muslim blogosphere, which in majority condemn the cartoons, but I still think there is more scope in these words.

The editor of that blog, Jamal, is looking for a Muslim Blogger Alliance:

I would like to see in the blogosphere, an alliance of bloggers that actively seek to combat negative views on Islam that are perpetuated by both Muslims and non-Muslims. An alliance of balanced bloggers like Indigo Jo, Safiyyah, Eman, Osama, Omar, Aqoul, Al-Hiwar, Angry Arab and Religious Policeman to name but a few of the varied voices I’ve encountered, to spread the truth that Muslims and Islam don’t call for hate and violence, and those that do so are only a small part of the Muslim world. The majority of us are not fanatics, Islamists, fundamentalists, or even the new term being bounded around, ‘moderates’. We are just Muslims, and people need to be educated on this. Muslims differ from generation to generation, culture to culture, some are more devout than others and interpretations and practices of the faith are numerous. It may also be the case that the individual is Muslim by name only and chooses not to practice their religion.

A ‘Muslim Blogger Alliance’ is particularly needed in the current climate, with issues including Hamas, the cartoons row and snakes like Condoleezza Rice using it as an excuse to further the invasion plan of Iran and Syria. Apparently another ploy to make Americans think Iran is the biggest threat to the US, when the reality is that G.W Bush is the real king of terror. The Arab contingent is but one factor, as it is also the expansion of global government, war on terror, disunity and Islamophobia that is perpetuating this global discontentment.

We could see that as a coalition of the people who try to stay calm. Luckily there are many such as Angry Arab:

Danish Matters. I mean, I may understand if somebody wants to boycott the Danish publciation that printed the cartoons. But why boycott Denmark? The Danish people are not responsible for whatever a Danish publication prints. I have been to Denmark and find the people there to be friendly and nice. And I like the pastries. The Danish people may have been only guilty of electing a right-wing government that sent troops to Iraq. But that issue does not seem to anger Muslim/Arab demonstrators who are busy being angry at the cartoons. Angry Arab is often angry at Western and Eastern anger. I often identify with neither. Where do I go? Do they have soy milk on space stations?

The Glittering Eye has even a round up of Voices of Reason

There’s been an enormous amount of aburdity written about the cartoons of Mohammed printed in a Danish newspaper and now re-printed in a number of European papers. But through all the din a few voices of reason have managed to come through, some from rather unexpected sources.

Clive Davis does the same.

Meanwhile the above statue of the Supreme Court has raised some eyebrows

KARAMAH was contacted by a number of Muslim organizations, which were concerned about reports of a sculptured representation of the Prophet Muhammad in the historical frieze on the north wall of the Supreme Courtroom. KARAMAH was also asked by these organizations to contact the Supreme Court administrators and discuss the matter.

While KARAMAH fully identifies with the Islamic aversion to such representation of the Prophet, we are very pleased that Islamic contributions to law are recognized in the highest court of our land. We see that attempt in a tolerant light similar to that in which earlier Muslims saw Turkish and Persian art. It is well intentioned. While it is not what we would have chosen to represent Islam, we do appreciate this early attempt at recognizing Islamic contributions to American jurisprudence and we do not believe it is necessary to destroy it. In reaching this position, we have consulted with many Muslim leaders and relied upon the reasoned opinion of Dr. Taha Jabir al-Alwani, President of the Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) Council of North America.

That of course makes a difference: the intention of displaying the prophet Muhammad. An article in the New York Times is also very insightful when you want a better picture of how the events and outrage crystallized:
At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized

As leaders of the world’s 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk in the hallways was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.

The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed “concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries” as well as over “using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions.”

The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance. But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — and the role its member governments played in the outrage — was something of a turning point.

After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.

In recent days, some governments in Muslim countries have tried to calm the rage, worried by the increasing level of violence and deaths in some cases.

But the pressure began building as early as October, when Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors and Arab ambassadors lobbied Arab governments.

“It was no big deal until the Islamic conference when the O.I.C. took a stance against it,” said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

Also Arab News(Thanks to Marbelous) has an interesting story:

Freedom of expression is indeed sacrosanct, and the illustrative effusions of a political cartoonist are as much a function of good journalism as those of his textual counterpart. But the first thing a budding journalist learns in Journalism 101 is that a news story, or a news image, is governed by its newsworthiness. Does it have news value, relevance to the objective world it is reporting or commenting on, or is it motivated by a mean-spirited intent to defame? Does it go beyond satire into the realm of racial stereotyping, contributing to the demonization of a community in the eyes of another, and the hardening of the cultural divide among groups of different ethnic, spiritual and racial backgrounds?

That’s why we have editors looking over our shoulders, not to censor our work but to make sure that freedom of expression is not abused, that it is not license to publish, in this case, tasteless and inflammatory cartoons depicting the Prophet of Islam in a pejorative manner.

And in January 1999, David Howard, a top aide to the mayor of Washington was made to resign (read, fired) because he had haplessly said that he would use his budget “in a niggardly manner.” Niggardly, of course, is a perfectly legitimate word, with etymological roots in old Swedish, that simply means to be parsimonious or frugal. Unfortunately for the mayoral aide, who is white, “niggardly” sounded too much like the racial slur associated with the N-word, and thus his fate was sealed. The resulting debate, which became national after the story broke, finding its way to the Op-Ed pages and the talk shows, went beyond the incident and touched on the issue of political correctness.

Was that an improbable case where racial sensitivities were taken to an extreme? Yes, but it shows you how one should not mess with the self-definitions of a minority.

And so on with these tales. But brandishing guns and burning down embassies, assaulting EU buildings and sending bomb threats? I don’t think so.

Sponsoring a cartoon contest to make fun of Muslims! Oh, grow up, will you? Get a grip.

And guys, guys, you out there behind the arson and the guns and the bomb threats, get a grip.

Stop buying Danish products, if you must. Register your peaceful protest at a forum, in an Op-Ed, at a rally, if you’re so inclined. Whatever. And yes, by all means, cancel your subscription to Jyllands-Posten.

No bullies needed here — just a calm dialogue, not a rancorous clash, between our two cultures.

I’m thinking of doing an overview of Dutch sites and other media (in Dutch), so everyone is warned.

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