C L O S E R

Cartoonesque 15 – Muhammad Cartoons and Public Anthropology

Posted on March 27th, 2010 by martijn.
Categories: anthropology, Blogosphere, ISIM/RU Research, Public Islam.

By Carel Brendel

Also on the side of Fawaz (a salafi imam, MdK) is religion researcher Martijn de Koning, anthropologist at Radboud University. Minister Hirsch Ballin trusted Radboud University to do research on sharia courts in the Netherlands. I hope Martijn de Koning is not conducting this research because one might as well let Willem Holleeder (a well known convicted leader of organized crime, MdK) do research about organized crime.

Note: all translations of Dutch quotes are mine.
As an anthropologist on Muslim youth, Salafism, public Islam, radicalization and multicultural issues I think it is important to take up a role in public as well. As I have explained earlier:C L O S E R » Blog Archive » Public Anthropology – 10 Years from Researchpages to Closer (1999/2000 – 2009/2010)

public science and addressing public issues is not just giving answers to questions the public has. It is as much, or even more, about questioning why particular issues are addressed in the way they are addressed by particular people and what the consequences of that are. How are particular issues and the way they are debated related to (changing) historical and cultural contexts, what is taken-for-granted and what does it mean?

Now as my regular readers now, last week in the Netherlands we had a mini-cartoon crisis after the publication of one of the Muhammad cartoons by a Dutch newspaper in a story about an alleged terrorist plot against Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. A group of Muslims protested against it and the newspaper withdrew the cartoon because they no longer deemed it relevant to publish it. Other newspapers, websites and magazines reported this withdrawal and with it published the same cartoon. This was followed by another action by the same Muslim group. One of their actions was a second video in which Salafi imam Fawaz appeared with several others, including myself.

This yielded a lot of criticism even more so because the comment above was copied by Dutch shocklog (yes that is me in the picture! like the blouse too?) in order to disqualify me:
GeenStijl : ZondagMiddagEssay: Carel Brendel over de CartoonRel

dr Martijn de Koning, the Albert Verlinde (A Dutch gossip king, MdK) van Islam.TV

.
It seems that my appearance on that video makes a me a ‘dhimmi‘ similar the newspaper AD for removing the cartoon after complaints:
The Dhimmi News From the Netherlands

This video would almost be as hilarious as a Monty Python sketch, if it were not deadly serious. No one in the video rejects the death threats against Lars Vilks, nor, most importantly, do they reject the Muslim plot to murder him.
[…]
Daily Standard comments in their article “Cowardly internet editors ofAlgemeen Dagblad remove Muhammad-cartoon after complaints by hate-imam”: “Above all, by removing the cartoon the Algemeen Dagblad reveals itself to be the Dutch version of the Danish Politiken. With the only difference being that the AD yielded to only a few angry e-mails, whereas Politiken at least was waited for some Muslim violence.”

From the same site (and also at Gates of Vienna), this is a transcript of my contribution:
The Dhimmi News From the Netherlands

01:16.00 I think the way this business is going now is a typical example of…
01:20.00 how the debate on Islam now taking shape in the Netherlands, especially also…
01:24.00 with these cartoons.
01:28.00 The AD [Algemeen Dagblad] has posted it. You may indeed wonder why…
01:32.00 and whether in any case they considered at all why they had…
01:36.00 to post that cartoon. Islam.tv and others have responded to it…
01:40.00 and partly as a result, AD removed this cartoon…
01:45.00 and now the AD gets the blame for having removed the cartoon.
01:50.00 In this way freedom of speech is placed against freedom…
01:54.00 of religion, in which the posting of this cartoon…
01:58.00 in fact only has one purpose, namely to teach the other, …
02:02.00 in this case the Muslim, a lesson about who in this country…
02:06.00 is the boss. Nah, you might wonder whether that…
02:10.00 is the meaning of freedom of speech or freedom of eh… religion.

Now according to some this is no less then a plea to limit the freedom of speech (and therefore to make that freedom void) or even more so a plea for preventive censorship. I don’t 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 here that I think are relevant for debates about public anthropology.

1. First of all, it is (and should) be clear that the video of Islaam.tv was part of their campaign against these cartoons. So why did I appear in that? Well to begin with a reject the notion of ‘guilt by association’  and if I was asked for example by Elsevier to comment upon them publishing the cartoon I would have said the same. A possible appearance in that magazine does not imply that I’m in favour of publishing the cartoon (as they did), nor does my appearance in the Islaam.tv imply the opposite (and to be fair other bloggers such as Ewoud Butter and Prediker at webmagazine FrontaalNaakt recognized that and criticized me being compared to a criminal). In my opinion anyway. Of course, as said, the video was part of the campaign, and the makers of the video were very upfront about that. So I knew what I was going into. Those who have read Cartoonesque 14 carefully know that I reject the way the publication is framed by the imam (and more implicitly also stated that in the film). In the video I tried to reflect upon the issue by asking myself what does this whole chain of events say about the current Islam debate in the Netherlands. Islaam.tv gave me the opportunity to do this without any restriction or directions from their side. It should be noted that several commenters at the shocklog and also on other websites fully acknowledged that (with or without fully endorsing my view).
2. There is another good reason for me as an anthropologist to take requests such as those of Islaam.tv into consideration and to respond positively to it. The group of which Islaam.tv is part of, Muslims claiming to be part of the Salafi manhaj, is the group of my current research. The central question in this research is why do Muslims turn to Salafi sources of knowledge and take part in Salafi ‘knowledge practices’ to acquire their sense of what Islam ‘really’ is? This means I visit the mosques and other meetingplaces where lectures, courses and other types of meetings are held, I conduct formal and informal interviews with participants on a regular base and I publish in scientific magazins and editted volumes. Share my views on particular issues with them and for them is, as I see it, part as my obligation as an anthropologist. When I would by definition say no to such requests it would mean that I would not do my work properly; sharing anthropological knowledge with outsiders of the scientific community is necessary and important and people among whom I do research or about who I write are always among the first of that responsibility. So yes, next time I would seriously consider doing it again because I see it as an important part of public accountability and reciprocity.
3. What does this event tell us about the Islam debate. Most of it of course I have already explained in the video and in my previous Cartoonesque post. But also the debate about my appearance tell us something I think. The most obvious of course is the escalation of us vs. them. The representation of Islam is public seems to divide that same public in two: us (the freedom loving Dutch) vs. them (the angry easy to irritate Muslim who cares more for his God and prophet than freedom).GreenLeft know-it-all ‘Tofu’ Dibi limits freedom « indedelta.nl:
   

   Then (based upon my comments in the video, see transcript, MdK) you show that you do not get it, De Koning! Itis not about making an opposition between issues; it is about correcting the one-sided nonsens of radical Islam with reasonable arguments. It is about the fact that there are people in this country who feel that this irrational religious stuff and in particular the intolerant Islam, is ridiculous and want to share that! With the matching illustrations! In ALL freedom!

   If it is not freedom of speech vs freedom of religion than it certainly shows idea of a (radical) Islam (intolerant) or religion (irrational) vs. freedom of speech (reason, tolerance, not one-sided) whereby the latter is learning the former to become reasonable. The title of the piece (‘Tofik Dibi limits freedom) refers to a Moroccan-Dutch MP who cautioned the publishing of these cartoons and called for restrained; interpreted by the person who wrote the comment, as well as did others, as an attack on the freedom of speech or (based upon the title of the piece of the first comment of this post) ‘throwing away the DNA of the Netherlands‘ to imam Fawaz. The critique on Tofik Dibi is important because he presents himself, and is seen as such by many, as a liberal. Earlier he stated that he (re-)discovered the DNA of the Netherlands: freedom of speech, right of self-determination, non-discrimination, equality of men and women and the separation of church and state). According to his critics, he is exposed here as a tool of intolerant Islam and a supporter of radical Islam and radical Muslim community. The freedom of speech is sacred and every restriction is seen as an attack with the Muhammad Cartoons as ‘icons of freedom speech’: they symbolize as I have explained the freedom of speech. Removing them after complaints of religious Muslims is therefore an attack on the freedom of speech, making the freedom of speech even more sacred because it is under attack. Hence the headline at the shocklog about ‘solidarity’ with the newspaper and magazine who received complaints by Muslims. Freedom of speech is absolute, hence the claims of people having the right to insult. Having a closer look reveals however that the situation is more complex. Also people who hold the freedom of speech as very important for Dutch society, do sometimes agree with my viewpoints and I have received emails from Muslims who, although agreeing for a large part with my viewpoints, think it is necessary to publish these cartoons as much as possible until radical Muslims keep silent about it and also at Islaam.tv one can read several comments by non-Muslims who support their action. And again, and I cannot say it often enough, the depiction of the Netherlands as a country trapped in that us vs. them dichotomy does not do justice to the social realities out here.

4. And to close this post: what does this tell us about public anthropology? The debate about public anthropology could have been given a boost by a recent publication in American Anthropologist that featured three blogs: Savage Minds, Zero Anthropology and AAA Blogs. Unfortunately it wasn’t anything more than a crash course about blogs for the digitally challenged. Certainly the first two deserved the attention: the are the best anthropological blogs have to offer in my opinion. In fact the comments on Savage Minds‘ following the publication are more insightful about public anthropology than the article in the journal. (For a strong but fair critique read Finds and Features and Ancient World Bloggers Group.With two colleagues of mine (E.B. and D.K) I’m preparing an article for a special issue of Fieldwork in Religion about well…fieldwork and religion. The article we are writing is about the politicization of the field. What are the consequences for researchers when their research field politicizes while the research takes place. One of the themes in this article is the issue of neutrality. People want neutral researchers and for some critics simply appearing in such video is compromising my neutrality. Interestingly, for others (and not only Muslims) it increases my neutrality because I know all sides of the conflict from within: as a native citizen and as a person who frequently mingles among so-called radical Muslims. For those who see the freedom of speech as sacred and absolute, my appearance is enough to question my neutrality not only in this research but also in the sharia research of which they think I’m the researcher as well (which is not the case by the way). It appears that saying that neutrality does not exist is enough; as we conclude (as some other researchers did as well) neutrality itself appears to be subject of interpretation. This situation becomes more complicated because of how people understand anthropological research. One of the things I did for example was announce on my Twitter account that I was going to a mosque. Indeed I went to the mosque that day to attend a lecture. The notice itself was seen as a sign of islamization and me going to the mosque as a lack of distance. The very fact of trying to inmerse oneself, to observe and, as far as (ethically) possible to participate, invalidates my research according to those people. In his classic study Time and the Other: How anthropology makes its object (1983) Fabian writes:
   

   “[Anthropology] patrols, so to speak, the frontiers of western culture. In fact it has always been a Grenzwissenschaft, concerned with boundaries: those of one race against another, those between one culture and another, and finally those between culture and nature. Those liminal concerns have prevented anthropology from settling down in any one accepted domain of knowledge other than the residual field of ‘social science'”

   I think, or like to believe anyway, that this is exactly what I’m doing and this is also exactly what is unsettling about anthropological research. I try to move back and forth in a world that is for some people dominated by us vs. them and therefore as a native man I transgress the boundaries of ‘us’. The fact that in the video I did not defend ‘freedom of speech’ against acts of ‘radical’ imams (although the team of Islaam.tv knows my views about it) or at least was not clear about own position probably contributed to that feeling of uneasiness, the fear that I secretly belong to ‘the other side’ or even the conviction that I am (which according to some makes me a ‘traitor’). For example in another post I questioned a British research about the Muslim Arbitrage Tribunals in the UK. I stated that regulating Islamic arbitration might be a good idea in order to monitor such practices and prevent problems but that religious arbitration (even when regulated) also has several problems attached to it. This comment contributed to the idea that I was in favour of sharia courts in the Netherlands, full stop. Hence, the comment quoted in the beginning of this post. What is a position of distance to me, for them is an attack and for those who objected to the cartoons it was a sign of neutral comments or maybe even friendly towards Muslims. This does not make public anthropology any easier but it does make it more necessary and relevant as Jovan Maud also stated at Culture Matters. And indeed, it will not give anthropologists a high ranking in popularity contests.

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