See You in the (Deadly) Funny Papers

(First published in the Bali Advertiser, February 15, 2006)

“We are angry – very, very, very angry. No one can say a bad word about our prophet.” – Jamila Al Shanty, elected to represent Hamas in the Palestinian Parliament, referring to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, International Herald Tribune, Feb. 2, 2006

I’m not going to drag out that tired old argument -- I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it -- because, buddy, if you use your freedom of speech to willfully offend cultural taboos, you are on your own. Freedom of the press should be almost absolute, with government-set limits restricted to libel, slander, and incitement. But if you lack the wisdom to stop yourself from gratuitous provocation, don’t expect my sympathy or support when people are provoked. I’m not crazy about defenses unto death anyway.

I thought at first that the editors of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten just didn’t know depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are considered blasphemy by Muslims. They knew. Fleming Rose, the paper’s culture editor says his intent was to “see if cartoonists were self-censoring their work out of fear of violence from Islamic radicals,” according to a Feb. 5 article in the International Herald Tribune. Rose said he commissioned the cartoons after reading of a Danish comedian, “who said in an interview that he had no problem urinating on the Bible but that he would not dare do the same to the Koran.”

Aren’t comedians supposed to be funny? What’s funny about peeing on a holy book? Why should a newspaper’s culture editor care what a humorless Danish comic will or won’t pee on? And don’t try to tell me the mixing of bodily fluids and sacred objects is art. It smacks more of snickering at the back of the classroom because somebody said “doo-doo.”

In principle, yes, European papers have the legal right to publish caricatures of Muhammad, Moses, Christ, or any other iconic figure. To do so with full knowledge of their potential to offend – particularly in the present political environment -- is immature. These cartoons aren’t noble free speech. “We don’t go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence,” Simon Jenkins put it in a Feb. 5 editorial on the Times Online (www.timesonline.co.uk).

Whatever point the Danish paper wanted to make about Islam and censorship, the hijacking of Islam by a militant minority, or even about a violent, militant philosophy at the religion’s core, could be made without deliberate, overt offense. Intellectual, moderate Muslims frequently make such arguments on the editorial pages of other newspapers. By being deliberately offensive, the Danish paper has only stirred up a deadly fuss. The violent reaction and protests in the Muslim world don’t prove anything except that if you set out to make people angry, you can easily do so.

Yes, calls for the beheading of the editors of newspapers that have published the cartoon, or to cut off the hands of the cartoonists that drew them, are an overreaction. But don’t confuse the ill-judgment in publishing the caricatures with the ill-advised attempts to stir up violence in response. This tempest isn’t about a conflict between press freedoms and respect for cultural taboos. It’s about punching somebody in the nose and complaining about (or enjoying) the howl they make.

Up to the writing of this column, protest rallies in Indonesia have been relatively mild, with protesters numbering in the hundreds rather than thousands. Action was limited to the throwing of eggs and rocks and the burning of flags. “Let’s slaughter the Danish ambassador!” said one poster, according to a Feb. 3 account by the Agence France-Presse. Compared to embassies burning in Syria and Lebanon, protest rallies by tens of thousands of Palestinians and Afghans, and calls for the heads and hands of those responsible for the cartoons, that’s almost a reasoned response. Perhaps that’s to be expected in Islam’s largest working democracy, where at least the theory of press freedom is understood.

Hopefully, by the time this is in print, the furor will have passed with no more dead or injured. And maybe the editors of newspapers that published the cartoons will feel chastised by the many Western voices telling them they have abused their freedom – but don’t count on it. Some folks never outgrow the “Mine!” mentality of a two-year-old.

On the other hand, Muslims and their leaders need to examine the violent nature of their response. I understand the philosophy behind the ban on images of the Prophet. And I agree there is an abstract danger in creating images of human and animal forms lest the image or the artist’s skill takes precedence over living, breathing creatures. But violating an actual living form by chopping off body parts strikes me as a greater blasphemy than the creation of an image, no matter how unflattering it is to the original, no matter how close a pleasing image is to idolatry.

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi