Offensive Cartoon

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   The Right to Be Offended
http://www.masnet.org/articleinterest.asp?id=3191
Gary Younge
The Nation
February 8, 2006

In April 2003 Danish illustrator Christoffer 
Zieler submitted a series of 
unsolicited cartoons offering a lighthearted take 
on the resurrection of 
Christ to the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. 
Zieler received an e-mail 
from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, 
saying: "I don't think 
Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the 
drawings. As a matter of fact, I 
think they will provoke an outcry. Therefore I 
will not use them." Two years 
later the same paper published twelve cartoons of 
Muhammad, including one 
with him wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with 
a burning fuse. 
Predictably enough, it created an outcry. How we 
got from there to talk of 
"the Muslim threat" to the immutable European 
traditions of secularism and 
freedom of speech, while Scandinavian embassies 
burn in the Arab world, is 
illuminating.

Four months after the cartoons were published, 
Jyllands-Posten's editor 
apologized. In the intervening time Muslims 
engaged in mostly peaceful 
protests. Several Arab and Muslim nations 
withdrew their ambassadors from 
Denmark while demonstrators picketed embassies. 
According to Denmark's 
consul in Dubai, a boycott of Danish products in 
the Gulf would cost the 
country $27 million in sales.

All of this went largely unnoticed in the West, 
apart from critics who 
characterized the protests as evidence of a 
"clash of civilizations." In 
their attempt to limit free speech, went the 
argument, the demonstrators 
proved that Islam and Western democracy were 
incompatible.

Even on its own terms this logic is disingenuous. 
The right to offend must 
come with at least one consequent right and one 
subsequent responsibility. 
People must have the right to be offended, and 
those bold enough to 
knowingly cause offense should be bold enough to 
weather the consequences, 
so long as the aggrieved respond within the law. 
Muslims were in effect 
being vilified twice--once through the original 
cartoons and then again for 
having the gall to protest them. Such logic 
recalls the words of the late 
South African black nationalist Steve Biko: "Not 
only are whites kicking us; 
they are telling us how to react to being 
kicked."

Nonetheless, the "clash of civilizations" 
rhetoric framed the discussion for 
the almost inevitable violence to come. For as 
criticism mounted, other 
European newspapers decided to reprint the 
cartoons in solidarity with 
Jyllands-Posten. This was clearly inflammatory. 
Now the flames have reached 
all the way to the Middle East, where Danish and 
Norwegian embassies have 
been burned down. And the violence has been 
characterized as evidence that 
Muslims are plain uncivilized.

There seems to be almost universal agreement that 
these cartoons are 
offensive. There should also be universal 
agreement that the paper has a 
right to publish them without fear of violent 
reprisal. When it comes to 
freedom of speech, the liberal/left should not 
sacrifice its values one inch 
to those who seek censorship on religious 
grounds. But the right to freedom 
of speech equates to neither an obligation to 
offend nor a duty to be 
insensitive. If our commitment to free speech is 
important, our belief in 
antiracism should be no less so. Neither the 
cartoons nor the violence has 
emerged from a vacuum. They are steeped in and 
have contributed to an 
increasingly recriminatory atmosphere shaped by, 
among other things, war, 
intolerance and historic injustices. According to 
the Danish Institute for 
Human Rights, racially motivated crimes doubled 
in Denmark between 2004 and 
'05. These cartoons only served to compound 
Muslims' sense of alienation and 
vulnerability. The Jerusalem Post has now 
published the cartoons. Iranian 
newspaper Hamshari is calling for illustrators to 
ridicule the Holocaust. 
The race to the gutter is on.

The acts of violence, including death threats to 
Jyllands-Posten's editor, 
should be condemned. The fact remains, however, 
that the overwhelming swath 
of protests, particularly in Europe, where crass 
banners and suicide-bomber 
attire were the worst offenses, have so far been 
peaceful. But those who see 
this episode as freighted with weightier cultural 
meanings have another 
agenda. "This is a far bigger story than just the 
question of twelve 
cartoons in a small Danish newspaper," Flemming 
Rose, Jyllands-Posten's 
culture editor, told the New York Times. Too 
right, but it is not the story 
Rose thinks it is. Rose claims that "this is 
about the question of 
integration and how compatible is the religion of 
Islam with a modern 
secular society." In the mistaken belief that 
Europe is a monoethnic 
continent to which nonwhite people have just 
arrived, Rose is not alone in 
refracting every protest by a minority through a 
racial, ethnic or religious 
lens.

In so doing he displays his ignorance of both 
modern secular society and the 
role of all religions within it. Without anything 
as explicit as a First 
Amendment, Europe's freedom of speech laws are 
far more piecemeal than those 
of the United States. Many were adopted as a 
result of the Holocaust--the 
most potent reminder of just how fragile and 
recent this liberal secular 
tradition truly is in Europe. Last year the 
French daily Le Monde was found 
guilty of "racist defamation" against Israel and 
the Jewish people. 
Madonna's book Sex was only unbanned in Ireland 
in 2004. Even as this debate 
rages, David Irving sits in jail in Austria 
charged with Holocaust denial 
over a speech he made seventeen years ago, 
Islamist cleric Abu Hamza has 
been convicted in London for incitement to murder 
and racial hatred and 
Louis Farrakhan remains banned from Britain 
because his arrival "would not 
be conducive to the public good." Even here in 
America school boards 
routinely ban the works of authors like Alice 
Walker and J.K. Rowling. Such 
actions should be opposed; but no one claims 
Protestant, Catholic or Jewish 
values are incompatible with democracy.

Which brings us back to Zieler. We will never 
know what the response to his 
Christ cartoons would have been because they were 
never published. (The 
paper's announced plan to reprint some cartoons 
about Christ fails to 
mitigate its double standard.) That fact alone 
shows that the question has 
never been whether you draw a line under what is 
or isn't acceptable to 
publish, but where you draw it. There is nothing 
courageous about using your 
freedom of speech to ridicule the beliefs of one 
of the weakest sections of 
your society. But Rose and others like him 
clearly believe Muslims, by 
virtue of their religion, exist on the wrong side 
of the line. That 
exclusion finds its reflection in the Islamist 
rejection of all things 
Western. And so the secularists and antiracists 
in both the West and the 
Middle East find their space for maneuver 
limited, while dogma masquerades 
as principle, and Islamists and Islamophobes are 
confirmed in their own vile 
prejudices.

To view more articles, news and campaigns on the 
"cartoon" controversy, 
please visit the Muslim American Society's 
website at 
http://www.masnet.org/.