Cartoon protests - yes, still spamming.

[icarus]

In a new turn, a prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition, saying it wanted to see if freedom of expression — the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings — also applied to Holocaust images.

Good point. Suddenly the Islamic cartoon protests make sense to me (if not the violence).

Comments

[mad_maudlin]

Here's how I see the cartoon protests: the original newspaper unwittingly crossed a line by publishing the cartoons. Muslims crossed a line by making their protests violent. So now crazy Europeans are saying "Nyah nyah, we can say whatever we want!" while crazy Muslims are say "OMG you can't ever say anything bad about our religion ever!!!"

In other words, both sides are being dominated by idiots. Which is nothing at all new. ::sigh::

[cheshyre]

Get a load of this story: http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/02/cycle-of-disrespect.html

In brief:

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

The illustrator told the Norwegian daily Dagbladet, which saw the email: "I see the cartoons as an innocent joke, of the type that my Christian grandfather would enjoy."

"I showed them to a few pastors and they thought they were funny."

He said that he felt Jyllands-Posten rated the feelings of its Christian readers higher than that of its Muslim readers.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Uhn-huh. They have a point. "Freedom of expression" is generally tempered with tolerance. Of course, isn't Holland the place where the Islamic extremists killed that prominent director for producing a film about spousal abuse in Islamic marriages? I'm seeing a cause and effect, domino effect relationship here.

Icarus

[cheshyre]

My husband recently pointed out that this is like a flame war writ large.

Remember the comics were first published several months ago. Think of the paper as a troller, but who doesn't get many bites.

Then, the troller's friends (other European newspapers) started spreading the cartoons around trying to get a reaction.

Nothing happens until a pro-Islamic troll takes the bait, and then he and his buddies start egging each other on (to the point of making further fake cartoons to try to sway the masses in the middle).

If it were just words, this would be fodder for LJDrama or wank. But you're right. Both sides are being dominated by idiots.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

And now it's spiraling out of control.

Is this why Miss Manners is a bastion of civilization?

Icarus

[ursula]

There have been Islamic cultures where all representative art was frowned upon, on the grounds that it was an attempt to imitate God's creation. There is still a general sense that making any image of the Prophet, complimentary or not, is somewhere between arrogant and sacrilegious. A recent religious animated film about his life didn't show the Prophet at all (instead it showed events from his point of view), and even that made some people nervous.

Combine that with a general sense that American values are a front for American imperialism, and, uh, yeah.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Fandom_Wank as a microcosm of the human condition, eh?

Icarus

[cheshyre]

I'll confess, I haven't been following all the details, but folks around me said Wikipedia's coverage is (currently) managing to remain pretty balanced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I hadn't thought of it that way, but it starts to explain the intensity of reaction.

Icarus

[ahina-gold.livejournal.com]

Theo van Gogh was the murdered director. I actually have the video. It isn't particularly offensive...if you're not a Muslim. Verses from the Koran written on partially clothed women could be seen as crossing quite a few lines.

Not that most people would argue that was justification for murder, but sadly all it took was one young crazy.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw clips of it on 60 Minutes. So Holland isn't feeling as tolerant as they have in the past.

Icarus

[ursula]

In Europe I think this picks up on the same anger about the status of immigrants that fueled the riots in France a few months ago . . .

[orca-girl.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, though -- at this point, it's difficult to separate the protest over the cartoons from the violence of that protest.

Or, from the other point of view -- this "turnabout" attempt to get the point across really only works if the reaction throughout the West to grievously offensive Holocaust cartoons in an Iranian paper is on the same level. But, it's not going to be. Which is part of the point being missed. A not-insignificant portion of the problem *now* isn't that Westerners can't get that Muslims were offended, or even hurt; it's that they can't comprehend the scale and quality of the reaction.

Another dimension to it being missed by the Iranian paper is that segments of the West have been entirely aware of the corrosive, vicious portrayal of Jews and Israel and Westerners endemic to media throughout the Muslim world, prior to this. Blasphemy and sacrilege in cartoons aimed at the West, though presented to a Muslim audience? Already there. We may look at them and feel anger. We may look at this latest set, and feel disgust. But that's a pretty far cry from calling for the murder of the cartoonists. Or from storming hotels to find any random person of the right nationality on whom to commit violence. The gulf isn't just the lack of understanding of what gives offense. It's the difference in feeling at the gut level of what constitutes an acceptable level of reaction.

The hypocrisy of the Dutch paper in a past decision not to run cartoons about Christ also clouds the issue. Because the issue has moved beyond will/won't, would/wouldn't, and is about can/can't. Especially, can/can't when under death threats.

And further problems: Iranians failing to understand the fine point between expressing opinion, and denying fact. Iranians would vehemently oppose any attempt by any Western agency to say what "can" be said in Iranian papers, be it Holocaust denials or denigrating cartoons. The West makes no comment at all on the latter (prior to the present iteration), and on the former, the rhetoric is not about censorship, but about rebuttal. Not "you cannot say that" (in any attempt to make that literally true, that is), but "you should not, not least because you are factually deluded if you try to deny an event for which there are still living victims and living eyewitnesses and piles of documentary evidence".

Recommended interesting reading: today at Salon.com (I always use the free day pass to read), the Somalian woman who is the author of the film for which van Gogh was killed. (A death-threat to her was pinned to his chest with a knife.) She is a member of the Dutch parliament, and an ex-Muslim. The interview doesn't go into the depth I would have liked to see, because her voice is a voice sorely missing from the usual media coverage we hear. There is, of course, nobody bitter about a religion like an ex member of that religion.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have to go home and have WG kick me off the computer (at my request because of the level of homework I have for tomorrow) but I'm thinking.

Icarus

[orca-girl.livejournal.com]

I think the greater problem, though, is that the young crazy had the rock-solid, overt support of a segment of his culture/religion. The young crazy doesn't have enough role models within his religion telling him that that response is wrong; he has too many that are too loud telling him that it's right. Most people in the West would argue that writing a novel critical of a religion isn't justification for murder, either, but tell that to Salman Rushdie.

Someone in the West publishes a toweringly offensive cartoon, and you know, at most there's stiff words, maybe a monetary fine, maybe losing a job, social ostracization. Yet there are not insignificant number of voices out there right now calling for the beheading of these cartoonists, and they're perfectly sincere in thinking that is a legitimate response, and they aren't just a few young crazies (they're... a lot of young crazies, mobs of them, being incited by older crazies). That's the basic disconnect going on here. That's the ground lying between the two sides, right now, I think. And I start to fear that it's not possible for either side to walk across that ground to reach the other.

(Though, are there moderate Muslims who *can* cross that ground? Yes. I certainly believe they outnumber the extremists making the most violent arguments, too. But they are not finding ways to make themselves heard, or success solving the problem from within.)

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

All I know is that, when I was reading the news today at work, I couldn't help but picture Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I really hope I'm just being reactionary, but the political structure around Islam--which is in a very delicate transitionary period right now, moving from One Islam (or Two Islamin, Sunni and Shiite) to many different forms--is so volatile that I'm worried that the whole mess is going to blow up before anyone can stop it. The cartoons and the reaction to them is only indicative of greater unrest lurking beneath.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

*nodnod*

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Here's a comparison to the European/Middle East difference in mindsets that might make it easier for US readers to comprehend:

http://www.alternet.org/story/31884/

[rydra_wong]

From what I've read, I think a lot of moderate Muslims feel they're being "squeezed out" between the fundamentalist crazies on the one hand and the many Westerners who seem to seize on it as a justification for Islamophobia on the other hand.

There was a thoughful piece by Tabish Khair, a Danish Muslim academic, at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1703944,00.html

[stellahobbit.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually seen the comic strip (I'm not even sure if our papers are reprinting them) but I assumed that the problem with them is that, under Islamic law, you can't draw or show Mohammed. Wasn't there a movie of his life that had the actor playing him completely out of shot for every frame? I didn't know that the strip was mocking him!

[caseylane.livejournal.com]

I kind of disagree. The Holocaust was about Nazi's and innocent victums, not religious leaders. Now if they wanted to make funny with cartoons of Jesus, Buddah, Joseph Smith and whatnot then I would say have at it.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think they're not comparing the two subjects and equating them. They're saying that people take offense to jokes about the holocaust and so newspapers normally temper their freedom of speech with some consideration. That lack of consideration where Islam is concerned shows a generalized and popular prejudice.

This has fed into, apparently, a persecution complex that "the west is against Islam -- look!" Wherever Muslims are already angry the cartoons seem to be a proof that the west as a whole is united against them, that it's not just the United States seizing Iraq. It seems the cartoons are looked on as tacit approval of the Iraq war and Isreal. That's how I read these riots.

Since in the Qaran the world is divided between (was it Dar Islam and Ar Islam?) the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world, where it was safe to practice Islam and where it was not (perfectly reasonable in Mohammad's time as a persecuted religion where they had to abandon his homeland to practice Islam) the cartoons seem to say "our supposed freedom of speech and freedom of religion doesn't apply to Islam and therefore we are the non-Islamic -- anti-Muslim -- world." Suddenly the political actions of the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq have a much more credible religious flavor.

It looks like the fact that the U.N. refusal to participate in the war helped keep the "enemy" the U.S., and Iraq framed as a political war for a lot of people. Since Islam (if I recall correctly) defines different types of wars, I'm guessing they couldn't call it a religious war, jihad. By saying all the west is against Islam and attacking (a pretty weak case frankly), it seems certain people are trying to upgrade so they can call for more popular support in Muslim countries against the U.S. and Isreal.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

There have been other western depictions of Mohammad that haven't incensed the arabs. The cartoon was described as Mohammad having a bomb in his turban, on his head? Anyhow, I got the sense it was depicting all of Islam as terrorists.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's an excellent observation. I hadn't thought about the changes to a multiplicity of "Islams." I guess there have been other types of Islams historically for a long time (I'm thinking of the Indian Sufis here) but nothing like what's happening now. Plus, with

globalization all the different types aren't distant any more.

is so volatile that I'm worried that the whole mess is going to blow up before anyone can stop it.

I was seeing the whole mess as a rather cynical attempt to upgrade the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from lesser political to more important holy wars that would obligate other Muslim countries to help. I rambled on about it here (http://icarusancalion.livejournal.com/458396.html?thread=5646492#t5646492). I suspect the U.N. refusal to participate in the Iraq war has prevented that classification.

Icarus

[cheshyre]

If you're still interested, Ian finally wrote up his version of current-events @ http://xiphias.livejournal.com/301591.html

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Iranians failing to understand the fine point between expressing opinion, and denying fact.

Exactly. And BTW, Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine which republished the Danish cartoons this morning have said they will run the Holocaust Iranian cartoons when they come out. Their reasoning is that people should see to what obscene lengths the Iranians can go - and draw conclusions. Which I find eminently mature. There have been hateful Nazi-like (sometimes literally copied from old Nazi publications) cartoons in the Middle Eastern press for years. Time to publicize that little-known fact.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm all for it. At a certain point when people get into a contest in being offensive they start making the whole issue ridiculous.

That's always a good point to reach.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I haven't a chance to read it yet, but it sounds interesting.

Icarus