http://www.smh.com.au/world/extremists-on-all-sides-exploit-taboos-20110905-1ju96.html Extremists on all sides exploit taboos September 6, 2011 Political sketch ... free speech protests in Sweden. Photo: Reuters
The fallout from the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad has led many to fear for freedom of speech, writes Karen Kissane. In Sweden, cartoonist Lars Vilks received death threats from al-Qaeda after he drew an image of the prophet Muhammad in 2007. His home now has a barbed wire sculpture that could electrocute an intruder and an axe he has said would allow him to ''chop down'' anyone breaking in. His paranoia appears to be justified. In March, seven people in Ireland were charged with plotting to kill him. Six years after the Danish publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad led to riots, firebombs and up to 200 deaths around the world, there is no resolution to the standoff between those defending free speech and extremists defending a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Swedish artist Lars Vilks. Photo: Reuters The September 11, 2001, attacks lit up a previously dormant cultural divide between European-style open discourse and the sensitivities of the continent's growing Muslim communities. The divide has since been exaggerated and exploited by both hardline Islamists and Europe's extreme right. Some fear the result has been a rolling-back of freedom of speech. Professor Jytte Klausen, a Dane, is professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, an expert on Muslim communities in Europe and author of the book The Cartoons That Shook the World. She believes there is no doubt the cartoon controversy has led to more self-censorship: ''The bottom line is that on this issue, the extremists won.'' Muslim protesters hold placards and shout slogans during a demonstration against Swedish artist Lars Vilks. Photo: Reuters Professor Klausen's book examines what happened after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad in 2005. One showed him wearing a turban with a lit bomb in it and another portrayed him in heaven begging a line of tattered, smoking young men: ''Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins!'' Critics said the cartoons were racist and blasphemous, in part because many Muslims believe Islam does not permit images of the prophet. As a result of the publication, one Danish embassy was bombed and several were set alight. In London, demonstrators carried signs calling on Muslims to ''massacre'' those who insulted Islam and warning, ''Britain, you will pay, 7/7 on its way''. (The London terrorist bombings, which occurred on July 7, 2005, are known as 7/7.) Last September, an American cartoonist went into hiding following death threats after she called for a ''Let's draw Muhammad'' day. Molly Norris, of Seattle Weekly News, ''went ghost'' on the advice of the FBI. She changed her identity to evade a fatwa by a Yemeni-American al-Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, who named her as a prime target and said her ''proper abode is hellfire''. Meanwhile in Europe, police thwarted a plan last December for a ''Mumbai-style'' machine-gun attack on Jyllands-Posten. The freedom of speech debate is not a simple question of Muslims versus Westerners, but of moderates versus extremists. Many Muslim reformers have also suffered violence or intimidation for criticising Islam. In 2008, Britain's Centre for Social Cohesion named 27 writers, including Salman Rushdie, as well as activists, politicians and artists who had been persecuted for their views. But Professor Klausen says the more common reaction has been self-censorship, a force she ran up against with her 2009 book. Yale University Press dropped not only an image of the original newspaper page of Muhammad cartoons but Islamic pictures of the prophet drawn centuries ago for religious manuscripts, citing fears that innocent lives might otherwise be lost. Professor Klausen told the Herald: ''I said there was no realistic threat, this is an academic book … but there was a difficult counter-argument: 'We don't really worry about what's going to happen in Hartford, Connecticut, we are worrying about what might happen in Afghanistan.' Are we going to base standards for academic publications on what's happening in Nigeria and Afghanistan?'' The decision was also criticised by a British free-speech organisation, the Index on Censorship, which ran an online interview with Professor Klausen - but which also refused to publish the cartoons. Index's news editor, Padraig Reidy, told the Herald he has not come across any cartoonists who have spoken of feeling threatened or of self-censoring. But he warns there has been a big shift in terms of what the law says is acceptable after Britain introduced religious vilification laws as a result of concerns Muslims might be targeted following the September 11 attacks. ''The unfortunate thing is that religious hatred laws have created this expectation in [Muslims'] minds that their religion can't be insulted,'' he says. ''Whereas anyone interested in free speech would say people should be protected but ideas should not be protected; that religions should be open to scrutiny and sometimes should be mocked … but now a new 'right not to be offended' comes into play.'' Mehmood Naqshbandi is the author of a guide to Islam and the creator of the website Muslims in Britain. He says Britain's religious hatred laws do not include a right ''not be offended'', as shown by the anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions of the English Defence League, such as the carrying of a pig's head on a pike. Asked whether non-Muslims should refrain from drawing Muhammad, he says that is a difficult question but ''for a conscientious Muslim, the simple answer is that they shouldn't''. Why should a taboo for Muslims become a taboo for everyone? Mr Naqshbandi says if the West practised the tolerance it preaches, then that respect would be extended to the religious taboos of others. But he also says the cartoons ''tend to give offence in parts of the Muslim community that want to be offended''. He believes both sides have to grow up. ''The Muslim community has got to be a lot more nuanced in its response to these kinds of issues, and recognise that however technically offensive and challenging they may be, they are part of a juvenile response by the West to Islam, and that the West will grow out of it; just as the West must realise that Muslim communities in the West are very insecure and it will take a long time for them to gain confidence.'' Professor Klausen believes the cartoon controversy has damaged free speech in Arab countries, too. She argues that the row blew up only after it was manipulated by politicians on both sides. The Danish prime minister initially refused to meet angry ambassadors from Muslim countries because he did not want to be viewed domestically as recognising Muslim complaints, while Egypt used the controversy to push back against the Bush administration's pressure for human rights. ''The Arab League used the whole issue to justify censorship of satellite TV, saying: 'This is what you get when you have free speech, insults and anger and unregulated violent expression','' Professor Klausen says. She thinks it was understandable that many Muslims were offended but that the Danish newspaper could not have foreseen what would happen. ''In 2005 we weren't yet used to the consequences of global media. The paper put it up on the website [unthinkingly],'' she says. ''All the international protests were with people who saw it on the internet but the editors were still thinking in terms of the print world, where it would just be displayed to local readers. If it was just the Danish, nothing would have happened … ''Now we put things out in a global world and we have these instant reverberations.'' Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/extremists-on-all-sides-exploit-taboos-20110905-1ju96.html#ixzz1X9r47Hjv [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! 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