Denmark and Jyllands-Posten: The background to a provocation
By Peter Schwarz
World Socialist Web Site
10 February 2006
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/denm-f10_prn.shtml

The basic lie in the controversy over the caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad published by Danish and European newspapers is the claim that
the conflict is between free speech and religious censorship, or
between Western enlightenment and Islamic bigotry.

The taz newspaper, which has close links to the German Greens,
declared the conflict was about reducing the influence of all
religions, including Christianity, "to a tolerable measure." In
Spiegel.online, Henryk M. Broder condemned the halfhearted apology
made by the publishers of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, which
unleashed the caricature controversy, as an "example of how democratic
public opinion capitulates to a totalitarian standpoint."

An examination of the prevailing political conditions in Denmark
reveals how bogus such arguments are. One would be hard pressed to
find another European country where political changes over the past
few years have found such a clear—and repellent—expression.

In a country renowned for its tolerance and openness, the social
crisis and the betrayals carried out by the old working class
organizations have opened the way for the emergence of political
forces which systematically encourage xenophobia and racism. The
newspaper Jyllands-Posten has played a prominent role in this process.

Last autumn Jyllands-Posten assigned 40 prominent Danish caricaturists
to draw the Prophet Muhammad. Twelve responded and the results were
published on September 30. The project was deliberately designed to
provoke.

According to the cultural editor of the newspaper, Flemming Rose, it
was aimed at "testing the limits of self-censorship in Danish public
opinion" when it comes to Islam and Muslims. He added: "In a secular
society, Muslims have to live with the fact of being ridiculed,
scoffed at and made to look ridiculous."

When the anticipated reaction by the Muslim community failed to arise,
the newspaper continued its campaign, determined to create a
full-scale scandal. After a week had gone by without protest,
journalists turned on Danish Islamic religious leaders who were well
known for their fundamentalist views and demanded: "Why don't you
protest?" Eventually, the latter reacted and alerted their co-thinkers
in the Middle East.

At this point the head of the Danish government, Andres Fogh
Rasmussen, and the xenophobic Danish People's Party, which is part of
the ruling coalition, swung into action. Fogh Rasmussen
demonstratively turned down appeals by concerned Arab ambassadors for
talks to clarify the issue. Even after 22 former Danish ambassadors
appealed to the prime minister to hold discussions with the
representatives of Islamic states, Rasmussen maintained his stance,
arguing that "freedom of the press" could not be a topic for
diplomatic discussion.

The chairperson of the Danish People's Party, Pia Kjaersgaard,
insulted Danish Muslims who complained about the caricatures, publicly
denouncing them as national traitors because they supposedly placed
their religious beliefs above free speech.

>From the start, the campaign had nothing to do with "free speech" and
everything to do with the political agenda of the Fogh Rasmussen
government, comprising of a coalition of right-wing neo-liberals and
conservatives, together with the Danish People's Party.

The latter rose to prominence in the 1990s when all of the country's
bourgeois parties—including the then-governing Social
Democrats—responded to a mounting social crisis with xenophobic
campaigns. The People's Party declared at the time that Islam was a
"cancerous ulcer" and "terrorist movement." Kjaersgaard, notorious for
her racist outbursts, declared that the Islamic world could not be
regarded as civilized. "There is only one civilization, and that is
ours," she said.

Fogh Rasmussen, at that time the chairman of the right-wing Venstre
party, adopted much of the racist demagogy of the People's Party. In
the election campaign of 2001he demanded, among other things, that
"criminal foreigners" be thrown out of the country within 48 hours.

His campaign utilized an election poster featuring pictures of Muslim
criminals to suggest that all Muslims were violent. Venstre won the
election and, together with the traditional conservative party, formed
a minority government, which was supported by the extremist People's
Party.

Danish politics lurched far to the right. The country's immigration
laws were drastically tightened, while spending for development aid
was cut back. In the Iraq war, which was opposed by the majority of
the Danish population, Fogh Rasmussen lined up behind the Bush
administration and sent a contingent of Danish troops to help occupy
the country.

The campaign unleashed by Jyllands-Posten is a continuation and
intensification of this reactionary trajectory, aimed at bolstering
the xenophobic policies of the government and strengthening its
support for US imperialism.

The caricatures themselves are patently racist. They suggest that
every Muslim is a potential terrorist. Reports and pictures of
outraged Muslims protesting the defamation of their prophet are used
to reinforce this slander.

Official politics and the media throughout Europe are increasingly
preoccupied with such agitation. Muslims are collectively held
responsible for acts carried out by terrorist groups, although they
bear no responsibility for them. In the German state of
Baden-Württemberg, Muslims seeking to stay in the country must answer
a catalog of questions probing their religious beliefs.

Television news presenters regularly malign Muslims for being prepared
to protest against the defamation of Muhammad, but not against acts
carried out by terrorist groups in the name of Islam, suggesting that
they secretly support such acts.

A campaign is emerging to depict Islam as an inferior culture that is
incompatible with "Western values." There are clear parallels here to
the anti-Semitic caricatures that were spread in the 1930s by fascist
newspapers such as the Nazi Stürmer. The depiction of Jews as
sub-humans served as the ideological preparation for the Holocaust.

Today the systematic defamation of Muslims is being used to prepare
public opinion for new wars against countries such as Iran and
Syria—wars which will be even more brutal than the Iraq war, and could
well involve the use of nuclear weapons.

It is no coincidence that it was the Jyllands-Posten that took up this
initiative. The newspaper is notorious for its declarations of support
for the Nazis in the 1930s, and has played a key role in Denmark's
recent shift to the right.

With editorial offices in the rural area of Arhus, Jyllands-Posten
remained a relatively insignificant provincial newspaper until the
beginning of the 1980s. At that time it began an aggressive policy of
expansion. It bought up smaller regional and local newspapers and
launched a price war with the two established newspapers in the Danish
capital—Berlingske Tidende and Politiken—and rapidly built up its
circulation to 170,000, becoming the biggest circulation newspaper in
the country.

In the 1990s the decidedly conservative paper increasingly developed
into a mouthpiece for openly xenophobic, right-wing forces. Nearly a
quarter of the editorial board was dismissed, and the quality of the
paper sank as its aggressiveness rose.

Shortly before the publication of the Muhammad cartoons,
Jyllands-Posten ran a headline reading, "Islam is the Most
Belligerent." The newspaper ran an exposé about an alleged Muslim
death-list of Jewish names—until it emerged that the whole thing was a
fabrication.

One year ago the editor-in-chief resigned because the newspaper
carried a report, in the midst of an election campaign, alleging the
systematic abuse of welfare rights by asylum-seekers. The sensational
charges were published against his will.

The notorious right-wing sympathies of Jyllands-Posten are no secret.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung describes it as "a newspaper with an almost
missionary zeal, boasting that it has been successful in breaking the
ideological and political grip of left-wing liberals over Danish
society." According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, it would be "an
inadmissible simplification" to equate Jyllands-Posten with the
People's Party, but they are certainly "fellow combatants in the
broader sense."

The FrankfurtRundshau writes: "Connoisseurs of Danish media will note
with no little irony that it is precisely Jyllands-Posten which is now
considered to be a beacon for free speech, i.e., the most right-wing
of the Danish newspapers, which normally thrashes anyone who dares to
advance a different point of view."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/denm-f10_prn.shtml








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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom 
(i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue 
with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone 
astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.} 
(Holy Quran-16:125)

{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in 
His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites 
(men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I 
am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)
 
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if 
Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of 
camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim] 

The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)  also said, "Whoever 
calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who 
follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all." 
[Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah] 
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