The Observer | Focus | How cartoons fanned flames of Muslim rage

Focus
How cartoons fanned flames of Muslim rage
Embassies burning. Riots and demonstrations across the globe. Journalists in hiding. Presidents and preachers joining the furious debate. But just how did a series of second-rate cartoons buried deep inside the pages of a small Danish newspaper produce such an incendiary dispute?
Jason Burke in Paris, Luke Harding in Berlin, Alex Duval Smith in Copenhagen and Peter Beaumont in Ramallah
Sunday February 5, 2006
The Observer
If the consequences are global, the source is almost farcically local. You reach number 3 Grondals Street by taking the number 9 bus to the outskirts of the Danish city of Aarhus and getting off by the red post box half way up the hill. The modest single-story yellow brick building is the head office of Jyllands-Posten, a national newspaper with a circulation of 150,000. It is where Flemming Rose, the arts editor, decided that publishing a page of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad would provoke a debate on multiculturalism and spice up a paper whose daily highlight for many readers is the diamond wedding listing on page 18.
This weekend, the fallout from that editorial whim six months ago has left half the globe reeling. A week of violent rhetoric and action, of statements by scores of heads of states, of commercial boycotts and diplomatic intervention, of strife and anguish and emotion, has exposed deep tensions and fissures at the heart of the modern world, tensions between the Islamic world and the West, between religion and secular society, between journalists and politicians, between different conceptions of the role of faith and a free press in society, tensions that look unlikely to disappear soon.
Jan Lund, the Jyllands-Posten‘s foreign editor, said there was little discussion when the decision to run the cartoons was taken. ‘I don‘t remember anyone raising any objections. The idea seemed good. The intention was to provoke a debate about the extent to which we self-censor in our coverage of Muslim issues.‘.
Rose said the exercise had been inspired by a conversation with Danish comedian Frank Hvam, who said he did not dare make fun of the Koran. Rose added that children‘s writer Kaare Bluitgen, who had written a book about the Prophet Muhammad, had lamented the fact that all the illustrators he approached wanted to work anonymously.
Rose said that last autumn‘s Danish theatre season included three productions in which President George W Bush was either criticised or ridiculed, but not one featuring Osama bin Laden.
The result was 12 cartoons published on 30 September on page 3 of the second section of the paper. One showed the prophet with a bomb as a head, another with either horns or half a halo growing out of his head, a third showed a ragged line of suicide bombers arriving in heaven to be greeted by an anxious-looking prophet telling them: ‘Stop stop, we ran out of virgins!‘.
Crude in execution and thought, the cartoons offended not merely because they breached the Islamic prohibition of representations of Muhammad, but because they depicted the prophet, seen as a man of peace and justice by Muslims, as a man of terror and violence.
It is unclear whether Jyllends-Posten journalists recognised the significance of their act, but in an editorial Rose invoked the highest of justifications. ‘Among writers, artists and theatre people, there is a trend for self-censorship,‘ he wrote. ‘This means artists are avoiding the major issue of our time: the meeting of secular and Muslim cultures.‘
Yet Rose‘s use of words - surely, one analyst pointed out last week, he meant ‘secular‘ and ‘religious‘ - was revealing. In a continent struggling to integrate large Islam minorities, his designation of ‘Muslim‘ as the ‘other‘, the opposite pole to European secularism, expressed a growing sense that the world is confronted by ‘a clash of civilisations‘. Such sentiments, stoked in the Netherlands by the stabbing of a Dutch film director by a Muslim militant, in Britain and Spain by bombings in London and Madrid, and in France by recent riots, blamed erroneously on Islam by many people. They are also on the rise in countries, such as Denmark, known for their tolerance. For many commentators ‘Muslim culture‘ is the opposite of the progressive, secular heritage of European ‘Judaeo-Christian‘ Enlightenment. Denmark has, like other countries, been marked by a xenophobic backlash against moves towards greater inclusivity.
If Rose‘s aim was indeed to provoke debate, he succeeded. The initial publication of the cartoons brought no response other than some angry letters. But when in mid-October two of the artists received death threats, the menaces were widely reported and rekindled debate, prompting vicious, anti-Muslim comments on Danish talk shows. Coming soon after a series of new, strict laws relating to marriage and citizenship, enforcing obligatory Danish lessons and clamping down on imams, the row plugged straight into pre-existing tensions. A minor storm was on its way to becoming much bigger.
First came a demonstration by 5,000 Muslims in Copenhagen. A week later, diplomats from Islamic states complained to the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. A group of ultra-conservative Danish imams set off for a tour of Saudi Arabia and Egypt with a dossier of the cartoons and several other cartoons, unrelated to the Jyllands-Posten drawings, showing Muhammad with the face of a pig and as a paedophile.
A flurry of diplomatic activity ended in an ‘explication‘ by the Danes to the head of the Arab League which was to be distributed throughout the Middle East. Then on 10 January a Norwegian Christian publication, Magazinet, published a selection of the cartoons. More diplomatic protests ensued, and Saudi Arabia and Libya recalled their ambassadors from Copenhagen. Suddenly, Danish goods were being boycotted and its national flags burnt.
Though still restricted to Scandinavia, the row was getting vicious enough for Prime Minister Rasmussen - who had earlier refused to meet ambassadors from 11 Islamic nations - to perform an abrupt U-turn, expressing his regrets and admitting the caricatures had hurt the sensitivities of Muslims worldwide. Separately, Carsten Juste, the editor of the Jyllands-Posten, issued his own apology. His paper had ‘indisputably offended many Muslims‘, he admitted. If either of them thought his action would defuse the row, he was mistaken.
For Roger K鰌pel, the cerebral, 40-year-old Swiss-German editor of the Berlin-based Die Welt newspaper, the Danish apologies amounted to a capitulation. Instead of standing up for the right to freedom of expression, Denmark had timidly succumbed to bullying, K鰌pel felt. He decided it was time for the rest of Europe to stake a stand.
‘The fact that a European country - ‘one of us‘ - had caved in was for us the trigger to say that this is a really important story,‘ K鰌pel said . ‘It is at the core of our culture that the most sacred things can be subjected to criticism, laughter and satire. We also know that moral double standards sometimes guide certain reactions in the Arab world. If we start to stop using our right to the freedom of expression within our legal boundaries then we start to develop an appeasement mentality.‘
The row now moved up a gear. With the re-publication of the cartoons, European newspapers were drawing a line in the sand, resisting the theoretical extensions of strictures in the Islamic world over the West- and what they felt was their own governments‘ weakness in the face of intimidation. If the 1988 Rushdie affair had been, at least in part, the attempt by a radical regime in Iran to extend a hypothetical authority over the West, the controversy over the cartoons could be seen as a similar exercise, on a bigger scale.
K鰌pel ran the story on Die Welt‘s front page under the headline ‘Protests against Mohammad pictures successful‘, together with a blown-up version of the most provocative of Jyllands-Posten‘s cartoons, the one showing the prophet with his turban as a fizzing bomb.
There was little dissent among his staff. Next to it was K鰌pel‘s front-page commentary, asking: ‘Is Islam...capable of satire?‘ This was not a ‘clash of civilisations‘, K鰌pel argued. The Arab world couldn‘t have it both ways. Anti-semitism is rampant in much of the ‘hypocritical‘ Middle East, the editor wrote, with Jewish rabbis depicted on prime-time Syrian TV as cannibals. In this context, he felt poking fun at Muhammad was fair enough. Three other newspapers in Germany also published the cartoons.
Analysts in Germany noted the rare consensus to publish on the left and right, explaining the nation‘s solidarity with beleaguered Denmark by pointing to an institutional pro-Israeli bias among German newspapers dating back to the post-Second World war era. Earlier this year the Christian Democrat-run state of Baden-W黵ttemburg introduced what has been known as a ‘Muslim‘ test, where Muslim applicants for German citizenship are questioned about their views on 9/11, gay relationships and whether their teenage daughters should be allowed to take part in swimming lessons.
In Paris, as their counterparts at Die Welt were planning their own pages, journalists at the offices of France Soir, an ailing tabloid based in an industrial estate in the north ofthe city, were also deciding that the cartoons should be published - for somewhat different reasons.
Arnaud Levy, 41, a senior editor, had realised from wire agency reports that the row over the cartoons was building into a major crisis - and a major story. Working late last Monday night, Levy mentioned the story to the foreign editor of the paper. Very soon, the two were deep in a discussion about the issue of liberty of expression and religion, recalling a series of other contentious cases in Europe such as the 2001 film Amen, by Costa-Gavras, a thriller which was highly critical of links between the Catholic church and the Nazis and Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ.
The French approach was subtly different from that of the Germans. ‘We recognised immediately that it was very sensitive,‘ Levy said. ‘We knew we had to see the cartoons themselves before making any decision and we wanted to know more about the newspapers that had published them so far.‘
At no time, Levy said, did the France Soir staff have any contact with anyone at any other newspapers also planning to publish the cartoons.
By the afternoon news conference last Tuesday, presided over by Serge Faubert, the paper‘s editor-in-chief, the background of the row had become clearer, though still no one had seen the cartoons. The debate between the half dozen men around the table was heated. Several journalists emphasised that extreme caution was required. Others said that though they understood the dogma prohibiting the representation of Muhammad, they did not live in an Islamic society. One pointed out that there were different interpretations of the dogma even within the Islamic world.
‘If for the most rigorous, images of all humans are forbidden, should we follow that injunction too?‘ asked Levy. Without sight of the cartoons, no decision was taken, and France Soir‘s own artist set about preparing a cartoon showing a variety of deities saying that ‘we‘ve all been caricatured‘.
Then, at 5.30pm, the picture desk announced they had finally got the cartoons. The senior staff crowded around and, after further discussion, Faubert decided to publish. ‘This was a considered, thought-out, informed decision. Freedom of expression was at stake and though we know people might be hurt by what we were doing, we felt it was worth it,‘ said Levy yesterday.
The front page was cleared for the newspaper‘s own cartoon and the headline: ‘Yes we have the right to caricature God.‘ The 12 Danish drawings - carefully framed by comment from a cleric and a campaigner for freedom of expression - ran across two pages. Soon editions of the paper, like those of Die Welt and several other publications in Italy and Spain, were on their way to the newstands.
Across Europe, dozens more newspapers, though none in Britain, prepared to republish some or all of the cartoons and scores of TV channels, including almost all the major French stations and the BBC, to broadcast images of them. What had been a relatively localised crisis was entering its final stage.
The reaction was immediate. As the news spread of the re-publication of the cartoons, a wave of anger rolled across the Islamic world. Gaza and the West Bank saw the biggest protests, as crowds organised by both Fatah and Hamas turned out en masse.
An imam at the Omari Mosque in Gaza City told 9,000 worshippers that the people behind the drawings should have their heads cut off. ‘If they want a war of religions, we are ready,‘ Hassan Sharaf, an imam in Nablus, said in his sermon. In Ramallah, protesters burnt a Danish flag, chanting: ‘Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up.‘
‘These countries claim that they are civilised and that they are democracies,‘ complained Anwar Muhammad, 30, a fruit seller, ‘yet they do not reflect civilised values. This is pure racism.‘
Yesterday the German flag was also burnt. Other groups took to the streets, from the Middle East to the Far East, from Indonesia to North Africa, often bending the offence to their own agendas.
In Pakistan, hundreds of activists from Islamic political parties set fire to French and Danish flags. Hundreds of Indonesian Muslims belonging to a hardline political group went on a rampage in the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta. In Turkey, amid protests, a programme of Western opera was cancelled. In London, angry crowds demonstrated outside the Danish embassy with women in burkas shouting that ‘7/7 was coming again‘.
If the question of the cartoons split the West, pitting partisans of freedom of expression against those favouring a more nuanced approach, many in the Islamic world were divided, though it was not immediate apparent from television broadcasts that spliced together all the most violent images.
In France, worshippers at mosques spoke of their hurt and, crucially, their hope that the laws of the French Republic should protect them. Leaders at all major mosques called for calm and ‘dignity‘. A Jordanian tabloid Al-Shihan chose to publish three of the images, a move that led to all copies being removed from the newsstands and its editor, Jihad Momani, being fired. ‘Muslims of the world, be reasonable,‘ he had written in an editorial.
Most intriguing was the reaction of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq‘s most senior Shia cleric, who, while condemning the ‘horrific‘ images, took time, in a posting on his website, to criticise those who had ‘darkened‘ Islam‘s image.
‘The problem with this issue,‘ said a Palestinian former European Union employee who asked not to be identified, ‘is that... we should be demonstrating that we are strong and that this cannot damage Islam. Instead what we are showing is a sign of our extreme vulnerability.‘
But such voices, even if more common than many think, are being drowned out by those who shout louder. A leading preacher in Saudi Arabia proclaimed: ‘A great new spirit is flowing through the body of the Islamic nation... this world can no longer ignore this nation and its feelings,‘ Saleh bin Humaid said in a televised sermon at the Grand Mosque in the sacred Muslim city of Mecca.
Yesterday everyone - except those militants with a vested interest in keeping the controversy boiling - was trying to calm tempers. In France, President Chirac and Prime Minister de Villepin tried to tread a careful middle path, talking of the right of free speech and respect for religious belief. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, strongly condemned the re-publication of the cartoons, as did the American State Department.
‘These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims,‘ State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said. ‘We all fully recognise and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.‘
In France, leaders of both the Catholic and the Jewish communities condemned the publication of the cartoons. ‘Freedom of speech is never absolute. It entails responsibility and judgment,‘ said Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general. At last the peak of anger seemed to have past.
But even if this week does see a gradual lessening of tension, too many deep and troubling questions have been askedfor calm to return easily. For newspapers, there are questions over the new responsibility bought by an interconnected, broadband world - where no images anywhere are without consequences.
For broadcasters, there are questions about whether the representation of 1.3 billion Muslims by a few violent images taken from international agency reports is fair. For Western nations such as France, Germany and Britain, there are questions again about how the fundamentals of secular liberal democracy can be reconciled with religion and with large - and growing - minority communities for whom religion is a crucial part of their identity.
In the Muslim world beyond the West, there are profound questions, too. For regimes that routinely endorse anti-Semitic propaganda and which play on anti-Zionist sentiment, last week‘s events show the risks of demagoguery.
More broadly, it is clear that the correlation of the prophet and terrorism touched a raw nerve, exposing a profound sensitivity at street level regarding Western societies that are economically, military and politically more powerful and an ambivalent mixture of shame and pride in the young men who blow themselves up in Islam‘s name.
The profound sense in the Muslim world that the West is essentially anti-Islamic - which is a key recruiter for terrorism - has been reinforced. The controversy has also revealed to the growing role Islam plays in giving a voice to any sense of grievance, whether political, social or cultural.
But the real message of last week may be directed at moderates, at those without strong feelings either way, at those who believe that compromise and rationality solve most problems. And the question posed to these people is perhaps the hardest: how can one ensure that one‘s own voice is heard in a world where, increasingly, it is the provocative, the strident and the angry voices that dominate?
What they said...
‘I have been hurt, grieved and I am angry.‘
Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf
‘There is freedom of speech, we all respect that, but there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory... I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong.‘
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
‘We‘d take Muslim protests more seriously if they weren‘t so hypocritical... The imams were quiet when Syrian TV showed Jewish rabbis as cannibals in a primetime series.‘
Berlin‘s Die Welt which republished one of the cartoons
‘We didn‘t think the cartoons had crossed any line... We are the biggest newspaper in Denmark. We have always been the enfant terrible of the Danish press. Our cartoonists have made fun of politicians, Jesus and the Virgin Mary.‘
Jan Lund, foreign editor of Danish Jyllands-Posten
‘As much as we condemn this, we must have, as Muslims, the courage to forgive and to not make an issue... between religions or cultures.‘
Afghan president Hamid Karzai
‘This plays into the hands of Muslim extremists. Many people at Friday prayers will want to express their anger, but we say do it within the law.‘
Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain
‘If someone said something offensive about my mother, I would deal with it, but if they insulted the Prophet it would be worse.‘
Abdullah Wahim, teacher, outside the Danish embassy in London
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03.02.2006:Norwegian editor apologises
03.02.2006:Jordanian editor sacked over cartoons
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03.02.2006:UK press hold back in cartoon row
03.02.2006:What the papers say
03.02.2006:European elite scrambles to defuse furore
02.02.2006:BBC joins cartoon controversy
02.02.2006:Spectator makes cartoon U-turn
02.02.2006:Cartoons published in Jordan
02.02.2006:Palestinian gunmen in cartoons protest
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31.01.2006:Danish paper sorry for Muhammad cartoons
Read the apology
30.01.2006:Danish paper sparks angry protests
27.01.2006:Saudis recall ambassador over newspaper cartoons
Comment
03.02.2006:Leader: Cartoons and their context
03.02.2006:Sarah Joseph: The freedom that hurts us
02.02.2006:Prophetic fallacy
03.02.2006:Letters: Muhammad and the limits of free speech
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