Cartoon Clash of Civilizations

Sadna loves steak as long as the cow is Paki. :)

i would think its natural to ridicule hindu icons if bjp/ss/bd etc swear by hindu icons to create mayhem. e.g. i have seen many a cartoons with trishuls (a symbol of shiva) in them.

DM ji:
i agree with the overall focus of your post. My experience in the usa is mostly of a campus town @ northeast where my first name is as good an identity as any and i am fortunate to have close friends from diverse backgrounds.

in any case, here is Ibn-e-Warraq`s powerful case for supporting Danes.

``On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and
Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.``

link: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398853,00.html

this is kind of off-topic and irrelevant to this article.

RE#19

i consider Mohammad as a lecherous and delusional human being. Based on:

1-
His marriage to a 9 year old kid
His marriage to a woman previously married to his adopted son.


2-
His claim that Devil dictated now-annulled verses to him.
His suspicions that he was being cast under some sort of evil spell. The context behind the revelation of Sura-e-Falaq and Sura-e-Naas.

scrutinizing his weird claims and practices sans Maududian summersaults: plausible explainations only make him to be someone far from being a shining example for all times and worlds.

Hence the direct threat of Eternal Damnation as very articulately pointed out by Naqshbandi Sahib in #26.

you can look it up the debate on these issues from both sides and relevant historical sources.

regards.

Raw_Dust

One problem is that pre-Islamic Arabs have been so demonized and defamed that in comparison almost anything or anybody would appear manifestly divine.

Still, we shouldn`t judge the Prophet of Islam any more harshly than we would judge another human being. Among his contemporaries, it could be fairly common for old men to marry 9 yr/13 yr old girls, or wed women previously married to their adopted children.

Nice article from faithfreedom.org

...............Muslims use Western standards of behavior against Westerners while also holding Westerners to Islamic standards of behavior; while at the same time never accepting Western standards of behavior. When Saudi Arabia is criticized for the lies and hate taught in its schools against Jews they demand we not hold them to our standards. When a Danish cartoonist mocks Muhammad, we are of course held to their standard..................

An article that I thought made sense from the Sunday times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025511,00.html

An article that I thought made sense from the Sunday times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025511,00.html

Re: # 36 Well, thanks to google and technology, you know and I know that for each hundred testimonies you bring up to support all your above claims i can produce a hundred and one to counter these, but I am not indulging into that, as then i`d be accused of straying off topic. Your calling Mohammed (SAW) `a lecherous and delusional human being` would make no difference to him and his sanctity in the eyes his followers. That`s indeed your personal point of view and on a par with the issue at hand, ala `freedom of expression`, which includes cotorting a phrase to serve one`s own intended meaning.

For now, all i would humbly request you to briefly expound on are the qualities that should serve to make someone a shining example for all times and worlds` in your eyes?

regards

Bina Shah,
Being offended by such deliberately provocative cartoons is but natural, what puzzles me being a muslim is how selective Muslims are when it comes to protests. Where were these Govts when Abu Ghraib pictures were published? How about the genocide in EE-Rak? Were those pictures not derogatory to muslim sensibilities? Killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians not a good reason for protests? Its amazing how selective amnesia can impair one`s sense of morality.

Iam angry, extremely angry with the so-called secularists europeans for supporting this maliciously centered freedom of expression. Moderate muslim`s who wish to build bridges with western societies are found searching for excuses for their western friends and at the same time defending their religious sensibilities.

Lasltly, the Saudi`s should be the last people on earth to express shock and dismay for they are the same people who have been systematically destroying all symbols and historical artifacts linked to the Prophet, his family and friends. Niether have they shown any religious tolerance to other religions in their country, take for example the arrests of 40 xtians in Riyad last year on the ground sthat they were practicing banned religious services. These poor Pakistani (desi, browns) were caught performing their service behind closed doors, that is considered to be a crime in Saudi Arabia, then they expect others to respect their religious sensibilities? I do not agrree or like Ibn warraq, but what he says about these fanatics and their desire to control all spheres of life is correct, one cannot allow fanatics from any side of the world to dictate terms, that also includes El Prezidento Busho, Herr Ahmed Nijad and Monsieur Bin Laden.

Bina,

You argue about boycotting danish products in muslim lands. but what about looking at the bigger picture:the clash of culture between the european and islamic ideals.

what about the mulsim immgrants who live in european country???

it throws open the quesiton of integration of muslim immgrants to european values and culture. and its not the radicals/conservatives who are asking for it but the liberals.

europe stands for secularism where religion is not above scrutiny. whereas islam and its prophet, in its present form, cannot be judged.

instead of worrying about depiciton of mohd. in a satirical cartoon, it would be interesting to knowing whether the european and muslim values would to be compatible with each other or not.

Danes Finally Apologize to Muslims (But for the Wrong Reasons)

By RACHARD ITANI

In many European countries, there are laws that will land in jail any person who has the chutzpah to deny not only the historicity of the Jewish holocaust, but also the method by which Jews were put to death by the Nazis. In some of these countries, this prohibition goes as far as prosecuting those who would claim or attempt to prove that less than 6 million jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. In none of these countries are there similar laws that threaten people with loss of freedom and wealth for denying that large percentages of gypsies, gays, mentally retarded, and other miscellaneous ``debris of humanity`` were also eliminated by the Jew-slaughtering Nazis.

Quickly now: what defines a hypocrite? Answer: a person who follows the letter of the law, but not its spirit. The laws against anti-semitism are just that: laws against anti-semitism enacted by hypocritical Europeans with blood on their hands from the genocides in their recent and distant past, and much guilt to atone for in their hearts and minds.

The spirit of the law, which would extend this protection to Muslims as well, if not indeed other religious groups, is nowhere to be found in the Western legal code. You can curse the Prophet of the Muslims at will and with total impunity. However, approach the holocaust at your own risks and perils if you do not include in your discussion the standard, ritualistic incantations about the six million Jewish victims of the European Nazis. There is a word for this in the English language: hypocrisy.

I used to have a lot of respect for the Dutch, the Danes, and the Norwegians, and still do. However, I cannot claim that this respect is not more nuanced today. The coloring started when the Dutch, who are invariably and automatically described as being amongst the most ``tolerant`` people in the West, if not the world, proved that their tolerance was little more than skin deep. Their reaction to the murder of Theo Van Gogh was anything but driven by tolerance. They behaved as a mob in reaction to the criminal, despicable action of an extremist and murderer, by painting the whole Dutch muslim community with the same broad brush that Vincent Van Gogh would have eschewed. They burnt Muslim schools and mosques. They directed opprobrium at Muslims in their midst, calling on them ``to go home`` though many had been born in the Netherlands. No subtlety in the Dutch reaction. Just collective anti-semitism which they directed not at the Jews, but at the Jews` cousins, the Muslims.

Then the Danes, who must have felt left out, decided to go the Dutch one better: a Danish paper published cartoons that are no less offensive to Muslims than anti-semitism is to Jews. The cartoons were described by Danish politicians and the press as not provocation, but a principled case of free speech, although many Danish and Scandinavian newspaper editors are on record stating that they published the cartoons as an act of defiance against ``radical Islam.`` This is akin to these ignorant morons recommending that the U.S. ought to nuke Tehran because that would teach Iranian President Ahmadinejad a lesson.

What free speech are we talking about here? The law says thou shalt not utilize or publish anti-semitic language or imagery. Consequently, Danish (and other European) papers will refrain from doing so, lest they fall foul of the law and offend Jewish sensitivities. The law does not say: thou shalt not offend muslims or use imagery that may be deeply offensive to them. So Danish papers will not refrain from doing so, in fact they will go out of their way to offend Muslims both in Denmark and around the world, in the name of ``free speech.`` And the Norwegians? Well, they just decided to follow the Danes down perdition lane, all in the name of holy hypocrisy, so a Norwegian paper also published the offending cartoons. The statement about ``confronting radical Islam`` was in fact made by the Norwegian editor of a newspaper that is described as a ``Norwegian Christian Paper.`` And now that other European papers and Magazines have also followed suit, if there was any doubt that this affair is one of anti-Muslim bias, it was swept away by the statements of the Editor in Chief of Die Welt, the German magazine, who declared that the right to publish the cartoons was ``at the very core of our culture`` and that Europeans cannot ``stop using our journalistic right of freedom of expression within legal boundaries.`` It`s the ``legal boundaries`` qualifier that gives the game away: there are no legal boundaries in Europe protecting Muslims from the same ignominies that the law protects Jews from.

And what further argument does Die Welt put forward to justify its ``legal`` action? `` It pointed out that ``Syrian TV had depicted Jewish rabbis as cannibals.`` You can imagine how helpful a similar argument would hold up in a court of law: ``But your honor, I only killed one guy and raped two women: the other guy killed four and raped 10!`` That a German editor-in-chief of a major German paper should use the ``legal`` argument to justify offending the religious sensitivities of Muslims, when that same ``legal`` framework would see him thrown in jail faster than he could spell the word legal if he offended the sensitivities of Jews, may be a testament at least of his own deep-seated contempt for Muslims. That so many European papers have now reprinted the offensive cartoons is an indication that the contempt for Muslims does not stop with the editor-in-chief of Die Welt.

This whole affair is nothing but an over-reaction to a simple cartoon, you say? Not if you remember a certain other cartoon that appeared in the British newspaper, The Independent, on 27 January 2003. It depicted Prime Minister Sharon of Israel eating the head of a Palestinian child while saying: ``What`s wrong? You`ve never seen a politician kissing babies before?`` Jews in Britain and around the world erupted with indignation, arguably because the depiction reminded them of millennial charges levied against them by Christians who accused them of using the blood of babies in ritualistic killings. You see, Sharon can actually kill, maim and spill the real, actual blood of Palestinian babies: that is not offensive to Zionist Jews and their apologists in the West. But let Sharon be depicted in a cartoon metaphorically as the ogre that he has proved to be in his real life, symbolically eating a Palestinian child, and the world will erupt in offended indignation. A cartoon that is offensive to Muslims, on the other hand, is depicted as nothing but an expression of ``free speech.`` There is a word for this in any language: hypocrisy.

Before the Danish cartoon incident started to evolve into a growing international crisis, the Danish Prime Minister and the publisher of the Danish newspaper that first published the offending cartoons both declared that they would never apologize on grounds of free speech and because publishing the cartoons had not broken any Danish laws. (Yes, the ``no law broken`` argument again.) Yesterday, however, they both ended up apologizing in the face of a growing tsunami of protests on the part of Arab and Muslim governments, some of whom withdrew their Ambassadors from Copenhagen. The Danish prime minister did not apologize because his moral compas suddenly found True North again. The real reason, of course, is that he understood, though a tad too late, the potential economic consequences of a widespread boycott of Danish goods on the part of one billion people. There is a word for this in the Danish language: realpolitik.

Muslims and other reasoning people around the world understand well that European laws against anti-Semitic speech, writing, and behavior, were enacted for two reasons. The stated reason was to protect the Jews from the continued onslaught of anti-Semitic attacks, both verbal and physical, which culminated historically in the repeated pogroms that Christian Europeans launched against Jews repeatedly through the centuries. (Historically, it was the Arabs who protected the Jews and took them in whenever they fled Christian barbarity, especially in the Middle Ages.) The real reason, of course, is to protect the Europeans from the pangs of their own conscience, which has very good reason to feel guilty indeed, given what Europeans did to Jews in the last millennium, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, not to mention what they did to the indiginous people of the Carribean and the Americas since the 1600s, and to the people of Asia, Africa and Oceania as well. I have long thought that it`s European Christians, more so than Jews, who ought to observe Yom Kippur, or adopt a similar atonement observance of their own.

While the spirit of the law is that Europeans shalt not offend any ethnic or religious groups including Muslims, this seems to be lost only on the Europeans themselves, or at least the Danes, the Germans and their ilk amongst them, who only care about, or fear, the letter of the law. Why should we therefore be shocked when Muslims depict Europeans as nothing but a bunch of hypocrites? Why shouldn`t Governments of Muslim countries recall their Ambassadors to Denmark in protest, as some did? The only disappointment is that no Western or non-Muslim government, the meek complaints to a French newspaper by the French Foreign Office excepted, had the moral and ethical courage to publicly, unequivocally and forcefully condemn an act that is as deeply offensive to Muslims as the desecration of a Torah scroll, or of a Jewish cemetery, is offensive to all civilized people in the world, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Animist, or Atheist.

There are two ways for Europeans to redeem themselves: the immediate temptation would be to call on their national parliaments to extend the protections of the laws against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denying to Islam and Muslims, as well as any other religious group . That would be the wrong recommendation however. The right recommendation would be to repeal the laws that govern holocaust denying and other laws that favor one group over another, so that the issue truly becomes one of free speech. And if Europeans are the civilized people they claim to be, then their politicians and newspaper publishers ought to find it easy to immediately apologize when they have unwittingly offended the taboos of any human community, be it religious or otherwise.

Muslims and Arabs have suffered enough hypocrisy on the hands of European Christians, just as Jews suffered in the past on the hands of these same Europeans, and as Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike are suffering today on the hands of Americans, Europeans and, of course, Zionist Jews, both Sephardim and Ashkenazi. If Europe thinks of itself as a civilized society, then it ought to do its utmost to redress the wrongs that too many people around the world have suffered as a result of European misbehavior and often outright criminal actions, most especially since the 1400s.

Muslims deserve nothing more nor less than for Christians in the U.S. and Europe, and Zionist Jews in Israel, to simply abide by the golden rule: treat others as you would have others treat you. So far, Christians and Zionist Jews have proven that they only abide by the alternative definition of this rule: ``They who have the gold, make the rule.`` The gold in this case is a combination of economic and military might. Of this, Europeans, Zionist Jews and their American overlords have aplenty in reserve. Were it that they also had an equal reserve of un-hypocritical, civilized morality and ethical behavior to underpin their feelings of sanctimonious superiority.

And the other measure that Europeans can adopt to redeem themselves? The European people can start by throwing out of office, and initiating criminal proceedings against, any politician responsible for sending a single soldier to invade, occupy, and initiate pogroms against the people of Iraq: these politicians have been guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which makes them unfit for the honors that continued office holding bestows upon them. Europeans can also give the boot to any politician who has approved or turned a blind eye to a single rendition flight that sent any person to the torture chambers of the Americans or their surrogate torturers in some Arab or Muslim countries. These are the same countries whose religious sensitivities we should all respect as strongly as we respect Jewish sensitivities when it comes to the Jewish holocaust, not because the law says so, but because it`s the right thing to do. These are also the same countries whose human rights trespasses Europeans ought to condemn as equally and vehemently as they should condemn the continued human rights abuses and state terrorism perpetrated by the Israeli government in Palestine/Israel, and by some European governments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other out-of-sight/out-of-mind places like Haiti, Africa, and elsewhere.

In other words, Europeans can start by applying the simple rule of one weight and one measure to both friends and foes, equally to themselves and to the rest of the world, because policy and politics, both domestic and foreign, ought to be based upon and subject to principled moral considerations, not expediency of the economic, financial or religious kind.

Is that such an unreasonable moral proposition to consider?

Rachard Itani can be reached at: racharitani@yahoo.com

unbelievable -- none of the `intellectuals` debating here has even vaguely referred to the fact that many european countries including the ones where the cartoons were reprinted have legislation against material seen as being anti-semitic or anti-jewish -- i doubt it very much that any danish newspaper could get away with a cartoon mocking the jews, or moses for that matter, or glorifying hitler, or something to the effect of denying the holocaust -- hey but wait

---

isn`t that also freedom of expression -- i am a practising journalist since 1993 and any moron (and there are of coursem any on chowk as well, some who think they are big tees maar khans/khanees) will know that freedom of speech or expression is not absolute and has a limit -- that is the case in any country in the world, even the US, where notwithstanding the First Amendment, freedom of speech does not extend to hate speech, racist speech, anti-inflammatory material and so on --

unbelievable --

Re: # 44
Dear Mr Qureshi,
Bina Shah posted a link to Simon Jenkin`s article which comes very close to your apprehensions. Enclosed are some excerpts from this article:

``A newspaper is not a monastery, its mind blind to the world and deaf to reaction. Every inch of published print reflects the views of its writers and the judgment of its editors. Every day newspapers decide on the balance of boldness, offence, taste, discretion and recklessness. They must decide who is to be allowed a voice and who not. They are curbed by libel laws, common decency and their own sense of what is acceptable to readers. Speech is free only on a mountain top; all else is editing.

Despite Britons’ robust attitude to religion, no newspaper would let a cartoonist depict Jesus Christ dropping cluster bombs, or lampoon the Holocaust. Pictures of bodies are not carried if they are likely to be seen by family members. Privacy and dignity are respected, even if such restraint is usually unknown to readers. Over every page hovers a censor, even if he is graced with the title of editor.

To imply that some great issue of censorship is raised by the Danish cartoons is nonsense. They were offensive and inflammatory. The best policy would have been to apologise and shut up. For Danish journalists to demand “Europe-wide solidarity” in the cause of free speech and to deride those who are offended as “fundamentalists . . . who have a problem with the entire western world” comes close to racial provocation. We do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence. To be a European should not involve initiation by religious insult.``

Reason why the Jewish angle was not discussed is simply because it is understood by everyone as a given fact. Ofcourse double standards are applied here, then again are Muslims societies not guilty of the same crime?

omar_r_quraishi:
incitement to violence and branding a group(muslims, jews, arabs, etc. etc.) in hateful terms is a Crime. Moses, Buddha or Mohammad being public figures donot qualify for this cover. I am sure you must be aware of a TV program South Park. if not then enlighten yourself.

German law expressly defines holocaust denial as a crime because (not 100% air tight case) they claim that people who deny holocaust are predominantly racists against jewish people.

kaalchakra:
sir, you are going haywire with your use of socratic irony :-).. problem with your take is that noone has the Right to judge Mohammad in the first place without getting booked for Hell`s deepest compartment.

#44 by omar_r_quraishi on February 6, 2006 0:12am PT


-- that is the case in any country in the world, even the US, where notwithstanding the First Amendment, freedom of speech does not extend to hate speech, racist speech, anti-inflammatory material and so on --


Mullah omar...wtf are you smoking..?

If the first amendment doesn`t allow hate speech, why don`t the publications of the national alliance get sued? Why are klan rallies allowed?

You should stick to paki affairs and avoiding commenting on issues regarding the American constitution, something you know nothing about..

Muslims need to realize the simple truth: You DON`T have the right to not have your feelings hurt.

People who threaten others with the Theo Van Ghogh example have brought this on themselves..So someone drew ol`mo with a bomb in his turban..get over it..