Back Freedom of expression or "unnecessary offence"?
Rasheeda Bhagat
While newsrooms across Europe are puzzled, intrigued and irritated by what they consider the Islamic world's inability to understand and come to terms with a free media and its right to freedom of expression, a few voices from the same conglomerate are defending the hurt and anger in the Muslim world. They argue that it is high time the western world learnt to understand and respect non-Christian religious sensitivities.
Let us look at the core of this problem, which for the Islamic world, has been a double-whammy. In Islam, the depiction of Prophet Mohammed in any visual form is expressly prohibited. There are reasons for this; the simplest one being that Islam frowns on deification or worship of any object in the physical form; a portrait, statue, or any other object. The core belief here is that when you pray to Allah, there should be no intermediary in the form of a physical object before the devotee. In the offending cartoons, the first mistake was to give the Prophet a form; the unthinkable was to portray him as a terrorist.
To really understand why the Islamic world should erupt into fury over this, consider the silly cliché that one hears all the time: "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims." Of course, whoever coined this never took into account the IRA, the LTTE's suicide squads, and a host of militants and extremists of all hues, beginning with our own Naxals, Maoists, Naga underground network, and the ULFA.
A community sick and tired of being taunted with 9/11, being dubbed jihadis motivated by the 70 virgins they are promised in heaven, their backward educational and often economic status, their intolerance for anything non-Islamic, etc., was close to snapping point.
The explosive reaction that has resulted in the torching of the Danish embassy in Beirut, attacks on the European Union in Palestine, attempts to kidnap Danish and other European nationals, and the boycott of Danish goods in the Arab world, including in that haven of prosperity called Dubai, might not have come if Islam as a religion had not been considered by its practitioners to be under attack by western forces.
It is their vulnerability, coupled with the frustration of being ruled by autocratic regimes, that has kept them "backward" in a myriad of ways, which has made the underlying volcano of suspicion and hate erupt. As a banner in one of the protest processions in a Muslim country proclaimed, summing up Muslim sentiment, "Prophet Mohammed cannot be the subject of a joke". Period. For Muslims, the Quaran and the Prophet are very, very sacred, and any attempt to denigrate them is not tolerated.
I wonder how many non-Muslims know that in Muslim households, there are specific places assigned for keeping the Quaran, which is often kept in its own special case. After a reading, it cannot be casually kept anywhere in the house. It has to go back into the case and its allotted place.
Other religions might not treat their scriptures with the same amount of fastidiousness, but in a multi-cultural society, you have to learn to accept the beliefs of other people. And here it must be said that the same holds true of Hinduism.
This is as good a time as any for that segment of Indian Muslims — mercifully minuscule — which makes fun of the concept of multiple Hindu gods, the romantic interludes of gods and goddesses, etc., to sit up and take note that this has to be respected too. You might not understand or believe in it, but you have to respect your fellow citizens' set of religious beliefs. And the fiery speeches from pulpits and in Friday sermons that the kafirs (non-believers in Islam) will rot in hell have to stop too.
Reverting to the cartoons, while the Danish newspaper itself has explained that its intention was not to hurt the religious sensitivities of Muslims and apologised for any hurt caused, the Danish government has expressed no regret, as Norway has done.
The latter's Foreign Minister, Mr Jonas Gahr Store, in an e-mail to the Norwegian embassies wrote: "I fully understand that these drawings are seen to give offence by Muslims worldwide... Your faith has the right to be respected by us. The cartoons in the Christian paper Magazinet are not constructive in building the bridges which are necessary between people with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Instead, they contribute to suspicion and unnecessary conflict. Let it be clear that the Norwegian government condemns every expression or act which expresses contempt for people on the basis of their religion or ethnic origin."
Complimenting British newspapers for not publishing the cartoons, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said that while freedom of expression had to be respected, there was no need to "to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory."
Pointing out that there were taboos in every religion, he said: "I believe that the re-publication of these cartoons has been insulting, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong."
Interestingly, and sensibly, on Monday, Lebanon apologised to Denmark, after thousands of demonstrators in Beirut set fire to the Danish embassy. After an emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday night, its Information Minister, Mr Ghazi Aridi, said the Lebanese government had "rejected and condemned the riots... that harmed Lebanon's reputation and its civilised image".
Significantly, an Associated Press report said that of the 200 arrested in Beirut, 76 were Syrians, 35 Palestinians and 38 Lebanese. The apology from the Lebanese government is indeed exemplary and it has to be noted that no such apology has come, or can be expected from Syria, where too the Danish embassy was attacked and burnt.
Coming to the core issue of freedom of expression, journalists in Europe are agonising over this issue. The original cartoons were published last September and, but for the Internet and the revolution in communication, might have gone unnoticed by the larger Muslim world.
The debate on most western television channels is freedom of expression versus religious sensitivity. It is not as though this is the first time that Prophet Mohammed is being attacked or insulted. There has been enough published literature where he has been described by a host of other insulting names. One has often found such drivel forwarded to one's Inbox, and treated it with the contempt it deserves, designating it to the trash-bin of cyber-space.
While editors of publications in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands, decided to publish the offending cartoons, the British newspapers exercised restraint.
Mr Robert Thomson, Editor of The Times of London, was quoted thus in an IHT report: "Every journalist in Europe is agonising over this issue. This is not about intimidation. It is a complex debate about informing readers and causing offence unnecessarily."
So, at the end of the day, as the violent protests continue, the question is: Was this "causing offence unnecessarily"? However, it is important not to confuse this episode with the unjustified fatwa against Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses by Iran's late leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, or the knife attack in 1994 in Egypt on the Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, for allegedly insulting Islam in one of his novels, and the more recent acts of intolerance against any criticism of Islam.
The most unfortunate part of this entire imbroglio is that it leaves room for exploitation by violent or jihadi brand of Muslims to tell the rest of the community that their religion is under threat by the "Crusaders" and that embracing the gun or the bomb is the only way to defend it.
(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)
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