Opinion - Editorials

Time for reason and restraint

Uttar Pradesh Haj and Minority Welfare Minister Yaqoob Quereshi went outrageously over the top — violating the law and all norms of propriety and decency — in announcing a cash reward of Rs.51 crore for the head of the `cartoonist' who drew offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammed. Elements like Mr. Quereshi revel in scoring a succession of own goals against secular democracy and the interests of Muslims worldwide. Such `edicts' tend to reinforce the stereotyping of Muslims and to fuel Islamophobia. There is no question that the cartoons — a dozen of them published originally in the Danish right-wing newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which has now come up with a full-scale apology, and republished in European newspapers with crass disregard for the consequences — were intended to cause hurt. The caricatures of the Prophet — one of them, as it turned out, portrayed him as a terrorist — were commissioned in order to provoke and presumably to test the limits of tolerance. It is worth noting that violence escalated only after the cartoons were deliberately reprinted on February 1. More provocation ensued in the form of a T-shirt carrying the Prophet's caricature, worn by an Italian right-wing Minister. Within India, there was little reaction until television started beaming images of protests elsewhere in the world. But by and large, despite attempts by fanatical elements to stir up trouble, Indian Muslims have been commendably restrained.

The U.P. Minister was not even well informed on the basic facts. The caricatures of the Prophet were drawn, not by a single cartoonist but by 12 of 40 cartoonists who were stupidly invited by the Danish newspaper to "draw Muhammed as they see him." The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board quickly distanced itself from the Quereshi statement, characterising it as an attempt to "incite passion" and gain "cheap publicity." This response contrasts with the unacceptable refusal of the U.P. Government to rebuke the Minister, let alone sack him. The Danish cartoons were crude, racist, and calculated to inflame. But the way to counter them was a reasoned and sustained exposure of Islamophobia and legal redress where possible. (After all, David Irving, the British historian and Nazi apologist, has just been sentenced by a Vienna court to three years in jail for exercising his `freedom of expression' to deny the Holocaust.) Writing in the Jurist, an eminent Muslim African-American law professor, Bernard K. Freamon, argues that the publishers of the cartoons are punishable under Section 266b of the Danish Penal Code. The section provides for criminal prosecution and conviction for dissemination of any communication by which a group of people is "threatened, insulted or degraded on account of their race, colour, national or ethnic origin or creed..." A counter movement, grounded in law and reason, is clearly the answer. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Mulayam Singh must make an example of Mr. Quereshi by throwing him out of his Ministry.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu