FINALLY, some sense...

The following is an article about the DANISH CARTOONS. It's by Robert Fisk (a very intelligent and well-informed person). More of his writings on the Middle East can be found here.

(I know the article might be a bit 'long' for some but I totally thinks it's worth a read!)

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Danish cartoons: provocative and perverse

By Robert Fisk

This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our saints and prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights and freedoms, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith.

SO now it’s cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). Ambassadors are withdrawn from Denmark, the Saudis and the Syrians complain, Gulf nations clear their shelves of Danish produce, Gaza gunmen threaten the European Union and foreign journalists.

In Denmark, Fleming Rose, the ‘culture’ editor of the pip-squeak newspaper which published these silly cartoons — last September, for heaven’s sake — announces that we are witnessing a “clash of civilizations” between secular western democracies and Islamic societies. This does prove, I suppose, that Danish journalists follow in the true tradition of Hans Christian Anderson. Oh lordy, lordy. What we’re witnessing is the childishness of civilizations.

So let’s start off with the Department of Home Truths. This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam. For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our saints and prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights and freedoms, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not. They have kept their faith through innumerable historical vicissitudes. We have lost our faith ever since Matthew Arnold wrote about the sea’s “long withdrawing roar.” That’s why we talk about ‘the West versus Islam’ rather than ‘Christians versus Islam’ — because there aren’t an awful lot of Christians left in Europe. There is no way we can get round this by setting up all the other world religions and asking why we are not allowed to make fun of the Prophet.

Besides, we can exercise our own hypocrisy over religious feelings. I happen to remember how more than a decade ago, a film called the Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus making love to a woman. In Paris, someone set fire to the cinema showing the movie, killing a young Frenchman. I also happen to remember a major US university which invited me to give a lecture three years ago. I did. It was entitled. “September 11, 2001: ask who did it but, for God’s sake, don’t ask why.” When I arrived, I found that the university authorities had deleted the phrase “for God’s sake” because “we didn’t want to offend certain sensibilities. Ah-ha, so we have ‘sensibilities’ too.

In other words, while we claim that Muslims must be good secularists when it comes to free speech — or cheap cartoons — we can worry about adherents to our own precious religion just as much. I also enjoyed the pompous claims of European statesmen that they cannot control free speech or newspapers. This is also nonsense. Had that cartoon of the Prophet shown instead a chief rabbi with a bomb-shaped hat, we would have had “anti-semitism” screamed into our ears — and rightly so — just as we often hear the Israelis complain about anti-semitic cartoons in Egyptian newspapers.

Furthermore, in some European nations — France is one, Germany and Austria are among the others — it is forbidden by law to deny acts of genocide. In France, for example, it is illegal to say that the Jewish Holocaust or the Armenian Holocaust did not happen (wait for Turkey’s problems over the latter if it ever gets into the EU). So it is in fact impermissible to make certain statements in European nations. I’m still uncertain whether these laws attain their objectives: however much you may prescribe Holocaust denial, anti-semites will always try to find a way round.

The point, however, is that we can hardly exercise our political restraints or laws to prevent anti-semitic cartoons or Holocaust deniers and then start screaming about secularism when we find that Muslims object to our provocative and insulting image of the Prophet.

For many Muslims, the ‘Islamic’ reaction to this whole squalid affair is an embarrassment. There is perfectly good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some element of reform introduced to their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue — if it allowed for a serious dialogue and no one would have minded. But it was clearly intended to be provocative. It was so outrageous that it only caused reaction. And this is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntington garbage about a ‘clash of civilizations’. Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that’s what happens when you topple dictators).

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of ‘Palestine’. There’s a message here, isn’t there? That America’s policies and ‘regime change’ and ‘democracy’ in the Middle East — are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes which we imposed on them. For the Danish cartoon to be dumped on top of this fire is dangerous indeed.

In any event, it’s not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Quran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Islam as a violent religion. It is not. Or do we want to make it so? —(c) The Independent