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Liberalism and the “Satanic Sketches”

By Saad Omar Khan

The Danish cartoons incident is probably one which most people would understandably

want to forget. It seemed to have brought out nothing but mutual hostility between Muslims and

the West, and was certainly considered an international relations disaster for Denmark. For

many in the West, time seemed to be repeating itself: like the Satanic Verses controversy,

Muslims seemed once again at odds with Western values and freedoms. For many Muslims, the

cartoons seemed to show nothing more than a bigoted, anti-Islamic streak in Western society. It

may seem that bringing up old wounds might be inappropriate; yet in a continent constantly

trying to fixate the position of Muslims as either intrinsically foreign or capable of integration,

discussing the crisis is necessary as it showcases a flaw in European liberalism that may preclude

any meaningful dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims. As deplorable as the angry,

intemperate, and often violent attitudes of many Muslims were, the cartoons and their supporters

did not display any greater sophistication. Despite the claims of the many of the cartoon’s

supporters that they were fighting against a form of religious totalitarianism, they were, either

consciously or unconsciously, supporting an all-toghether different form of narrow-mindedness.

The so-called “Satanic sketches” published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten

were probably not intended to offend. In response to a claim that a children’s author could not

find anyone willing to illustrate a book on the Prophet Muhammad, the editors of the newspaper

invited cartoonists to offer their interpretations. The cartoons published on September 30, 2005

depicted the Prophet of Islam in various caricatured forms, most of them far from flattering

ways. The most notorious included one with the Prophet holding a curved knife in front of two

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veiled women, another shows the Prophet with a bomb in his turban and yet another shows the

Prophet warning off suicide-bombers from heaven by announcing the lack of available virgins.

Most in Denmark probably saw the cartoons as innocuous, not realizing the traditional

Islamic prohibition in depicting the Prophet in any form, or not appreciating the stereotypical

nature of many of the depictions. Regardless, the Muslim reaction in Denmark was

understandably one of outrage. This outrage spread to Europe and the rest of the world as the

cartoons were not only circulated by Muslims but also reprinted by dozens of newspapers across

the world in subsequent months. Soon the entire crisis escalated to violence, including the

burning of embassies in Syria and Lebanon, death threats directed at the cartoonists, and the

deaths of more than a hundred protestors in total.

Jyllands-Posten could not have anticipated this level of reaction and anger on the part of

Muslims worldwide. Joern Mikkelsen, the editor in chief of the newspaper, defended accusations

of prejudice on their part by saying “No, we did not have a cynical, mean ambition to upset

Muslims around the world. No we did not have a cynical, mean ambition to upset Muslims in

Denmark. No, we were not an accomplice of extreme anti-Muslim sentiment around the world.”1

As far as they were concerned, therefore, the newspaper’s ambitions seemed more inclined

towards engaging readers in a debate about censorship than really participating in journalistic

Muslim-baiting. At the same time, one could have been easily fooled into believing that the

cartoons were part of some Islamophobic tract. Even ignoring the Islamic prohibition against

depictions of the Prophet as a general rule, one cannot help to see cartoons of the Prophet with a

bomb in his turban or the image of the Prophet holding a knife in front of veiled women as more

akin to crude, archaic Orientalist images of the East as a land violence and intrinsic barbarity.

1 “Cartoon editor attacks misreporting”, June 6, 2006.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1791557,00.html

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If the cartoons were displayed by themselves, without any broader contextualization, they

could easily have been seen as simply insensitive. What crossed the line from mere political

incorrectness to something a bit more disquieting was the text written in the centre of the page

displaying the cartoons reading: “The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims.

They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious

feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you

must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule”2 The type of language used here does

not seem indicative of the rhetoric of even-tempered dialogue or intellectual debate, but rather

the language of xenophobia, the idea that Muslims cannot interact with “modern, secular

society”, and, by extension, are thus inherently opposed to the West.

Denmark has had a long history of democratic freedoms, especially in terms of

journalistic expression. Critical mockery directed towards authority figures and traditional

values has a long and proud history. Like all societies where freedom of speech is held sacred,

there is an idea that irreverency has a special place as a societal equalizer. Yet trying to poke fun

at the Danish royal family or any other public figure in a Danish context where satire of such

authority figures is typical is not the same as attacking a representative figure of a minority

people who already feel marginalized in a society and where xenophobia and anti-Muslim

sentiment is particularly rampant.3 There is also a difference between genuine liberalism and

narrow-mindedness in a liberal guise. Muslims do not object to satire or criticism anymore than

other groups do. The cartoons, however, did not come across as some intellectual critique of

Islam or religion as a whole or a cry against fanaticism, but more as a deliberate form of

2 Translation of text from “Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_cartoons . 3 Karen Wren, "Cultural racism: something rotten in the state of Denmark?", Social & Cultural Geography, Volume

2, Number 2, 1 June 2001.

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mockery and marginalization. Jyllands-Posten itself has been accused of a conservative, anti-

immigrant stance in its editorials.4

The newspaper’s cultural editor, Flemming Rose, when out of his way to deny these

allegations, instead accusing many of Jyllands-Posten’s Muslim detractors of essentially not

understanding the nature of modern democracy by saying “if a believer demands that I, as a

nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my

submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.”5 Mr. Rose seems to be missing

the point. As he himself admitted, journalists often exercise self-restraint in matters of ethics and

good-taste. Jyllands-Posten refused to publish satirical cartoons depicting Jesus on those very

grounds. Many European countries use legal measures to isolate the purveyors of such

repugnant ideals such as Holocaust denial because they see the need to limit certain areas of

speech. What he should have appreciated was that the crude depictions of the Prophet were

emblematic of a very one-dimensional view of Islam. Displaying them at a time when the

Islamic-Western divide has never been higher does not support the notion that Jyllands-Posten

was making some bold step towards freedom, tolerance, and rational dialogue between

civilizations. Rather than describing all detractors as extremists or as kowtowing to totalitarian

impulses, some forethought should have been given as to what value and purpose the cartoons

would have in the place and time in which they were published.

As the crisis seems to be fading from memory, one should not be inclined toward the

notion that inter-cultural dialogue is impossible and unnecessary. It should be obvious that

cultures do not fundamentally share the same values; it is precisely the contrast in values that

4 “The Torch: Report to the UN on Discrimination and Racism in Denmark”

http://www.faklen.dk/en/doc/somalia.shtml 5 Flemming Rose, “Why I published those cartoons”, February 19, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html

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define the separateness of societies. The cartoon issue is as much a question of the divide

between religious and secular values as it is the divide between the West and Islam. The

assumption of the triumph of secular values is overstated if not entirely false. In the modern

world, the secular and the religious exist side-by-side. It is incidents like the cartoons that point

to a certain lack of ease between the two domains. Flemming Rose’s aforementioned statement

concerning the imposition of foreign taboos in a secular society has a bidirectional quality: just

as one religious community cannot impose themselves on a non-religious society, secularists

must appreciate what gives meaning to that religious community and use their secular values as a

means of encouraging genuine egalitarian pluralism as opposed to a hectoring monoculture.

Those who remain pessimistic about the state of inter-cultural relations in the wake of

crisis should note something mentioned by Karen Armstrong in recent article. During a meeting

of the United Nation’s Alliance of Civilizations this year, polls amongst Muslim youths showed

that 97% of those deeply offended by the cartoons also strongly deplored the violent actions of

Muslims protestors across the Islamic world. It was also reported that, while most Danes were

alarmed at what they perceived to be a threat to their freedom of expression, they were also

deeply unhappy with the offence felt by Muslims by the cartoons.6 There is a suggestion,

therefore, that the dire proclamations of conservatives during the crisis that multi-culturalism and

political correctness are worthless ideals are wrong. While Muslims and non-Muslim Danes

certainly held fast to their values, they were alarmed at the hostility and ugliness of the entire

situation. Thus, rather than seeing Western and Islamic societies as two grimacing faces staring

across an imaginary divide, Westerners and Muslims alike should now realize the possibility for

values and concerns to overlap between “civilizations”.

6 Karen Armstrong, “We can defuse this tension between competing conceptions of the sacred”, March 11, 2006.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1728653,00.html

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It is this sense of dialogue that was completely forgotten by all sides during the crisis,

almost as if both the cartoon’s unequivocal supporters and the extremists who demanded violent

action were twin sides of a similar venality. A desire for some measure of mutual respect and

tolerance is not the same as caving into to the demands of genuine fanatics. The cartoons were

used to “prove” that Muslims were, by nature, fundamentally illiberal, especially in light of the

violent reactions stirred up by the crisis. No democratic nation has an obligation to apologize for

its freedoms. The Danish government in particular was perfectly justified in staunchly

preventing any government intervention in a private journalistic matter. At the same time, no

group (religious or otherwise) should be expected to simply not be offended when another group

violates its taboos. Sacred cows are universal; those in the West as well as the East, the secular

and the religious, all have lines where they fear to tread across. Understanding is not the same

thing as self-censorship and shallow political correctness. True liberalism, both as a political

ideal and as a general sense of social openness, has to accept the idea that both secular and

religious forms of “sacredness” need to be understood and respected.