Muhammad Cartoons Set Europe and Muslims at Odds

Islam and its more conservative followers don’t make images of people. In Saudi Arabia, television had to be finessed to be permitted. Naturally, then, when some European newspapers ran cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad, peace be unto him, the reaction among some Muslims was quite heated. The alleged clash of values here overshadows a more fundamental problem – competing ignorance.

There are 12 drawings in all, and two of them stand out. One shows the founder of Islam wearing a headdress that looks like a bomb. Another shows him saying paradise is running low on virgins for suicide bombers. The last day of September, the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons. Ambassadors from Muslim nations complained to the Danish prime minister on October 20. This should have been the end of it, but on January 10, the cartoons ran in a Norwegian publication, and on January 26, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Oslo. Four days later, gunmen raided the EU's Gaza office demanding an apology. Two days ago, Jyllands-Posten did apologize (while maintaining it was perfectly legal to have printed the cartoons), but then, papers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain reprinted the drawings on February 1.

From the Muslim point of view, the drawings are contrary to Islamic law may even cross the border of blasphemy, which has historically carried the death penalty under certain varieties of Sharia law. At very least, they are insulting and in poor taste. The Kensington Review is not qualified to judge the various legal criteria that may or may not obtain, but one needn’t be a Muslim to realize that the cartoons gave offense. A passing understanding of Islamic teachings would enable one to know they would do so before they were published.

However, insults and exercises in poor taste are not illegal in Europe, nor for that matter, should they be elsewhere. Every human has the right to make a public spectacle of himself. The question is whether the insult was accidental or intentional. If accidental, an apology ought to suffice. If intentional, one must ask why? Could it be that there are simply too many suicide bombers claiming the mantle of Muhammad, peace be unto him? Could it be that huge numbers of decent Muslims have failed to convey their outrage at these idiots? (The insult is deliberate; suicide bombers are idiots regardless of the cause).

Moreover, the Islamic world must face a truth that it has historically rejected. Other faiths and non-faiths demand equal treatment. Islam has been a fairly tolerant faith, but it has always placed itself above the others. As proof, converting a Christian to Islam is considered a great triumph in an Islamic country, while a Muslim who opts to become a Christian is an apostate worthy of death. Accepting that Islam is “just another faith” to those who don’t share it is going to be very hard for many Muslims. Yet, as Reporters Without Borders told the BBC, “the reaction in the Muslim world ‘betrays a lack of understanding’ of press freedom as ‘an essential accomplishment of democracy’.” Freedom is the right to be insulting, crude and stupid without fear of reprisals. One would hope people are not insulting, crude or stupid, but those cannot be made crimes without losing something some value as much as the Faithful value the Koran, a free press.


© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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