the things we do or do not say

Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:48:59 +0100From: “porculus”Subject: Re: publication of “Jyllands-Posten” cartoons is not [7x]>> a. not funny; and>> b. extremely poorly drawn.but you all know free speech was always gotten in fight & in blur period & motives for most of time saying huge bullshit, as the king is an ass, my boss is a fuckard & my mother the greatest bitch the world ever done & not as the legend say..as ‘my name is fritz kurtz, i born in 1215, the earth turn around the sun, i claim it but i would never be in a dictionnary & what disgust me is to know it’s another one would be in dictionnary at my place..cause he retracted this fucking coward’ baaah these drawing are just ordinary & dayly cartoon product, no more good no more bad & saying this is really an offense to all truckdrivers of my familly & i want you all under fatwa of kick in the ass & belgium muhla entartement threat.. ‘not funny’, ‘extremely poorly drawn’, ‘stupid’, ‘idiot’, ‘nasty’ ‘bad tasted’.. chance you have these words resounded for making just me to think of the beloved spitting image of my best friend..otherwise————————————————————————–Date: 19 Feb 06 17:17, Jyllands-PostenFrom: Flemming Rose, culture editor of Jyllands-PostenSubject: Why I Published Those CartoonsChildish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people’s religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn’t mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages.So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.But the cartoon story is different.Those examples have to do with exercising restraint because of ethical standards and taste; call it editing. By contrast, I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn’t to provoke gratuitously — and we certainly didn’t intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.At the end of September, a Danish standup comedian said in an interview with Jyllands-Posten that he had no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran.This was the culmination of a series of disturbing instances of self-censorship. Last September, a Danish children’s writer had trouble finding an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Three people turned down the job for fear of consequences. The person who finally accepted insisted on anonymity, which in my book is a form of self-censorship. European translators of a critical book about Islam also did not want their names to appear on the book cover beside the name of the author, a Somalia-born Dutch politician who has herself been in hiding.Around the same time, the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.)Finally, at the end of September, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with a group of imams, one of whom called on the prime minister to interfere with the press in order to get more positive coverage of Islam.So, over two weeks we witnessed a half-dozen cases of self-censorship, pitting freedom of speech against the fear of confronting issues about Islam. This was a legitimate news story to cover, and Jyllands-Posten decided to do it by adopting the well-known journalistic principle: Show it, don’t tell it. I wrote to members of the association of Danish cartoonists asking them “to draw Muhammad as you see him.” We certainly did not ask them to make fun of the prophet. Twelve out of 25 active members responded.We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.The cartoons do not in any way demonize or stereotype Muslims. In fact, they differ from one another both in the way they depict the prophet and in whom they target. One cartoon makes fun of Jyllands-Posten, portraying its cultural editors as a bunch of reactionary provocateurs.Another suggests that the children’s writer who could not find an illustrator for his book went public just to get cheap publicity. A third puts the head of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party in a lineup, as if she is a suspected criminal.One cartoon — depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban — has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet.On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those.Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn’t intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But 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.This is exactly why Karl Popper, in his seminal work “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” insisted that one should not be tolerant with the intolerant. Nowhere do so many religions coexist peacefully as in a democracy where freedom of expression is a fundamental right. In Saudi Arabia, you can get arrested for wearing a cross or having a Bible in your suitcase, while Muslims in secular Denmark can have their own mosques, cemeteries, schools, TV and radio stations.I acknowledge that some people have been offended by the publication of the cartoons, and Jyllands-Posten has apologized for that. But we cannot apologize for our right to publish material, even offensive material. You cannot edit a newspaper if you are paralyzed by worries about every possible insult. I am offended by things in the paper every day: transcripts of speeches by Osama bin Laden, photos from Abu Ghraib, people insisting that Israel should be erased from the face of the Earth, people saying the Holocaust never happened. But that does not mean that I would refrain from printing them as long as they fell within the limits of the law and of the newspaper’s ethical code. That other editors would make different choices is the essence of pluralism.As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.Since the Sept. 30 publication of the cartoons, we have had a constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people’s beliefs. Never before have so many Danish Muslims participated in a public dialogue — in town hall meetings, letters to editors, opinion columns and debates on radio and TV. We have had no anti-Muslim riots, no Muslims fleeing the country and no Muslims committing violence. The radical imams who misinformed their counterparts in the Middle East about the situation for Muslims in Denmark have been marginalized. They no longer speak for the Muslim community in Denmark because moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against them.In January, Jyllands-Posten ran three full pages of interviews and photos of moderate Muslims saying no to being represented by the imams. They insist that their faith is compatible with a modern secular democracy.A network of moderate Muslims committed to the constitution has been established, and the anti-immigration People’s Party called on its members to differentiate between radical and moderate Muslims, i.e. between Muslims propagating sharia law and Muslims accepting the rule of secular law. The Muslim face of Denmark has changed, and it is becoming clear that this is not a debate between “them” and “us,” but between those committed to democracy in Denmark and those who are not.This is the sort of debate that Jyllands-Posten had hoped to generate when it chose to test the limits of self-censorship by calling on cartoonists to challenge a Muslim taboo. Did we achieve our purpose? Yes and no. Some of the spirited defenses of our freedom of expression have been inspiring. But tragic demonstrations throughout the Middle East and Asia were not what we anticipated much less desired. Moreover, the newspaper has received 104 registered threats, 10 people have been arrested, cartoonists have been forced into hiding because of threats against their lives and Jyllands-Posten’s headquarters have been evacuated several times due to bomb threats. This is hardly a climate for easing self-censorship.Still, I think the cartoons now have a place in two separate narratives, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe. The narrative in the Middle East is more complex, but that has very little to do with the cartoons.————————————————————————–Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:45:34 +0100From: Louise Moana KolffSubject: Re: publication of “Jyllands-Posten” cartoons is not “freedom of thepress”

Logically I can follow both points of view, and agree “freedom of the press” is an important and interesting discussion.

Subjectively, however, as a Dane I cannot help feel that the publication of the cartoons was wrong. In this discussion it is important to not only look at whether or not the press has the “right” to publish the cartoons, but to also understand what lead to the publication, and what is going on in the Danish society at the moment. The whole debate was originally fuelled by the fact that the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in October refused to meet with 11 muslim ambassadors to even discuss the issue of the cartoons. A decision to dismiss any form of debate, that angered and disappointed the Danish muslim community. A symptom of the political climate currently existing in Denmark.I have not been living in Denmark for the last 7 years, and am shocked every 6 months when I visit. The political climate, and the mentality of the people and the press has changed so extremely over the years, that I wonder what happened to the Denmark and the Danes I thought I knew. When returning with the train during the last elections, my first impression after crossing the border was a row of posters along the platform with the slogan “A fresh breath of air over the country”. This was part of the campaign for the very right wing nationalistic party “Dansk Folkeparti” (Danish People’s Party), which is now part of the government coalition. Parliament members of this party have publicly come with statements, which would be completely unacceptable and often illegal coming from members of a government party in most other EU countries.A few examples: Pia Kj=E6rsgaard (the party leader) 2005: “They would never have been able to imagine (in 1900), that large parts of Copenhagen and other cities in 2005 would be populated by people of a lower level of civilization. Bringing with them primitive and terrible customs like honour killing, forced marriage, halal butchery and blood revenge. That’s exactly what’s happening.”Jesper Langballe (said in parliament) 2002: “… we have said that Islam must be fought against, because of course it must be, just like nazism and communism was fought against… This means fighting a religion, that with the expression of Harvig Frisch, is a pest over Europe.”This is the tone the debate has been allowed to take. And when it has become acceptable and legal to use such language by members of the government, then the norm of what is morally acceptable to say in the public debate and the press also shifts.I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say, that in the press maybe 80% of the news and discussion is about foreigners, integration, and the government’s policy towards immigrants and refugees (It would be interesting to know whether there are actually statistics…). Therefore the Danes are constantly bombarded by this issue, making it into the biggest “problem” of Danish society (though the number of immigrants and descendants of immigrants is less than 8% of the population). Many new immigration and integration laws have been passed within the last years making it extremely difficult for immigrants and foreigners in general. The laws are some of the toughest in Europe.So in the light of this political and public climate, the cartoons have less to do with the freedom of press, and more to do with a continuation of the role the press has been playing in general in hyping the issue of “the Muslim threat” and “the foreign invasion” to an all time high. Satire in a balanced public debate is very different to satire in a country where the government and press have already identified and promoted the idea of the “scapegoat”. It is then not a question of whether or not the press should have the right to publish the cartoons, but whether or not the publication will have a positive or negative effect on society. In this case I would without doubt say the effects have been devastating.–Louise Moana Kolff————————————————————————–“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”–19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard————————————————————————–

(photo credits: top from Lucy Orta workshop, Fluid Architecture, 2002; bottom from Douglas Gordon)

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