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Mon. Feb 06, 2006

The Offense and Manipulation of Cartoons

What started out as a rather localized controversy over the simplest of “literature,” some cartoons, has now bubbled into a nearly worldwide dispute, filled with death threats, arson, and portents of greater violence, in which both sides claim centuries of cultural tradition are being violated. And while I do see some who seem genuinely offended, I also see (on both sides) a heapin’ helpin’ of what George Will has referred to as “synthetic indignation.”

Where to begin? To begin with, many in the Muslim community believe it is offensive to create an image of the Prophet Mohammed, because it is idolatrous (though there is some debate whether it is explicitly prohibited). I’m no expert on Islam, or on Europe either. But I do believe that most of us raised with “Western sensibilities” may not fully grasp the nature of that particular act and offense. I also believe that others do fully grasp it, and have used that knowledge to manipulate this event.

I found this article gave some interesting perspective on how the cartoonists are taking the reaction, and how that all started:

A spokesman for the cartoonists said: “They are in hiding around Denmark. Some of them are really, really scared. They don’t want to see the pictures reprinted all over the world. We couldn’t stop it. We tried, but we couldn’t.”

Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, president of the Danish Union of Journalists, told The Times: “They are keeping a very low profile. They are very concerned about their safety. They feel a big responsibility on their shoulders. It’s blown up so big. It is tough for them.”

The cartoonists’ names were originally printed in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. Flemming Rose, the paper’s cultural editor, invited 25 newspaper cartoonists to draw a picture of Muhammad “how they saw him”, after a children’s author complained that cartoonists would only dare illustrate a book he was writing on the life of Muhammad if they could be anonymous. Twelve cartoonists responded, had their pictures printed in September, and were paid 800 Danish krone (£73) each.

In an interview with a Swedish newspaper this week, some of the cartoonists expressed their doubts about the entire episode. “It felt a little like a lose-lose situation. If I said no, I was a coward who contributes to self-censorship. If I said yes, I became an irresponsible hate monger against Islam,” one of the cartoonists said.

Another said: “I was actually angry when I first received the letter [from Jyllands-Posten]. I thought it was a really bad idea. At first I didn’t want to participate, but then I talked it over with some friends from the Middle East, and they thought I should do it.”

Times Online: Danish cartoonists fear for their lives

Of those that were asked, only 12 cartoonists responded.

Now, a thinking person might look upon this ruckus and say, “raw data please. Show me the input that caused this, so that I may assess it with my own eyes.” This, in itself, has become an escalation of this controversy.

Here in the US, the media in various forms has seen fit to subject us to images ranging from “just a millisecond before the beheading” to “white trash chick degrades Iraqi prisoners” to “blue dress with presidential stains” ... but they somehow have largely decided their viewers and readers need to be protected from these cartoons (with a few exceptions, like the NY Sun, and the Philadelphia Enquirer).

OK, fine. I remember when the video of Daniel Pearl’s murder was floating around the Internet, there was a sizable debate about whether people should watch it. The Wall Street Journal strongly requested it not be distributed. Yet some felt they needed to see the video, just to fully grasp the evil we faced. Personally, I didn’t feel the need to see the evidence, I saw it on 9/11.

But this time, I did. However, if you feel you might find these cartoons offensive, don’t click this link.

As I said above, I don’t know if my Western mind can completely wrap itself around the full nature of the offense here (there’s also text I can’t read in several of the cartoons), but I can see where a devout Muslim might find about half of those cartoons visually offensive.

I know it isn’t the same thing. But as a Southerner, I’m sometimes subjected to stereotyped attitudes and portrayals in the media, movies, and TV. When I see some stand up comic make a joke at the expense of us dumb inbred rednecks that are surely 100% of the population of the South, I get offended. It’s just a bad comedian, but I take it a bit personally. For the half second it takes me to change the channel. Then I try to move on with my life.

But for a few seconds, yeah, the silliest and most inconsequential of mediums, a standup comic on cable TV, has left me feeling personally insulted.

However, I was raised in, and am proud of, a society where abominable groups like the KKK and Aryan Nations are still guaranteed the right to freely speak their opinion, to gather peacefully, and even march on public streets.

I was raised in, and am proud of, a society that may allow those 20 or so sad excuses for humans to don their white cone hats and sheets for a “parade,” but will also spontaneously generate ten or twenty times their number to counter-protest them.

I was raised in, and am proud of, a society that is based on the marketplace of ideas. Where, at the end of the day of that KKK parade, the marketplace has made clear, peacefully, “you’ve got the right to free speech, but so do we, and you’re outnumbered beyond the comprehension of your limited imagination. Whenever you come out into the light, we will always be there to bear witness against you.”

I was raised in, and am proud of, a society where freedom is more than just an intellectual concept, it’s a birthright that tens of thousands died to protect. Here, and in Europe, in fact.

And it’s not just an Amerkin-branded concept, as it was Voltaire who was credited with saying, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Which can also be translated in a more modern and cynical way: “In Western society, you have the right to be offended, and surely will be soon.”

I understand for many Muslims, this is simply a matter of respect. No one likes to see their religion disrespected, and you could argue that indeed is the root of many of our problems, both around the world, and right here in the USofA.

But it then becomes a matter of proportional response and/or moderation of escalation. If the object of your ire is a dozen cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper … boycott the newspaper. Condemn them publicly. Contact their sponsors and say they will be boycotted as well. Picket them. Put up a web site about them.

In short, utilize all of the time-tested and legal means widely available today to effectively counter their freedom of speech with your own.

Instead, this has escalated to death threats against the cartoonists and publishers, some of whom are now in hiding. You know, I have a downstairs neighbor who is bad about slamming his doors really hard, really often, really late. But I don’t go down there with a shotgun and blow all his doors off their hinges. It wouldn’t be … a proportional escalation (instead, I’m thinking of buying a basketball for some early morning dribbling practice).

In this case, like some perverse law of international physics, the disproportional escalation caused an equal and opposite escalation. These death threats quickly resulted in strong media solidarity across Europe, as newspapers in several countries republished the same 12 cartoons. It was as if they were saying, “oh yeah? You’re going to have to kill us, too, Sparky.” They got their back up, and issued a sort of a journalistic “No, I am Spartacus.”

Then all sorts of hell broke loose, with burning embassies in multiple countries. It’s all seemed a bit like a bad movie, frankly. An implausible plot line just so you can show lots of stuff on fire and people yelling.

What got left on the cutting room floor that might be an important missing piece of the plot?

Ahmed Akkari, a Muslim theologian from Copenhagen, said he had attended a meeting this week with the Danish intelligence service, which called the situation “very, very tense”.

He said that a text message had been sent to the mobile phones of young Muslims “telling people not to react to provocations from Right-wing extremists, like burning the Koran, but I know some Muslims will not listen to our message”.

Mr Akkari is the spokesman for a group of Danish imams and activists who brought the cartoons — plus three more offensive ones from an unknown source — to the wider attention of Muslims in trips to Egypt and Lebanon. One of the three new cartoons shows Mohammed with a pig’s snout.

He issued a warning that “a clash of civilisations” might result from the decision of newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland to reproduce the 12 cartoons.

“The latest developments are very dangerous. If some militant group goes to a church and tries to do something wrong, it can really escalate and make a danger for European communities.”

The Telegraph: Day of anger threatened over cartoons of Prophet

Now let’s pull this together. The original 12 cartoons were published in the Danish newspaper … last September. Four to five months ago. As I understand it, they generated some protest at that time, complaints were made to the government, but nothing was done, and the story never “took off” in the Western media.

So, “Ahmed Akkari, a Muslim theologian from Copenhagen,” travels to the Middle East with a couple of others, and they proceed to meet with various leaders and media to tell their tale. It then “takes off” in the Arab media. As Zahed Amanullah says, “The anger appeared to grow with the geographical distance from Denmark, with Danish and British Muslims pleading for calm to death threats in the Middle East and a storming of the Danish embassy in Indonesia.”

The other thread to pull together here is that when Ahmed Akkari & Co. arrived in the Middle East, they didn’t have 12 cartoons. They had fifteen. An article titled “Media look for answers on extra cartoons” says “The extra cartoons, whose origins are obscure, show Muhammad with a pig’s snout, a dog raping a praying Muslim and Muhammad as a pedophile demon.”

If you didn’t click that link above to view the original dozen cartoons, I can assure you, there was nothing anywhere near as visually offensive as what is described in the additional three cartoons (which I have not seen). Those three would incite a level of anger and insult far above that of the original dozen.

And Ahmed Akkari &s Co. had to know that. They’d failed to have the impact he wanted in the Western media after the September publication, so this year they took their beef to the Middle East, with a little added oomph for good measure.

Oh, and there’s this: “as soon as the row about the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten broke, angry Muslims popped up in Gaza City, and many other places, well supplied with Danish flags ready to burn [...] Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look?”

I believe there were many who saw the original 12 cartoons when they were published last year and were genuinely offended by at least some of them. And I believe there are many who we’ve seen expressing anger (and arson) in the media lately that are simply being manipulated.

I heard George Will use the phrase “synthetic indignation” in reference to something else entirely, but it stuck with me because I see it in multiple forms around our world, and it has multiple meanings.

There’s the “synthetic indignation” you often see in blogs, when some partisan hack selectively quotes a political opponent, and then voices outrage at their traitorous words (as they’ve re-portrayed them) on soybean quotas. Or when a clique starts foaming at the mouth over some particular media personality who is only viewed by 0.9% of Americans but whom they see as dangerous and beyond the pale.

In that case, it’s the indignation itself that’s largely synthetic. Then there’s the “synthetic indignation” practiced for centuries, where the indignation is real, it’s just synthetically generated. You provide the masses with some imagery and words that inflame them. They don’t have to be all true, or the whole truth. It’s the inflaming that’s important.

And you know what? There are those in the West who respond in kind, especially right here on the web. I truly believe there are those on “both sides” who would clearly like for the clash of civilizations to begin. Yesterday, please. They are the ones who paint in black and white only, as if any conflict that might involve a total of 2 billion people would be anything but shades of gray.

It’s true, it’s isn’t hard to find extreme reactions, like “Whoever defames our prophet should be executed,” and “Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up.” Or “We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible,” or a host of other examples currently in the media.

And there are many who will just leave it there, and say that’s the way “they” are reacting. But it’s never that simple.

Cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist are deeply offensive, but so is the violent reaction to the drawings from Islamic extremists, Canadian Muslims said Thursday.

“The protests in the Middle East have proven that the cartoonist was right,” said Tarek Fatah, a director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

“It’s falling straight into that trap of being depicted as a violent people and proving the point that, yes, we are.”

While quick to defend freedom of expression, Canadian Muslims said the cartoons are reminiscent of the anti-Semitic depictions of Jews common in European periodicals before the horrors of the Second World War.

Globe and Mail: Cartoons offensive, but so is violence, Canadian Muslims say

I saw Hamid Karzai on CNN saying that while Muslims had the right to be offended by the cartoons, they must also have “the courage to forgive.”

You can find other views of interest at alt.muslim, like this from Sheila Musaji:” If, as Muslims, we want to show respect for the Prophet, for the Qur’an, and for Islam, then we need to set a noble example of justice, tolerance, and respect. If we want respect from others we need to show them equal respect.”

And this from Safiyyah Ally: “Why are we so exciteable anyway? Why even care what a newspaper thinks? The cartoons, horrendous though they may be, need not affect a Muslim’s impression of the Prophet, for our tradition clearly shows him to be a man imbued with dignity, morality and goodness. The Prophet was ridiculed from the moment he started receiving revelation in Mecca more than 1400 years ago. The mockery — even the threats on his life — are well documented in the Quran and hadith literature. A few cartoons will do little to harm him — or us.”

It seems to me that, off to the side, “off the stage,” you can find voices of reason and moderation on both sides. There are many in the West who’ve said that these cartoons should be viewed in the same way we’d view an anti-Semitic cartoon, or that KKK parade. Tolerated as free speech, but otherwise shunned.

But the problem is the ones who are on the stage. This five month old publication of 12 cartoons in a small Danish newspaper has now essentially escalated into an odd international stalemate in which ambassadors of several countries have been called home.

One side has mounted protests that have been the largest and most fiery in predominantly Muslim countries that do not practice Western liberalism or democracy. They say it could get a lot worse if the Danish government (and, one would assume, the governments of France, Germany, and the other countries where these cartoons have now been published) does not apologize, and somehow muzzle this newspaper and others from ever doing this again.

On the other side, this escalation has now risen to the level of the government, which was not aware of and did not approve of this editorial decision by one newspaper. Unlike in many of the countries where the protests are largest, the Danish government does not control the media, or endorse every view within it. Despite this cultural disconnect, the Danish government has no choice but to feed into the mistaken belief they were behind it by saying, in effect, we cannot censure or censor the newspaper because our government guarantees the right to freedom of speech and a free press.

Neither side has any room to negotiate. It’s escalated way too far for that.

That’s one of the big lessons here. When you get mad and immediately “go nuclear,” when you quickly and disproportionally escalate, you are also removing many of your own options. Because there’s rarely any “going back.”

But this is an area of dispute to which we will likely return again and again. Because there’s a large disconnect between the traditions of Western democracies, and the traditions of the Islamic world as it relates to government. Many Muslims see no difference between the religious and the political, while Western societies mandate there be a separation.

Western societies also frown severely on the disproportionate response that Salman Rushdie and Theo Van Gogh got for their creative works, as these cartoonists are today.

It is both completely logical and absolutely simplistic to say that those who want to live in a society that provides freedom of speech should live in the West, and those who prefer a more Sharia based government should live in a predominantly Muslim country. But that ignores the demographic bulge of Muslims in Europe, one that will continue to grow, and it ignores the many Muslims who want more freedom and democracy in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

This combustible mix isn’t going away, and may continue to combust. One would hope that in this kind of cross-cultural dispute, people will come to realize that in order to demand respect (for your religion or your free speech), one must also give respect (for the other’s free speech or religion).

One would hope that when someone realizes they’re not getting respect, or squat, that they respond proportionally and within the constraints of that society. From the Netherlands to Saudi Arabia, those constraints vary damn widely.

Trying to change people is next to impossible, especially on such core beliefs. You can only hope to make the others respect your beliefs in at least a minimal manner, and then “agree to disagree.”

Otherwise, if our alternative to any offense we perceive is unresolved is to seek violent justice, well, the oil’s going to last a lot longer. For everybody that’s left.

Finally, the image I’m left with from all of this (so far) is indeed on of the 12 cartoons. It depicts a cartoonist working in a darkened room, under the focused beam of a single light, huddled over a fairly straightforward drawing labelled “Mohammed.” He’s got his left arm curled around the drawing to cup it from view, and is looking furtively over his shoulder to see if anyone is watching him.

That guy nailed the assignment.