[lit-ideas] Re: update on the Muhammad cartoons
- From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 05:34:48 -0800 (PST)
Spiegel has an interesting background piece on this:
Alienated Danish Muslims Sought Help from Arabs
(...)
Islam forbids the depiction of the religion's founder
Muhammad, and Muslims in Denmark grew outraged after
the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, a major Danish daily,
published a series of 12 political cartoons in
September that depicted the prophet in various
disparaging contexts. When they responded -- through
letters to the editor and complaints within the
community -- they felt ignored.
One group of Danish Muslims, led by a young imam named
Ahmed Akkari, grew so frustrated by the inability of
Muslims to get their message across in Denmark that
they compiled a dossier of racist and culturally
insensitive images circulating in the country and took
them on an road show in the Arab World to raise
awareness of the discrimination they faced.
There is currently a climate (in Denmark) that is
contributing to an increase in racism," the group
warned in the introduction to a 43-page dossier it
prepared before traveling to Egypt in late 2005. It
dedicated the rest of the dossier to "drawings and
pictures" that disparaged Islam and "denigrated the
prophet." The offending images included Muhammad with
a bomb wrapped in his turban. The Muslim community in
the small Scandinavian country erupted in anger -- not
only did the images denigrate Islam's central figure,
many felt the drawings also equated all Muslims with
terrorism.
(...)
Akkari and his group traveled together to Cairo, where
they visited Al-Azhar University, which has a
reputation for building bridges between Egypt and
Europe. Akkari said he wanted to draw attention to the
racist climate in order to prevent a repeat of the
Theo Van Gogh drama in the Netherlands. In November
2004, a radical Islamist murdered Van Gogh, motivated
by the filmmaker's criticism of Muslims.
Kaare Quist, a journalist at the Danish daily Ekstra
Bladet, who has been reporting on the story for a
number of weeks, says the group found a number of
highly placed officials in the Arab World keen to
listen to its message. Quist told SPIEGEL ONLINE they
included representatives of the Arab League, Egypt's
grand mufti and other high-level officials. The trip
the group made, Quist believes, helped to raise
attention to the political cartoons in Jyllands-Posten
and prejudices against Denmark's Muslims. some 270,000
of Denmark's 5.4 million population are Muslim, making
up 5 percent of the population.
Quist says the dossier they shared in Egypt may have
been far more damaging than the Jyllands-Posten
episode -- and it may have further exacerbated
misgivings between Denmark and the Arab world. In
addition to the now notorious caricatures published by
the newspaper which have now spread like wildfire in
the blogosphere, it also included patently offensive
anti-Muslim images that had been sent to the group by
other Muslims living in Denmark. The origins or
authenticity of the images haven't been confirmed, but
their content was nevertheless damaging. Quist says
the dossier included three obscene caricatures -- one
showed Muhammad as a pedophile, another as a pig and
the last depicted a praying Muslim being raped by a
dog. "The drawings in Jyllands-Posten were harmless
compared to these," he says.
For his part, Akkari said the more outrageous images
were clearly separated from those published by the
paper when the group met with Muslim leaders. "They
were at the back of the folder," he told
Stiftstidende. By including them, the group sought to
show the kind of hate they feel subjected to in
Denmark.
Stoking the fire?
But Quist claims the group may also have perpetuated
misunderstandings during its trip. The reporter says
that Arabs who visited with the group later claimed
Akkari's delegation had given them the impression that
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen somehow
controlled or owned Jyllands-Posten.
"I believe that this misunderstanding was
unintentional," Quist said, reviewing his research.
"But I also think that they are also trying to profit
from the agitation."
(...)
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,398624,00.html
Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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