[nasional_list] [ppiindia] Alienated Danish Muslims Sought Help from Arabs
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- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:02:58 +0100
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February 1, 2006 Print | Send this article | Feedback
CRISIS IN DENMARK
Alienated Danish Muslims Sought Help from Arabs
By SPIEGEL Staff
Twelve drawings of Muhammad printed in a major Danish newspaper have turned
millions of Muslims against Denmark. And one man's mission has transformed the
caricatures into the stuff of international diplomacy. The Arab world, though,
isn't being given the full story.
REUTERS
Yemeni women hold up banners calling for a boycott of Danish products.
It was just twelve simple drawing published in a Danish newspaper. But they
have triggered an international relations crisis for Copenhagen -- and
potentially the rest of Europe. The drawings depicted the prophet Muhammed, a
major no-no for Muslims. The result has been protests and boycotts in the Arab
world, and soul searching in Denmark and Europe.
The explosiveness of the tensions between Danes and the Arab World this week
drew ugly comparisons to a conflict of civilizations and raised uncomfortable
memories of the fatwa issued against author Salman Rushdie in the 1980s over
his novel "The Satanic Verses," which Muslim groups claim disparaged their
religion's central figure, Muhammad. But Denmark's crisis has been simmering
for months.
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.
Tivoli Gardens and Islamophobia
To Muslim leaders in Denmark like Akkari and fellow imam Abu Laban, the images
provided evidence of an Islamophobia that they believe permeates Danish
society. Worse yet, they felt their protests against racism had been ignored.
Newspapers failed to publish their letters to the editor and politicians seemed
unwilling to listen. "As a group in society, we've simply been ignored," Akkari
told the Aarhus-based daily Stiftstidende earlier this month.
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.
REUTERS
A police officer stands in front of the Danish newspaper Jyllands Post's
building in Copenhagen.
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."
Still, whether the trip by Akkari's group had any impact or not, Fogh Rasmussen
and the editors of Jyllands-Posten are on the defensive this week, dodging bomb
threats and a growing diplomatic crisis. The episode also sparked a strong
debate in the European media about free speech and whether editors in other
European countries should stand together in support of free speech and a Danish
paper that pushes the wrong buttons or whether they should scorn a series of
cartoons that perpetuated uncomfortable stereotypes about Muslims.
The newspaper's editor issued an apology this week. And the Danish prime
minister, who earlier said it would be inappropriate for him to apologize for a
newspaper's right to free of speech, did say he hoped the apology would
"contribute to the comfort of those who have been hurt."
REUTERS
Danish food products have been removed from stores across the Arab world,
including this supermarket in Amman, Jordan.
But sentiment against Denmark is strong. Earlier this week, Arab countries
including Saudi Arabia, Libya and Jordan, have staged loosely organized,
impromptu boycotts that have led many companies, including France's Carrefour
supermarket chain, to remove Danish products from their shelves. Denmark's
Jyske Bank has estimated that a one-year Arab boycott of Danish food products
could result in lost revenues of ?322 million and the loss of as many as 4,000
jobs.
In addition, Arabs have taken their protests to the street, to the Internet and
to the sphere of official international diplomacy. Arab hackers have attacked
the server of Jyllands-Posten's Web site and several Arab countries -- most
recently Syria on Wednesday -- have recalled their ambassadors from Copenhagen.
With reporting by Yassin Musharbash and Anna Reimann.
: Blogs discussing this story
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