The Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad

Released February 6, 2006 (Rev. Feb 9)
The Wisdom Fund, P. O. Box 2723, Arlington, VA 22202
Article: http://www.twf.org/News/Y2006/0206-Cartoons.html

The Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad

'All freedoms, including the freedom of speech, come with
responsibility. . . . Having the right to cause offense does not make
it right to do so' by Enver Masud

[Mr. Masud is the founder of The Wisdom Fund, and recipient of a Gold
Award from the South Africa based Human Rights Foundation.]


Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that first published the cartoons of
Prophet Muhammad, has ignited a firestorm akin to that during the Salman
Rushdie affair.

It's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, had in the past rejected Jesus cartoons
saying: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the
drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an
outcry."

The paper's culture editor, Flemming Rose, said in an interview: "This
is about the question of integration and how compatible is the religion
of Islam with a modern secular society."

It is not. It is about civil society. It is about double standards. It
is about hypocrisy. It is not about a free press - which we support.

"Islam," said HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales, in a speech some
years ago, "is part of our past and present, in all fields of human
endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own
inheritance, not a thing apart."

"What we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure
to the Andalusian enlightenment, wrote Christopher Hitchens, in his
review of Maria Rosa Menocal's, "The Ornament of the World: How
Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval
Spain."

The Christian reconquest of Spain in 1492 CE led to the expulsion of its
Jews and Muslims, their forced conversion to Christianity, or death.

In India - the country with third largest Muslim population (Indonesia
is first, Pakistan is second, Bangladesh is fourth), the Muslim Emperor
Akbar [1542-1605 CE], according to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, laid the
foundations of a secular state.

Written in 622 CE, the "Constitution of Madinah," a treaty among
Muslims, non-Muslim Arabs, and Jews of Madinah has been compared with
the Mayflower Compact of 1620 CE.

Islam is compatible with a modern secular society. The West's double
standards, hypocrisy, and injustice fuel Muslim anger. For example:

On March 6, 2001 the European Court of Justice ruled that "the
European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its
institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law
and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties."

Article 5 of the Basic Law, the constitution of the Federal Republic
of Germany, "sets out the possibility of limitations on the freedom of
expression."

A challenge in 1990 to the publication of Salman Rushdie's "The
Satanic Verses" on the grounds that it contained "a blasphemous libel
concerning Almighty God (Allah) the Supreme Deity common to all the
major religions of the world" was rejected because Britain's blasphemy
law was restricted to "scurrilous vilification of the Christian
religion."

A Paris court on February 27, 1998, fined Roger Garaudy, former
Deputy Speaker of the French parliament and a convert to Islam, $40,000
for statements made in his 1996 book "The Founding Myths of Israeli
Politics." The European Court of Human Rights declared inadmissible his
appeal lodged in the case of Garaudy v. France.

Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf and David Irving are serving time in jail
in Europe for their views about the holocaust.

It has been reported that Jyllands-Posten's Rose traveled to
Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, whose web site
Campus Watch works to undermine free speech. President George W. Bush
nominated Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

It has been reported that changes to the Patriot Act sought by
President Bush would make illegal at certain gatherings signs that have
not been previously approved.

Would a U.S. president invite Zundel, Rudolf, Irving, or Garaudy to
dinner at the White House as then President Clinton invited Salman
Rushdie? Why doesn't the press support Zundel's, Rudolf's, Irving's, or
Garaudy's right to free speech?

"The principle of secularism, in the broader interpretation endorsed in
India, demands symmetric treatment of different religious communities in
politics and in the affairs of state," writes Prof. Sen in The
Argumentative Indian.

Muslims are fed up with the double standards, and the almost daily
attacks on Islam. "Muslims live their religion. We do not," writes
veteran, Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.

The violent demonstrations - which, it is reported, followed months of
peaceful protest, and rejection of requests by Muslim ambassadors to
meet with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen - may not be the path
Prophet Muhammad would have chosen, but they are understandable.

These demonstrations may be compared to the 1965 riots in the Watts
district of Los Angeles. The riots, said the Commission set up to
investigate them, "weren't the act of thugs, but rather symptomatic of
much deeper problems."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the cartoons were
"offensive," but that "we vigorously defend" individuals' right of
expression reports the Washington Post. Why didn't the U.S. object when
France banned headscarves in schools?

Freedom of expression is not the message President Bush sent to Muslims
when he bombed Al-Jazeera's news staff in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable," said President John F. Kennedy. The virtual, and
sometimes violent, exclusion of Muslims' views from mainstream debate
risks "violent revolution."

Civil society requires more than merely observing the law. Language
acceptable in a book or tabloid is not necessarily acceptable from
society's leaders - be it from the head of state, or in a major
newspaper.

"All freedoms, including the freedom of speech, come with
responsibility. . . . Having the right to cause offense does not make
it right to do so," said Terry Davis, the head of Europe's leading
human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe.


---
The Wisdom Fund
www.twf.org
.

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