Akram's Razor - Reflections on Islam, Muslims & America

Danish embassy bombed in Islamabad

The Danish embassy in Islamabad was bombed today. No Danes were hurt, but several innocent Pakistanis lost their lives to this senseless savagery.

Which makes sense in a grisly way, as throughout this ridiculous conflict (about which I've blogged at length) the victims of these so called defenses of Islam have and continue to be mostly Muslim. In fact, the organization most devastated by this terror attack an UNDP supported NGO that is, unlike these zealots, helping the people of Paksitan.

The Hindu : International : 6 die in blast at Danish embassy

The brunt of the explosion was taken by the office of a UNDP-backed NGO, located opposite the embassy. The front portion of the building caved in completely, with papers and files strewn around.

Nice work. Perhaps for their next feat of idiotic savagery, the mullahs will target the Edhi Foundation?

As if Pakistan doesn't have enough problems these days.

The only shaheeds there were those poor security guards.

[To see all posts on this topic, go to the "The Danish Cartoon" category page, which lists what I've written on this in chronological order. Use the ">>" and "<<" links at the bottom of the page to navigate through the list, which is long.]

OBL threatens Europe after the republication of the Danish cartoons

The latest development in the cartoon wars.

Bin Laden slams EU over prophet cartoons - Yahoo! News

Osama bin Laden criticized the publication of drawings insulting to the Prophet Muhammad in a new audio message posted late Wednesday and warned Europeans of a strong reaction to come.

The message, which appeared on a militant Web site that has carried al-Qaida statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group's media wing al-Sahab, showed a still image of bin Laden aiming with an AK-47.

The idiocy never ends. This controversy will probably still rage in a millenium, when the world is run by roaches.

Abdul Sattar on Danish cartoons

Abdul Sattar has a good post on the latest spasm of conflict over the Danish cartoons. [HT: Suhaib Webb, via Mere Islam]

Notes on the Cartoon Controversy « “…perhaps they may Reflect…”

“God will not change the condition of a people, until they change what is within themselves.” (13:11)

It is time to stop burning flags, and start burning desires.

Stop yelling in the streets against people who are overjoyed at your anger, and whisper to Allah who will become overjoyed at your prayer.

Stop breaking, burning, and screaming.
Start building, learning, and calling.

I really like the "burning desires" line. Rumi meets Che.

Elsewhere, Suhaib Webb observes:

Suhaib Webb » Blog Archive » Please tell me as to what you think we can do as Muslims on the issue of the Cartoons? Suhaib Webb

Thus, we need to move beyond emotional reactions and ignorant articulations towards a mature method of dissent that agrees with our religious, cultural, political and social realities. Violence, hyper emotionalism and the like are doing nothing to serve the interest of the Umma. In fact, they have done more to harm it, then anything else. Was not Rushdi made by our own reactions and over emotionalism? Before that he couldn’t sell a paper.

Hear hear!

A minor quibble:  Rushdie was (and, love him or hate him, remains) a major (if, in my philistine opinion, occasionally contrived) writer. I think that to dismiss him as a hack, as many Muslims instinctively do, only undermines our credibility in this discussion.

There's no question, though, that the tremendous outcry and incredibly self defeating overreactions by some Muslims are what made him so famous outside literary circles. Were it not for this controversy, he probably wouldn't have become a household name, much less an icon of Western civilization. So Suhaib's general point is right on.

Also, this is neither here nor there, but one odd twist that  most people have forgotten is that before The Satanic Verses, Rushdie actually had a good record of defending immigrants and Muslims in the British media against xenophobia.  (See Ziaddin Sardar's Distorted Imagination, which acknowledges this before it argues that that Rushdie, like V.S. Naipaul, is a postcolonial "brown sahib".)

New skirmishes in Denmark over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons

Speaking of Denmark, there have been interesting developments surrounding the cartoons that launched a thousand boycotts not so long ago.

Uffe Elleman-Jensen, an internationally respected Danish conservative leader who served as foreign minister in the 1980s, emerged in 2006 as a leading critic of Jyllands-Posten's cartoons, which he viewed (quite sensibly in my view) as a deliberate and irresponsible provocation.

Listening to the mostly idiotic saber-rattling emanating from the GOP presidential debates on the topic of Islam, Muslims and the Middle East at the moment, I think the American Right could sure use some more level-headed conservative leaders like Uffe Elleman-Jensen, but that's another topic.

He and Flemming Rose are locking horns over the cartoons again.

I've written about my rather pronounced skepticism concerning Rose's professed high minded, apolitical motivations (e.g., here and here). Elleman-Jensen smells a rat in Rose's explanation, too. When discussing his recently published  memoirs [link in Danish] in a soon to be aired TV program, Elleman-Jensen fired a fusillade (quoted by Politiken and translated by me):

He [Rose] went so far as to affirm this (that "in a democracy one must be ready to face scorn, mockery and ridicule [This is Rose's famous sanctimonious reproach to Danish Muslims offended by JP's campaign. The line about readiness to endure "scorn, mockery and ridicule" is the controversy's best known sound byte in the Danish media.] by ordering caricatures of the Prophet, which he then published in the paper. With this he went beyond the original aim, as he order caricatures of the Prophet instead of simple drawings.

Rose fired back, accusing Elleman-Jensen of spewing conspiracy theories and lies that put the cartoonists at risk anew.

Rose claims [link in Danish] to be able to prove that he only commissioned generic drawings of their own choosing and that he did not instruct them to mock Muhammad (peace be on him). The request sent to them simply read, he claims, "Therefore, we would like to invite you to draw Muhammad as you see him" (my translation).  Nudge nudge, wink wink.

Horse feathers, retorted Ellement-Jensen.

"I maintain that when one commissions drawings from caricaturists one gets caricatures. What else?" he writes and points out that others have  noted how JP turned to cartoonists and not "innocent illustrators".

Elleman-Jensen then told Rose and JP to essentially put up or shut up. If this is such an outrageous charge, he says, come and get me in court.

It will be interesting to see what JP and Rose do. My guess is that this is a losing battle for them, as the closer you look at the details of this case, you more grounds one has for for suspecting political agendas to lurk beneath JP's idealistic crusade for freedom of speech.

Speaking of free speech and JP, the case that seemed to reveal Jyllands-Posten's own ambivalence about this  sacred right--they sued a lawyer for voicing the  "outrageous" suspicion that, in light of the coincidence that the arguably most offensive of the cartoons was produced by a JP staff cartoonist, perhaps Rose didn't find the original cartoons provocative enough and therefore commissioned this harsher one in-house--was recently dismissed. 

Publicly saying one suspects a desire to offend Muslims on the part of a media figure who promotes inveterate critic of Islam and Muslims Daniel Pipes and who is cavalier about stirring up religious conflicts is apparently beyond the pale for these fair-weather defenders of open debate and satire.*  Rose and JP editor in chief Carsten Juste sued him for DKK 100,000 (something like $16,000).

* Even one of JP's original cartoonists, Peder Bundgaard, came to a similar conclusion, saying he'd been misled and duped into contributing to JP's agenda of "self-promotion and provocation for provocation's sake" (Politiken, Oct 20, 2005, qtd. on Humanisme) [link in Danish].

[For those looking for background, I've provided a lot of links to IMO excellent analyses and backgrounders on this case and related news since it all began.Those so inclined can read all my posts on the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Note that you have to click the arrow at the bottom to get through them all; there are currently 5 long pages of posts: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, & Page 5. They're in reverse chronological order, so #5 is the earliest.  One of these days, I'll have to try to organize these links into a concise primer on critiques of the Rose/JP actions.]

Update (2007-01-13): A few edits, including a date correction. Forgot to mention that the lawyer Rose and Juste sued was  the representing a group of Muslim plaintiff who had themselves filed suit against Jyllands-Posten in 2006 for  defamation.

Reflections on the Danish cartoons a year later

Danish journalist Jakob Illeborg has penned a balanced and insightful reflection in The Guardian Unlimited on the lingering legacy in Denmark of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons that roiled the known universe a year ago. 

My only complaint is that he didn't explicitly acknowledge how intensely political the affair was from the outset.  It never was simply about freedom of speech, and the affair's architects' professed  motivations have become increasingly hard to swallow as more information about them, past and present, has become available. 

 Comment is free: Those cartoons - one year on

That is really what it's all about. Many Danes see themselves as a minority and accordingly think they have the right and obligation to kick out at the mighty Muslim faith. Muslims on the other hand, with some justification, see themselves as a global underdog. This is a bad match and therefore it is important that we reach international agreements on the role and limitations on religion and likewise the obligations to treat minorities in a certain way.

The paradox of the cartoons crisis is that it was completely avoidable. Had we had a functioning consensus and a better mutual understanding in Denmark it would never had happened. Here is an area where Britain could truly lead the way. The relatively successful integration and acceptance of different values you find in London should be used as a role model internationally, including the European Union which is becoming more and more diverse.

Emailed hat tip: Thabet.

Incidentally, yours truly has a chapter on the saga in an edited volume on the affair that is soon to be published in Germany.  The title of my article is "Jyllands-Posten and the Otherization of Europe's Muslims".

The book is entitled Der Karikaturenstreit und die Pressefreiheit. Wert- und Normenkonflikte in der globalen MedienkulturAnkündigung /  The Cartoon Debate and the Freedom of the Press. Conflicting Norms and Values in the Global Media Culture (edited by Bernhard Debatin).   The publisher is LIT Verlag and the book's basic info (as of yet minus the work's contributors) is here.

Would love to share the article, but I guess I need to wait till its safely in print.  Wouldn't want anybody biting my rhymes. 

Why Muslims don't protest peacefully like civilized Westerners

A comrade commented on my post about the controversy among German Catholics over the "Popetown" program ("German Catholics offended by 'Simpsons'-style cartoon of Vatican") by predicting that many will respond that, sure, some Catholics may be calling for censorship, but at least they're not burning embassies, killing people, etc.

I thought I'd repost my response to that observation on its own since I think it begins to addresse some of the underlying problems with the cartoon debate and punditry on Islam and Muslims in general:

I agree that this is what many will say but it's ultimately a non sequiteur and an ad hominem ploy.

One, we're talking about the principle of censorship and "modern" people's supposedly instinctive and universal opposition to it, not respect for law & order or even nonviolence.  Those are legitimate but entirely separate questions.

Two, one's subsequent actions do not retroactively justify (or invalidate) a particular reaction in a conflict.  Demands for censorship don't become any less contrary to free speech if their proponents behave politely after they make them. 

Third and most importantly, Muslims for the most part live in and/or come from much rougher neighborhoods than Westerners, places with much less political stablity, and where in many cases various kinds of exploitation, sectarian violence,  and even outright warfare are facts of life.  One certainly hopes for and should work for a peaceful response, but expecting people living in such unstable societies to just write a letter to their non-existent congressman is hopelessly out of touch with reality. 

Politics and popular protests work rather differently in such places, and are inherently more prone to sliding into violence. 

And not just among Muslims.  Recently, I read of a case in China where university students rampaged (looting and burning) on campus in protest to proposed administrative changes which,  would have hurt their job prospects somehow. Is this because Confucian/Taoist culture encourages lawlessness and violence, or perhaps because China has yet to develop the social and political conditions for nonviolent protest (which, it should be noted, naturally foster a greater respect for rule of law) that we take for granted in the West?  I think the latter.

Just as Catholics in in India and the Philippines reacted quite differently to the "Da Vinci Code" recently--there were calls for the film's outright ban--than did their coreligionists in Europe, so is it unsurpising, perhaps even natural, that Muslims living in considerably harsher  and less law-abiding environments would react less moderately and peacefully than protesters do in Western societies.

Finally, something we tend to forget is that Westerners misbehave simliliarly when put in comparable circumstances (e.g., the shockingly widespread and open sympathy for the abortion bomber Eric Rudolph in Appalachia) .  We just aren't very often, thanks to our good fortune to inhabit the peaceful, well fed, and constitutionally governed First World.

Update (2006-08-01):  Made some stylistic tweaks and fleshed out some points.

German Catholics offended by "Simpsons"-style cartoon of Vatican

German Catholics call for censorship of seemingly considerably less offensive portrayal of Pope than the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.  Muslims are supposed to take Muhammad with a bomb in his turban in stride at the same time that Catholics are up in arms over the Pope on a pogo stick.  It kind of says it all, doesn't it?

Now, I should note that I don't have a problem with Catholics pressuring MTV to drop the series.   Judging by the stills on the website, the programs seems irreverent, if not downright demeaning to the Vatican, so I can't blame Catholics for taking offense.  And the fact that it's been shown on a youth-oriented channel like MTV is doubly problematic.  Most importantly, in a free society worth the name we all have a right to protest things that offend us even if others don't understand what's bothering us.

I do have a problem, though, with the seeming double standards at work.  A Simpsons-style parody of a religious institution is prompting calls for a ban only months after Muslims were expected to meekly suffer open and intensely politicized attacks on their religion.   (I'd also like to know, just out of curiosity, whether the bishops in question spoke out one way or the other on the cartoons.)

Let's see how many pundits who until recently were sancitmoniously preaching to muslims about free speech and the legitimacy of satire in a free society will condemn the bishops for their seeming repudiation of those supposedly absolute values.

It seems to boil down not to principles of freedom but whose ox is getting gored.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | German bishops act over Pope show

Catholic leaders in Germany have acted to try to prevent music channel MTV from showing the controversial cartoon series Popetown.  The first episode of Popetown - which features a Pope on a pogo stick - is due to be aired in the country.  But bishops from Pope Benedict XVI's home state of Bavaria say the satirical series is insulting to Catholics, and have filed a legal injunction.  Popetown was commissioned by the BBC in 2002, but later dropped.  Viewer feedback  BBC bosses were concerned the 10-part animation, set in a fictional Vatican, would offend Catholics.  It shows an elderly Pope bouncing through St Peter's in Rome on a cross-like pogo stick and satirises religious ceremonies.

Update (2006-08-01):  Fixed some typos.  Also changed the title (which was "German Catholics offended by cartoon of Pope on pogo stick").

Compelling new evidence against Danish government's handling of the cartoons

Have been too busy to blog lately, alas.

A quick update on the Danish cartoon controversy.

Just got my hands on a great new book by Rune Engelbreth Larsen and Tøger Seidenfaden called Karikaturkrisen: En undersøgelse af baggrund og ansvar  ("The Cartoon Crisis:  An Study of its background and responsibility") which pretty much demolishes the government's justifications and much of the conventional wisdom about the Danish imam's supposedly inflammatory contribution to the crisis.

Haven't read the whole thing yet and don't have time to translate anything from it at the moment, but suffice it to provides considerable evidence to prove that:

1. The government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen had ample opportunity to nip this crisis in the bud over a period of half a year.
2. The early Muslim response did not demand government censorship.  The October 2005 letter from Muslim ambassadors to the Prime Minister explicitly affirmed freedom of speech (and presciently warned of the danger of unrest in Muslim societies), as did even Egypt's protest letter the following month to the UN.  All that was asked was for him to distance the government from Jyllands-Posten's divisive PR campaign against Islam.  In other words, the argument that the Danish government had no choice but to rebuff Muslims because they were demanding that the government ignore Danish laws protecting speech are patently false.
3. While the Danish imams did say some some things that's weren't entirely accurate in the heat of the controversy, there is no evidence that they sought to misrepresent the cartoons by including the infamous additional drawings.  These additional items were physically separated from the JP cartoons.
   
4. They provide compelling arguments for the view that the imams and the dossier (i.e., with the JP cartoons and various other more offensive ones that Danish Muslims had encountered in Denmark) they distributed to leaders in the region did not contribute appreciably to the escalation of the conflict.  One interesting point they make is that most of the leaders they met were already quite familiar with the cartoons, so it is unlikely the additional drawings in any way misled them.
5. Not only is it a myth that the Danish Muslim delegation whipped up the Muslim world into a frenzy against Denmark, they actually were instrumental in delaying the outbreak of the boycott.  They opposed a fatwa by Egyptian mufti Ali Guma urging a boycott.  The authors note that a senior Danish counterterrorism official publicly thanked them for their constructive and moderate role while in the Middle East.  They go on to state that there is considerable evidence for the view that the imams prevented the boycott from beginning two months earlier.  The boycott and mayhem did not occur until they'd returned to Denmark (and at a point at which the Danish government had had months to defuse the crisis).

Hope this book gets translated into English soon, as it provides so much important context that's lacking from international coverage.

Even if you don't agree with all the authors conclusions--though I don't see how one could argue against them given the evidence they marshal--it's hands down the most thorough study of the saga done to date.

It definitely puts the government in a bad light, not to mention supports my take on the sorry saga. 

Just finished an article for book on the controversy, btw.   More later.

Jyllands-Posten's noble efforts finally bear fruit

Some considerably less upbeat news from the state of Denmark, and from Jutland, Jylland-Posten's heartland. 

The Danish newspaper Politiken reports (my translation):

According to Aalborg Police, approximately 110 threating letters have been mailed directly to northern Jutlanders with Muslim-sounding names.

"In the past, we have had individual cases of racism but nothing at all on this scale.  So we take it very seriously.  It is deeply tasteless action and a punishable offense," said Chief Criminal Inspector Aage Nøgaar Jensen, Aalborg Police.

Threats and racism
He reports that the letters are a mix of threats and racist remarks, plus pictures of among others Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess.

Both the Center for Documenting and Counseling against Racial Discrimination [Have no idea what the official English name is for the Dokumentations- og Rådgivningscenteret mod Racediskrimination. -Svend] and the Institute for Human Rights have stated that this is the first time they've registered something of this sort here at home [i.e., in Denmark].

"We have not experienced such a surge before.  It should be taken very seriously because the general political climate--and the way we discuss foreigners today--can provide fertile ground for extremism and because the police are increasingly concerned about far-right groups," says Morten Kjærum, Director of the Institue for Human Rights.

More complaints filed with police
The threatening letters come at a time when numbers of complaints about racist abuse filed with the police are on the rise.  According to the Danish Security Intelligence Service (PET), the number rose from 37 in 2004 to 81 in 2005.  [And during the first half of 2006, we have over 110. -Svend]

PET Chief Criminal Inspector Ørting Jørgensen will not comment specifically on the case, but acknowledges that the agency is taking these developments seriously. "I can confirm that this year we have seen a higher level of activity, especially on the far right.  Various forms of threats, intimidation, and harassment are being resorted to to create conflict between the broader society and ethnic minorities."

Here's an example of one of the letters (click the image above to see the original), which the bigots considerately composed in English:

Foreigner, Listen....

Your fucking treasonable helpers, such as "Radikale Venstre", "SF", "Enhedslisten", "DKP" and "Antiracistisk Netværk" [Leftist political parties. --Svend] can't help you in the longer term.  They are few compared with the national majority.  Before the civil war (Svendborg, just a silent, vague start) a last reminder:  GET OUT OF HERE!!!!

DANMARK FRIT ["Free Denmark" --Svend]
- It means you don't belong here, bastard!

I'm sure the Fleming Rose and his merry band of Muslim-bashers are proud to see their noble efforts finally bear fruit.

The sentiments of this fascinating missive are the the logical and predictable outcome of the  confrontation with Muslims engineered by Jyllands-Posten in the "defense" of free speech, not to mention the kind of careless rhetoric about Turks in Germany that I commented on yesterday.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that needless confrontations that pit the majority against an already unpopular and misunderstood minority will result in outbreaks of bigotry and nativism of this sort.  So it's no surprise that Denmark is now seeing Neo-Nazi agitation against foreigners normally associated with Germany.

I don't for a minute imagine that these vile sentiments represent the average Dane,  but it's probably fair to surmise  that such attitudes are becoming less uncommon and more socially acceptable in the post-cartoon era.  More importantly, these atavistic passions are the logical outcome of the anti-Muslim hysteria one sees in Danish politics (and, increasing, in some sectors of dank, smelly corners of American politics and media).

This is what happens when responsible leaders remain silent day after day as hardliners bash immigrants as the root of all evil in the public square.  When people hear something go unchallenged enough, they will eventually believe it.  It's a lesson that many leaders across Europe would do well to consider.

P.S.  It's interesting that the letter should mention Svendborg (which, I modestly note, literally means "City of Svend"), a small town in the south of Funen where I once lived.

I spent some time in the mid-1990s with my grandmother Kamma, who passed away two years ago (God rest her soul). It's a cozy and sleepy little coastal town.  I have fond memories of wandering its quite cobbled downtown streets, chasing her poor cat Mathilda around the house during childhood visits from the US, and later as an adult making my poor mormor (Danish for maternal grandmother) watch really bad American action movies (not to see the movies, but to elicit her hilarious reactions).

Wasn't aware of any problems with immigrants there.  Would some kind Dane lurking out there mind filling me in?   I would've expected problems in Odense (where I also lived) before Svendborg.

Indian Christians: Ban 'Da Vinci Code'

Ah, a picture is worth a thousand words. And for a change they're about non-Muslims.

AFP on Christian demands for censorship:

A Christian activist protests against the release of "The DaVinci Code" and "Tickle My Funny Bone" in Mumbai. Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper said polemics surrounding "The Da Vinci Code" reflect a clash between religious and secular values reminiscent of the recent furor over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, considered blasphemous by Muslims.(AFP/File/Sebastian D'Souza)

Update (2009-03-06):

Happened to do some googling on this again and came across this other interesting report from May 2006, which shows that Christians in South Korea and even Thailand got into the censorship act. BBC: "Da Vinci Film Protests Stepped Up":

Its release in India is likely to be delayed after a furore that has seen Islamic clerics in Mumbai (Bombay) back a call by Catholics for a boycott.

South Korea's Christian Council has unsuccessfully tried to ban the film.

And Thai censors want to cut the last 10 minutes, having been persuaded by critics that they are "blasphemous".

The film is adapted from Dan Brown's best-seller, which revolves around the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and their descendants survive today.

The blockbuster has caused outrage among many Christian organisations, including senior officials at the Vatican.

In India, which is home to 18 million Catholics, the head of the Catholic Secular Forum has begun a "hunger strike until death".