In early 2006, violence across the Islamic world rocked the quaint Scandinavian country of Denmark after one of its major newspapers, Jyllands-Posten, published inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad months earlier. The images enraged many Muslims, some of whom burned Danish flags and embassies to protest the caricatures of their prophet, which Islam forbids from being depicted at all. One… return to article
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Reader Comments (23)Page 1 of 1 pages“Muhammad depicted a man with a bomb under his turban”
Given the events of the day, this seems to be a pretty appropriate cartoon. Furthermore, one has to question the morality of a group of people who would *kill* others for such an “insult”. Perhaps some of you remember PissChrist )(a Maplethrope work of “art"). If conservative Christians had gone on a rampage killing over it, i doubt there would be any sympathy here or elsewhere for their response (and there should be none).
“The biggest challenge for Danish Muslims” - ought to be to reign in their crazy segments! Such as the crazy who killed Van Gogh (a distant relative of the famous painter). The fearful are the cartoonists who had to hide for fear of being killed (as did Rushie for *years*).
“Freedom of expression and freedom of religion are representative of democratic societies but are also representative of Islam.”
Say it louder sister! Perhaps you can convince the many many crazies who utterly disagree and are more than willing to kill for “insults’.
The lady in the article may be a moderate, but she is far from a *typical* Muslim. While we have plenty of crazy Christians (Falwell, Wright, etc) they are a distinct, almost completely non-violent minority. Sadly the reverse is true for the Muslim crowd.
Posted by wolf on Mar 28, 2008 at 8:09 AM Wolf:
How many Muslims do you actually know in order to claim that Asmaa is not a “typical” Muslim. Or is your claim based on the sum total of watching news clips, which tend to favor the bomb-throwing fanatic, as opposed to the ordinary lives, hopes and dreams of over a BILLION people?
There are certainly religious people (of all faiths) that use religion to justify their actions. When Christians were massacring Muslim civilians in Bosnia, or when the Catholic IRA was bombing Protestant Belfast, most people understood that it was inaccurate and inappropriate to blame Christianity or Christians for such beastiality.
Your statement tells me more about you, and those like you that make sweeping statements about Islam and Muslims, without actually knowing a thing about them or their faith, than of your “typical” Muslim, or of your “Muslim crowd.”
Imran
Posted by Imran on Mar 28, 2008 at 11:35 AM Wow what an incredibly brave and outspoken woman. I think she has the potential to be a big activist and a true gem of an intellectual, even if she was first time unlucky when it came to her attempt to get the seat in parliament. I think it is certainly possible for a woman to be influential and successful even if she does not have a seat in parliament.
BTW, wolf did it ever occur to you that the cartoons may have been inappropriate if only because bombs as we know them did not even exist in 7’th century Arabia ?
Posted by SASboy on Mar 28, 2008 at 1:40 PM Imran - I know some about the middle east. Saudi Arabia for instance. Total pit, due to the intolerance of Muslims. The Taliban, Iran, etc. The religion is stuck solidly in the middle ages. But it is no worse than Christianity was back then, perhaps it will evolve? I hope so. (BTW, i am pretty sure that the IRA or Christianity had/has nothing to do with beastiality! :)
SASboy - No. *Any* images of the Prophet is forbidden, even ones that are not funny. And many many crazies of Islam believe it is a *death* offense. Sadly.
Posted by wolf on Mar 28, 2008 at 2:34 PM Wolf:
Beastiality: The quality or condition of being an animal or like an animal.
Conduct or an action marked by depravity or brutality.Looking at the most extreme interpretation of Islam (Saudi Wahhabism, which is universally accepted as a minority view) as somehow representative of all or most of Islam, is either bad logic or an intentional attempt to deceive (your Taliban example being another entity following such minority view). The sum total of all these persons (even assuming every individual in the countries above follows such view) is still a tiny fraction of all Muslims.
And while Iran is certainly no paradise of civil liberties, it is at least, if not more politically enlightened and advanced as Christian Orthodox Serbia and Russia, or Catholic Latin America and subsaharan Africa. It’s NOT the religion. It’s local politics, and its both cultural and economic.
The vast majority of Muslims are not extremists nor intolerant. Certainly no more so than Christians, Hindus or Jews. Like the rest of us, the lead normal lives, too uneventful to make the evening news.
While I would not have commented on your post had it been posted on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh’s website, it was unbecoming for such a progressive website as In These Times, and it demanded a response. With the neo-cons advocating “civilizational confrontation” against Islam, we as progressives should be cautious about carelessly buying into their hate-mongering.
Imran
Posted by Imran on Mar 28, 2008 at 3:29 PM What a load of ....
I have voted for the Unity List - or one of the member parties since 1976 and I can assure you, that the Danish Peoples Party “smear campaign” had nothing to do with my descision NOT to vote for the Unity List this time - which in my case meant not voting at all.
I - and most of my buddies - stayed away from voting for the party this time, knowing full well that the party was fighting to stay in the parliament.
The reason can be boiled down to one word: Asmaa.
As a socialist and anti-theist - as the voters of a left socialist party tend to be - her open display of religion is anathema to most of us.
It did not make things any better, that she refused to say hello to any man - even members of her own party. Or that she attacked feminism and defended pre-feminist gender roles as biologically determined.
And that was just the beginning. I had extremely grave doubts about her secular credentials: As the interview shows, she is not exactly clear when it comes to the separation of church/mosque and state. The same goes for her split messages on the death penalty and her almost agressive treatment of feminist core issues.
In short, many asked themselves what exactly she was doing on a leftist slate.
If you study the election results closely, by the party managed to drive away thousands of traditional supporters, while not gaining any new sectors.
In a post-election evaluation, published last month, the collective leadership has admitted, that putting her near the top of the party list was a mistake.
As for Asmaa - she has already said, she wants to run again. I would suggest that she spends the coming years reading Marx, Luxemburg and Zetkin.
Posted by KOPA on Mar 28, 2008 at 4:47 PM What seems to be stressed in this discussion is that Muslims are crazy for reacting to cartoons that defame their beliefs and that this proves how backwards they are. What is left out, is the fact that these cartoons are intended to cause that reaction, and also to encourage violence against a minority population that already feels threatened.
In fact, violence against Muslims is on the rise in Europe and America.
Most of us with more than a couple brain cells to rub together are aware that ALL Muslims aren’t ready to kill over this blasphemy, and that attempting to make sweeping generalizations about ANY group of people is racist and stupid, but is done of course to make them easier to kill.
And here’s betting I can guess Wolf’s religion.
Posted by opeluboy on Mar 28, 2008 at 5:06 PM from http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Beasttiality
“A separate term, bestiality (more common in mainstream usage and frequently but incorrectly seen as a synonym; often misspelled as “beasttiality"), refers to human/animal sexual activity.” (addted extra t due to blacklisting of actual term)
Imran - I wish you were right in your claims, but sadly they seem to be more what could be than what is. But to you and to any “moderate” Muslims (of which i have a few friendships with), i wish you only peace and happiness. (Incidentally, even most of my moderate Islamic friends believe in polygamy, which i find to be unfortunate.)
opeluboy - I think anyone who reacts to cartoons with violence and killing is nuts. I also believe in freedom of speech, which in the US is carried to extremes, happily. Furthermore, if you assume i am completely “anti-Muslim” (which i am not), this would not be “racist”. Muslims come in a variety of races, as you may or may not be aware.
PissChrist was “blasphemy”. I am happy to say that it sparked protests, but not mass violence or killings. Now if it happened 1000 years ago, i think it would have created the same sort of situations a arose in the publication of the cartoons in question. I can only hope that Islam and its follows advance much more quickly then their Christian brethren did.
BTW - if you guessed agnostic, you win the prize!
Posted by wolf on Mar 29, 2008 at 8:49 AM As an atheist who identifies as fairly left of center left, I want to say to my lefty friends: read the Koran and the Hadith. The violennce is on virtually every page. Look at any Sharia state in the world and ask yourself if you’d want to live there.
The problem with Islam as compared to other desert religions is that the violence in written into the core of the movement. Responding with violence to infidels is how the “Prophet” built the religion in the first place. A minorty of “radicals” can and do control large majorities of people who pretty much go with the flow.
The traditionally tolerant and relatively successfully socialized countries like Denmark and The Netherlands are facing a quandry with large numbers of immigrating Muslims. At what point do we “tolerate” people who want to toss out the whole idea of tolerance?
The hopeful part is that usually the second generation adopts more of the ways of the new country, but it takes a very long time.
Meanwhile you have a bunch of men who think beating or killing women for showing their ankles or hair or committing adultry is the right thing thing to do, even if they can’t do it in Denmark. See Saudi Arabia to see what happens when they get into positions of power
I’m glad Asmaa lost there. Her insistance on the hijab is not some kind of expression of free will - it’s an expression of submission (The meaning if the word “islam") to the most brutal philisophical system of beliefs known to humankind.
Posted by stcrispy on Mar 30, 2008 at 5:24 PM Sometimes I think the world would be a much nicer and safer place if more people were agnostics.
Neither arrogant and self-assured enough to presume the right to stone or kill or nuke in the name of a higher power, nor enough to NOT pray in times of tragedy and loss, or even occasionally at dinner.
Posted by Natalie on Mar 31, 2008 at 3:50 AM Its this people who think they have to be religios, and leth other people see that they are from that way of thinking, what is raping the Dutch free thinkers social democratic sociêty, we where more or les very happy in Europe, very good social national health insurance, an very good unemployment insurance, housing, work, only 3.8% out of work, 5 weeks hollydays a year, well its not enough for them, where they come from, are people stoned and hanged, shoot and evey body lives in fear. No they come not to integrete, they dont give a shit for Dutch values, not speking about culture or history, they keep their woman as domestic animals, they ste at home look to the Arab TV canals, 90% over 50 years of age, dont work, 5 times a day preaching and thé drinking , and if you show them in an miror( the film from Geert Wilders) what they are doing with other people, they geth very angry, not to speek from the genocide of the Christan religion, they are used in their stupidety to conquer the west, but we in the Netherlands do love our way of living and free thinking, so we will fight for this, its the citizen who have to do it, our government is like a lame duck, they are corrupted and in side eaten up by all the lobys from the east with all there oil money, dont go for nice faces and lovely historys, sorry but they are sly and mean, and do every thing to come by their object, the usurpation of our countrys.
Posted by geus on Apr 1, 2008 at 9:59 AM Very gripping first hand account, geus.
Whatever the small proportion of Muslims who have insane reactions to cartoons, the fact is that the rest do far too little to rein them in.
The moderates are afraid to speak out against the rioters and murderers, for fear of being murdered themselves. But they are the only ones who have any hope of changing the dynamic in the Muslim world. So far, it doesn’t seem like they’re even trying very hard, which is regrettably understandable.
Except for a brave few, willing to live in constant fear of death.
What’s happened in Denmark and other European countries is coming to a country near you, unless moderates rise up together and take decisive action. Problem is, I’m starting to wonder just how many Muslims really care that much that their radical brothers are targeting innocent people simply for not being Muslim enough. It’s like, I’d never do it myself, but I’m not losing any sleep over what they did.
I hope I’m wrong on that.
Posted by Natalie on Apr 1, 2008 at 10:40 AM Well I have reed some wonderful solutions, but they dont work, its a shame but you have to generalize by this people, the religions control between them, is much more severe as in our sociêties, and the punishment well every body knows that, The Dutch people had allways problems with religions, we had very long wars with the Spanies Kings, they oppressed us to become Catholic, but one moment et voila we where free, not all , but some went to new countrys to live with the faith they liked, or just plain humanytairien, and now this god for saken people start to oppress us again, with an kind of thinking and doing out the middle age, no it will not pas, the problem is we can’t again start creating NEW AMSTERDAMS every where.
Posted by geus on Apr 1, 2008 at 10:49 AM NATALIE,-------I should like to give you a nice bunch of roses, for your nice style of writing, its so much nicer as mine. Further don’t trust this people, the most dangeres are the well educated, their exist some good and normal Moslims, a friend of mine, nice soft spoken Kabyl, don’t go’s to the Moskee, you know he has his own god, well have we not all somewhere a smam or a big god, the Humanists are people who geth captured in their own nice democratic human feelings net, for this kind nothing is holy, not even their brothers in religion, the are possessed by their own bend touths.
Posted by geus on Apr 1, 2008 at 11:03 AM Thanks, geus, but you’re doing just fine. I admire anyone who can speak/write two or more languages; I know only one.
My grandmother was pure Danish, and her husband pure Swedish. So I am 1/4 each I suppose. The rest a mix of a lot of things. It would be interesting to visit that area of the world someday, and if that happens, I’m sure I’ll wish I’d studied those languages when I was younger.
Thanks for your perspective.
Posted by Natalie on Apr 1, 2008 at 7:02 PM Having lived and travelled for years in several Muslim-majority countries, I think the central cultural disjoint a lot of “westerners” will have with many Muslims (perhaps Asmaa as well) is that for a Muslim, it’s not something you do, it’s something you ARE. The secularized wealthy societies often compartmentalize religion as a personal matter (which, as a secular if not a wealthy guy, is exactly how I look at it, personal only and never to be legally codified). This is totally alien to the Muslim worldview. Since you are presumed to have chosen submission to God and God’s mandates as transmitted to Muhammad in a series of angelic revelations (Quran = that which has been revealed), you are also presumed to now BE a Muslim. That means everything you do must now reflect your identity as one who submits to all of God’s revealed instructions, including how you parent, pray, invest, eat, fight, bequeath, dress, marry, divorce, wash up, do business, and participate in civic life.
Further, there’s really no middle ground about the role of the Quran. It’s either to be regarded as a human-made document in its every source and [removed]meaning that Muhammad was either a demagogue or had temporal lobe epilepsy) or, as Muslims uphold, it is the direct transmission from God to humanity by way of his last-ever prophet.
Now, I’ve met Muslims who say, “I’m Muslim” in exactly the same sense that, say, some Catholics say, “I’m Catholic” but don’t observe Church mandates, i.e. they’re from a Catholic or Muslim family but aren’t observant. However, if being true to the faith is the real agenda, Islam guides nearly all “worldly” decisions because it’s you, the presumably decisive slave to God’s Will, who make those decisions, and by choosing Islam you are presumed to have accepted the authority of Quran and Hadiths in their entirety.
The question is (as implied above by KOPA), in what direction would Asmaa apply her role as a parliamentarian? For example…
... how can it be reconciled that most Danes are anti death penalty, when Islam requires it in certain cases, e.g. blasphemy, extramarital sex, homosexual lovemaking, etc?
... how would she manage quranic requirements vis a vis Danish secular norms, e.g. daughters are stipulated to receive half the inheritance of sons, Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men though Muslim men are allowed to marry Jewish or Christian women, adoption in which the child takes the adoptive parents’ surname is forbidden, use of intoxicants is a crime, premarital sex partners must be whipped, graven images (e.g. Buddhas, statues of national heroes) are forbidden, children in divorced families are assigned only to the father, 2.5% of assets (not income) is stipulated for donation, etc etc.
John F. Kennedy had to face questions about how much his role as president would be shaped by Vatican demands. He convinced enough voters that he was personally Catholic but had no agenda to influence the US into a devotedly Catholic shape. Asmaa has to answer similar questions from Danish citizens.
The solution is to constitutionally mandate separation of religious authority from political authority, and then to uphold complete freedom of worship as a human right beyond the influence of majoritarian pressures (i.e. freely chosen or freely rejected beliefs and disciplines, and no one is allowed to vote about it). This is the only way religious requirements can co-exist with democratic liberties. The second anyone’s religion becomes the law, freely chosen devotion or liberality goes right out the door, because law punishes non-obedience and religious law doesn’t have a democratic foundation but instead an uncompromising, scripturally defined one. You’re not free to worship, when religion is law. You are, if no one’s religion can become law.
Posted by Kuya on Apr 1, 2008 at 9:13 PM I’m skimming through the comments and many of them seem typical of the arrogance and barely-concealed racism that plagues the european (& to a lesser extent, the north american) left., a museum-quality illustration being KOPA’s “I would suggest that she spends the coming years reading Marx, Luxemburg and Zetkin”.
I know a bit about “quaint” Denmark, having lived there for 25 years, and I have watched a constant demonisation of the underclass unfold, in what was, when I first arrived, a lily-white nearly-totally-homogenous society, without ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities. This demonisation has publicly taken on a tone which would be unthinkable anywhere in the English-speaking world in the past half-century, simply because there minorities have fought for basic rights to the extent that they have bases of power from which to combat & prevent these attacks.
But this is not the case in Denmark. The tabloid press has been joined by the government-owned electronic media to daily hammer home the message: Danish culture --"danishness"—is under constant threat from a tiny minority of inhabitants of the country that are not “integrated” ; all foreigners are criminals, etc, etc. Day-in & day-out. [google denmark-racism-news media to find the European Centre on Discrimination’s report on the Danish media’s role in promoting xenophobia under the previous social democratic government]
The Mohammad caricatures were never about “free speech” but part of this clearly orchestrated campaign to trash a despised minority and bolster political suport for the status quo. Which is always a popular strategy in Denmark.
The reality isn’t the government discourse that immigrants have “failed” to “integrate” but rather that the Danish underclass has been systematically denied entry to the labour market because of their non-Danish surnames or because of the colour of their skin. That this has occured with government collusion was revealed in a tiny ripple of scandal which opened two years ago when it was revealed that one could telephone the government-run job centres and specify “white only” workers]
so this is the situation here. And where is the left? Well, scroll up to KOPA’s post above for the answer. One brave Muslim woman decided to stand for political office - and her own party smeared and trashed her constantly. And that was the furthest-left parliamentary party. The bigger left party - left-social democrats under leader Villy Sovndal --has been most active in recent weeks pandering to the most xenophobic elements of the Danish population, saying that Muslim militants should “go to hell”. Odd that he hasn’t had anything at all to say about the xenophobic anti-immigrant populists here, who openly consort with neo-nazis, and who have the support of about 15% of the population. That’s because he knows the basic law of politics in today’s Denmark. Play the “Hate Muslim” card—or die.
Push is coming to shove here. We had three weeks of running urban guerrilla warfare tactics waged by 13 year olds, a small version of Paris-Lille-Toulouse 2005. And where was the Danish left? firmly on the side of the forces of law & order. This little intifada died out when the weather turned a bit wetter and the kids went back to school. from Winter vacation. But summer is coming soon. So you can expect some hot news in the coming months from Denmark…
Posted by countdown on Apr 2, 2008 at 1:02 AM Kuya - very thoughtful post. I think you have laid out the issues very well. I particularly appreciate your final paragraph.
countdown wrote -
“The caricatures were never about “free speech” but part of this clearly orchestrated campaign to trash a despised minority and bolster political suport for the status quo. Which is always a popular strategy in Denmark.”.
Perhaps. But the worldwide response to them tells us a great deal about Muslims and tolerance (not to mention some were funny and all too appropriate).
Posted by wolf on Apr 2, 2008 at 8:11 AM NATALIE, -------We had a Deense ( means Danish) super grandfather, than came the Friesian womans in, well this woman where first qualety, hard working lots of children, and as in my famelie, they where sailors to, my bed grandmother saild with my bed greatgrandfather on an two mast ship with their children, chikkens a porc and other food, some times the where frozen in specialy in Petersburg Russia in the winter,in the north they speek Danish, nort h friesian, than Saks friesian, than in the Provice Friesland first language Fries second Dutch that was done by an referendum of the whole population,maby something interesting its gone now but I have know that boys just at the age of 12 years where carrying the girls dress, you know wy, well before the Drakars passed and toke all young boys withem, so afther 12 years came the mans hose, you can see some nice old dresses on you tube, MARKEN or KLEDERDRACHTEN, ----The Dutch communety wash allways very close, when fishing schips dit not came back from sea, the communety payd up, O yes the old people where proud even when they had not much money, you did’t die of hungre, even the filthy rich build every where HOFJES( small houses round an inside square)for old widows, where they lived protected and cheap, go an visite your Heite land, and they have beautiful music, its dramatic lovely and lyrice and very romantic all at the same moment of time, Yours Jenne
Posted by geus on Apr 2, 2008 at 10:49 AM As the problem of Moslima’s in the government, wel look to the Netherlands they are not Dutch but 50% Dutch and 50% Turkish, an other 50% Dutch and 50% Marocan, wy,---- they can’t give up their citizen ship, from their country of origin, but this came out when they had taken their place, fait accompli, its allways the same, sly and slyer and slyerst, thats wat we have invited an our tables, but maby we can geth lose of them with an nice desert with cream and nice small winking pigs eyes, out of the question they eat hallan and we are vegetariens.
Posted by geus on Apr 2, 2008 at 11:16 AM Countdown:
You may have lived in Denmark for 25 years, but you obviously did not get immersed into society.
For starters: Denmark has one of the highest rates of atheists - between 43 and 80 pct, depending on the survey.
Because of our Lutheran past, religion is strictly a personal issue. F.I. I do not know if my parents or siblings are religious: I know that one brother attends services and recieves the sacraments, but it is never discussed.
Secondly, the unity list is a conglomeration of old communists, trotskyites, maoists and left socialists, which would be close to the 26th july movement of Cuba.
This is a party with a clear atheist profile and a proud socialist heritage.
You may believe that Clara Zetkin belongs in a museum...I disagree. And her ideas of a womans liberation through socialism, is definitely fresher than claims of a 1400+ year old God-given separation of the sexes.Noone forced Asmaa to run. Noone forced her to run for the unity list. But when she did - and also chose to make her own religion the centre of her campaign (just like the worst bible-thumping US fundamentalists) - she, herself, “created the smell in the bakery”.
And when she THEN chooses also to make anti-semite statements, and speaking with two tongues, the cup spilleth over.
Why was she even put on the slate?????
My guess is, that a small part of the party has veru good connections to the UKs Socialist Workers Party and were inspired by the alliance between islamists and leftists in Tower Hamlets, London. (It lead to the election of George Galloway).
Finally....since when is it pandering to the right-wingers to ask the isalmists to go to hell, as Villy Søvndal did? I see this rejection of religious fundamentalism as a duty of any party, that calls itself socialist. (Og - and they are not leftist social democrats, but are the first euro-communist party in the world).
Posted by KOPA on Apr 7, 2008 at 2:04 AM KOPA,------ is it tru, are their still communists, I know the real socialist are not any more of this world, lot of people and party’s who call them self socialists, as other people calling them selfs nemporte quoi, but act different in their dayly live, the Islam and Jews go mostley in politics to the left side, its about i sayd before, not real solid footing, they are looking for the quantity and not quality, thats wy they are domed to lose, or there has to come a deep renesance in their thinking and filosophy.Yours Jenne
Posted by geus on Apr 7, 2008 at 8:02 AM Geus - yes, they are the real thing....more or less. I know people who have voted for the party (or, rather, one of their integrants, since 1945 - and who have been fighting against the nazis with weapons), but did not vote this time. Because of Asmaa.
I know people who fought in Central America, who stopped voting for them. Because of Asmaa.
To me, putting Asmaa on the list is a historical betrayal: While leftists in arabia and Iran are being executed or thrown into the dungeons for defending freedom from religion, my party chose to put up a candidate, who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.
It is also a betrayal of women in the same region, who fight for the equality of the sexes.
Well, all in all, they lost almost 40 pct of their votes. Not exactly surprising.
Posted by KOPA on Apr 7, 2008 at 2:13 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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