Making A Difference

Man Bites God

The Prophet cartoons were a dangerous stab at satire. But Europe's freedom of speech may have legal limits.<a href=pti_coverage.asp?gid=300 target=_blank> Updates</a>

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Man Bites God
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Outlook
Jyllands Posten
Jyllands Posten
Die Welt
Granta
Outlook
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Court cases now could dig some underlying moral assumptions out from beneath a civilised Europe facing up to violent Islam. There is an undeniable fringe of violent Islamists in many parts of the Muslim world, but the record on the other side is not all clean either. More than 40,000 Iraqis were bombed to death as they fled back from Basra after the first Gulf war—the equivalent of shooting a defeated soldier in the back, the unthinkable by the oldest codes of war. The killing was stopped finally because it sickened the pilots. If an Arabic paper had then drawn a cartoon of Jesus Christ in the shape of a cruise missile, it would be a product of the ugly mind of an uncivilised Arab. One chap with a bomb is a terrorist; when you kill thousands from the air, it's a "taking out". What would be an expression of customary ugliness in an Arabic paper becomes in Europe an expression of freedom. It would be cartoonish to pretend this is satire.

The publication of the cartoons could translate inside a courtroom as premeditated provocation. Jan Lund, arts editor of Jyllands Posten, declared: "The intention was to provoke a debate about self-censorship in our coverage of Muslim issues." What this would do to Muslims was not considered. In effect: Here, I'll spit on you to show you how free I am.

"If this was so-called freedom of speech, it could still have ended with the publication in Denmark four months ago, but the re-publication in so many newspapers in Europe was mischievous," Shamsuddin Agha from the Indian Muslim Federation told Outlook. "Moving the courts now is the peaceful way to take this forward."

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