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The Cartoons and the Neocon
Daniel Pipes and the Danish Editor
By JOHN SUGG
02/14/06 "Counterpunch" -- -- Let me tell you a few things about
blasphemy. Been there, done it. Got expelled from high school
for it.
That was a few decades ago, and for those seeking titillation,
I’ll give you the details at the end of this screed. First I
have to tell you about a massive propaganda coup. You’ve been
had by some of the most bigoted people in the world -- and I’m
not talking about Muslim fundamentalists.
The big news about blasphemy today is in the Muslim world. A
Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September published 12
cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. It took four months for
that fuse to reach the powder keg of religious sensibilities --
the flame was relentlessly pushed along by the right-wing,
neo-conservative press until it exploded. The dumbed-down media
depiction was free speech versus intolerant Muslim fanatics.
That’s not entirely wrong, just very incomplete. Ultimately,
crowds erupted in protests in Muslim cities. The picture of the
burning Danish consulate in Beirut is the icon of the day.
I have to admit a severe conflict of principles here. On the one
hand, I want to shout: “I am Danish! Cartoons don’t kill, bombs
do!” I don’t countenance any prior restraint on freedom of
expression, and when I first read of the Muslim outrage over
cartoons -- such as one depicting Mohammed’s turban as a bomb --
I sighed a deep sigh of regret. There’s no dialogue in burning
embassies.
Should free speech have constraints? Official censorship is
anathema to a free society. Self-censorship and spinning for a
regime -- a la Fox News -- is just as corrosive. On the other
hand, I think the media should be very judicious about
gratuitous offense. I’m repulsed at such things as artist Andres
Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” And, I feel no need to antagonize
Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans or any other religious groups by
intentionally creating an affront to their faith. I even have
respect for the misbegotten gospel of the (un)Christian
Coalition.
That the Muslim world reacted with violence to the cartoons is
abhorrent. That Christians have done the same thing -- lighting
up town centers and hilltops across Europe with flaming heretics
and blasphemers -- is just as abhorrent. Indeed, the theocratic
movement in America, which would enshrine one narrow view of
Christ’s teachings as the law of the land, is simply a variation
on the Muslim fundamentalists bellowing hatred at Scandinavian
businesses and government offices.
There are other caveats that need to be stated: The Muslim world
has been under assault from western, Christian crusaders for a
thousand years. We’ve colonized and despoiled their lands. Many
in America regard their oil as rightfully ours -- an underlying
if not complete explanation for George Bush’s war of conquest.
We’ve carved up the Middle East, overthrown democracies
(pre-Shah Iran, for example), and fostered despots to suit the
West’s imperial whims. And we wonder why THEY don’t like us, and
why THEY take insults from us so seriously.
So, let’s look at the guy who started this whole cartoon
escapade. He’s Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish
newspaper. In all of the Lexis-Nexis database of stories from
the American media on the Mohammed cartoons, there is absolutely
no mention of the fact that Rose is a close confederate of arch-Islamophobe
Daniel Pipes. Indeed, there is almost no context at all about
Rose’s newspaper. On a brief mention in the Washington Post gave
a hint at a fact desperately needed to understand the situation.
The Post described the affair as “a calculated insult … by a
right-wing newspaper in a country where bigotry toward the
minority Muslim population is a major, if frequently
unacknowledged, problem.”
How bad is Pipes? He wants the utter military obliteration of
the Palestinians; indeed, from the Muslim world, his racism is
about as blatant as that of the Holocaust denying Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pipes’ frequent outbursts of
racism -- designed to toss gasoline on the neo-cons’ lust for a
wholesale conflict of cultures -- earned him a Bush nomination
to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think
tank. Rose came to America to commune with Pipes in 2004, and it
was after that meeting the cartoon gambit materialized.
It’s also worth noting that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen wrapped himself in protestations about freedom of
speech, and that’s commendable. But he is one of Bush’s few fans
in Europe, steeped in the we-versus-them rhetoric, and having
sent troops to the Iraqi Crusade.
Is Rose an equal opportunity offender? No way. As the British
press reported last week, his newspaper refused in 2003 to run
cartoons that ridiculed Jesus. And, of course, free expression
in Europe is very relative. Many of the democracies have laws
banning certain speech.
Rose gave a rather misanthropic rejoinder to AP when asked about
whether he would have published the cartoons in light of the
subsequent protests. Rose said: "I do not regret having
commissioned those cartoons and I think asking me that question
is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short
skirt Friday night at the discotheque."
That, of course, makes the assumption that women are responsible
for being raped. It’s just as fallacious as assuming the Muslim
world should passively accept an intentional provocation, one
that gratuitously attacked one of the religion’s strictest
prohibitions.
Was the reaction overwrought? Absolutely. Was it predictable?
Absolutely. Was it an intentional scheme to provoke Arab anger,
and thereby engender Western disgust with the Muslim world? The
involvement of Pipes and Rose argues that that is exactly what
happened.
Now, my confession of blasphemy. In 1963, as an art student in
Miami, I was assigned to a safety poster, “Cross at the corner.”
I (humorously) depicted a crucified Christ at a Miami street
corner looking down very sadly at people doing all sorts of
horrible things to each other. My principal wasn’t amused,
called me sacrilegious and a blasphemer, and tossed me from
school. I got back in -- the First Amendment was still alive an
well. And, fortunately, none of my supporters (there were quite
a few) burned any consulates.
John Sugg is editor of Creative Loafing.
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