Essays by Muslims on the Danish Cartoons
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Essays and articles on the Danish Cartoons
Emran Qureshi in the New York Times
The Islam the Riots Drowned Out
By EMRAN QURESHI Cambridge, Mass.
IN a world of wrenching change, the Danish cartoon affair has widened a growing fissure between Islam and the West. The controversy comes at a time when many in the Islamic world view the war on terrorism as a war on Islam. They draw on memories of colonization and of the Crusades, when Western invaders ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad as an imposter.
Sadly, the recent polarization obscures a rich humanistic tradition within Islam — one in which cosmopolitanism, pluralism and a spirit of open-minded inquiry once constituted a dominant ethos.
European Muslims for the most part have protested the Danish cartoons but kept their protests peaceful. That is good. Stigmatized European Muslims are often the targets of right-wing attacks and feel increasingly beleaguered. But the lesson many have learned from this affair has not been the utility of freedom of speech so much as that their continued presence is an affront to European identity.
Within the Muslim world, the cartoon imbroglio has given ammunition to the two entrenched forces for censorship — namely, authoritarian regimes and their Islamic fundamentalist opposition. Both would prefer to silence their critics. By evincing outrage over the Danish cartoons, authoritarian regimes seek to divert attention from their own manifold failures and to bolster their religious credentials against the Islamists who seek to unseat them.
Ironies abound. Saudi Arabia leads the protests, yet is systematically destroying its Islamic heritage. The Wahhabis who dominate Saudi Arabia do not believe in honoring Islam's holy men and women or the Prophet Muhammad (they've proscribed the celebration of his birthday). Driven by sectarian zeal, the Saudi authorities have razed and dug up virtually every site in Mecca and Medina linked to Muhammad, members of his family and his companions.
But these acts of disrespect and desecration have failed to arouse any protest from those who now take to the streets to condemn the Danish cartoons.
Elsewhere, Sunni Muslim fundamentalist leaders express anger over the Danish cartoons, but no comparable indignation over suicide bombers who attacked Shiite Muslim mosques during Ramadan in Iraq. In Pakistan, blasphemy laws have been used by fundamentalists to attack Christians and Hindus.
All this is a far cry from the Islamic humanism of Ibn al-Arabi, the Andalusian philosopher and mystic, or of Rumi, the Persian Sufi poet.
Muslim societies have paid a dear price for the militants in their midst. Many of the best and brightest within the Muslim world have had to flee to the West to avoid being silenced or killed. Fazlur Rahman, a brilliant and deeply religious Pakistani scholar of Islam, had to flee his native land for the University of Chicago. Similarly, the Islamic studies scholar Nasr Abu Zayd fled Egyptian Islamists for the Netherlands. Naguib Mahfouz, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was stabbed in the neck in Cairo and barely survived; the Egyptian writer Faraj Foda was not so lucky.
In some Western Muslim quarters, the proposed solution is more censorship — that these cartoons and similar expressions should be banned as hate speech. By that logic, shouldn't Salafist diatribes against Shiites also be banned? Shouldn't the writings of Maulana Abul Ala Maududi and his Jamaat-e-Islami, which were instrumental in persecuting the Ahmadis, a Muslim minority in Pakistan, be banned as well? Maududi's religious writings, best sellers among Muslims in the West, are suffused with an intolerant and anti-Western hue.
No, the answer is not more censorship. But it would be nice if Western champions of freedom of speech didn't trivialize it by deriving pleasure from their ability to gratuitously offend Muslims. They view freedom of speech much as Islamic fundamentalists do — simply as the ability to offend — rather than as the cornerstone of a liberal democratic polity that uses such freedoms wisely and responsibly. Worse, these advocates insist on handing Muslim radicals a platform from which to pose as defenders of the faith against an alleged Western assault on Islam.
Today's Muslim leaders, for their part, seem unable to formulate an ethical response to the challenges of the modern world. Moreover, their actions lead to the stereotyping of Islam. What else is one to conclude from this episode?
The loudest and most murderous forces have chosen to forget the spirit of the Koran, which opens with an invocation of God's mercy and compassion and which repeatedly urges believers to practice patience and kindness. There is something very ugly about the power of the radicals, their recourse to violence, their anti-intellectualism and their ability to trample and blaspheme a more humanistic Islamic tradition.
It is right and proper for Muslims to be offended, to be hurt, to protest. But we should be wary of the authoritarian voices that claim to speak and act in the name of Islam. The answer is not more violence and censorship, but rather peace, mercy and compassion.
Emran Qureshi is a fellow at the Labor and Work Life Program at Harvard Law School.
Svend White, Whose Fault is the Danish Boycott
Svend White
When I look at analysis of the Danish cartoon controversy, I’m struck by how so many otherwise well informed and intelligent commentators simply don’t get what’s really going on. The basic reasons for and issues involved in this crisis are pretty easy to grasp, but conspicuously absent from most discussions of this saga. Instead, one finds ethereal discursions on freedom of religion and freedom of speech, ideals that actually have precious little to do with this lamentable turn of events, as this is about politics and prejudices, not constitutional rights.
Mona Eltahawy writes in MuslimWakeUp.com: Can we finally admit that Muslims have blown out of all proportion their outrage over 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad published in a Danish newspaper last September?
Umm, no we can’t. At least not in the way you mean.
The author, like so many other liberal Muslim commentators at the moment–it seems everyone’s working overtime to prove to non-Muslims how secular and progressive they are by defending the Jyllands-Posten outrageous and irresponsible attacks on the Prophet Muhammad–overlooks basic political and cultural context to those cartoons, and ignores the significance of the openly contemptuous way this supposedly high minded defense of freedom of speech was made.
In recent years, Denmark has been lurching rightward and turning increasingly hostile to Islam and Muslims (who now make up about 4% of the population). It is becoming distressingly commonplace to see headlines about prominent Danish figures openly expressing prejudice against Islam, and mainstream parties are working increasingly closely with hard-line nationalist (and, of course, Muslim-baiting) parties that were once rightly viewed as beyond the pale. It’s gotten so bad in Denmark–and I’m sorry to say so as someone whose maternal side of the family is there and who has long taken pride in Denmark’s once enlightened policies–that a prominent pundit in neighboring Sweden declared Denmark the most xenophobic country in Europe. By all accounts, inter-communal relations in Denmark (which for the most part are Muslim/non-Muslim relations) are becoming worryingly strained and beset with prejudice and misunderstandings. This is the essential political and social backdrop to Jyllands-Posten’s attacks on the Prophet, and it missing from the Muslim WakeUp piece and so many other discussions.
Again, there’s also the way this so-called defense of free speech was launched by those idealists at Jyllands-Posten. They didn’t simply exercise their right to ignore the traditional Islamic discomfort with visual portrayals of the Prophet, which is not universally shared by Muslims–as any lover of Persian art knows, there are many classics of Islamic art which also completely ignore this taboo; a few mundane sketches of the Prophet by aren’t going to roil the Ummah–with the kinds of caricatures one expects of revered political and religious figures. Instead, they chose to slander him, portraying him as a bloodthirsty killer and misogynist. They really went for the jugular.
Not so long ago during the 1980s, many American Christians were up in arms for much, much less in Martin Scorcese’s infinitely more respectful rendering of a religious icon in “The Last Temptation of Christ”.
There’s another fundamental weakness to all this apologia. It rests on a demonstrably false assumption that other religions are routinely treated in this manner. For all this, if you’ll forgive the ironic choice of words, pious talk by the secular intelligentsia about how other religions are supposedly subjected to the same harsh treatment that Islam and Muslims are now suffering in the public square, you’ll be hard pressed to think of many comparable examples.
For example, how many times have you seen Jesus Christ portrayed in a deliberately offensive and controversial manner in a Western publication that is read by millions? How many times have you seen a portrait of Christ that is remotely uncomplimentary? The closest analogy I can think of to this controversy in recent American history is the furor over the “Piss Christ” art exhibit (which, while admittedly disgusting and offensive, pales by comparison to the bile of Jyllands-Posten’s “defense” of free speech)? Did the New York Times include an insert of photos of a crucifix in urine? Was it the exhibit televised, or even dispassionately debate, on ABC? Has it since been repeatedly republished by other media outlets in a show of solidarity for the artist’s freedom of speech?
How about Buddha? Moses? Abraham? Can’t recall any public sniping at them in the mainstream media? Okay, how about lesser known religious figures, like Guru Nanak (the founder of Sikhism), Joseph Smith (Mormonism), or Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science)? Still no potshots? Hmm, how about our controversial contemporary and founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard ?
Really, try to find deliberate, open assaults on these revered figures that were dignified with publication by major media outlets. Find a case where a person revered as a spiritual guide by many millions of people is intentionally and openly pilloried in a major newspaper.
You won’t succeed. My guess is that you’ll struggle to even find a case of such an icon being affectionately parodied with a fake nose and glasses, so reverent is mainstream media coverage of these revered figures.
There’s a reason for this double standard (and it certainly is one). As Edward Said pointed out long ago, Islam and Muslims are the perennial exceptions to the rules of consistency, objectivity and scholarly rigor in contemporary Western policy debates. The reasons are complex, but the pattern is unmistakable and recurring. A newspaper can crudely and deliberately malign the Prophet Muhammad at a time when Muslims are increasingly being mocked and discriminated against throughout the West–and in a manner guaranteed to stoke the flames of prejudice and hatred, to boot–and we’re all supposed to stand by it in the name of freedom of religion? Give me a break. Get back to me when Jyllands-Posten runs comparably offensive cartoons about Jews, Christians or even Rastafarians. Then I’ll understand the “bigger picture” here.
Eltahawy observes: Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was right not to intervene, insisting the government has no say over media - the argument used by Arab leaders when they are asked about anti-Semitism in their media, by the way. But in a New Year’s speech, Rasmussen condemned “any expression, action or indication that attempts to demonize groups of people on the basis of their religion or ethnic background.”
To portray this as a simple choice between state intervention or freedom of speech is to miss the whole point, I’m afraid.
It’s also an example, in my opinion, of how blind liberal Muslim commentators can be to the dynamics of power in Muslim/non-Muslim relations today. Like a white intellectual discussing American race problems in abstract categories of right and wrong (”Black racism is just as wrong as white racism!”), such cerebral and idealistic analysis overlooks the messy ethical nuances and psychological twists introduced by great disparities of power and the impact of long, depressing histories of discrimination and marginalization. It is always tempting to discuss such thorny problems in a historical vacuum–in fact, this is the preferred tactic of Muslim bashers, who prefer to cast Muslims as savage natives inexplicably prone to irrational behavior and random acts of violence–but this condemns the analysis to irrelevance in the real world. But that’s another discussion.
The problem was not Prime Minister Rasmussen’s stance against censorship–a policy I support and doubt many would find this policy terribly shocking–but his unwillingness to openly disavow this outburst of rank prejudice and xenophobia by a major Danish publication. His refusal to meet with the host of ambassadors from Muslims states worsened the situation greatly, sending the message that the Danish government was utterly indifferent, if not hostile, to the concerns of Muslims around the world. In the process, Rasmussen gave Muslim hardliners and political opportunists the perfect pretext for stirring up conflict.
An aside: This is where I have issues with the shows of solidarity by various other European media in republishing those cartoons recently. Not only are they allowing Jyllands-Posten to duck responsibility for sparking this crisis–its actions displayed grievously poor judgment, if not outright bigotry– in running those cartoons, but these other European media are creating the impression in the Muslim world that, you guessed it, Europe is united in supporting attacks on Islam and spitting on Muslim sensibilities. It is doing so at the very same time that it’s incessantly preaching to Muslims about religious extremism, anti-Semitism and other unsightly social phenomea in Muslim societies. Muslims will understandably wonder at their silence on open prejudice and Islamophobia.
I understand the desire to support freedom of speech, but I’m not sure this was a particularly constructive move and, moreover, I doubt it’ll make all that much of a difference for Denmark in the long run, anyway. Unfortunately, negative impressions born of terrible press like this is hard to undo. This damage can only be done through diplomacy that demonstrates that this has been a colossal misunderstanding. I don’ t think the spectacle of European media rallying to not only implicitly endorse but to greatly increase the distribution of the scurrilous drawings that caused the rift in the first place will help much. Jyllands-Posten’s tawdry case is unworthy of this grand and politically risky gesture.
Also, it must be noted that this cause is being exploited by Middle Eastern governments to burnish their often dubious credentials of respect for religious tradition. As one Danish commentator Rune Engelbreth Larsen noted , Jyllands-Posten should rather have exercised its vaunted right to freedom of expression not to denigrate Islam, but to mock these dictatorial and hypocritical regimes, which are now cynically exploiting this crisis for domestic political consumption. But that fact that doesn’t change anything. Two wrongs, as they say, don’t make a right.
Part of leadership is distancing yourself and your government from unhealthy trends in your society, even if only rhetorically–Had those cartoons been of Ariel Sharon with horns on his head you and matzoh dripping with Gentile blood, you can be sure he would have said something for the record, and rightly so.–and leaders speak out all the time on far less weighty matters. Leaders also meet constantly with representatives of important constituencies (and, as the calamitous impact of this brewing boycott has shown, those ambassadors definitely represented an important constituency). Unfortunately, the government under Rasmussen sent a clear political message to Danish Muslims and Muslims around the world by refusing to take these concerns seriously until it was far too late.
The other thing that many observers fail to understand is that this is basically a case where hardliners lashed out, as they periodically do, at an already scapegoated and vulnerable minority and, for a change, found themselves on the receiving end. It’s not unlike a bully who makes a habit of picking on the smallest kid in the schoolyard finding himself in hot water when he happens to pick a child who unbeknownst to him enjoys a large family. Zealots picked a fight that they thought was safe and now we’re supposed to fret when they, in a stroke of poetic justice, suddenly find themselves hugely outnumbered?
I’m very saddened by this surreal crisis, which is as unnecessary as it is unfortunate, but we need to think about who started it. It is exceedingly tragic that Danes around the world and the Danish economy are being caught in the crossfire and it is my fervid hope is that this bizarre episode will be defused quickly, but Danes need to understand how this came about. Is it fair that Denmark should be in this pickle for the actions of a few? (A question that has a familiar ring to Muslims.) Certainly not. But neither is it fair that the founder of Islam should be singled out for such singular abuse, nor that such outbursts of contempt for Muslims and Islam should be increasingly commonplace in Danish politics. It’s a sure-fire recipe for confrontation.
It’s also my hope that Denmark, whose political climate has really taken a nasty, xenophobic turn in recent years vis-a-vis its Muslim minority, learns something from it. As they quite understandably rail against Denmark’s suddenly precarious situation–Danish business leaders are in a panic at the prospect of a boycott, security officials are increasingly worried about the risk of terrorist attacks in retaliation, and there are cases of hackers indiscriminately attacking websites in Danish–I think rank and file Danes ought to stop in the midst of all this mayhem and ask themselves, “Have I played a role in bringing this confrontation about? Do I tacitly support the denigration and scapegoating of immigrants? Did I condone Jyllands-Posten’s entirely unnecessary expression of contempt for Muslims and their beliefs?” If you did, I submit with all due respect you’re not a completely innocent bystander after all. Some would argue that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost. Perhaps, you need to reexamine your attitudes towards your Muslim neighbors to ensure that you’re not part of the problem that landed Denmark in this bizarre mess.
Finally, regardless of what side we come down on, let’s get something straight: We all have a right to boycott the products of those who we feel insult us. This insight applies especially to all these pie-in-the-sky libertarians promote of the free market as pie-in-the-sky solution to all the world’s problems. If that describes you, realize that boycotts are your omniscient Invisible Hand at work. A boycott is not extremism or terrorism. (I’m reminded of all the claptrap by pro-Israeli apologists in the American media in the past about the great “injustice” and “extremism” of the old Arab boycott against Israel, as if Israel had a right to Arab money while it built settlements on Palestinian land and regularly ignored Palestinian human rights.) In all but the most unusual of circumstances, boycotts are a peaceful and legitimate protest. In fact, they are often the only effective means of protest left to the masses in our day of globalization, unresponsive governments, unrestrained multi-national corporations, and co-opted media. It’s often the only way the little guy can be heard (just ask Rosa Parks).
The bottom line is this: Shortsighted leadership by an administration beholden to hardliners let what should have been a minor local hiccup in inter-communal relations mushroom into an international, geopolitical cause celebre and icon of Muslim frustrations. Prime Minister Rasmussen’s ham-handed response has made Denmark, no doubt unfairly, into the latest poster child for the Clash of Civilizations. Frankly, it should come as no surprise that a boycott should be in the works, tragic though its consequences for normal Danes may be.
Muslims didn’t start this fight–obnoxious hardliners on the other side did. Hopefully these unsavory elements in Denmark (and bigots and xenophobes everywhere) will remember this lesson next time they’re tempted to score cheap points at the expense of a small, embattled community. It’s a small, interconnected world. Like in kindergarten, you never know when your bullying might backfire on you.
Svend White is an Information Technology consultant living in Washington, DC with his wife Shabana Mir. This article was originally published on his blog, http://akramsrazor.typepad.com/
Response to British program on Danish Cartoons
"It's a Question of Love, Newsnight, not Fear!" By Shaykh Riyad Nadwi, PhD 03 February 2006
As Muslims across the world voice their displeasure at cartoons in Europe depicting the Prophet of Islam (on whom be peace) as a terrorist, and journalists repeat the well-worn mantras of "wake-up call", "freedom-of-speech in danger", "Muslims must conform to our norms", and "secularist traditions under threat", many are still wondering, "What is all the fuss about?"
Last night on the BBC Newsnight programme, Mr Stephen Green of "Christian Voice", who had earlier led the campaign against the staging of "Jerry Springer the Opera", supported the cartoons by arguing that Islam is different. As he puts it, "Christians do not blow up bombs on the London Underground". I urge Mr Green to reflect on the fact that as a Muslim who loves and respects Jesus (on whom be peace) I was also deeply offended by the clips I saw of the Jerry Springer show, and the fact that a devout Christian like Mr Bush had invaded Muslim countries and probably caused the deaths of 150,000 Muslims in less than five years did not prevent me from writing a strong letter of protest against that opera.
These cartoons are being hailed as a barometer of freedom and European tradition and many Western commentators have begun to swallow this "spin" hook, line and sinker. A prime example of this was Mr Tim Whewell's report on Newsnight yesterday, in which the newspaper editor who engineered this controversy, Flemming Rose, called for a debate about how much the "receiving country" and "migrant community" have to compromise. For good measure, Mr Whewell included in his report a scroll through several anti-Zionist cartoons from Arab newspapers, without pointing out that nowhere in the Muslim world will you find a disparaging cartoon of the Prophet Moses (on whom be peace). Nor did Mr Whewell bother to look for the numerous examples of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim cartoons in the Israeli press. Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian followed this declaring, with an air of authority, "Of course, it looks a bit rich".
The first point that seems to have eluded these journalists, and also happens to be very convenient for a certain interest group, is that Muslims still love and respect their Prophet, genuine love that is, as usual, hard to express in words.
Indeed, it is difficult to find comparisons in today's Britain to convey the intensity of this sentiment to a Western audience. Perhaps the public emotion for Princes Diana upon her death and the respect for the Queen mother can help to elaborate the point. These were people who had relatively little impact on the daily lives of those who adored them and yet I doubt that there would be any newspaper in Britain today that would publish a derogatory cartoon of either of these women. To grasp a glimpse of the attachment Muslims have to their Prophet, one would need to combine the feelings of respect and love for these two women in the British consciousness and multiply it a hundred times over. The Prophet's words and deeds impact the lives of Muslims around the world every day in countless ways, from the way they greet each other in the morning to the last words they pray at night. He is for them the perfect example of guidance and compassion, and is dearer to a Muslim than his own family.
The second point that appears to evade journalists is that these cartoons, whilst undoubtedly very effective tools for creating tension between Palestinians and Europeans in Palestine, and between Muslims and Christians worldwide, were produced with the full knowledge of the impact they would have on the Muslim heart. When someone takes a conscious decision to offend 1.5 billion people across the world, "good journalism" requires a search to discover the underlying motives. What we were offered in Mr Whewell's report, however, was superficial gloss and inaccurate comparisons.
We need to ask the real question: if Muslims are forced to leave Europe, the Arab world stops trading with the West and the Palestinians sever links with European aid institutions, all because they are unable to accept the disparaging portrayal of their beloved Prophet, which country in the world will that benefit most?
The time has come for the editors of programmes such as Newsnight to stop furthering the agenda of others by scaring people into believing that they are about to be imprisoned by a Muslim army. Instead, they should start asking intelligent questions. Shouldn't "free speech" also provide the freedom to ask why there are so many pro-Israel journalists campaigning to promote Anthony Browe's "Triumph of the East" and Giselle Littman's "Eurabia" theories of scaremongering ( http://www.occri.org.uk/articles/TriumphoftheEast.htm)?
To Muslims I say in expressing your feelings on this matter, please do not play into the hands of those who have orchestrated this campaign. We need to bear in mind that their objective is not simply to denigrate the Prophet ( S.W.S) but to create fitna (strife in our world) between Muslims and the rest of the World. They study our history; they know that this technique has been employed successfully in the past. In Muslim Spain, there was a coordinated campaign of sending people to stand outside Mosques after Juma to curse the Prophet. The aim was to provoke excessive reaction and create friction with the non-Muslims, and sadly it worked. This campaign was the beginning of a long process that eventually culminated in the forced removal of Muslims from Spain altogether.
Difficult as it may be to control the eruption of feelings and anger in the face of such provocation, it is absolutely imperative that we maintain focus on the real source of this problem and not get entangled in the traps they have set for us.
Remember the story of Abu Bakr, the first Caliph (R.A.) who was sitting with the Prophet Muhammad (S.W.S) while someone cursed him repeatedly from across the road. Eventually Abu Bakr's patience was spent and he responded to the curses directed at the Prophet. The Prophet thereupon got up and walked away. When Abu Bakr asked "O Prophet of God, why did you walk away when I replied to his curses?" the Prophet said: "As he began cursing me, God appointed an Angel to respond on my behalf but as soon as you responded to him the angel went away".
Our responses must be both measured and wise so that our impulsive reactions do not become a source of celebration for our antagonists. Our love for the Prophet ( S.W.S) should manifest itself in our words and our actions. Our claim to love Him will appear hollow if our actions violate the standard of conduct he has set for us.
Of course, we must let people know how we feel and the injustice done by this act of spiteful mockery, but for those of us who may feel that they must respond with equally spiteful generalisations and calls for extreme actions, in contravention of the teachings of the very Prophet that we are supposed to be defending, they must realise that they would be doing exactly what was expected of them by those who have instigated this problem in the first place.
Say (O Muhammad): "If ye do love God, follow me and God will love you and forgive you your sins: For God is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful." (Al-Quran 3:31)
www.occri.org.uk
From the blog Chapati Mystery
"Figure of Speech"
I have been asked to weigh in on the Muhammad in cartoon bruhumhum. Oblivious readers can click here for a rundown of the event; curious readers can click here to see what the fuss is about; irate readers can click here to see the non-apology from Meninger Jyllands-Posten.
Medieval Europe’s fascination with Mahound, Mahomet and Mohamad can be seen from Dante’s description of the Divine Comedy - Mohammad is in the 8th circle, bolgia 9 of hell, condemned for sowing “scandal and schism” - to Voltaire’s Mahomet: tragédie where he is the seditious imposter. A cursory look at the archives of 13th-18th century reveals frequent and vehement portrayls of Muhammad as wicked, ‘with a desparate stomach’, delighted with rapes and plunder, seducer of women, of mongrel birth, and whose name tallyied up to 666. For example, the first English translation, via French, of the Qur’an, in 1649, stated, “Good reader, the great Arabian imposter, now at last after a thousand years, is by the way of France arrived in England, and his Alcoran, or gallimaufry of errors (a brat as deformed as the parent, and as full of heresies, as his scald head was of scurf) hath learned to speak English”. Arberry, in his translation of the Qur’an, has more snippets from that introduction.
So, while on the one hand, the call for ‘artistic interpretations of Muhammad’ falls into a long tradition of ‘Muhammad the Other’, the hue and cry raised by Muslims also needs some correctives. The claim is that Islam bans all representations - while also banning drinking alcohol and playing games of chance in much more unequivocal tones which doesn’t get as impassioned a defense anywhere. I don’t have the time or energy to go into it here [incidentally, one of the first CM posts was going to be on images in Islam - it sits unfinished.] but the iconoclasm of medieval Muslims had more factors than simply the abhorration of any rendition of the human form. From the Deccan to Shiraz to Baghdad, painters and miniaturists found ample motivation to portray humans. However the depiction of the Prophet’s facial features, by and large, remained taboo. The vast majority of portraits would have him in a veil or occluded. Which does not mean that we don’t have some surviving miniatures that do portray the Prophet in a classical indo-persianate tradition and many more mentions of such in the literature. See, for example, this 17th c. miniature of Muhammad with many diginitaries [Bilal on the extreme left].The Shi’a hagiographical tradition has been a bit more tolerant of such depictions, like this Jesus-y one from Iran. Relatedly, read Pamuk’s My Name is Red. In short, if ‘any’ depiction of the Prophet is an assault on the sensibilities of the global Muslim, than we have more to worry about than bad Danish cartoonists.
The Danish editorial board wants to express their freedom of speech to cast Muhammad as a terrorists. Fair enough, it is their right. Just as the literal and figurative depictions of Muhammad in medieval and early modern Europe served a political and cultural purpose, these cartoons do the same. The debate, of course, is about Danish or French society and their efforts at dealing with that perennial invasion from the East [via immigration, now]. On the other hand, if Saudi Arabians want to ban Danish products and recall their Ambassadors, it is their right as well. I’d say there are way more offensive things for Muslims out there. Lack of democracy in their respective countries, being one obvious one. But, they will only get around to protesting that when they are done burning Danish flags or condemning bad postcolonial authors. A fact that has not escaped the notice of the Kings of Saudi or the Generals of Pakistan.
