Article on the 2006 Danish Cartoons controversy, published in the London School of Economics student magazine "The Scrip.t"

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Liberalism and the “Satanic Sketches”
By Saad Omar Khan
The Danish cartoons incident is probably one which most people would understandably
want to forget. It seemed to have brought out nothing but mutual hostility between Muslims and
the West, and was certainly considered an international relations disaster for Denmark. For
many in the West, time seemed to be repeating itself: like the Satanic Verses controversy,
Muslims seemed once again at odds with Western values and freedoms. For many Muslims, the
cartoons seemed to show nothing more than a bigoted, anti-Islamic streak in Western society. It
may seem that bringing up old wounds might be inappropriate; yet in a continent constantly
trying to fixate the position of Muslims as either intrinsically foreign or capable of integration,
discussing the crisis is necessary as it showcases a flaw in European liberalism that may preclude
any meaningful dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims. As deplorable as the angry,
intemperate, and often violent attitudes of many Muslims were, the cartoons and their supporters
did not display any greater sophistication. Despite the claims of the many of the cartoon’s
supporters that they were fighting against a form of religious totalitarianism, they were, either
consciously or unconsciously, supporting an all-toghether different form of narrow-mindedness.
The so-called “Satanic sketches” published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten
were probably not intended to offend. In response to a claim that a children’s author could not
find anyone willing to illustrate a book on the Prophet Muhammad, the editors of the newspaper
invited cartoonists to offer their interpretations. The cartoons published on September 30, 2005
depicted the Prophet of Islam in various caricatured forms, most of them far from flattering
ways. The most notorious included one with the Prophet holding a curved knife in front of two

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veiled women, another shows the Prophet with a bomb in his turban and yet another shows the
Prophet warning off suicide-bombers from heaven by announcing the lack of available virgins.
Most in Denmark probably saw the cartoons as innocuous, not realizing the traditional
Islamic prohibition in depicting the Prophet in any form, or not appreciating the stereotypical
nature of many of the depictions. Regardless, the Muslim reaction in Denmark was
understandably one of outrage. This outrage spread to Europe and the rest of the world as the
cartoons were not only circulated by Muslims but also reprinted by dozens of newspapers across
the world in subsequent months. Soon the entire crisis escalated to violence, including the
burning of embassies in Syria and Lebanon, death threats directed at the cartoonists, and the
deaths of more than a hundred protestors in total.
Jyllands-Posten could not have anticipated this level of reaction and anger on the part of
Muslims worldwide. Joern Mikkelsen, the editor in chief of the newspaper, defended accusations
of prejudice on their part by saying “No, we did not have a cynical, mean ambition to upset
Muslims around the world. No we did not have a cynical, mean ambition to upset Muslims in
Denmark. No, we were not an accomplice of extreme anti-Muslim sentiment around the world.”1
As far as they were concerned, therefore, the newspaper’s ambitions seemed more inclined
towards engaging readers in a debate about censorship than really participating in journalistic
Muslim-baiting. At the same time, one could have been easily fooled into believing that the
cartoons were part of some Islamophobic tract. Even ignoring the Islamic prohibition against
depictions of the Prophet as a general rule, one cannot help to see cartoons of the Prophet with a
bomb in his turban or the image of the Prophet holding a knife in front of veiled women as more
akin to crude, archaic Orientalist images of the East as a land violence and intrinsic barbarity.
1
“Cartoon editor attacks misreporting”, June 6, 2006.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1791557,00.html

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If the cartoons were displayed by themselves, without any broader contextualization, they
could easily have been seen as simply insensitive. What crossed the line from mere political
incorrectness to something a bit more disquieting was the text written in the centre of the page
displaying the cartoons reading: “The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims.
They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious
feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you
must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule”2 The type of language used here does
not seem indicative of the rhetoric of even-tempered dialogue or intellectual debate, but rather
the language of xenophobia, the idea that Muslims cannot interact with “modern, secular
society”, and, by extension, are thus inherently opposed to the West.
Denmark has had a long history of democratic freedoms, especially in terms of
journalistic expression. Critical mockery directed towards authority figures and traditional
values has a long and proud history. Like all societies where freedom of speech is held sacred,
there is an idea that irreverency has a special place as a societal equalizer. Yet trying to poke fun
at the Danish royal family or any other public figure in a Danish context where satire of such
authority figures is typical is not the same as attacking a representative figure of a minority
people who already feel marginalized in a society and where xenophobia and anti-Muslim
sentiment is particularly rampant.3 There is also a difference between genuine liberalism and
narrow-mindedness in a liberal guise. Muslims do not object to satire or criticism anymore than
other groups do. The cartoons, however, did not come across as some intellectual critique of
Islam or religion as a whole or a cry against fanaticism, but more as a deliberate form of
2
Translation of text from “Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_cartoons .
3
Karen Wren, "Cultural racism: something rotten in the state of Denmark?", Social & Cultural Geography, Volume
2, Number 2, 1 June 2001.

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mockery and marginalization. Jyllands-Posten itself has been accused of a conservative, anti-
immigrant stance in its editorials.4
The newspaper’s cultural editor, Flemming Rose, when out of his way to deny these
allegations, instead accusing many of Jyllands-Posten’s Muslim detractors of essentially not
understanding the nature of modern democracy by saying “if a believer demands that I, as a
nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my
submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.”5 Mr. Rose seems to be missing
the point. As he himself admitted, journalists often exercise self-restraint in matters of ethics and
good-taste. Jyllands-Posten refused to publish satirical cartoons depicting Jesus on those very
grounds. Many European countries use legal measures to isolate the purveyors of such
repugnant ideals such as Holocaust denial because they see the need to limit certain areas of
speech. What he should have appreciated was that the crude depictions of the Prophet were
emblematic of a very one-dimensional view of Islam. Displaying them at a time when the
Islamic-Western divide has never been higher does not support the notion that Jyllands-Posten
was making some bold step towards freedom, tolerance, and rational dialogue between
civilizations. Rather than describing all detractors as extremists or as kowtowing to totalitarian
impulses, some forethought should have been given as to what value and purpose the cartoons
would have in the place and time in which they were published.
As the crisis seems to be fading from memory, one should not be inclined toward the
notion that inter-cultural dialogue is impossible and unnecessary. It should be obvious that
cultures do not fundamentally share the same values; it is precisely the contrast in values that
4
“The Torch: Report to the UN on Discrimination and Racism in Denmark”
http://www.faklen.dk/en/doc/somalia.shtml
5
Flemming Rose, “Why I published those cartoons”, February 19, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html

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define the separateness of societies. The cartoon issue is as much a question of the divide
between religious and secular values as it is the divide between the West and Islam. The
assumption of the triumph of secular values is overstated if not entirely false. In the modern
world, the secular and the religious exist side-by-side. It is incidents like the cartoons that point
to a certain lack of ease between the two domains. Flemming Rose’s aforementioned statement
concerning the imposition of foreign taboos in a secular society has a bidirectional quality: just
as one religious community cannot impose themselves on a non-religious society, secularists
must appreciate what gives meaning to that religious community and use their secular values as a
means of encouraging genuine egalitarian pluralism as opposed to a hectoring monoculture.
Those who remain pessimistic about the state of inter-cultural relations in the wake of
crisis should note something mentioned by Karen Armstrong in recent article. During a meeting
of the United Nation’s Alliance of Civilizations this year, polls amongst Muslim youths showed
that 97% of those deeply offended by the cartoons also strongly deplored the violent actions of
Muslims protestors across the Islamic world. It was also reported that, while most Danes were
alarmed at what they perceived to be a threat to their freedom of expression, they were also
deeply unhappy with the offence felt by Muslims by the cartoons.6 There is a suggestion,
therefore, that the dire proclamations of conservatives during the crisis that multi-culturalism and
political correctness are worthless ideals are wrong. While Muslims and non-Muslim Danes
certainly held fast to their values, they were alarmed at the hostility and ugliness of the entire
situation. Thus, rather than seeing Western and Islamic societies as two grimacing faces staring
across an imaginary divide, Westerners and Muslims alike should now realize the possibility for
values and concerns to overlap between “civilizations”.
6
Karen Armstrong, “We can defuse this tension between competing conceptions of the sacred”, March 11, 2006.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1728653,00.html

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It is this sense of dialogue that was completely forgotten by all sides during the crisis,
almost as if both the cartoon’s unequivocal supporters and the extremists who demanded violent
action were twin sides of a similar venality. A desire for some measure of mutual respect and
tolerance is not the same as caving into to the demands of genuine fanatics. The cartoons were
used to “prove” that Muslims were, by nature, fundamentally illiberal, especially in light of the
violent reactions stirred up by the crisis. No democratic nation has an obligation to apologize for
its freedoms. The Danish government in particular was perfectly justified in staunchly
preventing any government intervention in a private journalistic matter. At the same time, no
group (religious or otherwise) should be expected to simply not be offended when another group
violates its taboos. Sacred cows are universal; those in the West as well as the East, the secular
and the religious, all have lines where they fear to tread across. Understanding is not the same
thing as self-censorship and shallow political correctness. True liberalism, both as a political
ideal and as a general sense of social openness, has to accept the idea that both secular and
religious forms of “sacredness” need to be understood and respected.