HUMAN RIGHTS DAY MESSAGE
“THE CARTOONS AND THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION”
“They desire to extinguish the light of Allâh with their mouths but
Allâh will perfect His light even though the Kafirûn detest it.”(At-Tauba:32)
All praise is due to Allâh and may His choicest blessing continue to descend upon our Master and Leader Muhammad Sallallâhu 'alayhi wasallam.
The provocative and malicious cartoons of the Holy Prophet Sallallâhu 'alayhi wasallam have touched the hearts of over a billion Muslims. The outrage and anger although sometimes misdirected sent a clear message to the hedonistic provocateurs that Muslims will not tolerate such kind of venom directed at the beloved personality of Nabî Sallallâhu 'alayhi wasallam, no matter how vehemently they try to shield behind their right to freedom of expression – a freedom they have interpreted as the as the right to incite, slander and smear. Freedom of expression has never been unlimited or unrestricted, nor is it a license to insult, degrade, and make fun of others.
Denmark itself has laws proscribing blasphemy. Section 266b of the Danish Criminal Code provides: “Any person who, publicly or with the intention of wider dissemination, makes a statement or imparts other information by which a group of people are threatened, insulted or degraded on account of their race, colour, national or ethnic origin, religion, or sexual inclination shall be liable to a fine or to imprisonment for any term not exceeding 2 years.” Section 140, states: “Those who publicly mock or insult the doctrines or worship of any religious community that is legal in this country, will be punished by a fine or incarceration for up to 4 months.”
Even in the South African context Freedom of Expression is not an absolute right, it does not extend to:
a) Propaganda for war
b) Incitement of imminent violence; or
c) Advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm
(Section 16.2 -S A Constitution)
The truth however is that the press was and is never free... corporate interests, and the dominant worldview, have always conditioned the freedom of the media. Look at Italy, even though the majority of the people were opposed to the invasion of Iraq, yet very few anti-war intellectuals were interviewed in the mainstream print and electronic media? The media in France was likewise conveniently silent when the military junta deprived the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria of coming to power in 1992? Is it not because of a deep- seated collective guilt arising from the holocaust— that the European media hounds and harasses anyone who dares to raise even the slightest doubt about that terrible tragedy?
What this shows is that there are issues that the Western media deliberately suppress— in spite of their professed commitment to freedom of expression— because they do not dovetail with the media’s worldview or their interests.
The cartoons controversy has less to do with freedom of expression and more to do with Europe’s aversion for religion in general and Islam in particular. Europe has in the past century witnessed a mass migration from religion and religious values. It so happens that religion is one of those subjects that are at odds with the worldview of a lot of Western media practitioners. Often vehemently secular in outlook, sometimes contemptuous of matters of faith, they have no qualms about deriding the Sacred. It is not surprising therefore that Christianity has been lambasted at some time or other in almost every major European newspaper and, on numerous occasions, Jesus Christ has been lampooned in films, cartoons and articles.
The vilification of Islam is also a consequence of other factors. With the dramatic growth of Muslim minorities in almost every European country in the last 20 years, the majority community has become more and more negative towards their presence, reflected in the rise of the phenomenon known as Islamophobia. The cartoons were meant to ‘discipline’ the Muslim communities so as to adapt and embrace the culture and values of their host countries.
There is perhaps another more important reason for the demonisation of the religion. It is the impact of 9/11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ in which Muslims have been stereotyped in the media as a people prone to violence. Television images and media commentaries have often reinforced the erroneous equation of the religion with terror.
Equating Islam and Muslims with violence and terror is not new. It has been going on for a thousand years. It began with distorted and perverted biographies of the Prophet in Latin in France and Germany in the tenth and eleventh centuries and has continued into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the writings of men like Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes.
It is also significant that when certain Muslim states began to exercise control over their oil from the early seventies onwards, thus challenging the Western grip over this vital commodity, that pejorative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims became rife in the mainstream Western media. Similarly, as Zionist influence over the critical sectors of American society increased and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation intensified, the American media accelerated it’s imaging of ‘Muslim terror.’ It is undeniably true that the politics of Israel and oil has been at the root of much of the stereotyping of the religion and its adherents in recent times.
The pockets of violent protests have unwittingly reinforced the worst prejudices of those detractors of Islam who are only too willing to link the religion to terror. Peaceful protest would have served the cause of Islam better. Such protest calls for a certain degree of restraint. It is true that in some of the protests Muslims have shown remarkable control over their emotions. But it should have been the norm.
After all, when the Prophet was hurled with abuse and taunted with insults— even when he was physically attacked— he displayed tremendous restraint. Surely, the least that those who are protesting in his name can do is to try to emulate his example.
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