What The Mohammed Cartoons Say About The West, Not Islam
By Jack Yan – Publisher Lucire Magazine
I have a lot of sympathy right now for Arabs and Muslims who were offended by the publication of cartoons mocking
Mohammed. It’s another example of media irresponsibility: as if the newspaper that published them, Jyllands-Posten,
didn’t anticipate this reaction.
As a media owner, I keep a careful eye on this sort of thing. When we ran a picture of Gov Schwarzenegger in one issue
of Lucire, I made sure the Democrats had someone: we ran a photo of former governor, Gray Davis, in the same issue.
While it’s not always one-to-one, I am sensitive—as I know how politicized some of our readers might be. Some people are
anal enough to keep count.
That’s just over mere politics. Now we are dealing with something far deeper, more meaningful.
It is a shame that this foolishness on behalf of Jyllands-Posten has made Danish expatriates in the Middle East
uncomfortable—and some are distancing themselves from their homeland’s behaviour. The Danish government has refused to
intervene, which says very little about its understanding of foreign affairs.
I would have let this stand. But for this: now other media, including bloggers, are publishing the cartoons. Why? One
newspaper’s actions might seem to be foolish, but now this just seems malicious: no one can claim ignorance on how
offended Muslims can be through blaspheming their prophet. And yet so many in the west like to portray Islam as an
intolerant faith. What hypocrites these media are, with their prejudices.
This is not wholly about censorship and allowing others to come in and gag us. This is about the fact that in the age
of citizen media, we are all ambassadors for our culture, and a horrible job we are doing of that. Diplomatic relations
rely on a sense of decorum and respect. These messages, of taking a stab at a stereotypical Muslim way, could have
easily been achieved by illustrations of, say, Arafat or various al-Qaeda members. I would argue, looking at other
cartoons (including some I was referred to that really made some distasteful comparisons between the President, Prime
Minister Sharon, Hitler and Satan) that most cartoonists would take stabs at people, not their beliefs. There is a happy
medium to be found here—just as there is some sense of refrain on network television that they don’t cuss before a
certain hour.
This is far worse than the racist cartoons that were published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with Chinese
in pigtails and Russians in Bolshevik costumes, being made a mockery. Then, it was just about other races. This time, it
is about the holiest figure in a religion, short of Allah Himself.
The republications have served to unite Arabs and Muslims around the world. It’s a pity that a lack of respect for them
and their most sacred beliefs will lead to disunity between them and western Europe.
We would be wrong to analyse this issue through western eyes, saying that if we are OK with funny jokes about Jesus
Christ that the Muslims ought to be cool with jokes about Mohammed. Once upon a time—we only need to look back 75
years—we, too, would have been offended as a culture with images of Jesus in a cartoon. This does not make the Muslims
and Arabs 75 years behind us—but this should be something borne in mind on why the Danish newspaper and the
republications have caused offence.
If we are proud of our western heritage and freedoms, then we should act like it. Civility and civilization are marked
by the human abilities to refrain from acting like animals, and respecting customs and codes. The United States was
certainly capable of doing so during its heyday of the mid-20th century, its finest hour, although I reserve judgement
on its racial record at that point; and China’s greatest period of prosperity, the Sung Dynasty, was marked with the
same sense of civilization and pride. Nations that retain that sense enjoy freedom—and also harmony.
Relations between nations are like relations between people. Just as I don’t expect, on my first meeting with someone,
to be punched in the face by him, the Islamic world doesn’t expect to get a black eye from a cartoonist in a commentary.
You would tolerate my making a joke about you, probably, but I expect if I bring your mother’s sex life into it, then
I’ve got a kick in the teeth coming. Same thing here, except most Muslims seem to find this far more grave than a quip
about a parent’s private habits—this strikes at something very dear and precious to them, and, as Gina says, we should
be having dialogue, not alienation, with the Muslim world.
The media’s duty needs to be very similar to the wishes of citizens if we are to survive. And I sense the world would
rather we have unity over discord, in which case we in the media—including the citizen media—have failed to further the
agenda of the public we supposedly serve by republishing these cartoons.
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Jack Yan, LL B, BCA (Hons.), MCA
CEO, Jack Yan & Associates and Lucire LLC
My sites: Lucire - http://www.lucire.com; Beyond Branding http://www.beyond-branding.com; my book, Typography and
Branding http://www.natcoll.co.nz/tab.html