The Politics of Cartoon Conflict
8-2-06
Recent controversies surrounding the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad have raised the spectre of a
deepening cultural clash between Islam and the West. The issue has been debated as one of freedoms of speech and press
versus respect for religious belief. The issue is more complex than that.
There is an element of cultural clash at play, but not just that of Islam against the West. The issue is one of
pre-modern versus postmodern perspectives on life. For pre-modern ideologies like Islam, much is sacred, including
images of prophets and seers. In post-modern Western society, virtually nothing is scared and no ideology is sacrosanct.
One person’s blasphemy is another person’s parody.
In the post-modern world, the original Danish cartoons of Muhammad are seen as a political commentary on the times, not
necessarily as a religious insult. In the pre-modern world of Islam, they are a desecration and a provocation. Many
Western media declined to re-publish the cartoons in order to avoid further offence, but some did so as a matter of
principle (if not to sell papers or boost audience ratings). Yet the violent reactions of recent days may be a case of
protesting too much, because if religious sensibilities matter, then the grotesque characterisation of Jews and Israel
in the Muslim world would also be equally deserving of repudiation—but it is not. Nor are outrageous depictions of a
variety of Christians, and in earlier conflicts, of communists and other infidels. It seems that the West is not alone
in profaning that which is sacred. Or put another way, when it comes to sacred cows, perhaps it is a matter of whose ox
is being gored that matters most.
In the post-modern world all sorts of indecencies and liberties are taken against the honour and dignity of the living
and dead. It is considered part of the tolerant philosophy of Western pluralism that individuals are free to choose not
to view offensive imagery or read offensive lines. And if one chooses to do so and is offended, there are legitimate
means of protest short of calls for mass beheadings, violent riots and torching of diplomatic missions. Trade embargoes,
for example, are a legitimate means of expressing unhappiness with the behaviour of a foreign commercial partner (even
if that partner may not be responsible for the original offence).
A more specific issue that has emerged in this controversy is that of incitement. The argument has been made that
however unintentional, the original cartoon was an incitement to anger in the Muslim world and should therefore have
been denied publication by newspaper editors, and certainly not reprinted and broadcast. Then there is the reaction that
followed, where people were deliberately incited to retaliate with murderous intent against those who desecrated the
image of the Prophet. The reaction, which appears commensurate in some Muslim eyes, is considered disproportionate in
most of the West. Moreover, while the gravity of the offence may resonate equally in the hearts of many Muslims, the
political reverberations of their reaction, although synergistic in effect, vary between the immigrant Muslim
populations of the West and the resident populations of their home countries. In parallel, the reaction of Western
societies depends on the degree of secularisation among them. Such is the context in which the specifics of the cartoon
conflict are being played out.
Diversity of opinion and tolerance of contrary and often abhorrent views are considered foundational stones of modern
Western political culture, yet history suggests otherwise. The Hispanic and Slavic worlds, to say nothing of Asia, have
traditions of ideological intolerance and imposition that parallel that of the Islamic Diaspora, even if the specific
content of the ideologies differs. It is only recently, via a process of global diffusion of democratic beliefs, that
these societies have embraced ideological diversity and the freedoms of expression associated with it (not always
wholeheartedly). Thus rather than focus on the nature of the religion itself, it is better to look at how ideological
intolerance has roots in the cultural and political authoritarianism of the Muslim world, much as it did in other
cultures until very recently.
Cultural and political authoritarianism tend to go hand in hand. Social contexts of ascriptive hierarchy and arbitrary
imposition provide a nice base for political authoritarianism, which is consequently harder to dislodge as a social
practice even by external military intervention because of its ingrained cultural roots. The question is often asked of
Muslims what used to be asked of Latin Americans or Asians: how many Islamic countries are democratic? Even if Egypt,
Indonesia, Iran, Iraq and Malaysia are included, that leaves a majority of Muslim states under authoritarian rule,
backed by traditional cultural and social practices, justified by a state religion. Coincidentally or not, most of these
countries, along with their authoritarian counterparts in other parts of the world, score low on human development
indexes, measured in terms of literacy, infant mortality, GDP per capita, access to potable water, freedom from
oppression and the like. Due to individual and collective socialisation in conditions of cultural and political
authoritarianism (to say nothing of ignorance and despair), many non-Western Muslims (and more than a few Western
Muslims) cannot distinguish between individuals, press editorials and the policy of governments when it comes to public
expression in the West. They are simply unable to comprehend the primacy of the individual that is central to social
pluralism, and are therefore susceptible to ideological manipulation by their local elites.
This brings up the issue of orchestration of anti-Western demonstrations and riots in some Muslim states. Rather than
spontaneous outbursts of popular indignation, in several countries the dissemination of the offending cartoons (and some
fakes) and a lack of police presence outside targeted Western embassies suggest some element of direction was at play.
After all, how often is it that residents of Gaza happen to have Danish flags handy for burning? How many Syrians knew
the street address of the Danish embassy, and how exactly did they come to congregate with firebombs outside of it? That
raises the question of whether the cartoon controversy is being manipulated by certain states and groups for political
purposes beyond the taking of religious offence.
Muslim states are not uniform or alone in their political calculations. Several Arab oligarchies and secular regimes
(Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia) have suppressed dissemination and discussion of the offending cartoons so as to avoid
mass unrest. Western countries that are on the front line of the conflict with the Muslim world, Australia, the UK and
the US in particular, have all sided with the mainstream Islamic interpretation, arguing that the cartoons should not
have been published because of their offensive nature. Given that all three of these liberal democracies have attempted
to curtail freedom of speech as part of their own approaches to the “war on terror,” perhaps it is their way of
conveying to the rest of the West the strategic gravity of the situation while justifying their own restrictions on
civil liberties.
After all, beyond exacerbating already extant tensions, for those Westerners inclined to see darkness on the horizon,
there is trouble ahead. Muslim birthrates are increasing while European birth rates are declining, which means that a
demographic shift towards Islam as a dominant culture is inevitable where those populations coexist, as well as more
globally. In fifty years Europeans will be a demographic minority (including in some of their own countries), and if
Islamicists predict correctly, culturally subordinate as well. The time of reckoning will be theirs. This has Christian
fundamentalists thinking in apocalyptic terms, and has secular humanists worried that the democratic rights and freedoms
they hold as universal goods will eventually become the instruments by which the yoke of pre-modern religious belief is
re-imposed upon them via forced conversion or restoration.
There are many other geopolitical and strategic implications. On the three major dimensions of international
relations—diplomacy, security and trade—the fallout from the cartoon conflict is universally negative for the West, but
advantageous for militant Islamicist groups (in government or not) who desire a withdrawal of Western influence from the
Islamic world. Polarisation of conflict along pre-modern versus post-modern lines pushes aside the voices of moderation
and rapprochement that attempt to bridge the cultural divide Islam and the West in the interest of common understanding
and prosperity. The strategic outlook assumes millennial and crusading contours, with political militants, opportunists
and troglodytes on both sides of the cultural divide seeing opportunity to advance their causes by fuelling the
controversy.
The political implications of the cartoon conflict extend to Iran’s nuclear aspirations, Indonesian anti-terror efforts,
the fate of Western hostages in Iraq, the stability of Central Asian Republics, the plight of Muslim asylum seekers and
refugee communities in the West, New Zealand’s foreign trade, to numerous other facets of life, including individual
fortunes touched by the inopportune happenstance. The course of modern history—unhappy enough as it is--is at risk of
being diverted by cultural provocations and backlash, with international mechanisms for conflict resolution incapable of
redressing the juxtaposed grievances of the pre and post-modern worlds.
In terms of Western foreign policy, realpolitik suggests that efforts be made to assuage Muslim sensibilities in this
latest cultural battle because the larger struggle could well lie ahead, especially when there is much already at stake
and plenty of existing problems to contend with. Likewise, for secular and moderate Muslims, reconciliation with the
West on terms of mutual respect is the key to social progress in their home states (Chinese commercial inroads into the
Arab world notwithstanding). This pragmatic approach should not be confused with cultural acceptance, nor is it a
substitute for such. But it does have the virtue of understanding that respect for diversity of thought, opinion and
belief is a two way street that should not be hijacked by the political interests of a cynical few.
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Paul G. Buchanan is the Director of the Working Group on Alternative Security Perspectives at the University of
Auckland.