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The Danish Cartoon Controversy

Since the printing of a cartoon in Jyllands-Posten; a Danish newspaper, in September of 2005, Islam has been in an uproar.  The caricature in question is one of 12 in a series of drawings making light of certain aspects of the Muslim faith.  The newspaper printed drawings of the prophet, Muhammad, after having asked its readers to send in “Satirical Images.”  By October 12^th a letter had been sent to the editor of the paper, Fogh Rasmussen, asking him to meet with ten Muslim delegates.  At that time Rasmussen refused to meet with the delegation of ambassadors who represented several Muslim nations.  The resulting protests have claimed the lives of countless people and injured even more.  This is not the first time Muslims have reacted to offensive depictions of their prophet.

In 2002, a Nigerian newspaper suggested that Muhammad might have chosen his bride from among the Miss World contestants. The resulting riots killed 200 people. In 1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentenced British author Salman Rushdie to death for his book, The Satanic Verses, based loosely in part on the life of Muhammad. Rushdie's Japanese and Italian translators were both stabbed, the former fatally, in 1991. Rushdie's Norwegian publisher was shot outside his home in 1993.

 

To remain objective and due to the scope of this paper I will refrain from finer details regarding the cartoons themselves and focus more on the cultural clash that has followed their printing.

 

Cultures, religions and countries everywhere are divided.  Reactions in the Muslim world vary from violent protest to expressions of regret by Ahmed Akkar, the Danish Islamic scholar who brought the cartoons to the attention of Muslim leaders.  Akkar says he did it to get an apology, not to encourage violent protest.  A professor at St. Mary's University in Halifax views this as an attack on freedom of speech.  Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations is urging papers around the world to stop printing the cartoons.  "It is insensitive. It is offensive. It is provocative, and they should see what has happened around the world," said Annan in a press conference February 9^th 2006.

 

There are so many varying opinions from so many cultures and religions.  We are even seeing varying opinions within the religions and cultures themselves.  So, we must wonder what mechanism is driving this division.  The first observation I make is that protests rage most fiercely in nations closer to the heartland of Islam, while peaceful protests are observed in western nations.  For example, in Pakistan, thousands of protestors attacked businesses in Lahore on February 14^th.  On the far side of the globe we saw peaceful protests in Montreal and Toronto on February 11^th.

 

The spread of the information affected Muslim’s reactions the most.  In the west it was spread by contagious diffusion through the national news networks, where in the Middle East we see a hierarchical diffusion from some Muslim leaders to the varying nations involved.  Concentrations of Muslim population are largely responsible for the variance in which information was received.  The hierarchical diffusion produced a seemingly stronger reaction beginning almost immediately when Islamic leaders urged Muslims in the Middle East to boycott Danish products. 

 

Looking to North America, there is a distinct push/pull factor involved as well.  Canada, where violent protests occur much less frequently than in the East has seen little or no violence at all.  There are far less Muslims here than there are in the Middle East and those living here have been influenced by a different culture and way of life than Muslims in Syria or Iran where protests have been fiercest.   We can also ascertain that as we move farther away from the source, the events seem less of an attack on Muslims themselves and produce a smaller reaction.  It is interesting that even though information flows so rapidly across the globe that it sill falls subject to spacial interaction and the decay of distance.  We must also recognize the media bias in America.  Muslims here are presented with “Western” news, lacking immediate access to networks such as Al Jazeera, which presents a much more “Eastern” bias.  It can also be attributed to behavioural assimilation since there is already a great deal of unrelated lawlessness in the countries most affected.  This pre-existent lawlessness is a large contributing factor acting as a catalyst for religious outburst.  So ultimately one can conclude that the separation in violent protests and non-violent protests are not religious but cultural.

 

As a whole the activities in the Middle East can also be viewed as expansion diffusion.  It began as a movement starting in the heart of Islam and intensified to violence and deathas it grew through Europe and the Americas.   Perhaps in the future we will begin to see more intense protesting in Canada. (See fig.1)

 

In conclusion, the division between Muslims worldwide is not truly a religious division, but a cultural division and the friction of distance.  In my observations, Muslims in the Middle-East appeared more affected and angered by the cartoons than Muslims abroad.  The reality is that Muslims are united in their offense to the cartoons worldwide, the reactions we’re seeing stem from the varying cultures in which these Muslims live.

 

 

Sources Cited

 

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