ninety minute nationalist

This week's Scottish Socialist Voice has three letters on the Danish cartoon controversy. Unfortunately they all fall in line with the standard far left response; condemn the cartoons as racist, assert the real issue as support for a beleaguered muslim community, ignore any circumstances that don't fit in with that view.

I'm not even sure the writers of the first letter have actually seen the cartoons, the description they give has the air of second or third-hand information about it. For instance, these writers are outraged at a cartoon of Mohammed "as a pig writing The Quran". Fine, except that wasn't one of the cartoons published in the Danish paper, rather it was one of three additional cartoons mysteriously compiled along with the original twelve by a group of Danish imams for a trip to Egypt and Saudi Arabia used to stir up the controversy. Worth noting here that the original twelve cartoons were published in an Egyptian newspaper in October 2005 without creating any great uproar.

Bill Scott writes, in "the current climate of fear created by Bush and Blair portraying the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist is nothing less than promoting racial hatred.
That doesn’t mean that I believe that Islam can’t be criticised but that we as socialists have got to be sensitive about how. Otherwise we will end up siding with those who are driving ordinary Muslims into the waiting arms of extremists". The cartoon Bill refers to is certainly the most dubious of them of all, however, at least one muslim disagrees with Bill's interpretation,

"I am a Muslim. I believe in and recite the Kalima. I am in a rage over the cartoons. I have managed to see them, since there are many sites now where they are available, and my rage is that they are an accurate representation. Political cartoons are wonderful. They are a mirror which cuts away the superficial and shows by exaggeration what the cartoonist sees as the heart of the issue...

If a Danish newspaper commissions cartoonists to find an image of the Prophet Muhammad, where are they going to find the imagery to capture in their cartoons? They are going to see it in the face that the Muslim world presents. And it isn't pretty.

It is the face of the bomb ticking away above the brain, destroying reason. It is the face of the sword guarding repressed, hidden and frightened women. About a vision of paradise as a male voluptuous fantasy inspiring people to kill innocents and themselves. They could have shown other ugly scenes from state executions to anti-semitism and intolerance of other religions and viewpoints. The scariest image I saw was of the placards outside the Regent's Park mosque saying: 'To Hell with free speech' and 'Behead those who insult the prophet'. The Qur'an and the Al-hadith are venerated and recited, but not read, studied and acted upon". The Guardian 6/2/06

Portraying Mohammed in this way may be unwise unless you like getting death threats but is it really a call to racial hatred? As the letter writer to the Guardian shows there isn't just one interpretation of the cartoon's meaning.

I also don't like the idea that unless we moderate our criticism of militant Islamism we will end up "siding with those who are driving ordinary Muslims into the waiting arms of extremists". For one thing don't we have a duty to be honest with those we want to win to socialism. There are people dying throughout the Middle East at the hands of militant Islamists, militant Islamists have murdered thousands of workers in the USA, Indonesia, Nigeria, the UK; the very "extremists" Bill mentions promote a death cult and try to justify it on the basis of their Islamic faith. Also it's not clear to me who this mysterious "those" are, nor is it obvious there is a concerted campaign by 'them' to drive "ordinary Muslims into the waiting arms of extremists" as Bill implies and, whatever 'those'' people are doing, "ordinary Muslims" needn't respond by rushing "into the waiting arms of extremists".

The third letter is too depressing; how do conduct a debate with someone where the langauge used by one side is calculated to cut off debate before it can get started?

Finally, here is the voice of a socialist from Iran;

"I must admit, those of us who have fled the Islamic Republic of Iran are very familiar with this outlook on things. Cultural relativism's equal opportunity for all values and beliefs has often been shoved down our throats by many of the very same politicians, publishers and editors, telling us time and time again to respect 'our' culture and religion though it has been imposed by sheer force.

Now this racism of lower standards and relative rights regarding Islam is being applied to the European press as well! Beware!

From Jack Straw to frightened politicians and editors across the board, in unison with Ahmadinejad and others Islamists and their apologists, we are told that free speech and a free press do not mean the freedom to 'insult', 'offend', be 'inflammatory', 'insensitive' or 'disrespectful' to the 'beliefs of Muslims'.

I ask you, what use is free speech then if it merely deals with the mundane?"