Pakistani Paper's Editorial on the Cartoon Flap

[liberalpragmatist]

Whatever your feelings about the current cartoon controversy, I can only ask that people don't tar other groups with a broad brush. The people who are the loudest get the most attention.

I can't say how representative this is of the feelings of ordinary Muslims. The Karachi Dawn is Pakistan's most prominent paper and one of the most well-respected.

* Oh, and ignore the last piece on the editorial page - the newspaper's own editorials are fine; the op-ed piece by one Muhammad Ali Siddiqi is anti-Semitic crap.

Sense & sensibility

THERE has been an angry reaction in many Muslim countries to the publication of offensive cartoons in a Danish newspaper. The cartoons were first published in September. They were republished in the Norwegian media last month, and some newspapers in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have also now chosen to carry them. This is supposed to be an assertion of press freedom on the part of these newspapers. Syria and Saudi Arabia have recalled their ambassadors from Denmark in protest, and Libya has closed its embassy in the Danish capital. In the episode, lines have become hopelessly crossed somewhere.

There is the old conundrum about where one person’s freedom ends, and the other’s begins. In the subcontinent, with its multiplicity of religions and beliefs, newspapers (as indeed the broad mass of the people) have learnt to respect religious and ethnic sensibilities and do not confuse freedom of expression with freedom to ridicule a religion or a religious figure. The media here believes that, with its reach, it has a special responsibility in this regard as opposed to political groups or individual writers, etc., who can say or write what they want to. The “Christian West” and “Jewish Israel” are often referred to in derogatory terms in the political discourse in the Muslim world, but none of the revered figures in the two religions are ridiculed or caricatured because they are equally revered by Muslims. The media in Europe has perhaps yet to become accustomed to the large and growing Muslim presence on the continent and finds it even more difficult to be understanding of Muslim beliefs in the current confusion about Islam and terrorism. The right to blasphemy is not one of the rights of the press, however free it may consider itself to be, and the extensive reproduction of blasphemous material cannot be seen as anything but a deliberate affront. It can only be hoped that a greater sense of responsibility will gradually evolve and the religious and cultural sentiments of the many communities in Europe will begin to be better understood.

On the part of Muslim countries, most of them are used to a controlled media and whenever something gets written in the western press about Islam, they think that the government of the country concerned is somehow complicit. This leads to governments getting involved, as the authorities in Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia have done. If there is a moral to be drawn from the present episode, condemnable as it is, it is that we must all respect each other’s religious sensitivities and be more tolerant of each other’s views. Threats of violent action in retaliation for the cartoons’ publication will be self-defeating and will only reinforce the stereotype of Islam as a religion sanctifying violence as portrayed in the western media. Protesting is one thing, declaring death on foreigners, as two Palestinian groups have done, is the wrong way to go about it. It would be far more effective for Muslims living in the countries where the cartoons have been published to boycott the offending newspapers, write to them and make their feelings clear. Meanwhile, the West as a whole should realize that it is episodes like these that strengthen alienation among Muslims and the conviction of a calculated anti-Muslim campaign. And Muslims must understand that their religion is far too strong to be dented by the warped output of some cartoonist’s weird imagination.

http://www.dawn.com/2006/02/04/ed.htm

Incidentally, I would highly recommend the Dawn's colummnists - Ardeshir Cowasjee and Irfan Husain especially.