Cartoon Flap - Part 2
8 February 2006 by Gil
The cartoon furor continues… Today French president Jacques Chirac condemned the ‘overt provocation’ of Muslims by various French newspapers which have continued to publish the infamous cartoons. Chirac, according this article, stated that any subject matter that could hurt other people’s convictions should be avoided. The irony here is thick. France is one of the most aggressively secular nations in the world and has, at times, flirted with open hostility toward public displays of religious affiliation. Many French Muslims would accuse Chirac himself of the ‘overt provocation’ which he is now condemning.
France now finds itself in an awkward position. Like most Western democracies they have an official policy of ‘tolerance’ toward various religious positions. What is becoming clear is that tolerance has its limits. Religions will be tolerated as long as they are not too religious, as long as they don’t take themselves too seriously, as long as they don’t actually believe what their religion requires of them. So the idea of blasphemy is nonsensical to the average Western European because their understanding of the function of religion is completely different than that of a devout Muslim. For the European, religion serves to add a bit of self-constructed ’spiritual meaning’ to an otherwise secular life. For the Muslim, religion is a total commitment that has implications for absolutely every component of their individual and corporate identity. Western countries dismiss this kind of commitment as ‘fundamentalism’ and see it as something all self-respecting religions ought to want to purge themselves of.
Meic Pearse writes,
By their constant, mindlessly inaccurate resort to the ‘f-word’ - fundamentalism - to describe the upsurge of religious fervour in much of the non-West, Western secularists are employing a boo-word that long ago lost its original meaning and has come to signify ‘more-religious-than-I-happen-to-like’ - and thus say more about the speaker than the persons, things or phenomena being described. It is one more signifier that Western self-styled ‘multi-culturalists’ are, in fact, refusing to take seriously any culture but their own.
Again it seems like this is a clash of two religious perspectives, one which admits it and one which does not.
there are something about your post that leave me “just wondering” - are you placing some sort of equality between spiritual fervor and fundamentalism? If so what then is the nature of that spiritual fervor? Do the repressive objectives of fundamentalist values hold some merit in understanding our commitment to Christ? if so in what way?
why do you claim that muslim faith is “a total commitment that has implications for absolutely every component of their individual and corporate identity.” Some of my experience of Muslim individuals would suggest that secularism is healthy in their religious culture. Could it be that the retaliatory rioting that we are seeing is fueled by cultural values (other than religious ones)?
I can see how it seems easy to blame fundamentalism for what appears to be a fervent response to religious infringement. I’m just not sure that what we are seeing is primarily a religious response.
I am certainly not presenting myself as a fan of the behaviour of Islamic fundamentalism (blowing stuff up). You are quite possibly right in saying that what we are seeing these days is mixed up with nationalist politics as well as religion. The fact that this is happening throughout the Muslim world (from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia) seems to me to be an indicator that this is primarily a religious issue.
My only aim was to point out the tension that seems to characterize the dominant Western perspective toward religion. On the one hand we have a commitment to tolerance and diversity. On the other hand we are outraged when Muslims dress like Muslims, or take offense to what they take to be blasphemous illustrations.
I certainly think that a commitment to Christ and a commitment to Islam would look very different. But we run into the same thing as Christians. Christian belief is tolerated as long as it only affects the private religious realm of a person’s life (their ‘values’ to use the contemporary lingo). The net effect is the same: all religion is trivialized.
i can see how labelling this a primarily religious issue seems justified - at least on the surface. And certainly I am not suggesting that religion is NOT an important part of the response evident in Islamic countries. However, we have lived for centuries in nations with a paradigm of church/state separation. and no matter how you might want to contest that reality. Islamic states have not historically dwelt in any sort of national system that doesn’t tie religion and state. Their political paradigm is catagorically different than ours. That is why I suggest that PERHAPS this might not be a PRIMARILY religious issue - especially from our point of view.
however your point about religious fervor is an important one to consider. It makes me wonder if our comfortable religious freedom isn’t making a wreck of our zeal to God.
I too have been following the story with particular interest in how this affects world politics. Although it is true that there have been widespread denunciations of these cartoons by Muslims, one of the most interesting places to consider is Iran where this has taken on a much larger political problem than religious.
In the last ‘elections’ the Iranians chose a more radical candidate, and since that time the Iranian government has taken a much harder line against the West, in particular the U.S. It seems to me that in some cases, Iran being one of them, these cartoons have provided an opportunity to fire up the people, to prove once again that the enemy of Islam is the West. The consequences of the actions of this Danish paper, and perhaps moreso by the support by the French and Germans originally and now the majority of the West, will be great.
Iran has suspended all trade with Denmark, which of course brings the European Union into the mess, threatening sanctions on Iran. Iran has also used this as an opportunity to withdraw any final commitments to nuclear cooperation (another matter unto itself). What is interesting to me is firstly the fact that many Muslim clerics have denounced the violence, and secondly how Muslim nations, especially Iran, are calling out the West. A printing in a Danish newspaper has created a domino effect, the problem is when will it end? Another domino effect occurred after the assassination of an archduke, leading to WWI.
Gil, you wouldn’t happen to be teaching Contemp Thought at the moment, would you? Really good thought provoking stuff. Keep it coming!
Trevor
Great quote! Totally hits the nail on the head. Multi-culturalism is very much a western construct with good intentions to include people from different backgrounds but often alienates those who hold a strong belief in objective truth. Multi-culturalism at its worst is a kind of “tokenism” - picking and choosing aspects of a culture or religion that secular society also values. In this way, multi-culturalism pleases no one. Multi-culturalism at its best is creating a forum for dialogue and understanding between groups. However, this can is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
Our western idea of multi-culturalism is foreign to most of the world. Most people define themselves by the ethnic or relgious group they belong to. In Western society we define ourselves by our individual qualities rather than our cultural or religious histories. These differing world veiws found a catalyst with the Danish cartoons -the cartoons were seen to strike at the very identities of Muslim people and for many, proved that the West does not understand the Islamic world and does not wish to understand the Islamic world.
and gil one other thing have you noticed how many muslim leaders are calling for calm. Not the typical religious response historically (take salman rushdie for instance). You gotta admit this is a very complex situation. Plus look how long it took for this situation to develop. Does anyone else find it strange that in today’s immediate media it would take four plus months for this story to develop. i appreciate your comments jessica cause i think that we have to look at this from all sides.
Thanks for your insights Jessica. I agree with your assessment of the ‘tokenism’ that seems to be going on at times. There’s a certain sense that we as Westerners want to give the appearance of being ‘global citizens’ while controlling the terms of dialogue to the extent that we marginalize others.
In an interesting test of the “west’s” conviction on the freedom of speech, there are some Muslim papers holding competitions for a cartoon that makes fun of the holocaust. All I can say is, what happened to Garfield, and Beetle and Bailey?
Perhaps even more interesting is the agreement that the Danish paper which originally published the Mohammed comics, would also publish those of the Holocaust. It seems that the paper is willing to go the grave in defence of ‘freedom of speech’.