[Mb-civic] Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement - Washington Post Special Report

[William Swiggard]

Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement
Opposing Certainties Widen Gap Between West and Muslim World

By Anthony Shadid and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 16, 2006; A01

BEIRUT, Feb. 15 -- It was Oct. 13 when Teguh Santosa, a 30-year-old 
editor with wire-rim glasses, slicked-back black hair and a stubbly 
beard, decided to make a point in Indonesia, the world's most populous 
Muslim country. His idea was a small gesture in a broader confrontation, 
illustrating the power of images in shaping sentiments. He scanned a 
dozen cartoons published in September by a Danish newspaper that 
lampooned the prophet Muhammad and chose to publish the one on his news 
Web site that has proven the most inflammatory: the prophet wearing a 
turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

"I wanted them to know why it was insulting," said the thickset Santosa, 
a Muslim who runs the widely read Rakyat Merdeka Online.

To his surprise, there was almost no reaction. A few e-mailed comments 
to the Web site, he said. That was all. So he republished the caricature 
more than a week later, on Oct. 22. Again, nothing.

"We were confused," he recalled, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. 
"Why aren't people reacting to this story?"

What followed was a quintessentially 21st-century battle, a conflict 
steeped in decades, even centuries of grievances, reshaped by the 
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath. A digitally 
interconnected world propelled it forward, as did a series of slights 
and missteps. And a cultural divide, at times so deep two sides cannot 
seemingly occupy the same space, transformed an almost incidental 
decision to publish a dozen cartoons on a page inside a small newspaper 
in Denmark into a global conflagration.

Protests have erupted in an arc stretching from Europe through Africa to 
East Asia and, at times, the United States. About a dozen people have 
died in Afghanistan; five have been killed this week in Pakistan. Muslim 
journalists were arrested for publishing the cartoons in Jordan, Algeria 
and Yemen. European countries have evacuated the staffs of embassies and 
nongovernmental organizations, Muslim countries have withdrawn 
ambassadors, and Danish exports that average more than $1 billion a year 
have dried up in a span of weeks.

But the scope of the fallout tells only one story. The debate over the 
cartoons is replete with unintended consequences, some still taking 
shape this week. On one side is a defense of freedom of expression, on 
the other an unforgivable insult to a sacred figure. In between are 
potentially longer-lasting repercussions: a rethinking of relations 
between Europe and the Muslim world, and a rare moment of empowerment 
among Muslims who have felt besieged. Given the moral certainty 
pronounced by each party, some in the middle feel forced to take sides, 
blurring the diversity of religious thought that might offer grounds for 
compromise.

In the United States and Europe, some officials have suggested that the 
governments of Syria and Iran, isolated abroad, have stoked the protests 
for internal political reasons. A few Muslim leaders have contended the 
controversy would have ended quickly with an apology. But the conflict 
illustrates a broader collision of worldviews, often fueled by feelings 
of Muslim weakness and injury that date back long before the cartoons 
were published.

"The way I see it, the war has already started," said Daii al-Islam 
al-Shahal, a Sunni Muslim cleric in the coastal Lebanese town of 
Tripoli, who helped organize protests this month against the cartoons in 
his home town and in Beirut. "Will it end soon, or will it come to a 
close only after it has completely wiped out the two sides? That is up 
to God."

This is the story of how it unfolded.

September

Denmark Challenging a Religious Taboo

In September, Flemming Rose, a tall, soft-spoken editor for the Danish 
newspaper Jyllands-Posten, had an idea.

He had read that museums in Sweden and London had removed artwork that 
their staff members deemed offensive to Muslims. A comedian told him he 
would be afraid to desecrate the Koran, a reluctance he did not have 
about the Bible. Then he read that a Danish children's book author 
couldn't find illustrators willing to work under their own names to draw 
illustrations of Muhammad, the 7th-century prophet of Islam, for a new 
book on the religion.

Frustrated, Rose decided to contact 25 Danish newspaper cartoonists with 
a request to draw Muhammad as they saw him. A dozen responded, and his 
newspaper published each illustration on Sept. 30.

"We have a tradition of satire in Denmark," said Rose, 47, the paper's 
cultural editor, who saw it as a matter of principle. "We do the same 
with the royal family, politicians, anyone. In a modern secular society, 
nobody can impose their religious taboos in the public domain."

"We were astonished and extremely shocked," responded Ahmed Abu Laban, a 
prominent cleric in Denmark. Representations of the prophet are banned 
by most schools of Islamic thought. For the devout, even his name is 
rarely uttered without the phrase "Peace and God's blessings upon him." 
To Abu Laban, it was not just a portrayal: One cartoon pictured Muhammad 
with the explosive turban. Another depicted him in heaven greeting 
suicide bombers; in Islamic tradition, martyrs are promised sensual 
rewards in paradise. "Enough," Muhammad is portrayed as saying. "We've 
run out of virgins."

"Muslims have been stigmatized," Abu Laban said. The cartoons, he added, 
are "the drop that made the cup overflow."

Within a week, Abu Laban and others began organizing. He and leaders of 
11 Muslim groups wrote letters to the newspaper and to the Danish 
culture minister. They received no immediate response. They circulated a 
petition and submitted 17,000 signatures to Prime Minister Anders Fogh 
Rasmussen. They met with ambassadors from 11 Muslim countries, who asked 
Rasmussen for a meeting, which he declined.

"After that, we tried to figure out a way to get more voices with us and 
how to be heard and get respect here in Denmark," said Ahmed Akkari, 28, 
a Lebanese-born theological student who has emerged as a chief spokesman 
for the groups.

December

Middle East Envoys of Protest

They decided to travel to the Middle East, where anti-American sentiment 
has long festered over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and a 
perceived U.S. intention to dominate the region. In recent years, 
surveys have shown that Muslims in the Arab world and elsewhere 
overwhelmingly see the U.S.-led war on terrorism as a war on Islam.

Akkari carried a 43-page dossier with photocopies of the Jyllands-Posten 
cartoons, along with 10 more illustrations that were published on Nov. 
10 in Weekend Avisen, another Danish newspaper.

The dossier also included illustrations that depicted Muhammad as a pig 
and engaged in bestiality. Abu Laban and Akkari said those cartoons, and 
other obscene drawings of the prophet, had been mailed anonymously to 
Danish Muslim leaders after the controversy over the cartoons began. 
Critics have said the delegations deliberately inflamed the situation by 
passing off those cartoons as the ones published by Jyllands-Posten. 
Akkari and Abu Laban said those drawings were never represented as 
having appeared in the newspaper. Rather, they said they were included 
to illustrate what they called anger and prejudice against Muslims in 
Denmark.

"Freedom of expression without limits is like a car without brakes," 
Akkari said.

A delegation of five Danish Muslims went to Egypt on Dec. 4 and met with 
Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, head of al-Azhar, one of Sunni Islam's foremost 
establishments; Ali Juma, the mufti, or top cleric, of Egypt; and Amr 
Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League. They also met with an 
assistant to Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister. Akkari 
said the group stayed in Egypt about a week and gave a news conference 
that was covered extensively in the Arabic-language media.

A second delegation of four Muslims, including Akkari, went to Lebanon 
on Dec. 17 and met with Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, grand mufti of Lebanon; 
Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual head of the country's Shiite 
Muslims; and Nasrallah Sfeir, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church. 
The group stayed in Lebanon until Dec. 31. Akkari said he also made a 
day trip to Syria and gave a copy of the dossier to Sheik Ahmed Badr 
Eddine Hassoun, the grand mufti of Syria.

Among those they met was al-Shahal, the Lebanese cleric in Tripoli, who 
cringed at the sight of the pictures.

"Ugly and repugnant," he recalled thinking.

January

Saudi Arabia 'A Revolution Inside Me '

Over the weeks that followed those trips, the conflict germinated, 
sometimes by the most modern of means.

In Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, Hashim Balkhy, a 43-year-old plastic surgeon 
who would not consider himself unduly conservative by his country's 
standards, heard about the cartoons on about Jan. 21. He received a text 
message on his cell phone from a friend in Medina, one of Islam's 
holiest cities, saying Danish newspapers had been making fun of the 
prophet for months.

We must boycott them, his friend said.

That night, after his wife and children had gone to bed, he spent almost 
four hours online, smoking Carlton cigarettes and reading Web sites. He 
discovered that within weeks, an entire virtual world had already been 
dedicated to the subject. He stayed up past dawn.

A few days later, he got an e-mail from a Yahoo discussion group called 
al-Bostan, which published the cartoons. His eyes wandered over the 
photos until he got to one portraying the prophet wearing a turban as a 
bomb. He stared at it.

"They don't know our prophet," he recalled thinking. "And they can't get 
away with this."

Balkhy was already upset with the West. The photos of torture by members 
of the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had outraged him. He 
was bitter at American support for Israel. He had already stopped 
drinking Pepsi and Coke, as a symbolic gesture. But the victims in those 
cases were people -- Palestinians and Iraqis -- and this was the most 
pure man we know, Balkhy said.

"A revolution inside me started," he said.

He found that the most informative Web sites were the most religiously 
rigid. In the past, he had recoiled at some of their views, but he now 
came to rely on them for help in what had become a personal campaign.

On one Web site, he found the e-mail addresses of Danish embassies 
overseas, and a form letter to them. He cut and pasted a 27-page letter, 
written in both Arabic and English, and sent it to the embassies. The 
following day he sent a shorter version of the letter to the same list 
as well the Norwegian newspaper Magazinet, which had republished the 
cartoons in January. This time it was only in English. The third day, he 
e-mailed the same group a copy of a letter calling for a boycott.

He sent a copy of each e-mail to a separate list of 100 people, 
including colleagues in Egypt and Lebanon. Some he knew from training in 
Canada, others he met at conferences in the region. In the past, the 
list was often used to send jokes. This time, his messages encouraged 
those on the list to boycott Danish goods and, like him, write letters 
of protest to Danish diplomats, journalists and businessmen.

He joined what had become a virtual sphere of activism, with themes 
repeated from London to Jakarta, Indonesia. Its speed and scope were 
unprecedented; to him, it was empowering. As Balkhy sent his e-mails, 
thousands of others were circulating as well. Dozens of Web sites were 
set up. Among them was http://www.NO4Denmark.org . Text messages beeped 
on cell phones: "Danish papers are making fun of our prophet," read one. 
"Boycott their products." Supermarkets in Saudi Arabia began pulling 
Danish goods from their shelves, and Saudi companies published 
advertisements citing their support for the boycott. The kingdom 
recalled its ambassador to Denmark.

"We had accomplished something," Balkhy said. "Our campaign was working."

Denmark Stopping Short of an Apology

By Jan. 30, intense pressure had built on Rasmussen, a tough-talking 
farmer's son, and the editors at the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. 
Protesters in Muslim countries were burning Danish flags. The economic 
boycott that started in Saudi Arabia had nearly shut down sales of 
Danish cheese, butter and other products in the Muslim world. On that 
day, a Monday, Rasmussen expressed his first public criticism of the 
cartoons.

"I personally have such respect for people's religious feelings that I 
personally would not have depicted Muhammad, Jesus or other religious 
figures in such a manner that would offend other people," Rasmussen told 
Danish television. He stopped short of the apology demanded by Muslim 
leaders, saying he could not apologize for what was printed in a 
newspaper exercising free speech.

At about the same time, Carsten Juste, editor in chief of 
Jyllands-Posten, posted a similar statement. "In our opinion, the 12 
drawings were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance 
with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims, for 
which we apologize," he wrote.

Al-Shahal, the Lebanese cleric, watched Rasmussen's remarks on 
al-Jazeera satellite television. So did Balkhy, on both al-Jazeera and 
al-Arabiya, another Arabic-language satellite network. Both felt the 
same way. "Truthfully, it wasn't a real apology, in the precise meaning 
of the word," al-Shahal said. Balkhy was blunter: Rasmussen had "tried 
to weasel out of an apology."

February

Berlin A Free Expression Paradox

In Berlin, Roger Koppel, editor of Die Welt newspaper, saw the apologies 
by Rasmussen and Juste as an alarming defeat for Europe's tradition of 
free speech. The next day, Tuesday, Jan. 31, he met with his editorial 
team and ordered up a front-page story on the issue, including a 
reproduction of the cartoon of Muhammad with the bomb in his turban 
positioned at the top of Page One. At least six other European papers 
did the same, sharply increasing anger in the Muslim world about how the 
dispute was being handled.

"This had now become a huge political story," Koppel said. "In a secular 
Western society, a prime minister and a newspaper had to issue an 
apology for exercising their right to satire."

Koppel said he found many of the cartoons "ridiculous," but the quality 
of the images wasn't the point.

"You don't deliberately stir up religious hatred, but, sorry, we live in 
a secular country in the West," he said. "It's part of our culture. It's 
just not possible that our culture gets somehow penalized by threats."

It is illegal in Germany -- and punishable by prison time -- to make 
statements denying or questioning the existence of the Holocaust. It is 
also a crime to make "patently false statements" about the Holocaust, 
such as minimizing the number of victims. Some Muslims have argued that 
such laws constitute a double standard: in the West it's fine, they 
argue, to denigrate Muslims, but not Jews.

"It's not a double standard because it's the right of every culture to 
have its own taboos," Koppel said.

Koppel said that given Germany's painful history with the Nazis and the 
Holocaust, German society had chosen to establish certain limits on free 
speech. He said people in Germany must abide by those laws, just as 
people in Muslim countries must abide by the laws and traditions of 
those lands. He said a newspaper publishing the Muhammad cartoons in a 
Muslim country should expect to be punished, while a newspaper 
publishing them in Germany should expect to be protected by German 
guarantees of free speech.

In Milan, Gianni Riotta, deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera 
newspaper, was framing it in a different way.

While defending Jyllands-Posten's right to publish, he said the Danish 
newspaper made a mistake in judgment by running all 12 cartoons, which 
he said carried the implication that "all Muslims are terrorists." 
Riotta said it reminded him of his days studying at Columbia University 
in New York under famed American television news producer Fred Friendly. 
He recalled Friendly telling the class, "Shouting fire in a crowded 
theater is not freedom of expression, it's being stupid."

Riotta had in mind publishing something with what he thought was a 
clearer perspective. The Corriere, one of Italy's most respected papers, 
ran a package of nine cartoons: three of the "least offensive" Danish 
cartoons, along with three anti-Semitic cartoons taken from Arab 
newspapers and three Nazi-era propaganda posters.

"We wanted to publish to show that these cartoons were really offensive 
and really racist," Riotta said. "We wanted to give our readers some 
perspective: This was not Salman Rushdie." Riotta said that, as a 
reporter, he had covered the controversy over Rushdie's novel, "The 
Satanic Verses," and that he believed the Danish cartoons could not be 
considered in the same literary league with Rushdie's book.

Muslim World Building Solidarity

Republishing the cartoons unleashed a torrent of response.

Governments were already taking action: Interior ministers from 17 Arab 
nations called on the Danish government to punish the Jyllands-Posten 
newspaper. The Saudi interior minister urged the other nations to recall 
their ambassadors from Denmark. Protesters burned a large photo of Prime 
Minister Rasmussen outside the U.N. compound in Gaza City, scenes 
repeated elsewhere in Muslim countries. Algeria and Yemen, among others, 
were calling for U.N. action against Denmark.

In Indonesia, Santosa, the Web site editor, decided to publish one of 
the cartoons yet again.

"But then after I published the picture, a lot of Muslim people got 
angry at me. Then I said, 'Oh my God, what happened?" He put the cartoon 
up at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 2. He pulled it down less than 12 hours 
later.

In time, editors in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan were arrested for 
publishing the cartoons, often to bring attention to the offense.

Some of the region's most influential leaders weighed in.

Fadlallah, the senior Lebanese Shiite cleric, dismissed defending the 
cartoons under the principle of freedom of expression. Why, then, were 
some European networks banning al-Manar, the television station of 
Lebanon's Hezbollah group, on the grounds that it incited people? Sheik 
Yusuf Qaradawi, a leading Sunni Muslim scholar, called on Muslims to use 
the dispute to strengthen solidarity. "The whole nation must be angry 
and rise up to show their anger," he said. "We are not a nation of 
donkeys. We are a nation of lions."

Protests erupted the next day, Feb. 3, after Friday prayers in 
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Palestinian territories and Iraq. They would be 
dwarfed by the scenes that unfolded that weekend in Lebanon and Syria.

Feb. 4

Middle East 'Defending the Prophet'

For days in Damascus, diplomats had heard about protests planned for 
Saturday. In the streets, there were posters of a Danish flag with a red 
X across it. Text messages went out on Friday, their source unclear: 
"Join us in defending our prophet and what is sacred." It added, "What 
are you going to do in order to answer to your prophet in the afterlife?"

The Norwegian and Danish embassies requested extra security, the 
diplomats said, but received none.

The protesters gathered on Feb. 4 carrying Syrian flags and banners 
calling on the Danish ambassador to leave the country. They tore down 
the flags hanging on the building. Soon, people began throwing rocks and 
gasoline bombs. Diplomats said they saw what appeared to be Syrian 
intelligence agents in the crowd. Before dusk, the Danish Embassy was 
ablaze, and other protesters went to the Norwegian Embassy, burning it 
as well. Another crowd went to the French Embassy, but was driven back 
by water hoses.

Ammar Sahloul, a wealthy businessman, heard about the demonstration 
through text messages, canceled work on Saturday and went with nearly 60 
of his employees. He said he reached the Danish Embassy's doors and 
tried to calm things down, in vain.

"I wanted to express our resentment in the way that the prophet taught 
us," said Sahloul, 40. "He would not have wanted things to happen the 
way they happened outside the embassies."

That day, typewritten leaflets were circulating in neighboring Lebanon, 
calling for another demonstration in Beirut on Sunday. "They have 
declared war," it read. "So for the victory of our Prophet, we must 
accept the challenge." The 1,000 leaflets were issued by the Salafi 
Group in Lebanon, headed by al-Shahal, who first met the Danish 
delegation in December.

Hundreds boarded buses in Tripoli, flying green-and-black banners with 
white Islamic inscriptions from the windows. They passed at least seven 
army checkpoints on the way to Beirut unhindered. In time, thousands 
gathered in the Lebanese capital, some rampaging through a Christian 
neighborhood and setting fire to the building that housed the Danish 
Embassy. Al-Shahal, carrying a loudspeaker, said he was among the 
clerics who tried to restrain the crowd.

"The truth? I felt sorry when I saw it," he said. "The protest should 
have demonstrated strength, but with wisdom."

A day later, in Afghanistan, protesters chanting anti-American slogans 
tried to storm the U.S. air base in Bagram. Afghan security forces fired 
on the crowd, killing at least three people. More protests followed in 
other Afghan cities, the grievances multiplying and mixing. In all, 
about 12 people were killed. Unlike in Lebanon and Syria, calls were 
passed not by technology, but word of mouth. Few had seen the cartoons, 
but they had become the topic of Friday sermons there, each retelling 
tinged with another exaggeration.

"I haven't seen the cartoon itself, but I was told that our prophet has 
a hand grenade on his turban and each of his fingers, too," said Haji 
Mohammed Rafiq Shahir, head of a council of professionals in the western 
Afghan city of Herat.

This Week

Beirut Silencing Voices of Moderation

Amira el-Solh, 28, is a Lebanese Palestinian who lives in Beirut. She 
had heard about a text message calling for the protest in Lebanon. She, 
too, was angry about the caricatures, but recalled thinking that the 
Lebanese have greater worries today.

"Ten minutes of thought," she said she gave it.

The next day, as the protests raged in Beirut, she stayed glued to the 
television: Lebanese channels, CNN and the BBC. She talked to friends in 
Beirut, in Europe and the United States. At night, she met with friends, 
all disgusted with the way things had turned out.

But as she looks back at the dispute -- from the repeated publishing of 
the cartoons, to the protests, to the violence that pulled at Lebanon's 
frayed sectarian tapestry, to the moral certainty infusing the debate -- 
she sees the controversy as less about a dozen cartoons and more about a 
sense of siege in the Muslim world that forces everyone to take sides. 
"It's upsetting that you have to defend your identity as a Muslim 
constantly," she said.

She thought back to other divides in history -- the Green Line that 
partitioned civil war-era Beirut, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. She 
resented having to qualify herself as liberal or conservative, secular 
or religious. She worried that, in time, those definitions might become 
irrelevant. Perhaps they already have.

"These walls weren't so long ago," she said. "It was people who built 
them, and it will be people who will resurrect them."

"Do you want to silence voices of moderation, of coexistence?" she asked 
this week. "And this is what the generalizations of these cartoons do. 
It silences any individual as a Muslim and groups me along with everyone 
else."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021502865.html?referrer=email
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