Today’s Independent includes an excellent piece by Mark Steel, entitled “It’s no joke if you’re on the receiving end”, on the issue of freedom of speech arising out of the Danish cartoons controversy. Steel points out that:

“… it isn’t just The Sun denouncing Muslims for ‘threatening free speech’. Almost everyone regarded as vaguely clever has appeared somewhere to confirm that free speech, however unpalatable, is the foundation of etc etc. I expect the Shipping Forecast has gone ‘Biscay, five rising to eight, a gale that, while I may not like it, I would die for its right to blow. Easterly.’

“But a debate about free speech is meaningless unless it relates to the society in which things are being spoken. When Goebbels commissioned cartoons of grotesque paedophile Jews, he was exercising free speech. So if you approach the matter as an abstract debating point, we should defend his right to do so. But that’s obviously mad. Similarly, it wouldn’t have helped much to advise Jews to draw their own cartoons of grotesque paedophile Nazis, saying ‘Then we’ll all be laughing at each other, so isn’t that lovely.’

“But you get the impression that if the academics discussing the matter now had been around back then, there’d have been an edition of The Moral Maze which began ‘Our first witness is a Miss Anne Frank. Now you’ve been complaining about some of the images that have appeared recently, but surely if you’re not prepared to accept other people’s viewpoints you’ve no right to be in the country.’

“Because speech leads to actions. The reason we no longer accept golliwogs and black and white minstrels and the joke of throwing bananas at black footballers is because their existence effects the status of black people in society. If it’s legitimate to portray an entire race as sub-human idiots, they’re more likely to be attacked, abused and made to feel utterly dreadful. And yet the debates about the reaction to this Danish cartoon have almost all ignored the position of those who feel most threatened by it.”

Media Wise Bulletin No.119 takes up the Danish cartoon controversy.

Thousands of Muslims are expected to attend a rally in London at the weekend to protest at both the publication of cartoons defiling the image of the Prophet Mohamed and the response of Islamic extremists.

Muslim leaders will use the demonstration to call for calm and urge the media to apologise for the offence they have caused. The rally, expected to be one of the biggest Muslim demonstrations in Britain, is to be sponsored by Muslim newspapers and broadcasters.

Ihtisham Hibatullah, of the Muslim Association of Britain, said: “Last weekend was very damaging for the Muslim community. We are sometimes held hostage by extremists on both sides.”

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “British Muslims have been deeply hurt both by the provocative actions of the newspapers that printed these caricatures, but also by the disgraceful actions of a tiny group of extremists.”

He added that the aim of the rally was to protest against the “rising wave of xenophobia towards Muslims across Europe”.

Independent, 8 February 2006

Islamophobia – racism’s final holdout

By Louise Nousratpour and Roger Bagley

Morning Star, 7 February 2006

Peace campaigners condemned the “racist” mass media and accused ministers of applying “double standards” against the persecuted Muslim community yesterday. The comments followed government pressure on police to carry out mass arrests of Friday’s protestors in London against offensive caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. At the event, some extremists threatened “another July 7”, while others dressed as suicide bombers.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke seized on the furore to demand that MPs back his repressive anti-terror Bill when it returns to the Commons on February 15. Mr Clarke urged support for a ban on “glorification” or “encouragement” of terrorism, which was thrown out by the Lords. He also hinted that police will shortly make a wave of arrests following the weekend demonstrations.

While rejecting the extremist protest, peace campaigners joined British Muslim leaders in condemning media “double standards” and its “mirage argument” – claiming to champion freedom of speech while attacking a minority group already facing persecution.

The cartoons, caricaturing Mohammed as a terrorist and a killer, were first published by right-wing Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September. The images have since been reprinted in many European countries, such as France and Norway, by other right-wing titles.

The entire episode is taking place at the height of Western aggression in the Middle East, with the ongoing war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan joined by recent threats from the international community to cut funds to the Palestinian government over the recent election of Hamas.

Campaigners branded the action “racial stereotyping”, likening the images to those of Jews by anti-semites and nazis in the early to mid-20th century. Respect national secretary John Rees said that Islamophobia has become “the last acceptable form of racism”. He said: “If this were a cartoon of a hook-nosed Jew counting money, the liberal press would be, rightly, full of angry editorials denouncing the racism of such images.”

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