TO REFRESH THE MEMORY OF THE PUBLIC (WHICH, IT IS SAID, IS VERY SHORT!)
RELIGION
(This is an apt time for these—Excerpts
from RICHARD DAWKINS—International Best Seller—“THE GOD DELUSION”—2006. Only
Sentences underlined within brackets and the emphasis in Bold print are mine.)
“……..a particular case study, which tellingly illuminates society’s
exaggerated respect for religion, over and above ordinary human respect. The
case flared up in February 2006 – a ludicrous episode, which veered wildly
between the extremes of comedy and tragedy. The previous September, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published
twelve cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Over the next three months,
indignation was carefully and systematically nurtured throughout the Islamic
world by a small group of Muslims living in Denmark, led by two imams who had
been granted sanctuary there. In late 2005 these malevolent exiles travelled
from Denmark to Egypt bearing a
dossier, which was copied and circulated from there to the whole Islamic world,
including, importantly, Indonesia.
The dossier contained falsehoods about alleged maltreatment of Muslims in
Denmark, and their tendentious lie that Jyllands-Posten
was a government run newspaper. It also contained the twelve cartoons which,
crucially, the imams had supplemented with three
additional images whose origin was mysterious but which certainly had no
connection with Denmark. Unlike the original twelve, these three add-ons were
genuinely offensive—or would have been if they had, as the zealous
propagandists alleged, depicted Muhammad. A particularly damaging one of these
three was not a cartoon at all but a faxed photograph of a bearded man wearing
a fake pig’s snout held on with elastic. It has subsequently turned out that
this was an Associated Press photograph of a Frenchman entered for a
pig-squealing contest at a country fair in France. The photograph had no
connection whatsoever with the prophet Muhammad, no connection with Islam, and
co connection with Denmark. But the Muslim activists, on their mischief- stirring
hike to Cairo, implied all three connections . . . with predictable results.
The carefully cultivated ‘hurt’
and ‘offence’ was brought to an explosive head five months after the twelve
cartoons were originally published. Demonstrators in Pakistan and Indonesia burned Danish flags (where did they get them
from?) and hysterical demands were made for the Danish government to apologize.
(Apologize for what? They didn’t draw
the cartoons, or publish them. Danes just live in a country with a free press,
something that people in many Islamic countries might have a hard time
understanding.) Newspapers in Norway, Germany, France and even the United
States (but, conspicuously, not Britain) reprinted the cartoons in gestures of
solidarity with Jyllands-Posten, which added fuel to the flames. Embassies and
consulates were trashed, Danish goods were boycotted, Danish citizens and,
indeed, Westerners generally, were physically threatened; Christian churches in
Pakistan, with no Danish or European connections at all, were burned. Nine people were killed when Libyan rioters
attacked and burned the Italian consulate in Benghazi. As Germaine Greer wrote,
what these people really love and do best is pandemonium.
A bounty of $1 million was placed
on the head of ‘the Danish cartoonist’ by a Pakistani imam (Reminds you of the
BSP Rascal who offered Rs.51 crores to those who killed at Charlie Hebdo….doesn’t he?)—who was apparently unaware that
there were twelve different Danish cartoonists, and almost certainly unaware
that the three most offensive pictures
had never appeared in Denmark at all
(and by the way, where was that million going to come from?). In Nigeria,
Muslim protesters against the Danish cartoons burned down several Christian churches
and used machetes to attack and kill (black Nigerian) Christians in the
streets. One Christian was put inside a rubber tyre, doused with petrol and set
alight. Demonstrators were photographed in Britain bearing banners saying ‘Slay
those who insult Islam’, ‘Butcher those who mock Islam’, ‘Europe you will pay:
Demolition is on its way’ and ‘Behead those who insult Islam’. Fortunately, our political leaders were on hand to
remind us that Islam is a religion of peace and mercy.
In the aftermath of all this, the
journalist Andrew Mueller interviewed Britain’s leading ‘moderate’ Muslim, Sir
Iqbal Sacranie. Moderate he may be by today’s Islamic standards, but in Andrew
Mueller’s account he still stands by the remark he made when Salman Rushdie as
condemned to death for writing a novel: ‘Death is perhaps too easy for him’—a remark
that sets him in ignominious contrast to his courageous predecessor as Britain’s
most influential Muslim, the late Dr.Zaki Badawi, who offered Salman Rushdie sanctuary in his own
home. Sacranie told Mueller how concerned he was about the Danish cartoons.
Mueller was concerned too, but for a different reason: ‘I am concerned that the
ridiculous, disproportionate reaction to some unfunny sketches in an obscure
Scandinavian newspaper may confirm that . . . Islam and the west are
fundamentally irreconcilable’. Sacranie, on the other hand, praised British
Newspapers for not reprinting the cartoons, to which Mueller voiced the suspicion
of most of the nation that ‘the
restraint of British newspapers derived less from sensitivity to Muslim
discontent that it did from a desire not to have their windows broken’. (Probably
learnt during their rule of India!)
Sacranie explained that ‘The
person of the Prophet, peace be upon him, is revered so profoundly in the Muslim
world, with a love and affection that cannot be explained in words. It goes beyond
your parent, your loved ones, your children. That is part of the faith. There
is also an Islamic teaching that one does not depict the Prophet’. This rather
assumes, as Mueller observed,
that the
values of Islam trump anyone else’s—which is what any follower of
Islam does
assume, just as any follower of any religion believes that theirs
is the sole
way, truth and light. If people wish to love a 7th century preacher
more than
their own families, that’s up to them, but nobody else is obliged to
take it
seriously . . .
Except that if you don’t take it seriously and accord it proper
respect you are phyically threatened, on a scale that no other religion has aspired
to since the Middle Ages. One can’t help wondering why such violence is
necessary, given that, as Mueller notes: ‘If any of you clowns are right about anything,
the cartoonists are going to hell anyway-won’t that do? In the meantime, if you
want to get excited about affronts to Muslims, read the Amnesty International
reports on Syria and Saudi Arabia’.
Many people have noted the
contrast between the hysterical ‘hurt’ professed by Muslims and the readiness with
which Arab media publish stereotypical anti-Jewish cartoons. At a demonstration
in Pakistan against the Danish cartoons, a woman in a clack burka was photographed
carrying a banner reading ‘God Bless
Hitler’.
In response to all this frenzied
pandemonium, decent liberal newspapers deplored the violence and made token noises
about free speech. But at the same time they expressed ’respect’ and ‘sympathy’
for the deep ‘offence’ and ’hurt’ that Muslims had ‘suffered’. The ‘hurt’ and ‘suffering’ consisted, remember, not in any person enduring
violence or real pain of any kind: nothing more than a few daubs of
printing ink in a newspaper that nobody outside
Denmark would ever have heard of but for a deliberate campaign of incitement
to mayhem. (Strongly reminds us of Charlie
Hebdo!)
I am not in favour of offending or
hurting anyone just for the sake of it. But I am intrigued and mystified by the
disproportionate privileging of religion in our otherwise secular societies. All politicians must get used to
disrespectful cartoons of their faces, and nobody riots in their defence.
What is so special about religion that we grant it such uniquely privileged
respect? As H.L. Mencken said: ‘We must respect the other fellow’s religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife
is beautiful and his children smart.’
It is in the light of the
unparalleled presumption of respect for religion* that I make my own disclaimer
for this book. I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid
gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else.
* A stunning
example of such ‘respect’ was reported in the New York Times while this paperback was in proof. In January 200, a
German Muslim woman had applied for a fast-track divorce on the grounds that
her husband, from the very start of the marriage, repeatedly and seriously beat
her. While not denying the facts, judge Christa Datz-Winter turned down the application,
citing the Qur’an. ‘In a remarkable ruling the underlines the tension between
Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said that the
couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which she said it was common
for husbands to be at their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such
physical abuse’ (New York Times, 23
March 2007). This incredible story came to light in March 2007 when the
unfortunate woman’s lawyer disclosed it. To its credit, the Frankfurt court promptly
removed Judge Datz-Winter from the case. Nevertheless, the New York Times article concludes by quoting a suggestion that the
episode will do great damage to other Muslim women suffering domestic abuse: ‘Many
are already afraid of going to court against their spouses. There have been a
string of so-called honor-killings here, in which Turkish Muslim men have
murdered women.’ Judge Datz-Winter’s motivation was put down to ‘cultural
sensitivity’, but there is another name by which you could call it: patronizing
insult. ‘Of course we Europeans wouldn’t dream of behaving like this, but
wife-beating is part of “the culture”, sanctioned by “their religion”, and we should
“respect” it.’
