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August 30, 2007

Sweden: Caving In To Muslim Cartoon Protests?

In late September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of 12 images of Mohammed. These had been invited by the newspaper as author Kare Bluitgen, who had written a book on the life of Mohammed, could find no illustrators who dared to represent the founder of Islam. He had approached three artists, but after an attack upon a lecturer at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute, Jyllands-Posten had invited artists to submit their images, and published the ones they considered the "best".

Initially there was some local antagonism to these cartoons in Denmark. Then in November Egypt and Turkey voiced their protests. By February, the protests against the cartoons had gone "global". It transpired that fanatical Palestinian preacher Abu Laban of the Waqfs mosque in Copenhagen had gone to the Middle East to drum up international anger. Assisted by his violent Lebanese-born sidekick Ahmed Akkiri (who once bit off part of a fellow student's ear). By the end of February, at least 30 (possibly 50) people had died in cartoon-related riots. Most of the victims were Christians, killed in Nigeria.

Now, the ugly specter of Islamic anger being stoked in response to images of Mohammed threatens to create another "cartoon crisis". The images have been created by Swedish artist Lars Vilks. This artist is better known as a 3D artist, creating in situ sculptures within landscape (see above). Vilks' latest venture are rather sketchy 2D images of Mohammed as a dog. The sketches were thought too risqué for several Swedish galleries, which refused to display them. However, on August 18 one Swedish newspaper called Nerikes Allehanda, which serves the locality of Örebro, published one of Vilks' images.

On Saturday August 25, a group of about 60 Muslims protested outside the offices of Nerikes Allehanda. On Monday, August 27, Iran summoned Gunilla von Bahr, a Swedish diplomat, to its foreign ministry to protest the cartoon's publication. In one of his mad anti-Semitic rants, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that the cartoon's publication was part of a "Zionist conspiracy". He said: "They do not want the Swedish government to be a friend of other nations. I strongly believe they are behind it (the cartoon). They thrive on conflict and war."

Ahmadinejad's mention of the cartoons came amid a diatribe against "Zionists", made at a news conference in Tehran. He said: "Zionists are people without any religion. They are lying about being Jewish because religion means brotherhood, friendship and respecting other divine religions. They are an organised minority who have infiltrated the world. They are not even a 10,000-strong organization. Anywhere they are found there is war. Anywhere where there is war they are behind it. If the world is calm, people, Europeans, Germans even, will uproot them."

Pakistan has now joined in with the condemnations. Its foreign ministry has today announced that it had summoned Sweden's charge d'affaires (Lennart Holst) to criticize "in the strongest terms, the publication of an offensive and blasphemous sketch of the Holy Prophet."

The UK Telegraph mentions that Vilks has attacked the "Zionists" by depicting on his website "a giant hook-nosed pig looming over hillside houses. The caption reads: 'Modern Jew sow (judesugga), swollen by capitalism, on her way to tear apart some peaceful villages'."

Such exercises in leftist anti-Semitism do nothing to bolster Vilks' case, but in a free society such images can be shown. For that reason, we are also showing two of the "cartoon dog" images. Vilks may be a sculptor and conceptual artist, but as a cartoonist, he has little talent. Paul Klee once described drawing as taking a line for a walk. In Vilks' case, the line appears to be suffering a schizophrenic episode, unsure of its direction.

The newspaper which published a solitary cartoon of Mohammed as a dog, Nerikes Allehanda, has published in the English language a defense of the "right to ridicule religion". This mentions that a Muslim newspaper called "Minaret", in conjunction with the group "Secular Muslims in Sweden" is planning to mount an exhibiton, featuring these pieces of art. According to this editorial, the cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten were "lousy". I have to say that these cartoons by Lars Vilks are - both in style in content - themselves "lousy".

The article concludes: "The right to freedom of religion and the right to blaspheme religions go together. They presuppose one another. What happens if a fundamentalist Muslim wants to express his faith through pictorial art? Quite clearly, it will be easy to persuade art galleries that the pictures are unsuitable, that they may lead to conflict. So the restriction of Lars Vilks' possibilities to express himself may also negatively affect Muslims’ right to express themselves."

Sweden's the Local states that Sweden has officially offered an apology to Pakistan for the publication which "hurt Muslim feelings".

Pakistan has issued a statement, which claims: "Regrettably, the tendency among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims in the world is on the rise." The statement asserted that Sweden "fully shared the views of the Muslim community" and said the publication was "unfortunate".

Anna Björkander, Sweden's foreign ministry spokesperson said that the assumption by Pakistan that Sweden as a whole was sorry was itself a "misunderstanding" but admitted that Lennart Holst had expressed to Miangul Akbar Zed at the Pakistan foreign ministry that he was sorry " if the publication had hurt Muslim feelings." She said Sweden protects freedom of expression in its constitution, but claimed that "Otherwise the Swedish government has no opinion on the matter."

For more information on this case, see Middle East Times, Reuters, Press TV and also Gates of Vienna. The latter website claimed on August 18 that Lars Vilks had received a letter threatening to cut his head off.

I hope that by showing these cartoons, we do not unnecessarily offend anyone.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 30, 2007 6:10 PM

Comments

Posted by: Catawhumpus at August 31, 2007 11:46 PM

Posted by: Spipou at September 1, 2007 9:49 AM

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