When is a Cartoon Not Just a Cartoon?

When is a Cartoon Not Just a Cartoon?

When is a cartoon not just a cartoon? When it’s thoughtfully analyzed within its socio-political context.

Currently, much of the Islamic world is literally up in arms over the publication by a small Danish newspaper of a series of a dozen cartoons dealing with Islam. Apparently, driven by some perverse sense of wanting to stick up for “freedom of speech,” the newspaper’s publisher solicited professional cartoonists for their take on Islam today. The result was the now infamous dozen cartoons, several of which are pretty innocuous, several of which are difficult to decipher, and several of which are blatantly offensive.

Of course, the most controversial one depicts the prophet Muhammad, whose turban consists of a bomb with lit fuse. This cartoon is offensive on several levels at once. First, there’s the obvious direct link made in the cartoon between the religion of Islam and Islamic terrorism. This is not a link that most Muslims would accept. Second, and perhaps most important, however, is the fact that Islamic tradition generally prohibits depiction of the human form. To do otherwise is to commit a form of idolatry. Muhammad is no exception to this rule. In fact, depictions of Muhammad can be considered especially sensitive because of his central role as the Prophet of Islam, for to even suggest that the prophet is equal to God is tantamount to extreme blasphemy. This point is stressed when Muslims are called upon to pray five times each day: “I bear witness that there is no god but God [Allah]; He has no partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.”

But there’s another element to the raging controversy that is often overlooked, and that is the fact that the protests are also about relationships of power. I have tried to explain the protests to some of my students, who typically comment along the lines of: “But I wouldn’t riot over a stupid cartoon!” No, we Americans probably wouldn’t (and for that we should be thankful). Then again, we generally wouldn’t have to riot. We Americans live in a reasonably well-functioning democratic system with checks and balances, as well as a mature civil society that provides less dramatic outlets through which to let off steam. Upset with City Hall? Well, no one’s preventing you from attending a City Council meeting to air your complaint. Angry at the City Manager over an apparent abuse of power? You could always express yourself in a Letter to the Editor in the local newspaper. And why go to the trouble of rioting when a petition can be drawn up and circulated, or a permit requested for a peaceful demonstration? If all else fails, you can run for office yourself, or vote out the politicians you dislike.

Sadly, there are still countries in the world where even a simple Letter to the Editor (assuming a newspaper would even print anything critical of the government) could land you in prison, or worse. In the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, unfortunately, political rights we Americans take for granted are still largely notable for their basic absence. The United Nations, for example, includes in its annual “Human Development Report” a country-by-country assessment of political rights. The overall scale ranges from -10 to 10 (from least democratic to most democratic).

Of the 17 countries the U.N. groups into the category “Arab States,” for example, only ONE scored in positive territory (at a “2”) according to its 2002 study. That would be the tiny North African state of Djibouti with a population of less than half a million, which in January 2003 held its first free multiparty elections since gaining independence from France in 1977. Far more representative of the sorry state of democratization in that area would be those Islamic countries where rioting and violence was at its worst, such as Syria (“-7”), Pakistan (“-6”), and Lebanon (no ranking at all due to its being occupied until recently by Syrian troops). Five members of the group do not even yet recognize the right of women to vote. Saudi Arabia scored at the very bottom of the rankings, with a miserable “-10.” Where peaceful avenues of protest do not exist, and frustrations are therefore left to fester and grow over time, it should come as no surprise that a reaction, when it does come, can often take dramatic and even violent form.

Moreover, attacking the “West” can often be a convenient surrogate in such countries for venting popular frustrations that have as much to do with anger over their own ineffective and repressive national governments.

I do not mean here to excuse the violence that has recently wracked the Middle East and much of the rest of the Islamic world. Violence is violence, no matter the cause, and hence unacceptable. But it would do us good as a nation to try and put such violence into its proper context, and stop mindlessly assessing what goes on elsewhere in the world as if everybody were basically “just like us.”

The Islamic world was already an obvious tinder box. Publishing the cartoons simply threw fuel on a long-simmering fire. And while such right-wing blowhards as Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are falling all over themselves in their sudden haste to defend “free speech" rights (except where criticism of the Bush administration or its policies is concerned, of course), the violent response to the Danish cartoons should give us pause, and remind us that the permissible is not necessarily also ethical.

Peace!
Historian