Free Speech

Klausen frames the controversy and violence about the cartoons as a set of political conflicts. Doing so shifts the reader's attention from the consequences of the crisis for free speech to the political manipulation of the crisis. But ultimately, many will find the book unsatisfactory precisely because the controversy over the cartoons manifests a tension between free speech and religion and because Yale University Press, the book's publisher, suppressed publication of the cartoons. Yale justified the decision on several grounds, as explained by the Press's editor, John Donatich.Footnote ² One was that the book was not about the images themselves but about how they were used and misinterpreted and that, in any case, the images were available elsewhere. Another reason, according to Donatich, was that the cartoons actually were offensive and insulting and were intended to “hurt and provoke.” But Klausen's discussion of the cartoons makes clear that not all 12 were offensive and insulting to Muslims. Indeed, several of the cartoons were jibes at the newspaper editors. Some were intended to provoke—not to shock Muslims so much as to stimulate debate about whether one could say anything negative about Islam or other religions in Denmark without risking court charges or death threats. The author also points out that the most offensive cartoons were ones neither published nor drawn by the Danish cartoonists that were slipped into a file Danish imams took to Cairo for consultation with the Egyptian government (pp. 37–8). Thus, Yale's claim that the cartoons themselves were offensive shows Yale falling into the same solipsistic trap as the critics of the cartoons and Jyllands-Posten.

The reaction to the cartoons has been, literally, a blow to free speech. Donatich is correct that the cartoons have been (and still are) readily available on the Internet, though one wonders if the editor would use the same reasoning regarding a book on the history of French impressionism that sent readers to Google to find reproductions of the paintings discussed in the book. Donatich acknowledged that what ultimately turned the decision were security concerns. In its caution, Yale even declined to publish other images of Muhammad, including those done by Muslim artists from the 1300s and after. A highly useful section of the book is in fact about “what Muslims do and do not do with respect to figurative representation” (pp. 137–42). Klausen makes clear there was no reason to fear publishing such images as part of this academic book. Yale nevertheless feared that Muslims, enraged about the cartoons, seeing images of Muhammad in a book about the cartoons, would not distinguish between finer academic points and would react badly (p. vi).

While Yale has been criticized for, as Peter Berkowitz wrote, capitulating to “speculation about possible violence at an indeterminate future date,” events surrounding the publication and republication of the cartoons in the most obscure outlets unfortunately lend support to Yale's conclusion that there were serious security concerns.Footnote ³ As recently as January 2010, a Somali man attempted to kill one of the artists. Jyllands-Posten, which published the cartoons, had to put a surveillance system, fortified gates, and security guards around its building in response to threats in August 2010.Footnote ⁴ Clearly, the cartoons' 2005 publication continues to inflame some Muslims, and critics of Yale who alleged that “the controversy has died out now” and that there is “no chance of this book having a global audience, let alone causing a global outcry” are wrong.Footnote ⁵ The OIC has created a monitoring program to detect any perceived insult to Islam, accessible on the Internet. Had the Press included the cartoons, the OIC's program would have been an easy conduit for creating a “global outcry” about the book.

Perhaps Berkowitz's lament is partly that no one in academia is willing to die for free speech anymore. Some have alleged that Yale did not publish the cartoons because it was trying to win a large donation from a Middle Eastern interest. Yale denied that allegation, and in the end, what one must conclude is not so much that Yale erred as that it is lamentable that free speech in academic analysis has been curtailed by potential security threats, and that any critical comment about any religion may be perceived as an attack on that religion and a violation of the rights of its believers. (I am not including as “lamentable” the curtailing of idiotic and highly offensive plans to burn the Koran by various people). Theological beliefs and teachings and our understanding of them change through critical analysis and commentary.

In a note to the reader, Klausen expresses her disappointment that the Press did not publish the cartoons or the other images in the book. However, in the remainder of her work, she is rather critical of those who stood firm for principles of free speech. The Danish prime minister is criticized for not apologizing for the cartoons, the news editors for being culturally insensitive. With the book's argument that the controversy over the cartoons was largely due to diverse political agendas, the full weight of the conflict between rights claims of freedom of speech and of freedom from “injury to religious feelings” cannot be addressed.Footnote ⁶

Cultural Misunderstandings

Although Klausen's overall point is that the cartoon crisis was the result of political conflicts and ambitions, not cultural misunderstandings, her book provides substantial evidence of the latter, starting with the cartoons themselves. While the publication of the cartoons seems provocative, the author shows us that the situation was much more complicated. Several cartoons require knowledge of local Danish social and political cultures (including of a particular city). As she points out, the cartoons were in a newspaper with a circulation of about 120,000 in a language spoken by only 5 million people in the world. The accompanying editorial was antagonistic, but in the Danish context, easily dismissed as typical grandstanding (pp. 14–5; 19–20). She also points out that a number of Muslims were upset not about the fact that some of the images depicted Muhammad but that the images were critical of Islam and were just part of a larger prejudice they faced in Denmark.

One cartoon, showing Muhammad as a young boy at a Danish school, pokes fun at Jyllands-Posten, saying that “the journalists [there] are a bunch of reactionaries” (p. 21).Footnote ⁷ The infamous drawing of Muhammad with a bomb on his turban was, according to its artist, meant to show that radical Muslims use the Prophet to incite and justify violence. Unfortunately, the cartoon was too easily interpreted as the Prophet himself inciting violence (p. 22). Yet another takes a stab at an author who claimed he could not find anyone to illustrate his children's book about Muhammad. However, the image, with an orange falling on the author's turbaned head (and labeled “PR stunt”), requires knowledge that in Denmark, an orange falling onto one's head means undeserved good luck.

As Klausen shows, the cartoons did not initially cause a global crisis or even major protests in Europe, let alone Denmark. About two months after the cartoons were published, a group of imams from Denmark were invited by the Egyptian government to visit in order to discuss the imams' claims of a general anti-Muslim attitude in Denmark and other European countries. The imams brought a file of materials supporting their argument. The potential for cultural misunderstandings to be exploited for political purposes is evident in what happened.

In their file, the imams included three images allegedly of the cartoons that had not been published by Jyllands-Posten (p. 37). One was actually a wire service photo of a man at a French pig-squealing contest. Two others, extremely offensive, had not been published by Jyllands-Posten either. But the Muslim delegation to Egypt, which later met with representatives of other Islamic states, did not make that clear. The source of the additional cartoons is disputed, as is whether they ever were published or circulated anywhere in Denmark, save by some Muslims on an Internet blog about the cartoons. The imams' alleged intention was to show Egypt that there was a broad anti-Muslim campaign occurring in Denmark, and, by association, in Europe and the United States. As Klausen notes, it did not help that the BBC erroneously reported that Jyllands-Posten had published one of these images. At least with regard to the cartoon controversy, the Internet and modern media have been well suited to spreading erroneous and inflammatory information.

So while the Egyptian government and the imams may have had political goals, such as pushing back against the “freedom agenda” (see the next section) and rallying Muslims, the cartoons became caught up in cultural misunderstandings. Nuances were lost on all parties concerned and so, too, any opportunity for a reasonable discussion of the free speech issues involved.

Organization of the Book

Assessing for oneself what happened and discerning that Klausen's main point is that the cartoons “shook the world” because various actors used them for their political agendas is somewhat difficult. Most chapters lack introductions indicating what they will be about or conclusions reiterating main points and leading to the following chapter. The chapter entitled “Muslims' ‘Day of Rage’” starts with a description of a peaceful protest in Copenhagen, notes that things later escalated, states that “politics rather than theology was the issue,” and then offers a rambling description of Salafism. Then begins an account of various groups and individuals involved in various protests and a discussion of some of the protests, without any explanation of why—for protests that extended from October 14, 2005, to at least May 13, 2006—the phrase “Day of Rage” is an appropriate chapter title or way to think about the protests. The book has no conclusion—it just trails off, ending with a backhanded criticism of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's political ambitions (p. 184).

The book also contains contradictions and unclear passages. For instance, in describing one of the caricatures, Klausen states that a boy identified by the cartoonist as Muhammad has written something on a chalkboard in Arabic. The next sentence tells us what the statement means, but says it is in Farsi (p. 21). The statement is, in fact, in Farsi and, as would be expected, is written in Perso-Arabic script. It would have been better to add a clarification. An important letter from diplomats of Muslim-dominant countries is reproduced on page 36, and the Danish response is discussed in that same chapter, but the letter containing the Danish response is printed in the next chapter, on page 66. The chapter on “Danish Intolerance and Foreign Relations” is three chapters removed from the chapter titled “The Diplomatic Protest against the Cartoons.” This leaves the reader struggling to piece together cause and effect.

In addition, the reader is left to figure out that the long discussion of the Danish People's Party (DPP) in the former chapter (pp. 151–5) is meant to show that political calculations drove Rasmussen's response to the crisis. By discussing the DPP in a chapter on “Danish Intolerance,” Klausen conveys her view that Danes, not Muslims, are intolerant. Yet the facts do not back her up. The DPP got 13% of the vote in February, 2005, half a year prior to the publication of the cartoons. It did not get a plurality, and in the November 2007 parliamentary elections, it won 13.95% of the vote. Ironically, Klausen's discussion of the DPP's policies on immigration shows that Denmark is a rather welcoming nation for Muslim immigrants (p. 153). The narrative may be meant to link the anti-immigrant stance of the DPP with Rasmussen's handling of the crisis, since even though the prime minister was from a different political party, he did need their support to maintain his governing coalition (this “fact” is both stated by Klausen and then rejected by her on the same page, 162). Klausen argues that Rasmussen did not yield to pressure from Muslims and Middle Eastern governments to apologize for the Jyllands-Posten cartoons or meet with diplomats about apparent insults to Islam circulating in Danish media and other outlets because he believed in a clash of civilizations. The evidence for that is sketchy at best—mainly guilt by association. Rasmussen's governing coalition relied on the support of the DPP, whose leader did make statements about the ‘clash’ and whose leader had stated that the one “true civilization” was “ours” (p. 162). Rasmussen's interest, after 9/11, was in “strengthening of the organizations and movements that work for democratic reform, women's rights, and better education” (p. 165). While Klausen links that to the “neo-con” agenda, she has to admit that the “Danish program does what an Egyptian diplomat described as ‘nice things.’” Klausen cannot understand support for free speech except in the context of being a neo-con, rather an odd conclusion. But scattered throughout this and other chapters is evidence that Rasmussen was a true believer in free speech.

It is also hard to understand Klausen's criticism of Rasmussen, since her narrative reveals that most of those persons or entities that Muslim governments had complained about were prosecuted under Danish law. Her critique seems based on the fact that they were prosecuted “without the government's involvement” (p. 155), which would seem to support Rasmussen's point that Denmark had laws against slander that could be invoked. For instance, when a DPP party member posted on her Web page that Muslims were “a cancer on society that had to be ‘cut out,’” she was criminally charged and removed the offending language (p. 157). It is not as if Denmark ignored or was incapable of restricting free speech that insulted members of various religious or racial groups.

Klausen seems to agree with aggrieved Middle Eastern diplomats that Rasmussen should have reined in a Danish radio station, a Danish politician not even in his party, as well as the newspaper—none of which, as she points out, were under his control. She notes his response to diplomats was to stress that free speech is the bedrock of Danish democracy and that he couldn't intervene. While criticizing Rasmussen for not apologizing, she states, “Nor, however, is it probable that a timely statement of regret from Denmark would have resolved the affair” (p. 81). This is because, according to the author, Arab governments were intent on using the issue to push back against a “freedom agenda” (sponsored by the United States and supported by Denmark) promoting “democratization and social liberalization” in the Middle East (pp. 168; 174). She concludes, “It was never about the Danes” (p. 179).

Klausen ends the “Day of Rage” chapter with a statement that “the protests turned against the governments that had originally started them” (p. 113), even though in her description of the protests, such as in Lebanon, she notes that the government had nothing to do with them and that instead they were a result of “complicated machinations” among various Islamic factions. She notes that many of the protests resulted from individuals mobilizing thousands through “flash mob” and rave party techniques and is unable to verify that governments fomented them. The discussion of the protests does not enable the reader to sort out whether or to what extent governments did start the protests. The author does point out that governments framed the protests, in their dealings with Western states, as “see what happens when you push us too far in allowing democracy in our country,” but that is not the same as the governments themselves starting the protests. Indeed, she absolves Egypt and Muslim diplomats from “having set off the extremist wave” (p. 81). Klausen tells us that she is exploring the cartoon crisis “Rashomon” style, presenting the events from the separate perspectives of all protagonists, enabling us to see, as in the 1950 film, that “interpretations are more important than objective realities” (p. 10). Unfortunately, the technique does not work here because neither the perspectives nor the “objective realities” are presented clearly.

This brings us back to Klausen's implicit argument: Danes (and other Westerners) who privilege free speech over religious sensitivities are intolerant. The problem was not some Muslims' reactions (calling for death to those who drew or published the cartoons) or the very harsh views some imams in Denmark held of women and Danish society. The issue was that some Danish newspaper editors insisted on exercising the right to free speech, and not just that they did so in a rather tasteless manner. There clearly was a problem in Denmark, and elsewhere in Europe, where Muslims were expressing justifiable concern about a wave of insults, discrimination, and harassment, and non-Muslims were voicing fears about free speech being repressed through threats and violence.

To address anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim attitudes and actions, the OIC and a number of other organizations have been advocating strict limits on free speech pertaining to religion and religious communities. Such restrictions are unlikely to foster the dialogue, understanding, and tolerance necessary for peoples of diverse religious beliefs to get along. Even Klausen states that “more regulation is not the way to go” (p. 146). Ultimately, she circumvents the free speech issue by saying that we need to regard the furor surrounding the cartoons as a “political conflict rather than as a colossal cultural misunderstanding” (p. 10). Yet her book makes clear that it was, and still is, both. And, most notably, it is a colossal challenge to free speech.