Sorry for the spam, for my own reference.
Sometimes We Seek To Be Insulted
Fintan O'Toole
Irish Times, 7/02/06
In the 28th canto of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century poem, The Inferno, widely regarded as one of the keystones of European civilisation, the poet imagines himself transported to the circle of hell reserved for those who sought advancement by "sowing discord".
There he encounters a man whose body, in an endless cycle of pain, is torn open by devils, heals and is again ripped asunder.
The man who is thus tormented is the Prophet Muhammad.
This scene has long been a favourite for some of Europe's greatest illustrators. Gustave Dore, William Blake, Auguste Rodin and Salvador Dali have all done their own versions of it. These images show, not just the face of the Prophet, but his naked body and even his innards. They are unquestionably, and at root intentionally, insulting. Dante drew on the medieval belief that Muhammad was originally a Christian, and that he was therefore a schismatic who deserved to have his body split in two because he had divided the one true church.
Arguably, The Inferno and the illustrations it has inspired through the centuries are much more offensive to Muslims than the cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that are currently causing so much grief.
The image of Muhammad in hell has, indeed, attracted the anger of Islamic extremists. In June 2002, there were widespread news reports of a plot by a group linked to al-Qaeda to blow up the Church of San Petronio in Bologna. It contains a 15th century fresco by Giovanni da Modena, illustrating the scene from The Inferno.
The interesting question is why it took so long for an image that is so luridly offensive to Muslims to become controversial. For centuries, of course, Muslims were unlikely to be exposed to these images, or, if they were, to have any power to object. But with the growing Islamic population in Europe and the wide reproduction of these paintings, not just in scholarly books but on the internet, there was ample opportunity for outrage a long time ago.
It didn't happen for a reason that is pertinent to the current controversy: offence has to be taken as well as given. As with the fresco in Bologna, which is tucked away in a dark side chapel, you have to go out of your way to be insulted. You have to crane your neck and strain your eyes. If you look hard enough, you'll always find what you're seeking.
Any Irish person over 40 can easily imagine the uproar there would have been here in the 1980s if a popular American show, broadcast worldwide, featured a stream of images of the Irish as violent drunks. How would we have felt about a float in a St Patrick's Day parade carrying "drunken Irish novelists" who proceed to dismount and start fights with random passers-by? Or someone being told that they're going to be shown something they've never seen before and musing, "A sober Irishman?" Or a shot of a book on a businessman's desk with the title When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, You've Just Been Robbed?
These are just a few of the anti-Irish jokes in The Simpsons - a show that is nowhere more popular than it is in Ireland. If anything, we laugh louder at these jibes than anyone else does. Twenty years ago, though, we would have been picketing the US embassy in Dublin and organising boycotts of McDonald's.
What's changed? Money, success and power thicken the skin, and ours has been so hardened by our newly confident self-image that sticks and stones feel like tickles. Offence is subjective, not objective. Mass outbreaks of high dudgeon depend on the presence of two factors. One is a group with an agenda, looking for insults to exploit. The other is a wider group of people who feel so vulnerable to denigration that their feelings are available for exploitation.
The Irish had those two factors 20 years ago. The Muslims have them now.
The current conflict is not about religion, still less about a supposed clash of civilisations.
It is about power and politics. Movements, factions and regimes are using outrage to outflank their opponents, just as they did in the 1970s over the film The Message and in the 1990s over The Satanic Verses. Their sincerity about religious insult can be measured by the way they propagate, or at least tolerate, a rancid anti-Semitism that reproduces without blushing the vile anti-Jewish propaganda of the Nazis.
For these tactics to work, though, there has to be a significant mass of people who feel threatened and humiliated enough to be hurt by images that more confident people could dismiss as puerile jottings.
However cynical the manipulation of Muslim outrage undoubtedly is, the hurt it exploits is real. It is inflicted, not by the pen of a cartoonist, but by the political realities of the last few decades. In that period two of Europe's indigenous Muslim minorities - the Bosnians and the Chechans - have been horrifically abused; the Palestinians have had their noses rubbed in degradation; the invasion of Iraq has revived a 19th-century imperial arrogance; and Muslim populations in Europe's cities have suffered from structural discrimination.
Until those underlying conditions change, Muslims will be easily provoked and Islamo-fascists will have easy pickings.
Letters to the Irish Times
7/02/06
Madam, - What appears to be an unbridgeable gulf has opened up between those who support freedom of expression and those whose Muslim beliefs deem respect for the Prophet to be paramount. This raises important questions for Europe, for the many millions of Muslims who live here and the millions of Turks who want to join the EU.
Freedom of expression is a right which took millennia to achieve. It is now being directly challenged by those who would relegate it below respect for religion. But it is that very right to freedom of expression which guarantees the rights of all minorities to practise their religion. If Muslim protesters succeed in preventing the publication of ideas they deem offensive, what is to prevent other groups attempting to censor Islamic publications?
Muslims living in Europe must understand that freedom of expression is one of the cornerstones of European freedom. Christians and Christian symbols have been lampooned and satirised for years. But the majority of Christians, who may be deeply offended, accept that the right of some to engage in such satirising is a basic freedom in Europe. Such satirising neither threatens nor weakens their belief. It may even strengthen it.
Freedom of expression allows for the dissemination of ideas which are unpopular, unpalatable, vulgar and offensive. For if ideas were pleasant and agreeable, they would not need protection. Western civilisation has reached its present level of freedom because ideas which in their time were unpopular and offensive were spoken and published. Had those radical voices from the past been silenced, Europeans today might be enduring the same lack of freedom experienced in most Muslim states.
Europeans need to remain true to their cherished freedoms and Muslims living in Europe must accept that the rights of Europeans are not those dictated by religion. - Yours, etc,
TREVOR TROY, Connaught Place, Athboy, Co Meath.
A chara, - A Danish cartoon depicting Islam as fundamentalist leads to an outburst of anti-European violence in Islamic countries - an extraordinary reaction that can only reinforce the caricature. Extraordinary because the free press in Europe is more sympathetic to Muslim causes than is the press almost anywhere else. One example is its criticism of the invasion of Iraq.
Moreover, it is extraordinary that some of the most militant protests came from Palestine, whose government has been bankrolled by Europe for years.
I personally think the cartoons were ill-judged, but as a sequel may I suggest a sketch of a rabid mouth severing the hand that feeds it? - Is mise,
CIARÁN MAC AONGHUSA, Churchtown, Dublin 14.
Madam, - Will we ever learn that when we insult somebody we hurt them? Sometimes we do this accidentally, in which case we are genuinely sorry and apologise. When, however, we insult deliberately, apologies are difficult to accept.
Were these cartoons published accidentally or deliberately? Good manners are taught basically so that we can survive in harmony with others. These same manners require us to desist from hurting or offending beliefs held dearly by others.
Of course we believe in "freedom of speech". But where does this end? Is it not time we asked ourselves whether or not we should want to accept that any of us who hold our religious beliefs dearly can do so without ridicule. In doing so we would allow all beliefs or disbeliefs to mature in a calm and peaceful manner, and hopefully live together in a happier world. - Yours, etc,
MARGARET TURVEY, Abbey Terrace, Howth, Co Dublin.
Madam, - Suicide bombers killing men, women and children in the name of Islam; Islamic groups beheading kidnap victims; members of al-Qaeda evoking the name of the Prophet to justify the 9/11 slaughter in the US and those in in Bali, Madrid and London - none of these provoked mass demonstrations or public protest across the Muslim world.
Yet, five months after its first publication in a Danish paper, a cartoon conveying the concern of many in Europe that Islam has been obscenely hijacked and distorted by radical barbaric fundamentalists results in violent demonstrations, a boycott of Danish goods, embassies being torched, flags burnt, Denmark and its people being threatened with "a bloody war" by the al-Masri Brigade and the EU offices in Gaza being threateningly surrounded by Palestinian gunmen.
Apparently publication of the cartoon is a greater insult to the Prophet than the murder of innocent men, women and children in His name.
Political leaders in the Middle East and in other predominantly Muslim countries have rushed to the verbal barricades to both support and encourage their local protesters, whose anger is easily distracted from the responsibility of many of the same leaders for the political and economic failures which blight the demonstrators' lives. The demonisation of others is always a good distraction from culpability and its political consequences.
Iran's President, who never misses an opportunity to declare his desire to "wipe Israel off the map" and who has nuclear ambitions, demands "a firm response" to the cartoon. The leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah attributes the Danish fall in standards to the failure of Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie as decreed by a fatwa issued 17 years ago.
And European politicians and newspaper owners, are they acting firmly to assert the rights to press freedom and freedom of speech? Predictably, the managing editor of France Soir is sacked for republishing the cartoon and European Commissioner Peter Mandelson, reflecting the views of many European politicians, condemns the newspapers which reprinted it for being "provocative and offensive".
What is truly not only "provocative and offensive" but also entirely indefensible is the death, mayhem and destruction that has been perpetrated in recent years wrongly in the name of Islam. What is frightening is the ease with which some people in the Western world succumb to Taliban-style political correctness and self-censorship and the extent to which people who should know better are willing to suspend their critical faculties and their commitment to democratic values and human rights.
When will the lesson be finally learnt that appeasing intolerance and extremism is a slippery slope that leads to disaster? - Yours, etc,
ALAN SHATTER, Upper Ely Place, Dublin 2.