Four months ago the Danish daily broadsheet Jyllands Posten actively sought expressions of self-censorship from cartoonists. The result was 12 cartoons including one simply reinforcing the stereotype muslim=terrorist and another equating Islam with Satan. Carsten Juste, the editor who commissioned the drawings has apologised for the “culturally based misunderstandings” and clarified his position. I find it hard to believe that the “sober” drawings “were not intended to be offensive”. Some typify pointlessly antagonistic hate speech rather than the intellectualy valuable free speech Juste seems to be promoting, which Guido discusses in this excellent post.
So why the clarification now? Well, on Friday, the Danish Business Council asked for one. The top article on Jyllands Posten’s website reads “Thousands of jobs are in danger if the Middle Eastern boycott of Danish goods becomes protracted. But the boycott can not shake the whole Danish economy.” The boycott is not only serious because Danish dairy giant Arla moved has production into Saudi Arabia to cut costs, but because expansion into Middle East markets is a major part of the company’s expansion strategy. Fat free and diet milk, yoghurt and cheese have gradually been taking over traditional full fat products in Arla’s traditional European markets so the problem of fat disposal has increased in recent years. The solution? Exporting butter and other fats to Middle Eastern markets, along with other dairy products, to the tune of US$420 million a year, roughly half of all Danish export income in the region. Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, accounting for half of Arla’s market in the region have all threatened or are proceeding with a boycott.
Update: The pro-cartoon and anti-cartoon movements continue apace:
Let us christians boycot moslem vegetable sellers, pizza-bakers and taxi-drivers in Denmark. Pass this text message on if you agree.
Unsurprisingly, the far right Danish People’s Party received 13.2% of the vote in the last election.
It’s simply breathtaking that this is being framed so unequivocally as an issue of free speech in which “liberal little Denmark” (!!!) must be defended against Islamists. A notable absence from the tropes of the Culture Warriors is Prime Minister Fogh’s personal opinion:
“I personally have such a respect for people’s religious belief that I personally never would have depicted Muhammad, Jesus or any other religious character in a way that could offend other people.
Well, market supporters can hardly complain about consumer sovereignty at work!
dk.au: “The result was 12 cartoons including one simply reinforcing the stereotype muslim=terrorist…”
Guido: “Yesterday masked gunmen in Gaza have briefly (sic) stormed the local office of the EU and demanded an apology from Denmark and Norway (where another newspaper reprinted the cartoons).
Heh.
Today I heard quite a long item on this subject on Radio Netherlands via News Radio. Among the elements cited were:
1. In the beginning phases there were quite extensive street protests organised by Muslims.
2. The whole thing has turned into a serious PR and commercial disaster for Denmark in the Muslim world.
3. While the paper has long since apologised, but only a government apology will do.
4. The PM or his representative said words to this effect:
” I’m sorry, but I can’t say I’m sorry because the Danish constitution prohibits the government interfering with free speech.
PS. Please don’t anyone infer from the above what my attitude is on all this, because I haven’t said. Just reporting.
Yes, I await similar capitulations from the Middle East media who run government-promoted, non-offensive-yet-richly-satirical images of Jews - like these - in the face of furious international protests. But I think I’ll be waiting long.
That’s a fair point, Rob - vile clips.
I’d be curious as to Brian’s view on the comparitive vice of the Danish cartoons and the videos linked above - and in which series of depictions he thinks we might more reasonably invest our revulsion.
Many of the countries that most vociferously objected to the cartoons - including Iran and Jordan - themselves vigorously promote and disseminate these images of Jews.
I’m not being snarky, Brian, although the tone of the question may seem pointed. I’d be genuinely interested in your views on this.
Rob, I just noticed at C.L.’s rather unpleasant thread (where I’ve just been patronised and called a “hypocrite” and a “coward” with nothing adduced to support the slurs) that Brian said he was pretty time poor so he may not get a chance to read your comment.
Fair enough, Kim - and Brian. I am for bed myself.
Just here for a mo, Rob.
I often don’t have completely settled views on things, but you can have my interim view FWIW.
Denmark, as I understand it, is small, culturally homogenous in its caucasian population, almost tribal. In this context the influx of Muslims from Africa and the Middle East would be hard to integrate.
In view of this, the newspaper’s idea was unwise. Most of the cartoonists likewise. But the reaction has been disproportionate and I don’t see it as serving anyone.
At one level, though, it could be a warning, as with the riots in France, that all is not well.
But the intervention on a diplomatic level by foreign powers has given it a whole different dimension and hypocrisy from Jordan and Iran would not surprise. Integrity and ethics often go out the window at that level. But I don’t know enough to make a useful contribution in that regard. Nor do I know how the Danish PM should act to resolve the situation, but he does seem to be keen on holding the freedom of speech line. This is not all bad.
One further point. I would see cartoons as in the domain of freedom of speech and comment. I see art in a different domain. I spent a deal of time earlier this evening following up on the Piss Christ thing. The image is here. I accept at face value Serrano’s claim that he was being reverential to the image of Christ and I think this is the key to understanding it. (But even if he wasn’t being reverential, I don’t think we should ban it.) I don’t think a lot of words further than that help very much. But we need artists to shake us up a bit, even if that is not their main purpose.
Sorry, I’m a bit flat at the moment so I’ll cave in and get some kip.
You’re right in thinking all is not well in Denmark. They have, albeit commensurately smaller, the same problems of France. Sweden also has problems:
Muslim rioting in Denmark
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/008829.php
“”This land belongs to us”, declared the young rioters. Another arson attack took place sunday night.
Sunday evening the fire department needed police escorts to get in and extinguish an arsonist fire in Søndervangs Alle.”
Swedes Reach Muslim Breaking Point
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139614,00.html
Here’s some good news on the racial and religious vilification front. Although, if you scroll right down to the final sentence, you could be forgiven for thinking that an uncomfortable suspicion that the Prophet’s own pronouncements could be regarded as a kind of — well, vilification, actually — might have played a role in the defeat of the Government’s draft of the bill.
Perhpas the beleagured Danish cartoonists should now consider seeking political asylum in Britain.
How awful it’d be to be a beleaguered Dutch sectarian cartoonist. To be constantly commissioned for work by mass-circulation newspapers, to have your work internationally promoted, to be made famous for a couple of hours of pencil and gouache work.
I don’t know how I’d cope if I were so oppressed.
Don’t be silly, Liam.
test
Those cartoons weren’t vilificaton. They were too incoherent for that. But they were hurtful. They were saying - I piss on your religion, I shit on your gods. Now in the West, where pissing and shitting on each other’s idols is often taken as a pleasantry, we tend not to get overly umbrageous, but in more trad societies where the glories of hi-tech fuelled communications has not yet dulled the senses, outrage still occurs. Quaint tho it may seem to us. (We have short memories.)
If you brought your grandmother over to my place, and between serving the tea and bringing out a plate of biscuits, I made lewd sport about the shape of her dress, you’d be outraged, hurt and deeply humiliated. Depending upon your personality, you’d either make me wear my china or simply leave fairly abruptly.
Similar scenario really. The publishers of those cartoons have made royal fools of theirselves. The blokes who then invaded offices etc - likewise. And as for ppl like Rob who make a cultural/political/religious case for Anything out of all this churlish unpleasantness, well, likewise.
Seems OK now, Mark. (Was having difficulty accessing the comments box for this post.)
Yes, Rob, we’ve figured out the problem. There was some sort of bug that disappeared the post and the comments while dk.au was updating it.
That’s not vilification? I’d hate my faith - if I had one - to be vilified, then.
Bring on the tumbrils, wbb. When you feel the need to speak your mind about anything someone might take offence at, bite your tongue, and jump on board instead.
Meanwhile, the governments that orchestrate these protests are themselves responsible (see post above) for promulgating the most appalling libels about Jews - including Hamas, soon to take over the government of the Palestinian territories. I don’t think there’s much of a chance they might find their way to an apology.
Check out who’s sitting next to you on the way to the execution ground, brother.
Muslim beliefs are no more worthy of respect then any other unproven doctrine. Christianity, Creationism, Evolution, Marxism and the Raelian Movement included, among others.
Don’t ask me to respect the superstitions of the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia has no qualms about confiscating and destroying even a single Bible at their airport checkouts. Who the hell are they to preach to Denmark?
Perhaps if every major European newspaper published these cartoons, Muslim governments may realise the futility of trying to dictate terms to another continent altogether.
No one hit back nonsense like holding Europe to a higher standard. I recall Berbard Lewis had a few fine words to say about that type of ‘pro-Arab’ sentiment.
As for the boycott of Arla, I understand the price of them doing business in Saudi Arabia is not doing business in Israel. Just desserts.
Perhaps the Danish government will decide to prop up ailing Arla with the hundreds of millions of aid and assistance Euro’s they send to some of the same governments which are now trying to boss them around.
As for the boycott of Arla, I understand the price of them doing business in Saudi Arabia is not doing business in Israel.
That’s not correct: Partners to the end
Who’s sticking up for Saudi Arabia, anti-semitism, or goons waving guns here? I’m personally surprised that people are surprised that people are offended when the intent was to offend in the first place. I’m with WBB offense happens in a social context and if it’s political in intent, it’s right to question what the outcomes and results are? Personally I thought the Iranian film “The Circle” is a much more devastating insider critique of Islam and “The Message”, with the prophet constantly just off camera, funnier. Were there better, cleverer, more effective ways of doing this? And does free speech mean we don’t have to ask these questions?
Slighty off topic example to a more familiar area for me (not an LP first I believe). Every year the Prime Minister of Japan visits Yasukuni Shrine which has the graves of Japanes soldiers and some class A war criminals. This is his right and the Japanese do respect their dead but I think he’s a dick for doing it and it’s not a source of amazement that Koreans and Chinese (cynical as this may be in many ways) go apeshit.
Antony, not trying to score points, but Submission by Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems to me to be a more germane criticism of fundamentalist Islam. And even a non-critical work, like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, can spark homicidal fatwas.
….and Theo van Gogh, of course, was murdered for making the film. I should have mentioned that.
I meant to post this before. For those interested, you can download Submission here.
Submission is a dog of a film. Nothing to get murdered over, sure, but really, it’s lame-ass and offensive cinema. And of course there’s plenty of that too, but if you are going to pick a fight with a bunch of miltant deists then at least make something that other heathens can respect you for.
Yep, a really trivial event. Poor old lame-ass Theo, gunned down, nearly decapitated, an Islamist catalogue driven into his heart. Who’d respect a man like that? No hoi-polloi appeal.
And now silly old Ali’s making Submission Part 2. Let’s hope she ups the aesthetics. She might get killed, ’sure’, but more of the right kind of ‘other heathens’ may feel sorry for her, this time.
Antony, not trying to score points,
Your burden of proof - show that Submission wouldn’t be a ‘germane criticism’ of any society where arranged marriage is still practiced Rob. And what wbb said.
Theo van Gogh was Dutch, not Danish. I should have mentioned that.
What wbb said indeed. I loved his comment and intend to use it often. No probs with that, wbb?
Pace Anthony (sorry), he wasn’t Iranian either. What’s that to the purpose?
This one seems to have been ramped up a notch. Michael said:
It seems that many of them have, at least in Germany, France and Spain. There is a report on Spiegel Online (in English) about the editor of France Soir being sacked because of his action in reprinting the cartoons. It seems that the paper is owned by an Egyptian.
Die Welt has a story on the story. 17 Arab states have demanded that those reponsible be punished. 10,000 women have demonstrated in Yemen. There are calls for terrorist strikes against Denmark and Norway and the Danish police are gearing up for demontrations against Muslims.
The France Soir printed the Danish cartoons inside. On the front page according to Spiegel they:
Die Welt says that the chief editor of Jyllands Posten has thrown in the towel. He says that he’s ashamed to say that the opponents of free speech have won.
To sum up, many of the papers are saying “We mean no disrespect, but it is important to understand that we must have the freedom to blaspheme any god in a secular society.”
Others make a distinction between satire and blasphemy.
The Muslims are saying it is a clear slur on their religion.
Some Muslim leaders are saying, “That’s right, but that doesn’t provide a justification for violence.”
Others are calling for just that.
According to Die Welt the Deutschen Journalistenverband (German Union of Journalists) has critcised the reprint of the material in German papers. They say that it is offensive to a specific group of people and has nothing to do with the responsibility of the press.
Then there is this from Jordan (via Deutsche Welle)
I haven’t read all the copious articles and my German is a bit rusty. French is double-Dutch to me. But that’s how it seems to me from what I’ve read and a few more reports via the ABC.
Great comment, Brian.
“Muslims of the world, be reasonable,â€? said the editor-in-chief of the weekly independent newspaper Al-Shihan.”
Can’t we all say amen to that in whatever language and out of whatever faith?
Speaking of the Dutch, Leon de Winter doesn’t hold back.
This is interesting, Brian:
To what extent is ubiquitous welfare part of the problem? I’ve no answer, just asking the question (which I know is not original). It’s been advanced in the wake of both the French and Australian ‘race’ riots.
Rob, I think de Winter fails to say that the guest workers were brought to Europe to do jobs that are no longer there. The jobs have migrated to Eastern Europe, Turkey and Asia.
he fails to appreciate that the poor are not doing do well in the US these days either, the jobs having migrated to Mexico and now China. 45.8 million have no medical cover. 75% of all jobs are not ‘good’ jobs according to a recent study, with one or more of low pay, no health care and no pensions.
Most of the US poor immigrants come from the south and most are not Muslims. Not sure what the latter means, but they are less likely to get drawn into this sort of issue.
But most of the world’s poor are still in India, Indonesia, China and Pakistan (Africa included) where they seem more passive, although there have been protests in Pakistan about the Danish cartoons too.
All this is beyond me.
I’ve just heard via the BBC that armed and masked Palestinians are threatening direct actions against ‘European’ (specifically Danish, French and Spanish) churches, other facilities and personnel in Palestine if apologies are not forthcoming. Their latest story is here.
It seems papers in Italy also reprinted the cartoons.
I understand there are 12 European newspapers that republished the Danish cartoons. It made the ABC TV news here tonight, possibly for the first time. Also the Danish embassy in Indonesia came under attack. The item was top story on the Deutche Welle site, also front page at Spiegel and the BBC.
Der Spiegel has an interesting article in which key editorial staff of the Jyllands-Posten said the whole exercise was worthwhile, as they stood on the street after evacuating their building because of a bomb threat. It showed how relevant the issue was to contemporay society, they said. Their intent was to show the extent of self-censorship.
Ironically, their action has probably increased self-censorship.
Ibn Warraq says that the west should not cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset. He says:
Deutsche Welle carries an opinion piece by Peter Phillip. He puts the issue in terms of opposing freedoms:
Deutsche Welle’s main story today is in an opinion (analysis) piece. They say that in 25 countries enraged Muslims have taken to the streets. They see the issue as a problem of having no separation between church and state:
But more chillingly, Deutsche Welle sees radical Islamic elements as taking political advantage of the issue to radicalise Muslim opinion and whip up general anti-west feelings.
They say that the great efforts by Europe and Germany in particular to establish dialogue with the Arab and Islamic worlds are in danger of being undone.
It’s hard to see where all this is going to end.
It’s certainly an extremely thorny one.
A couple of observations - this brings out some of the limitations and aporias of liberalism when confronted by speech which sits uneasily within the frame either of tolerance or civil debate. It’s the sort of thing that leaves liberals impaled on the horns of a dilemma, not knowing which principle to uphold - respect for religious figures or freedom of speech. Because in this instance they clash and are very hard to reconcile.
There’s also a different context for religious satire in continental Europe - anti-clericalism certainly started a tradition of lampooning religion (Christianity in this case) - not just of the Enlightenment type - but earlier in Northern Europe where some of the most powerful weapons of the Reformation were satire and biting humour (at which the great polemicist Luther was a master).
I would say ‘amen’ to every word of that remarkable article by Ibn Warraq. Thank you for linking it.
I’ve just heard a discussion on the BBC. Apparently no English paper has published the cartoons even to illustrate stories about them. Mostly because of the desire not to offend, curiously enough.
One newspaper guy said the cartoons were poor quality and reflected a past era of orientalism.
Another said the issue was blck and white, as it were. Publishing images of the Prophet were verboten in Islam, so publishing them per se was bound to give deep offense.
The quality of the images, the intentions etc were simply irrelevant. Certainly that is how Muslims in general seem to see it.
A point that hasn’t gone unnoticed on theBritish blogosphere, Brian.
Hullo to you all (first time posting; I read your blog with much interest, though often with respectful disagreement).
I have rather a mouthful to say on this, but since I’m new here I’ll limit myself to a few points and come back if you indicate I’m welcome. (also, am rather new to this blogging thing, so if I trip over any rules of courtesy, please let me know. Nothing said is meant in an unpleasant spirit.)
A bit of background: the Danish cartoons were originally commissioned by Jyllends-Posten not in a blind rage of insensitivity, but in response to the fact that no illustrators would come forward to illustrate a projected children’s book about the life of Muhammad, all being fearful of Islamic threats. The fact that a climate of fear and intimidation has been developing of late in a free Western society, and that this intimidation comes from Islamic sources, recently arrived in an ancient culture with its own pre-existing norms and standards, ought to be noted seriously and without prejudice.
Another important point: have you all seen the cartoons? While some are what might be termed ‘insensitive,’ many are simple, banal (and frankly, not even very good) depictions of Muhammad. This is important. I’m sure you all know that Islamic tradition forbids the depiction of Muhammad in any circumstance. Well and good for censorious Islam; but of course, the pictures were made in Denmark; by Danes, for Danes, and so on. Muslims are in effect demanding that non-Muslims abandon their own traditions and submit to Islamic religious norms, and are making violent threats to enforce their will. Last time I checked, that was known in our Western culture as tyranny.
If the Muslims are offended, can they boycott Jyllends-Posten and its advertisers? Of course; fair play to them. Can they boycott Arla, and the entire nation of Denmark and its government? This strikes me as tenuous, but let’s say yes. Can they make violent threats, storm embassies, riot, kidnap (yep, it’s true), and demand that the Government of Denmark officially punish the publishers? ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN’ NOT.
Well, of course, they “can” and in fact do, do such things. But should we ‘respect’ them for this? Should we ‘tolerate’ this? Come on.
And now I see I have gone on longer than I intended. Sorry.
Hope I’m welcome to the fray. Cheers!
Or a kind of cultural blackmail.
Welcome, jpz, to ‘the fray’. Good comment.
(This is a left-wing blog, by the way. Sometimes you wouldn’t know it, as it plays host to a increasing swarm of irritating RWDBs. Play your cards right, and you could join them.)
Rob — Thanks for the kind nod, and also for the jolly admonition. Understood. (Over here, not quite what you’d term a RWDB.)
As a matter of disclosure: personally I am neither “left” nor “right” wing — not because of “centrism,” but because increasingly I think these terms, and their respective baggages, compass approaches to distinctly ‘20th-century’ political problems. I think most of the great themes and issues of the 20th century have either been solved, made irrelevant, or have morphed into new questions which our old framework no longer addresses with precision. I find my own opinions constantly improved and corrected by the range of information and perspective available on both left and right. Broadly speaking, I admire the ‘left’ for its hopeful and generous, imaginative vision for a shared human future; but I tend to value the ‘right’ more for its cranky grasp of facts as they currently stand, and its sense of what is good about the present and the past that is worth preserving.
The particular issue on this thread –censorship and Islam, as put to the test by the current fracas– strikes me as crucial to our shared future, because in one simple issue it exposes so many complex fault-lines that have vital bearing on the coming century. So I have a LOT to say about it… tho’ it’s unlikely I shall be ruffling feathers in other threads on this blog, God bless ‘em. But as I say, if anyone here with a proprietary interest feels that my input is unwelcome, I will surely abide by your wishes. It IS your community, after all.
And now I am hogging the mic, which is bad manners. More to come, if you feel like hearing it. Cheers….
How do we know john_peter_zenger is not really Graeme Bird in disguise?
I’m with flutey here. Any religion is fair game for satire. After all many of them have no hesitation in condemning us non-believers to eternal pain and suffering so jeering at them is the least we can do in return.
And in return, those jeered at have every right to respond in turn by jeering back, boycotts and complaining loudly through official and other channels. But demanding at gunpoint that a cherished belief (secular or non-secular, and in this case free speech) be renounced on its home soil is rarely productive for all concerned.
Unless of course like the Brits in India you have the real power on the ground to enforce those demands.
“A Brahmin told Sir Charles Napier that suttee was the custom in India. “In my country, too, we have a custom,” Napier replied. “We hang men who burn women. Let each of us act according to his custom.”
He’s a lot more polite and articulate and he actually argues a point!
That was the point of my veiled compliment Mark.
What you said about mornings, Nabs.
Mark said:
Interesting. I didn’t know that. I was, however, aware of Luther’s abilities in polemics.
I saw comment where the Danes said that they particularly valued satire and sarcasm. It figures.
john_peter_zenger, you said that “Islamic tradition forbids the depiction of Muhammad in any circumstance” and that “the pictures were made in Denmark; by Danes, for Danes, and so on.”
As I understand it in Islam any depiction of persons is considered idolatory. It is not just a trivial and wilful decision but something that challenges their reality. I can’t think of a good analogy to it in our culture.
Also the CIA Factbook tells us that there are 2% Muslims in Denmark’s polulation of 5.4 million. These people are presumably either Danish citizens or long-term residents. So there is an obligation on the 98% Christians to act in a way that is sensitive and not injurious to the 2% with different beliefs. These people, about 100,000 of them, are not ‘other’, they are Danes.
Presumably the children’s book about the life of Muhammad was intended to lead to greater dialogue and understanding. If so it was always going to have to be sans depictions of Muhammad.
Brian, thanks for your posts on this thread. They’ve been very good.
That may be what their passport says, but in everyday discourse, they’re often referred to as ‘immigrants’ or, less generously, ‘Pakis’ - even if they’ve been in Denmark for 40 years, when the first real immigration took place outside the guest worker programs they had throughout the 20thC (and before). Danes don’t play dog-whistle politics like in liberal societies. They tend to just come straight out with prejudicial statements based on the supposed presence of discrete, observable ethnic groups (cf. Dansk Folkepartiet). I found this hard to comprehend when I was there, and is one reason I wouldn’t want to live there permanently.
‘They are danes.’
Good point, Brian, but it doesn’t resolve the issue - indeed, it potentially makes it more intractable. What if, for the example, that 2% were to insist on living according to Sharia law?
I doubt they’re a monolithic group, Rob.
“In times of crisis, we must decide again and again who we love, /
And give credit where it’s due…”
— Frank O’Hara, in the uproarious poem
‘To the Film Industry in Crisis’
Brian — You make some very interesting and very important points. The fact that I disagree with you almost entirely, is exactly why I’ve chosen to debate this question here. The truth is that we are both probably partly right and partly wrong; what the exact proportion of right to wrong is, is hard to know for sure… but we do get closer to finding out by arguing about it. (Which is another way of saying, I am about to employ arguments that may not be very good-tasting in your worldview. I hope you won’t assume I’m crazy or evil. You don’t have to take my word for it, but odds are good I’m neither. But I *could* be wrong. If I am, I’ll only know if you convince me.)
First of all I should say that the main reason I find this particular crisis so interesting, is that it exists almost solely on the metaphysical plane. It is a contest of ideas, of wills, and of conceptions of civilization, almost pure in this respect. We have none of the ‘human’ problems, and none of the ‘human’ uncertainty of motives and individuals, that make it hard to interpret the French riots, the Muslim gang-rapes, the violence in Cronulla Beach. All of these things are subject to multiple interpretations, depending on whether your frame of mind is sociological, legal, statistical, ethnographic.
But here now we have millions of people marching around in fury, making threats, burning flags, storming embassies, THREATENING TO BEHEAD PEOPLE IN BRITAIN (have you seen the photos?), because somebody made a drawing. Suddenly it’s a matter not of people, but of principle — I would say (and I think this is critical, but you may have another view of it) that it’s really a matter of definition of terms.
You say “there is an obligation of the 98% Christians to act in a way that is not injurious to [Muslim] beliefs.” I say, and I say it loud, THERE IS NO SUCH OBLIGATION UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES. There is an obligation to obey the law. There is a moral obligation not to harm the property or persons of individuals (something, I note in passing, that many Muslims seem to have a hard time reconciling with their views.) As far as I can tell in the broad sense of Western liberal tradition, there isn’t really such a thing as a ‘right’ never to be offended by anyone.
Insofar as someone claims such a right… if it were to exist, it would (since we live in a physical world, not an abstract one) have to take its place in line, within a hierarchy of other such rights. Since the Muslims in question have come, as it were, as supplicants to Denmark (which after all was under NO OBLIGATION to take them), and since the rights of Danes prior to Muslim immigration are ancient and pre-existing, I cannot see how someone can assert the right not to be offended by the norms of their host country, with a straight face.
This gets into the issue of what we now call ‘tolerance,’ and which we understand broadly, but have no good working definitions of. Me, I’ve never been to Denmark; I don’t know much about the Danes, or the legal and civil position of the Muslims in Denmark. I can see a forest, but not trees.
But in the part of the world I hail from originally, we have a pretty good working framework for religious tolerance, realistically defined (that is, as practiced in real-time, in actual society). Not everybody has to accept it (don’t know if the Danes would), but it’s based on Western, and Enlightenment, principles, it’s thoughtful and generous, and it’s been shown to work. It takes this form:
Article 1. Congress shall make no laws respecting religion, or the free exercise thereof.
There is an important corollary to it, one of the most important principles of constitutional jurisprudence:
“The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.”
You probably know that in Western democratic theory as it’s practiced in most of the English-speaking world, “rights” are conceived as negative capabilities, not positive ones. A Scottish friend of mine once put it like this: “One of the reasons I love the [American] Bill of Rights is that it’s just a list of things the government is not allowed to do to you.”
In practice: one has a negative ‘right’ not to be told by the government which religion one must practice. You do not have a positive ‘right’ to enforce your own practices on others. If I am a Catholic, I may not claim I am ‘offended’ that others eat meat on Fridays, instead of fish. BUT THIS IS DISRESPECTFUL TO MY RELIGION!, I cry. Tough shit. BUT IT ROCKS MY FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION OF RELIGIOUS REALITY! I AND MY VIEWS MUST BE RESPECTED! Again, tough shit. It’s steak at the Outback on Fridays for the Prots. If I don’t like it, perhaps I should choose to live in Vatican City.
When religions, as they often do, embrace political and social practices as well as ritual and metaphysical ones (and Islam is practically DEFINED by this; recall “Islam is politics or it is nothing at all.” — Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini), it will often happen that social and political behavior, as defined by different religious practices, will invariably clash. This is where the whole “this is not a suicide pact” premise comes into play. I think you can see where I’m leading with this.
Of course, Europe is not obliged to adopt American principles; but I would point out that historically, these principles are more European than they are American. They aren’t really ‘our’ principles; they’re *theirs*. We just happened to grow up in a static-free environment where they could be implemented. My broader point is, I hope I’m not sounding like a cultural imperialist here. I’m trying not to. I think that in broad historical terms, the West agrees to these principles. The ’suicide pact’ corollary of course is that the West is not obliged to destroy itself in deference to principles that are not only foreign to, but can be shown to be historically opposed to, the West itself. (And yes, I think there IS such a thing as ‘the West’ in real, physical terms, as sure as there is a place metaphysically called ‘the Mahgreb,’ in a location that in strict geographical terms is simply North Africa.)
I have more to say, but sadly I’m running out of steam, and quite afraid I’ve bored you all to death.
One last thing…
Nabakov — you say cultural imperialism only works “if you have the real power on the ground to enforce [your] demands.” That is exactly what the Islamists think they are gaining in Europe. Whether they are right is the topic for another day entirely.
Cheers!