Jacob Christensen

While we are at it, The Guardian reports on the British government’s latest initiative: A law that makes offending or insulting religion a crime with a seven-year prison sentence.Columnists were not amused: The otherwise left-leaning Polly Toynbee calls the proposal an example of the culture of thought-crime and self-censorship.Comedians failed to see the fun as well: Here is a link to Rowan Atkinson’s comment and a brief but interesting quote.

“A person is not guilty of this offence by reason of anything done … so far as it consists of criticising, expressing antipathy towards, abusing insulting or ridiculing any religion, religious belief or religious practice …”"Excellent” I thought. “Fantastic”. “Job done”.Sadly, the next word is “Unless”. “UNLESS he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred or was reckless as to whether religious hatred would be stirred up” (My italics)

The Lords (the members of the House of Lords, that is) were not amused either which is why the proposal has been returned to the House of Commons and is causing some unrest among Labour MPs.But to sum up the case: If Tony Blair has his way, the editor of Jyllands-Posten would soon be behind bars if the newspaper was published in the UK.And so would Dave Allen, were he still among us.Update: Shock defeat for government as the House of Commons vote for the amendments proposed by the House of Lords.

With the benefit of hindsight it was obvious that the first actor to choose the chicken strategy in the cartoon standoff would be the Confederation of Danish Industries. This followed protests by the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti governments and – more importantly – calls for a boycott of Danish dairy and meat products in Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti supermarkets.

A Letter to the Editor

This Friday the CEO of the CDI issued an open letter to Jyllands-Posten in which the Confederation demanded that the paper issued a formal apology to the groups that have been offended by the cartoons. The CDI does not make it entirely clear if the apology should be directed to Danish Muslims or to the various Arab governments which have intervened in the matter.

Perhaps more interesting from a political science point was that it was the leader of the Conservative Party’s parliamentary group Helge Adam Møller – known as Helge Saddam Møller among friends – who followed the CDI’s lead while the leader of the Danish People’s Party dismissed the intervention as grotesque and the Liberal Party declined to make any comments. This is one of several cases where the Conservative Party has chosen to follow business interests even if it meant that the party would distance itself from the Liberal and Danish People’s Party.

Following a session of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Danish parliament the Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller announced the he would discuss the issue on the next meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers.

That business interests often conflict with political interests outside of economic policy is a well-known fact. Pressure for human rights improvements usually don’t originate from the business community and politically motivated calls for boycotts frequently embarass businesses. If the CDI is forced to choose between freedom of speech and the possibility of doing business in the Arab world, guessing the result is a no-brainer.

Another fascinating twist in this case is that Jyllands-Posten during the last twenty years has made great efforts to present itself as the national newspaper for the business community. What effects, if any, the Muhammad case will have for Jyllands-Posten’s place in the Danish media landscape remains to be seen.

The Arab Angle

The role played by the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments in the conflict is more difficult to gauge. On the one hand the calls for a boycott of Danish products have been issued by Muslim clerics and the governments have followed by applying traditional diplomatic means (recalling ambassadors for consultations etc).

On the other hand Saudi Arabia stands out as one of the most un-free countries in the world with regard to political liberties, including freedom of speech. It is hard to imagine that a widespread and well-publicised boycott can take place without the implicit support of the Saudi government. On the other hand a de facto support for a boycott of Danish products can be seen as a low-cost way of appeasing conservative clerics.

The Kuwaiti intervention is a little more puzzling. One possible explanation for the political initiatives by the Kuwaiti government could be that the emirate is facing a complicated transition of power from an older to a younger generation of the ruling al-Sabah family. Diplomatic initiatives and calls for a boycott of Danish products could either serve as a token in a power struggle or reflect political cleavages between moderates and conservatives within Kuwaiti society.

Attacks against Danish Homepages

Meanwhile in the cyberworld, the websites of a number of Danish newspapers including Jyllands-Posten, Berlingske Tidende and BT were hit by attacks on Friday. This meant that the sites were partially unavailable for some hours.

Similarly, Jyllands-Posten and Politiken had been hit by a deluge of spam e-mails earlier in the day. It is suspected that persons in the Middle-East were behind both rounds of attacks.

And by the way

Jerusalem Post covered the story in an article on Saturday, January 28. You may also want to see this interview with Huston Smith on Slate regarding “religion in a global age”.

They had to do it. They just had to do it. When Swedish Television introduced the story about the presentation of the Danish Canon they chose a panorama with the Little Mermaid. You know the little sculpture placed out on Langelinie.

Aaaaarrrrghh!

So let me just point out that the Little Mermaid (the sculpture) was not selected for the list and neither were the Royal Guards. H.C. Andersen’s tale was selected but if you have read Andersen either in the original Danish version or in a decent translation (admittedly difficult: The market is swamped with bad or family-friendly translations), you will know that Andersen’s tales are the stuff of nightmares rather than of travel brochures.

Some would argue that the same goes for Denmark as well.

But to get the perspective, let us go back to November 2001 when the Liberals and the Conservatives took office supported by the Danish People’s Party.

Now National Identity and Ordinary People were in. Cultural Radicalism (US English translation: Liberalism), Multiculturalism and Expert Rule were out. And Muslims should get out and stay out.

As part of these cultural wars against the Cultural Radicals and the Muslims – the authorised Danish term is kulturkamp – the Conservative Minister of Cultural Affairs Brian Mikkelsen in early 2005 declared that the government would sponsor a Danish Canon which should contain outstanding Danish works of art in the fields of literature, music, painting and sculpture, theatre, film, industrial design and architecture. The works would be selected by seven committees staffed by eminent experts in the respective fields. Yes, I did write “experts”.

Brian Mikkelsen almost managed to halt the work in September 2005 when he gave a much talked-about speech at the annual convention of the Conservative Party. In the speech, Mikkelsen repeated the attacks on Culture Radicals – look for yourself and see just how many times Mikkelsen uses the word “kulturradikal” in his speech – and Muslims.

The attacks on Culture Radicalism didn’t really offend anyone but it did cause a public outcry when Mikkelsen described Muslim culture as such as mediaeval and less valid than the Danish culture. Among the upset were his canonic experts who threatened to leave the entire exercise and Mikkelsen had to make amends by declaring that the Danish Canon wasn’t intended to be a part of the culture wars.

Yeah. Right.

Anyway, the work continued and now we have the official Danish Canon. 108 pieces of art selected as the best, most typical or most influential works of art in the Danish history and of cause most belong in the solid mainstream of Danish culture.

There are a few surprises, though.

The Minister of Family and Consumer Affairs may have to think twice before accepting Jess Ørnsbo’s drama “Majonæse“. Not only does it depict a deeply dysfuctional family, Ørnsbo also took direct aim at the antiquated and often pretentious Danish way of spelling imported words.

Whether the selection of Adam Oehlenschläger’s (pronounced something like ”Ernslaiger“ if you want to try it at home and, yes, his family was German) ”Aladdin” should be considered a hidden criticism of the entire project or a case of orientalism is something I will leave open to discussion but the inclusion of Henri Nathansen’s “Indenfor murerne” (Inside the Walls) could be a little interesting.

The thing is that “Indenfor murene” is an acknowledged classic in Danish drama but Nathansen was Jewish and the play addresses the subject of anti-semitism in Danish society in the early 20th Century and the tight-rope walk between integration and assimilation that Jewish families had to perform.

Oh, and by the way: Donald Duck is part of the Danish cultural heritage.

In an earlier post I promised to take a look at the politics surrounding the Muhammad cartoons. For the sake of clarity I shall divide the parties into a Red and a Green corner. In case anyone wonders: Red signifies Danes, Green Muslims.

The Red Corner

Among the Danish media, Jyllands-Posten occupies a unique position. It is easily the most conservative of the national Danish newspapers and it is the only major paper published outside of Copenhagen.

Commentators are always happy to point out that the paper voiced its support for Europe’s fascist dictators back in the 1930s – see this column by the Swedish Social Democratic journalist Olle Svenning as the latest example of this kind of argument – but in this context it is more interesting to note that Jyllands-Posten was the newspaper which during the 1980s gave voice to criticism of the liberal refugee and immigration policies advocated by the Social Democrats, the Social Liberal Party and the Socialist Party.

And what a voice that was: The priests Søren Krarup and Jesper Langballe started their public careers as contributors to the op-ed pages of Jyllands-Posten and even if the paper has no relationship to them today, there is still an implicit link between Jyllands-Posten and the Danish People’s Party in many people’s minds.

Among today’s columnists you will find Ralf Pittelkow who started his public life along with his wife Karen Jespersen in the small but highly visible Left Socialist Party before starting a rightward move which has made Pittelkow a sort of the poor man’s Samuel P. Huntington cum Bernard Lewis.

But to make a long story short: Krarup, Langballe, Pittelkow and Jespersen are the kind of people who will argue that The West is presently locked in a deadly battle with Islam. If you are a Muslim you are by definition Anti-West and if you are a true Westerner you also have to be Anti-Islam.

The editors of Jyllands-Posten may formulate this more politely, but in essence the paper will interpret any criticism of the Muhammad cartoons as a case of multiculturalist appeasement towards the enemy.

This may sound thoroughly paranoid but it is worth noting the context of the Danish debate. If you look at the lastest Eurobarometer – that’s the Eurobarometer 63 performed during the spring of 2005 before the London bombings, the table on page 26 – you will see that Danes worry less about the economy but more about crime, immigration and terrorism than the average Europeans do. In fact, in these three subjects Denmark constitutes a cluster with the U.K, the Netherlands and Spain.

Given that Denmark is not Sicily, does not have a border to Morocco and has not been the target of any terrorist activities since the Second World War this may seem surprising.

Economic factors play a role in the explanation: The very low rates of employment among non-European immigrants mean that immigration from countries like Turkey, Pakistan and Somalia is costly to Denmark. Thus it should not come as a surprise that Danes are skeptical of further immigration from the Middle-East and other Muslim countries.

Political factors are important as well: Islamist terror groups have defended attacks in Spain and other countries with reference to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and this means that Denmark is a possible target for Islamist terrorists. Consequently, any kind of Islamist propaganda will be seen as a veiled threat to Danish security.

Finally, Danish politics play a role. The Social Democrats’ inability to formulate a coherent set of policies on immigration and integration during the 1990s was one reason why the party lost touch with its electorate and suffered severe defeats in the 2001 and 2005 elections. Immigration policies aren’t the only explanation for the Social Democrats’ misery, but playing the Muslim card will expose Social Democratic weakness and enhance the position of the centre-right parties.

The Green Corner

Who are the people in the Green Corner then?

Good question.

If you ask the proverbial man in the street the answer will probably be “Muslim Extremists”. One reason for this is that the Danish Muslim community – if you can speak of a community and not a number of distinct communities – has never really found its voice in the public debate. This has left the field open to extremist movements like Hisb ut-Tahrir whose meetings are followed closely by Danish media or individual clerics whose exact status in the community can be hard if not impossible to gauge for non-Muslims. The general rule seems to be: The higher you shout, the more likely you are to be quoted in Danish media.

On the other hand it would be wise to assume that we do not know exactly what Danish Muslims think about the Muhammad affair. Most have stayed quiet and some has voiced their opposition to the statements and initiatives by representatives of the Danish Islamic Congregation.

From a Danish or perhaps rather non-Islamic Congregation perspective it is obvious that the clerics and other representatives made a number of bad moves that haven’t exactly strengthened the Muslim community’s position in the Danish society.

Asking the Prime Minister to intervene against Jyllands-Posten was one such move. The Prime Minister refused with the comment that courts and not politicians decide whether or not the rules of free speech have been broken. Conclusion: Muslims don’t – or won’t – understand how a polity governed by law works.

Appealing to the ambassadors of a number of Arab and Muslim countries to act on their behalf was an even worse move – it was met with a very cold shoulder from the government – but the most disastrous move was probably to send a delegation to Egypt and other Arab countries to raise support. Even if the Egyptian government is allied with the U.S. it is not exactly known as a defender of civil or political liberties and Egypt is home to the Muslim Brotherhood.

As almost no Danes read or understand Arabic, rumours about what had been said soon started to circulate and reports about the coverage of the visit in Egyptian media helped to raise a fairly strong opinion against the Islamic Congregation. It was among other things suggested that the delegation had made gross misrepresentations of the original cartoons and painted a false picture of the relationship between Jyllands-Posten and the Danish government. All of this culminated in Pia Kjærsgaard’s statement that the Congregation had acted as traitors engaging in fifth column activities against Denmark.

The question is whether this really was a case of self-defeating behaviour or whether there was some kind of rationale behind the actions of the Islamic Congregation.

It is possible that the cartoon case gave some factions in the Muslim community a chance to deepen relationships to central institutions in the Islamic world such as the Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

Claiming a direct relationship to such institutions could be an important tool if you want to enhance your own position in the Danish Muslim community even if the price would be paid in a loss of outward status – or the chance of achieving status – in the Danish society.

Is rss a good thing? Let me put it this way: If I hadn’t subscribed to the rss feed of Jerusalem Post, I would never have known what Ehud Olmert’s real problem was.

If we leave aside the troublesome question of women’s headgear in the Middle-East, then it is an established fact that Yasser Arafat used his keffiyeh as a political symbol. (Arafat’s keffiyeh was deliberately arranged not in any traditional manner but in the shape of the state of Israel with Arafat’s head symbolising the West Bank).

An interesting observation is that Rudy Giuliani lost his combover following the September 11 attacks. It could be that his performance following the attacks meant that he didn’t feel the need to appear masculine in the traditional way. Or maybe it was linked to his divorce and subsequent re-marriage.

Oh, and by the way: Binyamin Netanyahu really should consider a visit to a hairdresser.

This post has been in the pipeline for quite some time now. The reason that I haven’t posted anything about the Muhammad cartoons is that I originally wanted things to cool down a bit and then try to sort out the political and social implications.

Instead of cooling down, the conflict has been escalating in ever stranger ways, involving new participants and accusations so that the more fundamental aspects have been more or less lost, at least in a Danish context.

But first, just to put things straight: God is a cartoon character. He reveals himself every morning in the Copenhagen-based daily Politiken and has done so for the past twenty years. In case you should wonder, he’s the little fat guy. And yes, the young girl is his daughter.

If God’s behaviour at times seems a bit strange, then this is probably because the cartoonist – somehow the term “creator of the series” appears a little odd in this context – used to be a grammar school teacher in Greek and Latin and this God’s approach to something like sex definitely has more in common with that of the ancient Greek and Roman deities than traditional Christian or Muslim chastity. You have been warned.

Anyway, the cartoonist is alive and well. Christian groups in Denmark have taken this in its stride and whether God is amused, bemused, laden with wrath or indifferent – well, God only knows.

Muhammad – who is not a god, but a prophet – is a different ballgame. As you may know by now, the Århus-based daily Jyllands-Posten published a number of cartoons depicting Muhammad in late September and this triggered a rather complex conflict involving among others journalists, Danish politicians, representatives of the Danish Muslim community and the Egyptian government.

What was the problem, then?

If you ask Jyllands-Posten, the paper had two motives for publishing the cartoons.

One was that the writer Kåre Bluitgen had complained that his publishers had been turned down by a number of artists when they wanted to commission illustrations for a book about the prophet Muhammad that Bluitgen was working on. Some of the artists explained their rejection to work on the book with fear of violent retribution by extremist Muslims who claim that any depiction of Muhammad amout to sacrilege.

Another motive was that Jyllands-Posted alleged that “mainstream” Danish media (Danmarks Radio and Politiken would be two obvious suspects) under the guise of multi-culturalism and political correctness were bowing to the demands of the most extreme parts of the Muslim community instead of claiming the right of free speech.

The cartoons – which can be seen here – are a mixed bunch. One is purely illustrative and to a Western audience the only point of interest is whether Muhammad’s clothes are historically correct. Some link Muhammad with Muslim symbols such as the crescent moon while others take a humorous self-mocking perspective to the issue; one has Muhammad stopping some zealots armed with swords and bombs with the words “it’s only a cartoon made by an indefil”. One cartoonist suggests that we wouldn’t be able to point out Muhammad in a group of Westerners and finally some artists turn the joke on Jyllands-Posten itself by declaring the publication a media stunt.

The cartoons have some troubling aspects, though.

I’ll leave aside the question of blasphemy for a moment as the Danish point of view would probably be that depicting a human as such cannot be an act of blasphemy and point to elements of ethnic and religious stereotyping: Muhammad in many of the cartoons has the typic “semitic” nose known from anti-Jewish cartoons, he carries a kilij (which is in fact an Osman sword that only came into use long after the historical Muhammad’s death) and one cartoon shows Muhammad as a psycopathic bigamist. This, incidentially, was the cartoon that graced the front page of Jyllands-Posten when the cartoons were originally published.

And finally: Religious fanatics – including Muslim extremists – will take offense at anything remotely connected to their religion but I think most people would understand that publishing a cartoon with a text claiming that “Muhammad was a madman whose aim was to subjugate women” might alienate even moderate Muslims. That the status of women in the Muslim world leaves a lot to be desired is undeniably true but as in the Western world, the relationship between religion and social development is complex.

In a second post, I will look at the political aspects of the cartoon case.

Following the news can occasionally be an interesting enterprise. Take the news reports on the annual meeting of the CSU Landesgruppe in the Bavarian resort of Kreuth as a case in point.

After the botched elections in September and the slightly chaotic negotiations leading to the formation of a grand coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD, there was general agreement that the CSU and especially its leader, Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber, were in a bad shape: Stoiber had insulted the East German electorate and failed to mobilise his own electoral base during the electoral campaign.

To round things off, Stoiber first stalled on the question if he would be joining a new government, then promised to take up the post as Minister of Trade and Commerce and finally decided to stay in (or return to) his present office.

In November, German media described Stoiber as damaged goods. The question was not if, but when he would be ousted.

But now it is January and the Bavarian snow may have covered a lot of unpleasant memories, so how does German media report the situation of the CSU just after New Year’s Day?

Answer: It depends.

If you watched the coverage in the HeuteJournal of the ZDF network on Tuesday, the CSU had performed the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Stoiber asserted his position as the unchallenged leader of the party and the leading politicians had closed the ranks. The CSU leaders also revelled in one of their favourite sports: Annoying the SPD by calling for a delay of the phasing-out of nuclear power plants.

If you then watched the reportage in ARD’s Tagesthemen, you might be forgiven if you were under the impression that the two networks weren’t covering the same event. In the Tagesthemen, the CSU was still a weakened party with a shaky leadership unsure of its place in national politics.

The lovely panoramas of Kreuth were nearly identical and unless German scientists have succeeded in performing a secret breakthrough in human cloning over the holidays, the politicians appearing on the two networks must have been the same. They also uttered the same statements in both networks.

What, then, is going on here?

It may help to know that German Public Service media are heavily politicised. The ARD is traditionally seen as more left-leaning while the ZDF is linked to the Christian Democrat parties. It is perhaps less surprising, then, that the ARD tries to report weaknesses and internal conflicts in the Christian Democratic parties and the ZDF the resolve and cohesiveness of the same parties.

The national radio network Deutschlandfunk had a third take on the proceedings: Yes, the CSU is experiencing internal conflicts, and yes, the politicians in Kreuth were happy. The thing is: The politicians participating in the meeting are with one or two exceptions national politicians who enjoy greater political opportunities when the party leader is busy governing in Munich. Edmund Stoiber as minister in the federal government would be a much more troubling presence in Berlin.