Special Report
Insulting Danish cartoons of the Prophet (peace be upon him) – Worldwide protests demand for apology
By Dr. Mozammel Haque

A series of cartoon images published in the Danish national newspaper, the right-of-centre, Jyllands-Posten, on 30 September, 2005, depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) with a bomb on his turban with a lit fuse is insulting, provocative and deeply offensive to Muslims. The Prophet’s life and thoughts, as revealed through the Hadith, or Traditions, is central to Islam and a model for Muslims to emulate. According to the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet, all depictions of Muhammad (pbuh), however complimentary, are idolatrous. As such, the image of the

Prophet (pbuh) can not be depicted.
The Noble Qur’an said in chapter 21, verse 107, that Allah sent Muhammad (peace be upon him) as his messenger as an act of “Mercy” for the whole world, Rahmatullil Alamin. It is reported in a Hadith, the Prophet is reported to have told his followers: “None of you is a true believer until I become more beloved to him than his child, his father and the whole of mankind.” “A singular love and veneration thus attaches to the person of Mohamed himself. When speaking or writing his name is always preceded by the title “prophet” and followed by the phrase: “Peace be upon him”, often abbreviated in English as PBUH. Attempts to depict him in illustration were therefore an attempt to depict the sublime – and so forbidden,” wrote Paul Vallely in “Threats to “Europeans over ‘hostile Mohamed cartoons” in The Independent, on 3rd of February, 2006, and added, “Criticism of the Prophet is therefore equated with blasphemy, which is punishable by death in some Muslim states.”

“Understanding of Islam is sorely lacking in the West. The culture gap has its roots in the fact that Christianity – like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – is essentially an iconographic religion,” Vallely observed and said, “Islam has traditionally prohibited images of humans and animals altogether – which is why much Islamic art is made up of decorative calligraphy or abstract arabesque patterns. Throughout history Muslims have cast out, destroyed or denounced all images, whether carved or painted, as idolatry.”
The cartoon images naturally hurt more than 1.3 billion Muslims all over the world. There were immediate protests within Denmark. The ambassadors of 11 Muslim countries requested a meeting with the Danish Prime Minister to discuss the matter, and were turned away.

Muslim Anger and Distress
The anger deepened in the first week of February after the reprinting and republication of one or more of the cartoon images in seven newspapers in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands in solidarity with the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten. Muslims mounted vigorous protests and demonstrations from London to Jakarta, throughout the Muslim world. Syria and Saudi Arabia have withdrawn their ambassadors from Denmark in protest at the cartoons and Libya has closed its embassy in Copenhagen altogether. Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassador of Austria, which holds the EU Presidency, to protest.

Leaders of Muslim countries also condemned the cartoons. The National Assembly of Pakistan unanimously passed a resolution condemning the offensive cartoon images. Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said, “I have been hurt, grieved and I am angry.” Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the cartoons will fuel terrorism. A spokesman for President Mubarak said: “The President warned of the near and long-term repercussions of the campaign of insults against the noble Prophet. Irresponsible management of these repercussions will provide further excuses to the forces of radicalism and terrorism.”

Malaysia
Malaysia, which is currently the head of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), also criticized the cartoons. According to BBC, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said Islam and the West should stop demonizing each other and try to curb extremism and promote moderation. While addressing an international conference, Badawi said, “The demonisation of Islam and the vilification of Muslims, there is no denying, is widespread within mainstream Western Society.” “The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa. They should accept one another as equals,” he said. (BBC News, Friday, 10 February, 2006).

Afghanistan’s President and Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the cartoon images. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said: “Any insult to the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) is an insult to more than one billion Muslims and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated.” Ahmed Qureia, the outgoing Palestinian Prime Minister and a leading figure in the Fatah “Old Guard” condemned the caricatures, saying they “provoke all Muslims everywhere in the world.” Mahmoud Zahar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, visited a group of Christian nuns and clerics at the Holy Family School to reassure them and unequivocally condemned the threats against foreign nationals. “We are not accepting any aggression against foreign institutions whether EU or American or against any group, foreign or Palestinian,” Dr. Zahar said.
Amid demonstrations in Singapore, the country’s senior Islamic organisation said that the cartoons had no purpose but hatred: “No one is allowed to ridicule or cast aspersions on the faith of a people under the cloak of free expression,” it said.

Many Arab commentators called for boycotts of European goods. The Qatar Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi said: “The least we have to do is boycott those who offended us by not buying their products.” Consumers across the Muslim world then boycott Danish dairy products. Across the Middle East, Danish dairy produce has been boycotted by an estimated 50,000 shops. “We must tell Europeans, we can live without you. But you cannot live without us,” said Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a leading imam in Qatar. “We can buy from China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia... We will not be humiliated.” In the Gulf state itself, the Carrfour supermarket said it had stopped selling Danish products. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Arab League have demanded that the United Nations impose international sanctions upon Denmark. The Danish Foreign Minister talked to the European Trade Commissioner and World Trade Organisation.

Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, said that newspapers had been deliberately provocative in republishing the drawings. Franco Frattini, the EU Justice Commissioner, said that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had been “imprudent” to publish the 12 cartoons. Publication was wrong, he said, “even if the satire used was aimed at a distorted interpretation of religion, such as that used by terrorists to recruit young people, sometimes to the point of sending them into action as suicide bombers”. Even Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, was drawn into the debate, saying that freedom of the press should not be an excuse for insulting religions.

In the United Kingdom
The situation in the United Kingdom is different. Shortly before the protest began, the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, attacked the media outlets that had republished the images. “There is freedom of speech, we all respect that - but there is not an obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory, and I believe that the re-publication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong,” he told reporters. Mr Straw praised the British media’s “sensitivity” over the issue after UK newspapers declined to print the cartoons, which first appeared in the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily in September.

Mr. Straw also said, “What we also have to remember is that there are taboos in every religion. It is not the case that there is open season in respect of all aspects of Christian rights and rituals in the name of free speech, nor is it the case that there is open season in respect of the rights and rituals for the Jewish religion, the Hindu religion, the Sikh religion, and it should not be the case in respect of the Islamic religion either. So we have to be very careful about showing proper respect in this situation.”

No British newspaper has yet published a cartoon. UK broadcasters, including the BBC and Channel 4, have shown brief glimpses of the images. The Spectator magazine briefly published them on its website, but they were removed later on. Friday last, hundreds of British Muslims gathered outside the Danish embassy in London to vent their anger over Danish cartoons. One, 26-year-old Bushra Varakat, said Muslims would not accept being the target of “ridicule.” “We don’t know why these silly people use these cartoons unless they were showing how much they hate us,” Ms Varakat, a student, said.

I interviewed Lord Nazir Ahmed of Rotherham and Lord Adam Patel of Blackburn, Peers of the House of Lords; Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and Zia Uddin Sardar, writer of many books on Islam, columnist and broadcaster on these offensive cartoon images of the Prophet (pbuh).