http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300124729

//if you think that followers of Mohammed are //deliberately provoked by the westerners, who //have deep seated and historical dislike for him //(as per you), then muslims have reacted the //exactly the way that they shouldn’t have.

It is highly problematic to cleanly categorize mulsims and westerners as two clashing units and a awful amount of details have been written and talked on this subject… Islam is not non-western and west was never free of Islam as you think…

But Muslim as a negative stereotype is not something “as per me”… The post was not mine but a quote from Asma Barlas’ work…But the details are documented in so much details elsewhere…Particularly interesting is the works of Iraeli Philosopher Gil Anidjar, especially in his works “Semites” and “Arab, the Jew: History of the Enemy”… He tracks the long genealogy of Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Europe, starting from Medieval European Chistianity… He tracks the origin of the word “Semites” in the 19 the century church documents to denote the languages Hebrew and Arabic… He also demonstrate in detail after Primo Levi and Agamban’s “Remnants of Auschwitz” thefigure of “Muselmann” among survivors of the death camps, in Nazi concentration camps in the history of Muslim stereotypes..

And what about the muslim response to the Cartoons… Again stereotypes
are made and reinforsed not entirely based on a few muslim’s responses… It is a complex and invisible process and cannot escape the social agents and power configurations… What was the response of the Muslims all over the world on the cartoons? Was it all violent?

I will end with a long Quote from Saba Mahmood (Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An incommensurable Divide?)

“At the time of their initial publication, I was struck by the sense of personal loss expressed by many devout Muslims on hearing about or seeing the cartoons. While many of those Interviewed condemned the violent demonstrations, they nonetheless expressed a sense of grief and sorrow. As one young British
Muslim put it:

I did not like what those raging crowds did in burning down buildings and cars in places like Nigeria and Gaza. But what really upset me was the absolute lack of understanding on the
part of my secular friends (who are by the way not all White, many are from Pakistan and Bangladesh) at how upset people like myself felt on seeing the Prophet insulted in this way. It
felt like it was a personal insult! The idea that we should just get over this hurt makes me so mad: if they don’t feel offended by how Jesus is presented (and some do of course), why do
they expect that all of us should feel the same? The Prophet is not after all Mel Gibson or Brad Pitt, he is the Prophet!
….
….
I was conducting field research in Cairo, Egypt. While the demonstrations were muted this time, I heard similar expressions of hurt, loss, and injury expressed by a variety of people. An older
man, in his sixties, said to me: “I would have felt less wounded if the object of ridicule were my own parents. And you know how hard it is to have bad things said about your parents, especially when they are deceased. But to have the Prophet scorned and abused this way, that was too much to bear!”

In your articulate comment on the Danish cartoon controversy, you have raised an important point of using freedom of speech as a tool of domination, and i understand in certain ways it would seem like that, but my point is that if you think that followers of Mohammed are deliberately provoked by the westerners, who have deep seated and historical dislike for him (as per you), then muslims have reacted the exactly the way that they shouldn’t have.

It reinforces the view that muslims are irrational, inherently violent and worst of all ‘have no sense of humour’ a la Martin Amis, I would just like to point out one thing which probably stems from my abhorrence of mob anywhere for any cause, when people see thousands of bearded angry man baying for somebody’s blood, they (westerners) immediately feel a sense of superiority of their own liberal ideals, which reinforces negative stereotypes.

I think what people need are better ways to protest, as recent controversy in Pakistan on facebook/ youtube has shown. Having a better managed response mechanism to perceived islamophobic (an undeniably stupid terminology, how about budhistphobia or hinduphobia) provocations will be the best bet for the defenders of the faith.

But may i suggest a better strategy, just ignore most of the provocations, they have no material impact on your life and shouldn’t in anyway make you question your own beliefs.

Let me again clarify. There is no “threat of moderation” on kafila. “Threat” implies intention. There is moderation on kafila.

And despite our “undemocratic” character we continue to post comments by you and your ilk. Read our archives, they are a testament to the fact that we rarely not pass comments. “Democracy” in your book seems to mean, “let me pointlessly meander on, and abuse you in the bargain”. Fair enough, it takes all sorts to make the world. Instead of whinging and whining about , in your case, the non-moderation of your comments (since every single one has been passed), try and focus on what is being indicated.

My comment was a polite reminder that in a discussion it makes far more sense to direct people to resources, rather than replicating them here. Further, your pained references to “privilege” notwithstanding” I am not bound to explain to you why we posted Mamdani’s text. But I shall put you out of your misery, and do so.

We posted Mamdani’s text because it was sent to us by someone who wished it carried in the light of the recent controversy over the cartoons. And we wanted a discussion on the text. We do not usually post full texts, this time we made an exception. Likewise, we posted Amitav Ghosh’s letter. We do this in order to bring something into discussion within the community of kafila readers. And in the comments space people share their thoughts and opinions. Yes of course it is always good to bring more resources into discussion, all i said was, please provide a link. I am not sure what you are reacting to so violently. If my initial comment seemed terse, it was because you had already, without any reason to, begun nattering on about “moderation” and “censorship”.

And finally I fail to understand what your grouse is, because every single comment of yours has been passed!!

So relax, join the discussion and stop taking your self so seriously :)

best
Aarti

I was given the following advice by one of the Kafila Moderators in another thread, regarding a response i.e. the part of a speech by Asma Barlas on Danisg Cartoon Controversy…

“As the moderator let me also say that while I have passed your last comment, I shall not do so the next time. This is because it is not in fact a comment by you at all. Rather, it is at re-pasting of a long commentary on Islam by someone else”

Why instead of giving a link to Mamdani’s speech that is avaialable elsewhere, his entire article posted here? I would like to ask is the right to paste the other authers is reserved only for the privileged?

Interestingly though Asma’s speech was on free speech it was described as a commentary on Islam…

Since much has already been said on the subject, I will content myself with three points. The first is that egregious images of the Prophet also date from medieval times and have an older historical pedigree than free speech; in other words, such images were never contingent on the idea or practice of freedom. The cartoons are merely the latest in this series of images and need to be looked at within the context of a larger historical narrative than arguments about free speech allow. Although this narrative also includes some salutary images, the Prophet’s depictions have generally served as a foil for establishing European piety, innocence, reasonableness, and most recently, victimization.

To medieval Christians he was the Antichrist, a heathen idol, the devil, Mahound (as also in Rushdie’s Satanic Verses), and an imposter; he appears in all these guises from the Crusades up to the Reformation. His depiction as an imposter during this period reaches its literary apotheosis in Dante, securing for him a place in the eighth circle of hell. Two centuries later, he appears as an Antichrist in Luther’s work who mentions him two dozen times in a single book, all in the form of demonization. Over a century later, the famous Dutch jurist, Grotius, declares him a thief. Contrasting him to Jesus, Grotius writes Jesus led an innocent life, against which no objection can be made. Mahomet was a long time a robber. Not satisfied with affirming Jesus’ innocence, Grotius goes on to declare that all Christians are innocent. They who embraced the law of Christ, [he says] were men who feared God, and led innocent lives . . . But they who first embraced Mahometanism were robbers, and men void of humanity and piety. This view of Christian innocence follows Grotius’ stern rebuke in the very same volume of Christians for their mutual hatred and bloodshed.

From the eighteenth century on, as the figure of the Antichrist began to lose its religious moorings, so did images of the Prophet. By the Enlightenment, his critics could assail him in the new language of secularism. To Voltaire, he was the worst type of . . . fanatic, and to Diderot and Kant the greatest enemy of reason who ever lived.Even if these changing depictions say more about the changing European relationship to religion than they do about the Prophet, the point is that such Classically inspired secular images would endure over time, surviving the vicissitudes of religious and antireligious sentiment in the early modern and modern eras.The Danish cartoons clearly bear this out; they have simply put a contemporary political spin on medieval images of the Prophet so that he now appears as a terrorist rather than as the Antichrist; however in both these roles he occupies the same ideological location vis-à-vis the West. This is why framing the cartoon controversy simply as a free speech issue obscures and deflects attention from the cartoons’ genealogy.

However, even if one were simply to focus on issues of free speech, the fact is that speech lends itself not just to expressions of dissent and critique, but also to assertions of dominance and enactments of power. If the exercise of power is inseparable from its display,then being able to represent power is essential to re-producing domination. To borrow an example from the antebellum U.S. (the period of slavery), domination depended upon demonstrations of the slaveholder’s dominion and the captive’s abasement.Something similar seems to be at work in the West today where free speech allows Westerners to re-present and re-produce their cultural and intellectual dominion over Muslims by desecrating our sacred symbols. It is as much to this willful display of power as it is to the content of specific attacks that most Muslims react angrily and what we condemn is not free speech but its use to demean and discipline us. One can certainly defend domination in the name of freedom, but those oppressed by such a view or practice of freedom would say that not all freedoms are equal or equally worth defending. Such a critique, it should be obvious, rests on rejecting not freedom or toleration but the West’s self-serving conceptions of both. My last point is that since the cartoons are neither humorous and nor ironic (they are not amusing because terrorism is not funny, and they are not ironic because most Westerners believe that Muslims are in fact terrorists), one must look to other factors to explain their entertainment value and function. Here I borrow from Saidya Hartman who argues that organizing innocent amusements and spectacles of mastery is a way for the dominant classes to establish their dominion. In continuation of what I have just said about free speech, I believe that the cartoons are very much spectacles of mastery. At the same time, they also evoke and reinforce intra-Western solidarity against Muslims produced by images of suffering at the hands of a common enemy. After all, parodying the Prophet as a terrorist can only resonate with Europeans to the extent that they are invested in claiming events like September 11, 2001 as their own.
…
…

In your second comment you retracted ‘Islamic’ and substituted ‘Muslim’ instead. Given, as you say, that his argument is secular, and is meant to be understood as resting on secular justifications, what do you think characterizing him as a Muslim intellectual adds to your reservations about his argument?

–

Aniket Alam — You have, I’m afraid, entirely misunderstood Mamdani’s argument, which is surprising because it was, as you concede, straighforwardly written. The clearest tip-off is when you write “It is important to underline the fact that there are numerous traditions of depicting Mohammed within different Muslim societies and the present embargo on pictoral depictions of Mohammed is entirely, entirely a recent creation of Muslim fundamentalism. “

As I said before, I apologize for my rather unwise use of the phrase, but would like to point out that no part of my comment contains anything remotely hinting that “anything islamic seems unacceptable and rejectionist”. I wonder where you got that from.

If you ask for my opinion about the holocaust deniers I would strictly say that they, too, have the right to advocate their beliefs about the existence or otherwise of a historical “fact” – someone else is more than free to point out the errors in such a denial, since it wouldn’t take much to rubbish a dispute of facts. Imprisoning holocaust deniers is largely in my view a political message that governments such as Germany send to their Jewish populations and the rest of the world.

Also note that imprisoning holocaust deniers has also attracted its fair share of free-speech-based criticism at forums as high as the European Court of Human Rights.

At any rate, even amongst countries that criminalise it, holocaust denial is always linked to “incitement”, or “approval”. If you observe the language of the various national legislations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial) you will find that in each case it is linked with “denies, supports or tries to justify” nazi actions.

This was the basis of my earlier point about the effect of hate speech. As I said, merely deeming something “offensive” cannot be adequate justification for a ban. A ban is only justified when there is a possibiltiy of real hatred or xenopobia as the outcome of the deliberated set of words. When somebody justifies or denies that the holocaust occured, a part of the danger is purely in the offensiveness of the thought – but another part, more immediate to a government’s concern is the possibility of future racist or xenophobic attacks as the direct result of such a support or denial. It is to prevent this outcome that governments criminalise holocaust denial.

Also, I fail to see how depicting the Prophet – which in my view does absolutely no harm to anybody’s rights – can be equated to denying that the Holocaust, which destroyed six million Jews, happened. The denying of the Holocaust is banned because such a denial would lead to consequences that would directly affect the human rights of these six million Jews and their families.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were large scale killings as well. But they differ from the holocaust in their context. Firstly, the holocaust is a specific term applied to an event in history, much like the exodus or 9/11. The Japanese have their own unique word for Hiroshima survivors – “hibakusha”. Secondly and more importantly most American responsese to charges of genocide in Hiroshima centre around the fact that it was a war-time act. While that on no level justifies it (I personally would called the bombings Genocide since it was an attack on an unarmed civilian population) it serves to distinguish it from the pre-war policy of destruction Hitler adopted. For more on the status of the bombings see http://lawofnations.blogspot.com/2005/08/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-war-crimes.html

I am to wonder, how come “holocaust deniers” are imprisoned in every court of the world? Where does lies free speech? When hiroshima and nagasaki were eroded of its populace, that is not consdered as holocaust!!! When democratically elected govt of hamas is being rejected by teh world as terrorist governement, clearly the bigotry and hypocricy of free speech and hate vanishes

The first disagreement. The blasphemy/bigotry distinction can be a useful academic device to understand particular situations, but is a dangerous and reactionary position in its political implications, specially when applied on the “world historical stage”. If I am outside a certain religious tradition, am I not allowed to debunk, attack, vilify and lampoon that tradition? I consider the entire human heritage as mine and for me every criticism, and more, on any human tradition is, to use that fashionable term, an “internal” attack. I have as much a right to denigrate Manu’s misogyny as I have the right to lampoon Mohammed.

The second disagreement. It is necessary to keep highlighting, as Mamdani has done, the existence of the “fuel” (aka 500 years of colonialism) which ignites at the “spark”, specially in a context where imperialist mythologies are working overtime to normalise all the sins of the past. But the “fuel” does not explain the present anger expressed by Muslim fundamentalism with pictorial depictions of Mohammed. It is important to underline the fact that there are numerous traditions of depicting Mohammed within different Muslim societies and the present embargo on pictoral depictions of Mohammed is entirely, entirely a recent creation of Muslim fundamentalism. This point must not be forgotten, but unfortunately is, often.

While Mamdani recounts the fact that Jyllands Postan did not accept cartoons of Christ for publication while publishing the Mohammed ones, he forgets to mention another, equally important story connected to this entire incident. The school board of Denmark wanted to introduce a course to teach children in primary school about different world religions. They wanted an illustrated book with short stories about different prophets and traditions. While they got illustrations for all religious traditions, no one was willing to draw Mohammed, given the recent killing of Theo van Gogh in neighbouring Holland. It was this terror at drawing Mohammed even for ostensibly progressive, at the least ecumenical, purposes which opened the political space for right wing papers like Jylland Postan to move in with an open contest asking whether there are any Danes left who would have the “guts” to draw Mohammed. A clear case as ever of the politics of reaction feeding off each others excesses.

Here I would like to assert that the “Muslim” protest against the Denmark Mohammed cartoons were only nominally against the West. To accept the claims of Muslim fundamentalism as true is to delude oneself. When the angry young men stomp and burn the Danish and American flags in Delhi, Lahore or Cairo they are actually sending a more direct message to individuals within their own community that dissent and protest will not be allowed against the writ of the fundamentalists. There is no doubt that anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism contribute support to the contemporary politics of Muslim fundamentalism. But it will be wrong to forget that the primary focus of Muslim fundamentalism is not the West or any thing/body external. Like all fundamentalisms, the primary aim of Muslim fundamentalism is to discipline the ‘Muslim’ and in a particular manner. Neither the cause nor the sustenance of “Muslim” anger at the West/Christianity/America can be found in the “fuel”. How can one forget that just a decade and half ago, Muslim fundamentalism, or as most people say “Muslims”, were the strongest ally of imperialism?

To use Mamdani’s unfortunate distinction, the ostensible protest against “bigotry” is much more a warning to “blasphemers”. The angry Muslim is much more likely to attack the heretic and heterodox near him than some distant Nordic cartoonist. Which is why Mamdani’s argument cannot explain the seamlessness of the attack on Taslima Nasreen and Jyllands Postan. Same time, same people, same anger, same politics…. what use is the distinction between bigotry and blasphemy here? There is much to be said about the political and social uses / implications of fundamentalisms, but all I would like to stress here is that we should be careful in (a) accepting, at face value, their claims of representing the community, and (b) remembering that fundamentalism has a clear, historically inviolable position with relation to the barricades of class struggle.

The third disagreement. There are two points about defending freedom of speech. It has to be remembered that this right is absolute, while the necessary qualifications are historically contingent. Further, this right accrues to an individual and not to a collective (Millat/Party/Nation). As Rosa Luxemburg put it, “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” This right is there to protect the individual from the collective. Mamdani seems to ignore this.

The other point about freedom of speech, like with most other rights, is that it has been won by the people from the State in struggles against the ruling class – the bourgeois order. Today, some lazy Marxists can get away by terming these and other rights, “bourgeois”, but these are bourgeois only in so far as they are incorporated in the rights schedule of the bourgeois state. They are popular rights won by the masses against the ruling classes. The ruling classes have always countered the demands for such individual based rights to the “sensitivities”, “feelings” and “rights” of collectives, specially primordial collectives, precisely because they have understood, perhaps in a pre-theoretic manner, the radical edge to the rights demands of the people. The specific right to freedom of speech is a life-line for those who are fighting against heirarchy, privilege and oppression. It is a crucial weapon against reaction and it is a convenient tool for proximate ruling classes / elites to set up a clash between this and cultural sensitivities/feelings/ emotions.

The failure to appreciate the radical origins of much of the rights, specially freedom of speech, makes Mamdani commit another error by putting a hard won political right (freedom of speech) on the same plane as a political programme (civil peace). For much of history, these two have been on opposing sides of the political divide and, usually, remain so today. The demand to curtail a right in the interests of civil peace is almost always a demand of the privileged and powerful against the upsurge of the oppressed and exploited.

The fourth point of disagreement with Mamdani is regarding his examples of how curbs on freedom of speech are often appropriate. The first one about Allen Lane burning books which hurt Christian sentiments leaves me a bit perplexed. What that man did is totally unacceptable. We might as well go and burn all of M.F. Husain’s paintings to achieve “civil peace”. I just hope that I have not been able to comprehend the correct import of his example and will leave it at that, since if what I have understood Mamdani as trying to say is correct, then its a shockingly retrogressive position. One which we should reject unambiguously.

The second example is also irrelevant with regard to the Mohammed cartoons. Mamdani refers to a talk show in the US where two white men mimicked blacks and made fun of them. That was not an attack on ideas and beliefs, it was an attack on, humiliation of, actual people. This just cannot be the same. Attacking living human beings, deepening prejudice against them which weakens their political and social positions is not the same as attacking an idea or belief, however similar they may appear to us. There is a basic difference which needs to be remembered, specially in times when the waters are so muddied. To put it in somewhat simplified, if stark, terms: the human being need to be defended against attacks, not a belief-system or its prophet.

It is instructive that Mamdani ends his talk with a call to “Muslim peoples” to learn the right lessons. Who, or what, is that? The 1.1 billion strong global ummah which is the wet-dream of the Mullahs?

The reason I have spent so much time to write out this response is because in Mamdani’s talk I have found an eloquent, persuasive expression of a purportedly anti-imperialist position which will, in my estimation, lead to the further entrenchment of fundamentalists within different Muslim societies.

(one note: I have not yet read any of the other comments. hope i have not repeated points already made.)

The//… bigotry-blasphemy distinction? Am I prohibited from saying anything against another religion just because it is not from “within” – and am I given full license to say what I want to about my own? Moreover how do you categorise non-practising members of religions, such as Salman Rushdie is? If a tag on my birth certificate can give me license to speak my mind or otherwise I am very sorry for the future of freedom of speech.//

Very thought provoking… I feel criticism can be disliked, protested against too but cannot be responded with violence or threats of violence or even bans.

//“Hate speech”.. of a nature as to create a public disturbance – not by being “offensive” to people but by turning one person against the other – should it be banned.// I agree.

People saying that idol worshiping is evil is hate speech for millions of hindus.

will the author agree to this view point

However Arani rebuttal is valid too. The only problem is he has not understood the gist of the article.

The point about the “Spark” and the “Fuel”. Its not about free speech, but about an entire society having a (historical) feeling of victim-hood.

You cannot rationalise away a “Feeling”, true or untrue. It is, by its very inherent nature, an illogical being.

I was a supporter of Draw Muhammed day till I read this article. Excellent clarity of thought and very

A credit to Kafila.

And what’s with his bigotry-blasphemy distinction? Am I prohibited from saying anything against another religion just because it is not from “within” – and am I given full license to say what I want to about my own? Moreover how do you categorise non-practising members of religions, such as Salman Rushdie is? If a tag on my birth certificate can give me license to speak my mind or otherwise I am very sorry for the future of freedom of speech.

“Hate speech” is a very diffuse tag. This covers abuses against cricketers of the opposite side as well as incitements to violence against the opposite sect. What needs to be seen is the EFFECT, both intended and actual, of a particular set of words. If they are of a nature as to create a public disturbance – not by being “offensive” to people but by turning one person against the other – should it be banned. Merely categorising a work as “offensive” can in no way amount to a justified restriction on the right to free speech. As Dworkin says, any government that takes rights seriously can never cite merely utilitarian goals as sufficient cause to withhold these rights.