Sheik Abdul Hamid Attrash, chairman of the Fatwa Comittee at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, the highest Sunni muslim authority in the world, is offended by a cartoon from a popular animated movie in Japan.
At issue is a 90-second segment from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which depicts Dio Brando, a villain, picking up a copy of the Quran from a bookshelf and examining it as he orders the execution of the hero and his friends.
”The scene depicts Muslims as terrorists, which is not true at all. This is an insult to the religion and the producers would be considered to be enemies of Islam,” Sheik Abdul Hamid Attrash told Kyodo News.
Well, it’s a fact that terrorist acts are being committed in the name of Islam, which of course doesn’t imply that every Muslim is a potential terrorist. The odd thing is that quite a few people who call themselves Muslims issue threats: If you say we are violent or that our holy book incite violence, we are going to kill you! In stead of pointing their finger at a Japanese cartoon Al-Azhar should fight the intolerance and violence that is being committed in Islam’s name.
Angry responses to the cartoon were carried by more than 300 Arab and Islamic web forums. The former heaad of Al-Azhar’s Fatwa Comittee, Gamal Qutb, told Kyodo News that Muslims will initiate a boycott against Japanes products.
”Muslims will be forced to adopt a position toward their civilization, from arguing their worship through boycotting their products to responding in the same manner if necessary.”
The movie is based on a popular comic book which has been carried in a Japanese weekly, from 1987 to 2003. A pirated version with Arabic subtitles has been distributed by several websites since 2007.
As a response to the angry reactions from Islamic clerics and Muslims the publisher behind the movie, Shueisha Inc., issued an official apology:
“We would like our Muslim audience to know that there was never any intention to insult Islam and Muslims (as if that is the same thing, FR). Shueisha and A.P.P.P. Co., Ltd. had no intention to show any disrespect for the Holy Qur’an or to describe Muslims as enemies.”
This is a another example showing how important it is to accept that one risk being offended in a globalized world because taboos and codes of the sacred and the profane are so diverse.
Back in February the Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot (pseudonym) told Danish TV that he was upset with the fact that more and more people are cowed into silence when dealing with Islam. He insisted that his cartoons – many of them being sexually explicit and taking on Islam - were meant to make people laugh.
”People are afraid, but when you laugh you are not afraid, and if you are not afraid, you are free,” he said.
Well, on Tuesday Nekschot’s freedom was encroached by the Dutch police. He was arrested as a suspect for having published ”cartoons which are discriminating for Muslims and people with dark skin”.
The Brussels Journal quotes a spokeswoman from Xtra, Nekschot’s publisher about the circumstances of the arrest:
”He was arrested with a great show of force, by around 10 policemen.”
Nekschot must be a dangerous man! A cartoonist at large!
Nekschot was a friend of Theo van Gogh who was slained by an angry Muslim on the streets of Amsterdam, November 1 2004. His offense: a documentary about violence against women in Islam that offended the religious sensibilties of the young Muslim.
The Police searched the home of Gregorius Nekschot (which means “shot in the back of his head”) and confiscated evidence, i.e. his computer, backups, usb sticks, cell phone and a number of cartoons. The Dutch minister of justice and Christian Democrat Ernst Hirsch Ballin said that the police had been investigating Nekschot for three years in order to establish his real identity. A Dutch imam and convert, Abdul Jabbar van de Ven had filed a complaint back in 2005 against the anonymous cartoonist, pointing to the insult that Nekschot’s cartoons were causing to Muslims.
”What you draw is worse than what they did in Denmark. Do you realize what can happen to you if your identity gets known?” a police officer told Nekschot according to the newspaper Het Parool.
Yes case illustrates why I am against laws criminalizing racism and ridicule and mocking of religion.
Did Nekschot incite violence?
No, he did not, and if some crazy people get violent in the wake of the publication of his cartoons, of which their is no evidence what so over, it’s their responsibility, not his.
By the way, Adjiedj Bakas, a Dutch expert on future trends, told Danish TV in February that self censorship is a growing trend among comedians and other people in the humor busines, and he predicted that it will be a growing trend in years to come. To him – and to me – this its’t at all about humor.
”It’s not about humor or cartoons. It’s about power, it’s about who will be the boss in Europe in the next century.”
Think about it, as they say.
April 22 a court in Amman, Jordan opened a trial aganist the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and 12 Danish editors including myself. Our offense: republication of Mr. Westergaard’s iconic cartoon of the prophet with a bomb in his turban. We are charged with blasphemy – the victimless crime – for having offended the prophet (who died almost 1400 years ago) and for having inflicted divisions upon Jordan’s society.
If convicted we can be sentenced to three years in prison, and the iniators behind the case have said that if this happens they will ask Interpol for our extradition so we can serve the sentence behind bars in Jordan.
It sounds crazy and it certainly is, but Jordan does have the backing of the UN Human Rights Council that has passed several resolutions calling on governments around the world to pass laws banning any criticism and satire dealing with Islam and other religions, as they phrase it.
Just to remind you: The UN Human Rights Council is the highest ranking body in the world endowed with the task to protect human rights.
The funny thing is that Jordan is prosecuting Danish editors and cartoonists. It would be of more relevance and to the point, were they to bring charges against Al Arabiya, the Arabic tv-station broadcasting by satellite to the Muslim world. Last year Al Arabiya broadcasted the documentary ”Bloody Cartoons” which shows Mr. Westergaard’s cartoon.
Or what about other newspapers that published the very same cartoon?
The answer is obvious. This has from the very beginning been a political case aimed at teaching Denmark and other possible ”offenders” a lesson. It has very little do to with insulting the prophet. It is about power politics.
In the past three years since the London bombings that killed 56 people British police has foiled 15 plots to attack targets in the UK.
This is one of several disturbing findings in a new report by Europol, the European police force.
Welcome to Londonistan.
Britain has emerged as the focal point of Islamist terror in Europe. According to the report last year the UK reported a 30 per cent increase in arrest of terror suspects. Out of 203 persons arrested in 2007 in the UK, a majority was related to Islamist terrorism. In the rest of Europe 201 were detained, 91 of them in France.
The number of suspects under investigation in the UK has risen from 500 in 2004 to 2.000 last year.
What are we to make of this?
Is the threat growing or is the police getting better at seeking out suspects?
Should female judges be allowed to wear the Muslim head scarf in court or is this kind of religious dress code violating the secular state’s principle of neutrality?
Recently Denmark’s Court Agency decided that female judges should have the right to wear the head scarf in court of law.
The Court Agency was established in 1999 by the Ministry of Justice in order to manage and develop Denmark’s courts, and president of the Supreme Court has on several occasions called on immigrants to become judges.
Last summer the Association of Judges made it clear that judges have to appear neutral in court in every possible way. The association added that judges’ physical appearance and behaviour are key to the courts’ credibility in the eyes of their fellow citizens.
Furthermore, Tyge Trier, an expert on the International Human Rights Court in Strasbourg asserted that European parliaments would not be in breach of fundamental human rights, were they to pass a law banning the head scarf in the court of law.
Yesterday the Danish government was expected to make its position clear on the head scarf, but it refrained from making any decision, though reports have indicated that the center right government was in favor of a ban.
The lack of action has prompted political commentator Ralf Pittelkow to criticise the government and the Court Agency for inadequate knowledge about the political and religious implications of the head scarf:
”It should be a very simple matter to decide. The prime minister and the minister of justice have both said that judges have to appear neutral in court of law. Nobody can claim that an Islamic head scarf is religiously neutral. It’s not even politically neutral,” writes Pittelkow in Jyllands-Posten.
Neutrality, he says, ”stresses that the courts in a secular democracy are independent of political and religious interests. A judge who find it necessary to show his religious affiliation in the court of law will call the neutrality of the court into doubt…And the doubt is legitimate. The scarf is not a piece of random clothing. It is closely connected to a certain point of view on the relationship between religion and society.
Contrary to Christianity Islam is a law religion. It demands that one observe certain rules, and within orthodox Islam women have to cover their head in order not to tempt sexual desire in men. This rule is connected to other rules dealing with the rights of women and blasphemy limiting the right to free speech, and rules dealing with the agreement between laws and the Koran that put limitations on democracy. It follows that the Islamic head scarf just isn’t a question of religion, it’s also a question of law and politics.”
Pittelkow concludes:
”You have to choose: Either one is protecting the secular law based state, or one gives in to Islam. It’s the same with the right to free speech (the cartoon crisis): Either you insist on this fundamental right or you submit to Islamic rule. It’s a question of what kind of society you want. It’s a political issue that cannot be left to the Court Association.”
What do you think? Should judges be allowed to wear the Islamic head scarf in court of law or is this a violation of the secular principle of neutrality?
To manage and develop Denmark’s courts
The Headscarf
