Helpful statement from Muslim thinkers on the ‘cartoons’

I saw the NYT linked to this statement today, jointly issued by around three dozen eminent Muslim thinkers and religious leaders from around the world. It explained the Muslim position on the sense of violation many or most observant Muslims felt in reaction to the cartoons:

    The events in Denmark concerning the Messenger of God represent an entirely unacceptable crime of aggression that has violated the highest sanctities of the Muslim people.

It also called on,

    the Danish government and the Danish people to yield to the large number of objective and sincere voices emanating from within their society, by apologizing, and condemning and bringing
    an end to this attack.

However, it also issued a crucial call for restraint:

    We appeal to all Muslims to exercise self-restraint in accordance with the teachings of Islam and we reject countering an act of aggression by acts not sanctioned in Islam, such as breaking treaties and breaching timehonoured agreements by attacking foreign embassies or innocent people and other targets. Such violent reactions can lead to a distortion of the just and balanced nature of our request or even to our isolation from the global dialogue. The support that we give to our Prophet will not be given by flouting his teachings.

The signatories include Sunnis and Shiites, and people from Indonesia, India, Morocco, the US, as well as the Muslim heartland. They include the present Mufti of Jerusalem, the Grand Mufti of Lebanon, and Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah, the spiritual mentor of Hizbullah, in Lebanon. I see no signatories from Iran. There are at least two from Syria.
Regarding people’s arguments that some of the anti-cartoon violence has been stirred up by “authoritarian” regimes, I would say that there has been as much anti-cartoon activism by pro-US as by anti-US regimes, and that in nearly all these cases the popular response was far stronger than any of the regimes had expected. The cartoons issue has touched a point of very deep grievance and hurt inside many Muslim societies. Of course it has been “used” by many different kinds of political forces for their own reasons. But their agitation on the issue would not have been met with such a strong popular response if the deep hurt weren’t there in the first place.
The response that has sickened me the most so far has been when Muslim mobs in Nigeria torched churches and killed a reported 25 members of the Christian community in the north of the country. And now, most recently, there have been anti-Muslim reprisals in the south of the country.
What do Nigerian Christians have to do with one self-important Danish journalist’s decision to knowingly break a Muslim taboo on publishing pictures of the Prophet? Nothing whatever.
Let’s hope as many Muslims as possible heed the religious leaders’ call for self-restraint. Personally, I wish it had been more strongly worded and called explicitly for a ban on all forms of violence and hate-mongering in response to the cartoons. But still, it’s a good start.

12 thoughts on “Helpful statement from Muslim thinkers on the ‘cartoons’”

  1. “Regarding people’s arguments that some of the anti-cartoon violence has been stirred up by “authoritarian” regimes, I would say that there has been as much anti-cartoon activism by pro-US as by anti-US regimes, and that in nearly all these cases the popular response was far stronger than any of the regimes had expected.”
    Both of these statements are true, but I’m not sure what it proves. A country can have a strategic and cooperative relationship between governments, and still allow and even incite protests as a perceived safety valve and to demonstrate their “bona fides” at home. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the examples that come to mind.

  2. The “Cartoon Jihad” coming, as it does, on the heels of the “Paris Intifada”, makes Islam look less than shiny. Add to that, the threats and non-cooperation from Iran, and the well-publicized little pogrom in Nigeria, and the overall picture is not good for Islam.
    But this comes at a time when Hamas is looking around the world for friends, especially in Europe. So having their leader visit Iran at this time did them no good at all in the rest of the world.
    The Danish newspaper had a legal right to publish offensive cartoons, but that doesn’t mean the cartoons weren’t offensive. The attempt to get an apology from the Danish government is problematical. The Danish government neither drew nor published the cartoons. But I’m sure their Foreign Ministry can spin up a “Non-apology apology” for their PM to use to commisserate with hurt Muslims the world over.

  3. When moslems bomb subways they claim these are isolated individuals that do no represent Islam.
    But now they want ALL Danish people to apologize for a cartoon they did not draw.
    There are no words to define such irrational hypocresy. The closest may be Helena’s “Crybabies” adjective.

  4. ” The editor of Jyllands Posten who ordered the publication of the cartoons is Flemming Rose, who has extensive connections to Daniel Pipes, another neocon fascist madman who runs Campus Watch, a neo-McCarthyite witch-hunting organization which vilifies American professors who criticize Israel or show sympathy for the Palestinians. President Bush wanted to name Daniel Pipes to the board of the US Institute of Peace, a government-funded arm of the State Department which organizes conferences and publishes books. When the raving extremist Pipes turned out to be too widely discredited to obtain Senate confirmation for this post, Bush forced his nomination through with a summer 2003 recess appointment to a temporary term at USIP without Senate approval. Daniel Pipes is the nepotist son of Richard Pipes, a Sovietologist who was a leading figure in George H.W. Bush’s 1976 Team B, the incubator of today’s neocon clique. At the time of his recess appointment, Daniel Pipes was accused by the very moderate Arab-American Institute of “hatred and bigotry” in the context of his “bizarre obsession with all things Arab and Muslim.” (www.aaiusa.org/pr/release08-14-03.htm) This is the sick, racist point of view embraced by Jyllands Posten.

    The editor of Jyllands Posten who ordered the publication of the cartoons is Flemming Rose, who has extensive connections to Daniel Pipes, another neocon fascist madman who runs Campus Watch, a neo-McCarthyite witch-hunting organization which vilifies American professors who criticize Israel or show sympathy for the Palestinians. President Bush wanted to name Daniel Pipes to the board of the US Institute of Peace, a government-funded arm of the State Department which organizes conferences and publishes books. When the raving extremist Pipes turned out to be too widely discredited to obtain Senate confirmation for this post, Bush forced his nomination through with a summer 2003 recess appointment to a temporary term at USIP without Senate approval. Daniel Pipes is the nepotist son of Richard Pipes, a Sovietologist who was a leading figure in George H.W. Bush’s 1976 Team B, the incubator of today’s neocon clique. At the time of his recess appointment, Daniel Pipes was accused by the very moderate Arab-American Institute of “hatred and bigotry” in the context of his “bizarre obsession with all things Arab and Muslim.” (www.aaiusa.org/pr/release08-14-03.htm) This is the sick, racist point of view embraced by Jyllands Posten.

    Flemming Rose provided details of his conversation with Daniel Pipes in a later article. They talked about the need to mobilize Europe for the war of civilizations against the Moslem world. Rose wrote: “Pipes is surprised that there isn’t greater alarm in Europe over the challenge that Islam represents thanks to falling rates of fertility and a weakened sense for its own history and culture.” (Flemming Rose, “The Threat from Islamism, Jyllands-Posten, October 29, 2004) The relation of such racist arguments to the Mohammed cartoons provocation should be clear enough.”

    The editor of Jyllands Posten Flemming Rose, was a major player in the creation of CEPOS research center one of the Advisory Board his board George P. Shultz.
    Flemming Rose wort in Oct 2004 a series of editors promoting Daniel Pipes under title The danger of Islam in Danish language.

    ” Agents of certain persuasion’ are behind the egregious affront to Islam in order to provoke Muslims, Professor Mikael Rothstein of the University of Copenhagen told the BBC. The key ‘agent’ is Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of JP, who commissioned cartoonists to produce the blasphemous images and then published them in Denmark’s leading morning paper last September.

    The International Herald Tribune, which reported on the offensive cartoons on January 1, noted that even the liberalism of Rose had its limits when it came to criticism of Zionist leaders and their crimes. Rose also has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons behind the ‘war on terror.’

    Rose told the international paper owned by The New York Times that ‘he would not publish a cartoon of Israel’s Ariel Sharon strangling a Palestinian baby, since that could be construed as ‘racist.”

    Asked why he was protecting Sharon, a known war criminal, while abusing Muslims and their Prophet in the name of free speech, Rose told American Free Press that he had been ‘misquoted’ in the Times article.

    Rose traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares ‘militant Islam’ with fascism and communism.”

    Juan Cole
    12/30/04 That the Revisionist-Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has fond visions of rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in concentration camps isn’t a big surprise. That a mainstream American newspaper would publish this David-Dukeian evil is. Of course, this is also a man that President Bush appointed to a temporary vacancy at the United States Institute of Peace, after the Senate understandably balked at a regular appointment for him.

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