Category: Culture

I just saw a good piece by the LA Times’s Maggie Farley in New York, where she reports on Kofi Annan’s latest attempts to calm things down around the cartoons controversy.
Notable in there, this:

When asked about claims this week by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Syria and Iran had inflamed the controversy and incited protests, Annan told reporters that he had “no evidence to that effect.”

Evidence? You think the Bushies rely on evidence for any of the increasingly wild series of allegations they’ve been making against Syria and Iran?
Farley also wrote of Annan:

“Honestly, I do not understand why any newspaper will publish the cartoons today,” he told reporters at the United Nations. “It is insensitive, it is offensive, it is provocative, and they should see what has happened around the world.
“This does not mean that I am against freedom of speech, or freedom of the press,” he added. “But as I have indicated in the past, freedom of speech is not a license. It does entail exercising responsibility and judgment.”
… He also condemned the violent response by demonstrators.
“They should not attack innocent civilians,” he said. “They should not attack people who are not responsible for the publication of the cartoons.”

Well said, Mr. Secretary-General. That’s a whole lot more constructive leadership than the global community has been getting from the self-proclaimed leader of the world George W. Bush on this issue.

My column titled Respecting both free speech and Muslims’ faith can bring peace is in the CSM today. As so often, they didn’t choose exactly the title I would have chosen. But what the heck.
The only thing I would have changed in the text of the column is to have clarified that for many of the Muslim governments involved it was primarily Rasmussen’s refusal even to meet with their ambassadors to discuss the cartoon issue that really riled them.
I was thinking of writing a little post here that would ask why does the Bush administration feel it has to inject itself into this very hot-tempered debate, at all? This completely mystifies me, since until now the issue has overwhelmingly been one between a (large) number of Muslim nations and a number of European nations.
So why have W and Condi felt they had to adopt a high public posture on this issue at all? And why has it become so much more hardline over recent days? I am honestly mystified.
I started being mystified when I saw them make a harshly accusatory statement over the weekend, accusing Syria of having instigated the violent protests in Damascus that resulted in the burning of the Danish and Norwegian Embassies there.
This is based on an assumption that “every single popular protest in Syria is totally controlled by the Syrian government.” This has most definitely NOT been the case in recent years… including back at the beginning of the present US-Iraq war, when there were street protests in Damascus against the US that truly terrified the regime.
(I guess the Bushies would have preferred for the Syrian regime to have shot some of the protesters dead, as the US-puppet forces in Afghanistan did earlier this week?)
But then I figured that the “temptation” of taking a hostile potshot at the Syrian regime whenever and however it can is just too overwhleming for the Bushies to be able to restrain themselves…
Anyway, I am also interested to see the effects of the synchronicity of the cartoon controversy with the commemorations in Shiite communities of the events of Ashura.
In Lebanon, Hizbullah organized a huge Ashura-related procession/demonstration at which Hasan Nasrallah “urged Muslims worldwide to keep demonstrating until there is an apology over the drawings and Europe passes laws forbidding insults to the prophet.”
The size of that crowd– in a country whose population totals 3.5 million, was, “estimated by organizers at about 700,000. Police had no final estimates but said the figure was likely to be even higher.”
In Iran more than a million Shiites marched in Karbala for Ashura. (No mention in that story of the cartoons.)
In Lebanon, we are of course coming up to the first anniversary of Rafiq Hariri’s killing. So no doubt there will be huge marches and counter-marches around that, too…
Altogether, not a great time for GWB to inject himself into a worldwide debate that started off not fundamentally involving Americans…
Gotta run. Time to go demonstrate for peace. As every Thursday till– when?

Here:

MADRID, Feb 6 (Reuters) – The prime ministers of Turkey and Spain made a joint plea for respect and calm on Monday after violent Muslim protests at the weekend against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan and Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in an article in the International Herald Tribune that they were increasingly concerned by the rise in tension provoked by the cartoons.
“We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation, which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake,” they wrote.
“Therefore, it is necessary to make an appeal for respect and calm, and let the voice of reason be heard,” they added…

The fulltext original of their piece in the IHT is here.

Talking of freedom of media, information, and dialogue in our present world, I want to express huge appreciation to Juan Cole for liberating the “Fact File” on the Danish cartoons issue produced apparently jointly by the CIA-linked “FBIS” media-monitoring organization and its British counterpart at BBC monitoring.
A careful reading of this fact-file, going back to the original Sept 30 publication of the offending images and the reactions of many concerned parties since then really helps to clarify the whole tangled story, and to show that the world’s “Muslims” have not merely been acting “emotionally and irrationally” to something that happened a long time ago… There is a whole history to this issue– inside Denmark and more broadly, that it is important to know about.
However, the monitoring reports produced by FBIS and the BBC are for-pay products– even though both are produced by tax money taken from taxpayers including (in the US) myself. So a big thanks to Juan liberating this “Fact File” for the global discourse.
Juan’s own commentary throughout the file is also v. worth reading. His conclusion there is this:

The allegation that this thing was fanned by Saudi Arabia does not seem to be substantiated by the FBIS record, which shows Egypt’s secular foreign minister to have been among the main fanners of the flame. Minor members of youth wings of Islamist parties in places like Pakistan then got into the action. Nor is it true that things were quiet after the immediate publication of the cartoons. Nor is it true that the Danish prime minister or the Jyllands-Posten expressed any sympathy for the hurt feelings of Muslims early on. Indeed, they lectured them on being uncivilized for objecting.

I just parenthetically note that this whole controversy is doing more for inter-Muslim unity than anyone could have expected. Including– as Salah has noted here– between Shii and Sunni adherents in Iraq; and also, as Juan notes, between more secular Muslims like the Mubarak government and their less secular confreres.
Interesting times. Let’s focus on pulling back from escalating this into a “clash of civilizations” but try to focus on the need to civilize the discourse and all its related actions. Increasing the amount of information available about the issue, as Juan has done, makes a great contribution.

…And maybe other European leaders, too.

Note: I revised and extended this post shortly after first posting it. Including I changed its title. ~HC

I can’t understand why Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who has said he disapproves of the cartoons of Muhammad, continues to insist he cannot apologize about the activities of his country’s media publisherss.
The government of Lebanon, badly shaken by the very nasty anti-Danish and anti-Christian violence shown by some hotheads in Beirut, quickly apologized to Denmark. This, from AP:

Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said early Monday that the government had unanimously “rejected and condemned the … riots,” saying they had “harmed Lebanon’s reputation and its civilized image and the noble aim of the demonstration.”
“The Cabinet apologizes to Denmark,” Aridi said.

I take it that no-one is inferring that, by having apologized to Denmark for the harm caused to its embassy, the Lebanese government is admitting to any culpability of its own in the act. But the apology regarding the harm caused by some Lebanese citizens (and also some non-citizen residents of the country) is a humane, very statesmanlike thing for a national leader to do.
So why does Rasmussen continue to feel– even five months after the original publication of the cartoons, and having seen quite clearly the hurt to others that they caused– that he “can’t apologize” for the actions of Danish publishers? To do so, after all, would imply no assertion whatsoever that his government should be held responsible for the actions of all of its citizens. But it would be a humane, very statesmanlike thing to do.
That same AP story linked to above, notes that Rasmussen says he can’t apologize “on behalf of” the Danish publishers of the cartoons. I don’t think people are asking him to apologize on their behalf. (Only they themselves could do that, or authorize it to be done.) But he could surely– as the national leader of the “nation” of Danes– apologize to Muslims in and far beyond Denmark for the hurt caused by this Danish institution and about the activities that caused that hurt?
… So what has been holding him back from doing that?

Update after following this link from Juan Cole’s blog:

Here’s what Rasmussen said in a statement he made on Al-Arabiya satellite TV on Thursday evening:

“I have a very important message for you: the Danish people have defended freedom of expression and religious freedom for generations. We deeply respect all religions including Islam and it is important for me to tell you that the Danish people have no intention to offend Muslims.
“On the contrary we will do our utmost to continue our historic tradition of dialogue and mutual respect. And therefore I am deeply distressed that many Muslims have seen the drawings in a Danish newspaper as a defamation of the Prophet Mohammed,” Rasmussen said.
The Danish leader said he would do his “utmost to solve that problem” and noted that the Danish newspaper had already apologized for the offence caused by the drawings.
But Rasmussen defended his country’s tradition of freedom, saying, “We have a free press and this freedom of expression is a vital and indispensable part of our democracy and this is the reason why I cannot control what is published in the media.
“But on the other hand neither the Danish government nor the Danish people can be held responsible for what is published in the media,” he said.

To me, this looks like an insufficient, indeed blame-the-victim type of apology. He says he is distressed that “many Muslims have seen the drawings… as a defamation of the Prophet Mohammed.” Clearly implied sub-text there: “Why are they so primitive? Can’t they ‘grow up’ and be like us and see these ‘drawings’ as quite value-neutral What is their problem?”
It strikes me that this was highly dishonest and unsatisfying. He must have known long before that point that the cartoons were not value-neutral but were indeed both clearly and intentionally desecrative of very widespread Islamic norms against pictorial representation of the Prophet and– in the case of at least one of them– defamatory to the Prophet and thereby to the worldwide community of Muslim believers. So for him to say that the “problem” that caused him distress was only the Muslims’ reaction to the cartoons, rather than the existence and publication of the cartoons– by anyone at all! but actually, as it happens, by a Danish media company– is mean-spirited in the extreme.
And then, he expresses “distress” over this but no “apology”. And rushes to argue that “neither the Danish government nor the Danish people can be held responsible for what is published in the media.”
Well, that is an important crux of his argument. It is one that is highly contested by many others around the world who have less of a free-speech-absolutist position on these issues than he does; and it is certainly a discussion we should all can engage in in our increasingly globalized world.
But if he wants to issue a sincere apology I suggest he simply does that. As the government of Lebanon did. Without making any mention in the statement of apology of issues of culpability or non-culpability. Those could be addressed later.
But this guy is certainly not acting in a way that is either humane or statesmanlike. What a dangerous ignoramus. Let’s hope the Danes hold him accountable at the next election.

Second addendum, 1:30 p.m., Monday

I just checked the Wikipedia entry on Rasmussen. From that he appears to be much more like a wittingly dangerous person in this matter than someone who merely “lacks awareness” of the effects of his actions.

I can understand, perhaps, if some publisher in a not terrifically lively place like Denmark decides he wants to make some money by publishing some cartoons that– perhaps– he doesn’t even know are actively offensive to a billion-plus of his fellow humans. What I don’t understand is that, after the offended people have expressed their deep hurt about these cartoons, a bunch of other publishers all over Europe should choose to reprint them.
And they call that “free speech”? To me, it is exactly like sexual pornography, which is an ideology and a billion-dollar industry that intentionally demeans and objectifies women and provides the ideological basis for the industries of prostitution and human trafficking that are built centrally on the human suffering of women and young girls and boys.
Liberal societies have laws against the free publication, display, and distribution of pornography, and I’m glad that they do. Many have laws against publications that incite race-hate.
Publishing cartoons whose main intent is– as we all well know– to cause predictable amounts of great offense to adherents of a religion is not a “free speech” issue. It is incitement to hate of the most childish and irresponsible kind.
Of course Muslims should also find effective and nonviolent ways to express their sense of deep hurt. The violent response that’s been seen in a number of Muslim communities does nothing, I think, to either defend or honor the values of the religion. Huge, disciplined, nonviolent protests of all kinds– demonstrations and possibly also boycotts– would achieve those things so much more effectively.
Meantime, maybe we should all have a calm and reasoned discussion about the nature of sacred-ness in our world– and how we can all learn better to respect the feelings of others about the sacred.
What does it mean, indeed, when we say something is “sacred” to us? Is free-speech absolutism a “sacred” value? Thoughts?

Here in Virginia, we are currently suspended between “Lee-Jackson Day”, which was celebrated as a state-wide holiday on Friday, and “Martin Luther King Day”, celebrated as a holiday both state-wide and nationally, tomorrow.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, 1929-1968, was a world-renowned nonviolent struggler for the cause of human equality, and against the war in Vietnam. Robert E. Lee, 1807 – 1870, was a career army officer who commanded all the Confederate armies during the American Civil War. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, 1824 – 1863, was a Virginia teacher who served as a corps commander in the (Confederate) Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee.
Back in the 1980s, when I was newly here in the US, there was a big nationwide discussion over the idea of adding a remembrance of King Day to the national calendar. I think it actually did happen then, under President Reagan. But states were still free to give their own employees the day off on King Day or not, as they chose. At some point there, Virginia, a southern state in which pro-Confederate sentiment still runs strong in some places, effected a compromise by having a “joint” public holiday for all three of these men– Lee-King-Jackson Day, which sandwiched poor Dr. King’s memory between that of two Confederate generals.
In recent years– I can’t remember exactly when, but since we moved here in ’97– the two days got disaggregated, so at least Dr. King doesn’t have to put up with those old secessionist (and deeply segregationist) bedfellows. And state employees here, and schoolkids etc, get two days off in mid-January instead of one.
What are we celebrating on “Lee-Jackson Day”, pray?
Anyway, we had a South African friend staying over the weekend. He told us how in his country, previously “divisive” public holidays have been replaced by intentionally inclusive and pro-reconciliation remembrances, which I think is a great idea. He said that even Soweto Uprising Day, which the ANC always used to mark every year on June 16, has now been rebranded as “Children’s Rights Day.” And various days that previously were celebrations of famous Afrikaaner victories etc have been rebranded as “Reconciliation Day” or whatever.
If the South Africans can do that, so soon after 1994– surely we here in Virginia could do something similar, and not have these divisive and highly personalized holidays? I mean, I know that celebrating Dr. King’s heritage is supposed to be a unifying thing to do, and in a way it is. (Can the same possibly be said of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson?) But maybe it would be better to just have one mid-January holiday and call it “Equality Day” or “Reconciliation Day”, celebrating the values for which Dr. King struggled rather than the one individual himself…

Many people have noted the synchronicity of Christmas with other midwinter festivals and observances. And yes, there is something good and hopeful for people living a distance from the Equator as we come to the point in the year when the days, which have been drawing ominously shorter, start once again to lengthen.
We experienced that in New Zealand, too, this year, back in June.
But thinking about this made me think about the general, highly inequitable power relationships over the past 350 years between (some of the) people who are indigenes of nothern climes and just about all of those who indigenes of southern climes. These inequitable relations run across the entire arena of human affairs including economics, politics, and culture…
What kind of midsummer observances are indigenous southerners marking at this time of year?
And then, there are the whole swathe of cultures that grew up fairly close to the Equator, where changes in day-length or sun-angle are less important than the cycle of rainy seasons, monsoons, etc. Those don’t really track with solstices at all, though they generally have their own annual rhythm. I wonder what kinds of festivals and observances the various indigenous cultures of those climes would be marking right now?
Anyway, we’re now coming up to the (Roman-origined) New Year, too… All of these are fine occasions to do some reflection and stock-taking, and think about our wishes and commitments for the year ahead.
This past year has seen the continued, massive perpetration of violence in many of the world’s continents, and humankind’s continued engagement in practices that are highly inequitable among the world’s different peoples. But it also started to see some early checking of the exercise of unilateral U.S. power and the emergence within the US citizenry of new questioning about the nature, uses, and abuses of that power at home and abroad. In 2006, I hope we see much more of this questioning and continued work towards the building of a worldwide movement for nonviolence and human equality.
And though we Quakers don’t stick to a fixed liturgical calendar, we do (as I noted earlier) tend to think at this time of year about the birth of Jesus of Nazareth… A great and gentle teacher, a proponent of nonviolence, and a consistent advocate for human equality. He must be rubbing his eyes in sheer amazement at the many terrible things that have been done in his name– over past centuries, and down into 2005, as well.

I have just spent a little time over at this September 11 victims’ memorial website, clicking through to some of the names and learning more about the people who died.
Here, picked out almost at random, is the page devoted to NYC firefighter Lt. Paul Richard Martini.
I don’t think I knew any of the nearly-3,000 people who were killed that day. My sincere condolences to any of you who did.
This page on the site tells us that 2,902 of the victims were US residents (including a number of foreign nationals). It also tells us about all the other nations that lost citizens in the attacks. These nations each lost five or more citizens:

Britain – 67
Colombia – 17
Filipines – 15
Germany – 5
Jamaica – 16
Japan – 23
Mexico – 15
Peru – 5

I remember the day very vividly. I opened my computer screen and saw the AOL newsfeed about the first plane attack in NYC. So then I went immediately downstairs to the TV and turned on CNN. Within minutes I watched as the second plane went into the towers there… And then, over the minutes that followed there were flames; then the horrific collapse of one tower– people rushing terrified in the street– then the collapse of the second tower…
Soon after, my editor from the CSM– then, it was Linda Feldman– called and asked if I could write a special column for Thursday’s paper. Since it was already Tuesday, I’d need to have it with her by later that evening. I said yes.
How do you write a column with a necessarily 36-hour-long lead-time in a situation like that?
I did what I could. Four years later, I’m still pretty pleased with what I wrote that afternoon. You can find it here.