No Laughing Matter: The Controversial Danish Cartoons Depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and Their Broader Meaning for Europe’s Public Square

By RUTI TEITEL
Findlaw.com

Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2006

On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a now-infamous set of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in derogatory terms, and associating Islam with terrorism. Many people saw the cartoons as highly offensive – and specifically, as exhibiting intolerance toward those whose religion is Islam.

Some Westerners, especially, have been shocked by the fury the cartoons provoked. To understand why so many Muslims were so gravely offended, it is important to see that the cartoons don’t stand alone, but rather were published against a backdrop of political and legislative action that, to many Muslims, reflects a repeated pattern of disparagement of Islam in the public sphere.

At present, Europe is struggling with issues of identity–issues that could plainly be seen in the recent debates over the adoption of a European Union Constitution. The crisis arises because of new demographics, at the same time as new regionalism. Many Muslims feel they are being relegated to second-class citizenship in Europe. And they relate the publication of the cartoons – by a newspaper they feel would not consider publishing anti-Christian or anti-Jewish cartoons – to this wrongful sense that they are not full citizens.

The cartoons, thus, raise much larger questions: How will Europe reconcile its varying affiliations: regional, national, local, and individual? And to what extent can it allow–in light of new demographics–a reconception of its public sphere ?

The UN Is Sympathetic To Muslim Complaints, while Many In Europe are Not

In light of recent events, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has initiated an investigation into “racism” and “Islamaphobia.” Similarly, while calling for “tolerance,” the UN Commission on Human Rights’ Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, and racial discrimination “strongly deplored the depictions of the Prophet” and the “grave offence they caused to the members of the Muslim community.”

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