"The Reactions Are Themselves Caricatures"

Raja Ben Slama, professor for literature in Tunisia, warns that violent reactions in the Islamic world to the caricatures of the Prophet seem proof that Islam indeed has a tendency to be narrow-minded and theologically rigid

Are Islam and the Prophet really so threatened by decline and fall as a result of the caricatures published in a Danish newspaper that the cries of consternation being raised around the world are justified? Are Arab governments justified in recalling their ambassadors? Are Muslim legal scholars justified in calling for a boycott of Danish products? Are venerable Islamic institutions justified in protesting publicly?

The situation is even more of a caricature than the actual caricatures themselves. The caricature created by the Danish caricaturist was the fruit of artistic labour. In contrast, the caricature created by the Muslims – and the Arabs in particular – is the fruit of a bitter reality: a bitter reality that turns into a black comedy that makes us want to laugh and cry simultaneously.

A mosquito feared by warriors

It is like an entire battalion of warriors setting off in pursuit of a mosquito crying "Allahu Akbar" and brandishing state-of-the-art weapons, a mosquito that the warriors fear is about to deliver a stinging blow to their lands by disparaging all that is holy to them, their religious convictions and certainties.

So, who is it then that is seriously damaging this religion, which has been followed by thousands of millions of people for fifteen centuries? Is it the artist who drew the caricature or the vulgar reactions to these caricatures that are demanding the reinstatement of the thought police and an inquisition?

Is not the insistence that journalists be condemned because they expressed an opinion a form of intellectual terrorism? Are we maybe seeking refuge in intellectual terrorism for a lack of real terrorism?

Did the caricatures really weaken Islam?

We want to prove to the world every day that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism and terrorists, that the terrorists who are tyrannizing innocent people around the world have nothing to do with Islam, and that Islam is a religion of love and tolerance.

But the fact of the matter is that what we are actually proving every day is that the Islam that we want and that we want to defend clashes with the values of people with different beliefs; that Islam is on a counter-crusade and that it has a tendency to be narrow-minded and theologically rigid.

Is the caricaturist really harming Islam and the Muslims? Has the number of Muslims diminished as a result? Did they turn their back on God's religion in their droves after Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses?

For that matter, did Islam perish in ancient times as a result of the writings of those who advocated what were considered to be heretical reforms or as a result of the satirical poems written by Abu Nuwas, Omar al-Khayyam, and al-Maarri, which were loaded with religious scepticism? Where there is faith, should there not also be a lack of faith so that the faithful can test their faith by comparing themselves with the unfaithful?

What do the faithful leave to God if they sit in judgement on the entire world before the Day of Judgement? And if devout Muslims abide by the ban on portraying the prophets and their companions, why do they want to impose the same ban on other nations; nations that for centuries stood up to clerics in order to achieve real freedom of opinion and belief?

Violent protest an expression of fear

We are quite justified in calling into question the faith of those who are crying out so loudly in consternation. After all, Muslims who truly believe are not concerned with what other people think of their convictions. This madness is an expression of a fear of something that is not, in reality, frightening at all.

The people who are crying out in consternation are afraid that they themselves are no longer capable of testing their faith in the light of a lack of faith. They are not able to expose their convictions to the test of modern life and this is why they are seeking refuge in cries for help and are playing the role of the victim in order to free themselves from their suppressed doubts.

But it is important to note that those who are shouting "Save Islam" – including one who grasped the opportunity to shout "And save the headscarf" because he believed that the headscarf was the supreme Muslim obligation – are forgetting one vital point.

The soldiers of the Arab inquisition, who count themselves among the intellectuals and publishers, are studiously forgetting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 in particular. Let us look at what this article says: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Export of civil and spiritual misery

Maybe the problem is that Muslims feel as if they belong to two different eras: the era of globalisation, of striving for material gain, and of the global promulgation of human rights, but also in an era where non-Muslim thought is forbidden and where Muslims can be punished for lapsing from their faith.

We want both things at once: We want to use the principles of democracy (jurisdiction, the use of diplomatic channels, referrals to the United Nations etc.) to drag humanity into an era of sinister theocracy (where people are muzzled and where artistic freedom and the freedom of expression are suppressed) in order to export our civil and spiritual misery around the world.

Should not the venerable Islamic institutions that are now protesting against the caricatures of a Danish journalist instead use their energy to guide the faithful to a form of religiousness that recognises modern civil achievements?

Official madness

Would it not be better for them to revoke the condemnation of people who lapse from the faith in view of the fact that the Koran does not itself stipulate such condemnation? Would it not be more important to avow the principles of justice, equality for all, and real tolerance? What sort of tolerance does not grant others the freedom to express opinions on things that are for us indisputable truths?

The official madness and the madness on the streets, both of which are spreading quickly, know no boundaries: maybe one day we will be calling for the condemnation of Voltaire because he derided religions, or of Marx because of his conviction that religion was opium for the people, or of Freud because he saw God as an ersatz father and religion as an illusion, or Sartre because he was the father of heathen existentialism.

Maybe we should ask the governments of these (now deceased) thinkers that they apologise to the Muslims and demand that their books be banned and never be published again because they disparaged Islam.

Or maybe we should demand that the United Nations removes Article 19 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights altogether and apologises for the principles that make it possible for every journalist and writer, wherever he or she be in the world, to express an opinion or to draw a caricature that disparages Islam.

Raja Ben Slama

Translated from German by Aingeal Flanagan

Raja Ben Slama is a Tunisian professor for Arabic literature who lives in Cairo.

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