A crucial yet overlooked aspect of the current debate re the publication of the Danish cartoons, is the balance of power between the offended Muslim communities and the media that have published the cartoons (and the socio-political elites that those media represent). In Denmark, where the row originated, Muslims largely inhabit a social underclass, experiencing real difficulties accessing employment and a stake in the economy more generally. In a country where an anti-immigrant right-wing is in the political ascendancy, bigotry plays no small part in determining the social status of Danish Muslims (for instance, it seems that one Danish MP described the Muslim presence in Denmark as a "cancer"). To many of them, the issue has as much to do with politics as it has to do with religion. The cartoons are an overt expression of the bigotry that has a material effect on their daily lives, and this experience is a common one in ghettos all across Europe. Add this to the historical record of Western foreign policy towards Muslim majority countries, up to and including the serious crises of the present day (Palestine, Iraq, Iran), and the context in which the cartoons are likely to appear from a Muslim perspective is hard to miss. The cartoons themselves figure next to nowhere on the scale of crimes committed by Western governments against the Islamic world, but they are, in the context, a puerile and gratuitous jab in the eye - the needless addition of another insult to a thousand injuries.

The posture struck by many in the European media has been one of brave defiance against the threat of religious dogma (though such bravery was in short supply three years ago when the Danish paper that published the caricatures of Muhammad refused to publish satirical depictions of Christ on the grounds that they might “provoke an outcry”). Given the balance of power between the media and the Muslim communities in Western countries, and between the West and the Islamic world internationally, the courageous pose is a hard one to take seriously. If the European media had a strong record in (a) documenting the relationships between their governments and autocratic regimes abroad, and (b) reporting on the lack of economic opportunity and consequent restriction of social freedom experienced by the domestic underclass, including Muslim first and second generation immigrants, then the current principled stand for freedom might deserve some credit. Again, the balance-of-power element of the issue, presented inversely by the newspaper editors who chose to publish the caricatures, is unavoidable. One can think of few less impressive sights than that of social elites affecting airs of heroism by valiantly standing up to the fearsome tyranny of those who reside under their boot.

But perhaps the most significant aspect both of the publication of the cartoons and of the subsequent reinforcing of the dichotomies discussed here is the effect they will have on the prevailing political discourse in the West and the government policies that emerge from or acquire legitimacy through the terms of that discourse. It is no coincidence that those who most enthusiastically peddle the fiction of a “clash of civilisations” also portray the opposing “other” as a force that seriously threatens to destroy “our way of life”, and therefore advocate an aggressive US-led military strategy across the Islamic world. Manichean rhetoric eulogizing the liberal idealism of “our values” and the necessity of defending them against those who “hate our freedoms” has been the very essence of Western pro-war advocacy in recent years. Observing essentially imperial foreign policies being depicted as altruistic endeavours aimed at bringing enlightenment to backward, inferior (if exotic) cultures, or at least at defending us against them, hardly places us in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, subjugation almost invariably goes hand in hand with the deliberate dehumanisation of those who are being subjugated by those responsible for or whose acquiescence is essential to the act of subjugation. And in terms of domestic social relations, the direct contribution made by stereotypical depictions of certain social groups as in some way inferior to the mistreatment of those groups by the majority is again a dynamic that's hardly unfamiliar, not least in Europe.

Meaningful dialogue between Muslims and Westerners is eminently possible. History shows that the common human values of freedom of expression, worship and conscience have emerged in both cultures at various points in time, to greater or lesser extents. The barrier to dialogue is not the necessary antagonism of two diametrically opposed value systems. Nor is the real question at hand one of whether freedom of speech should be curtailed by the demands of religious dogma. Rather, for us as Westerners, the question is whether we will continue to be complicit or to acquiesce in the denial of freedom to others. Declining to publish the caricatures, in light of the political context in which this issue has arisen, would not be a compromise but an affirmation of the values we in Europe purport to uphold.


- Extract from an article by David Wearing - ZNet -
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=9771