Mick Hartley

So, the fuss about the Religious Hatred Bill was all for nothing. It’s not needed. As this cartoon affair clearly demonstrates, no one, and certainly not the UK press, is going to do anything to offend Muslims from now on. Muslims have set the terms of the debate: they decide what it is that offends them, and from then on it’s a line we can’t cross – ostensibly because of our civilised concern for their delicate sensibilities, but in reality because we’re scared.

The whole thing has been a controversy manufactured by the Islamists, starting with the Danish imams who tirelessly toured the Middle East to whip up the hysteria – adding on the way some particularly offensive cartoons of their own – and continued by Arab regimes only too happy to deflect popular aggression onto Western targets: something they’re well practiced at. It’s simply not true that Mohammed is never portrayed in Islamic culture, and there’s certainly a rich tradition of his portrayal in the West, but, as usual, it’s the hard-liners who’ve set the terms of this debate, claiming to speak for all Muslims – not without opposition in the Muslim world – and being taken at their word by the British establishment.

But really, what’s the fuss about? Is this cartoon worth all that violence, all those threats? (I should add that this drawing I’m showing here isn’t one of the original Jyllands-Posten cartoons: it looks very like it, but is in fact emphatically not a cartoon of Mohammed, and has been posted by me merely as a way of giving an idea to those who haven’t seen the originals of what one of them looked like. Click to enlarge at your own risk.)

This, surely, is no big deal. It’s a drawing, for Chrissakes. So yes it suggests, in the way that cartoons do, that Islam is nowadays associated with bombs. Well, who could deny that? And this (or rather, the Jyllands-Posten cartoon that looks very like this but is a cartoon of Mohammed, unlike this one, which definitely isn’t) is supposedly the most offensive of the cartoons, which does kind of suggest that it’s not so much the portrayal per se which is the problem: rather it’s the unflattering connotations. Which further suggests that, really, any hint that Islam might fall short of being totally wonderful is going to be found offensive by the Muslim community – or rather its self-appointed hard-line spokesmen. So then, should every reference to Mohammed, for instance, be followed by the phrase, “peace be upon him”? Is it perhaps offensive to leave that out? Does the simple “Mohammed”, without the “pbuh”, come across as insufficiently reverent? A bit trivial, you might think, but then cartoons are trivial, aren’t they? Offensive sometimes, no doubt, but trivial.

And if we take it that far….well, you can see where this is going. A line has been drawn. They can define offence as they please, and we’ve given them a clear indication that we’re not going to argue about it. We are not to offend Muslims, though Muslims are of course perfectly at liberty to offend us: an opportunity they seized with relish at the recent demonstrations in London, with their placards demanding that those who insult Islam should be exterminated, and (my particular favourite) that we should “be prepared for the real holocaust“. Many of us – most of us – no doubt find this offensive, and might argue that it is in fact considerably more offensive than a cartoon purporting to be of Mohammed, but it is, after all, a free country, and policemen were on hand to make sure that the demonstrators were protected in pursuing their democratic rights to protest. But, as we now know, this is a one-way street. Because, after all, the Islamists know they’re right, and we – well, we’re not quite sure, when it comes down to it.

But what’s been most depressing this past week has been the abject performance of the British press. It would have been one thing if they’d come out with it and said, well, frankly, yes, there is a question of freedom of expression, and it would be appropriate perhaps to show solidarity with our Danish colleagues, but there are people out there with violence in mind, and we have families and safe secure lives, and really, who needs the aggravation. Not very inspiring perhaps, but at least honest. But this smug weaselly self-righteous whining about how the cartoons weren’t very good anyway, and how freedom of expression comes with responsibilities etc. etc. – it’s been a fairly nauseating experience all round. Norm looks at Simon Jenkins’ “craven piece” in the Sunday Times. The Observer features the pompous Henry Porter:

Would I have published the cartoons of Muhammad? No, they aren’t funny and, frankly, they aren’t worth the trouble. Do I applaud and defend the freedom to publish such offensive, asinine work? Yes, and that is my immovable position, as intransigent as the Muslims who have demonstrated across Europe and the Middle East.

But….

Ah yes, what a surprise: there’s a “but”. In the remainder of the article Porter drones on for a while about Voltaire before mentioning “blinkered secularism”, and finally rolls over in as dignified a manner as he can manage given that, faced with the threat of violence – sorry, the giving of offence – he’s prepared to abandon all his grand talk about principles and immovable positions. “Heightened Islamic sensitivity is something we are going to have to take on board.”

And so says all of Fleet Street.