Mick Hartley

I think we’ve been here before. It’s what you might call a cultural misunderstanding. From Arab News:

Sweden’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Jan Thesleff apologized to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) for the publication of a caricature of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a Swedish newspaper.

Thesleff offered his deepest apologies for the controversy created by the publishing of the hurtful depiction during his meeting on Tuesday with OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the 57-member organization’s headquarters in Jeddah.

The publication of the caricature in the Swedish newspaper, Nerikes Allehanda, on Aug. 18 sparked a furious debate in the Swedish media on freedom of expression and prompted Muslims in Oerebro, where the newspaper is based, to hold protests…

“Sweden is a country where people of different faiths can live together side by side,” the Swedish prime minister said in his statement late last month. “The foundation of this, our social model, is mutual respect and understanding, but also a desire for joint repudiation of offensive acts as well as acts of violence or aggression.”

While expressing regret, the Swedish prime minister pointed out that Sweden’s social model is based on the premise that politicians must not pass judgment on freedom of the press and expression.

Ihsanoglu welcomed the prime minister’s statement and the Swedish envoy’s apology. However, he felt, there was a need for a legal mechanism for stopping the recurrence of such extreme provocation.

“What we are simply saying is that freedom of expression does not entail freedom to insult. There has to be a way to stop this. There are certain values that every country abides by. There are red lines in all societies. We want them to know that we don’t mind their criticism of our religion but our Prophet is off limits. We will never allow such insults,” Ihsanoglu told Arab News yesterday.

He said by intentionally offending the sentiments of 1.3 billion Muslims, these caricaturists were leading the international community toward more confrontation and division and providing extremist and deviant ideologies with valuable ammunition.

Also, according to many Muslims, all these calls for dialogue between the Muslim world and the West become meaningless in the face of such extreme provocation. They are a waste of time. Dialogue should not be two monologues in two different directions. It will not and does not lead to any better understanding; it does not lead to any change in positions.

In the wider Muslim world, meanwhile, the apology was met with huge skepticism. “They will continue to provoke us. For them, it is simple: They will call it freedom of expression. And that is it. The one big lesson that we learned following the Danish cartoon controversy is this: Boycott their products and then they get the message,” said Mateen Abdul Rahman, a Jeddah-based expatriate. “We are already circulating e-mails identifying Swedish products to boycott.”

What we are simply saying is that freedom of expression does not entail freedom to insult. Of course it does. That’s the whole point. Especially when a particular group (like, let’s just say for example, Muslims) become militant offence-takers.

The Swedes, however, deny any apology has been made:

Sweden has denied reports that a diplomat apologized to Muslim leaders for the publication in Sweden of a cartoon depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad as a dog.

The Swedish ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Jan Thesleff, met Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, head of the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), on Tuesday in Jeddah and offered his “deepest apologies for the controversy created by the publishing of the hurtful depiction,” the 57-nation bloc said in a statement.

But the Swedish Foreign Ministry immediately denied that the ambassador had made any apology, saying he had only expressed regret.

“The ambassador repeated his regret at the controversy created by the publication, but not for the publication itself,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Anna Björkander told The Local.

She described the OIC’s interpretation of the meeting as a “misunderstanding.”

Björkander said Thesleff was dissatisfied that the OIC had said he had apologized, but did not plan to demand that the organization change its statement.

That’s a bit weak. Surely he could at least claim, as a robust defender of free speech, to be offended by the claim that he’d apologised. And, you know, demand an apology. Or at least an expression of regret, which he could then claim was an apology…