Prophet without a Face

The international turmoil surrounding the publication of satirical cartoons of the prophet Muhammad [one of numerous spellings] raises many issues. Where is the line between satire and desecration? How should a democratic government address concern over publication in its country of materials some find offensive? Are there universal standards to apply in judging such publications? What is the right way to protest such a perceived offense?

The word “satire”, coming from the Latin word for full, might be considered as the deflation of someone who is “full of himself”. If traditionally the objects of satire were people acting wickedly or foolishly, the object base has certainly expanded, not necessarily because there are more such people, but certainly in part because of the expansion of the media. Satirists are often enjoyed, sometimes even by the objects of their satire - up to a point- many a headless court jester didn’t know when to end his act.

“Desecration” has a mixture of Latin and Greek roots. It means taking away the sacredness of something that was religiously set aside as special. And therein lies a problem. What is sacred to one person may be seen as secular [Latin for “worldly”], profane [Latin for “common”], wicked [Anglo Saxon, related to wizards and witches] or just plain foolish [Latin for “full of wind”] to another.

Not all speech is free, it has to be weighed against harm it might cause. Falsely shouting “fire” as a joke in a crowded theater could cause a panic with people being trampled, so it is prohibited. Public and private “hate speech” prohibitions trying to protect targeted individuals or groups from intimidation are more constitutionally justified than laws designed to protect people from offensive speech. Between offense and intimidation are areas of demeaning and hostility, and where the line of prohibition should be drawn is debatable. I personally would draw it well toward the intimidation end.

The Pope says the right to free opinion and expression contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19, “cannot imply the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers”. I disagree. Look at Article 18 on freedom of thought, conscience and religion, which clearly leaves these three rights to the individual. Everybody has their own beliefs and I resent people who subscribe to a canned set of beliefs they call a religion calling the subscribers of such packages “believers” and those who do not accept any particular package “non-believers”. Article 18 got it right when it said “religion or belief” - everyone is a believer, though not everyone is a religious subscriber. The Pope should be corrected.

The Danish government blew it. When Muslims in Denmark asked to meet with the Prime Minister over the cartoons, he snubbed them. He did the same when they enlisted the help of Ambassadors from Muslim nations. When the concern was then taken to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, politicians then got hold of the issue and put it to their own use. By the time the Danish PM got around to apologizing for the offense, but not the cartoons, it was too little too late.

The right way to respond to a satirical offense may actually be to meet satire with satire as an Iranian paper is intending to do, although it would have been more appropriate to satirize Danes rather than Holocaust victims (though Muslims seem somewhat predisposed to harassing Jews). Protesting to the government of the nation where the satirist published can be a way of accomplishing some political gain as compensation for the offense, though the amount of compensation depends on the political power of the protestors. Boycotts can be effective in calling attention to the concerns and getting people to pay attention for economic reasons to something that otherwise was not important to them.

Satire is usually judged subjectively, considering the source of the satire, its object and the point of view of the judge. Objective judging measures how well the satire of the object is done, without regard to the source of the satire or the point of view of the judge. I have not seen the cartoons in question, other than a brief TV shot of one with a man in traditional middle east garb with a lit bomb on his head. Here is a BBC article giving some background and discussing what is shown in the cartoons.

Though I have not seen verification, I also have not heard refutation of the statement that Islam prohibits images of Muhammad. Perhaps it is similar to the Old Testament talk of not looking in the face of God. In Catholic school we had lots of picture books and statues of saints and of Jesus and the Holy Family. The Holy Ghost was always a bird and I cannot remember if we had God the Father pictures, though we must have seen him as in Michelangelo's Creation. Now the Church is discouraging imagery of Saints.

Let me close with a personal memory from my active duty days in the Air Force, working the day shift in a 24 hour duty section. When work was slow, we were allowed to have personal reading material at hand. I enjoyed a satirical anti-military newspaper published by non-career enlisted men like me, which I absent mindedly left in the desk drawer one day at the end of my shift. The night shift supervisor threw it out and complained about me to my day supervisor. This career sergeant was from Virginia and he was highly offended by this attempted intrusion into my First Amendment rights. He professed the importance of free speech so loudly in front of our whole work group that I was truly impressed and wondered if it was because his roots were in the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson. He then asked to read the paper himself. He sat silently reading and holding his cool, until he got to the highly detailed cartoon of a career sergeant of his rank labeled “lifer”, with his nose inserted in the buttocks of an officer. He jumped up and threw the paper in the trash and told me to never bring it into the section again. My question, “What happened to the talk about free speech?” went unanswered.