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Europe struggles to accommodate its growing Muslim minority
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 PARIS: A French court this
month upheld a weekly magazine's right to reprint a Danish cartoon of the
prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. At the same time, it affirmed a
lower court's finding that the image, published two years ago, could be
"shocking, even hurtful" to devout Muslims. The split
decision illustrates how France - like the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany -
is struggling to accommodate its growing Muslim minority without sacrificing
principles like separation of church and state and free speech, which form the
heart of a cultural identity forged by Voltaire and other 18th-century
philosophers. "Europeans
have to get used to living with people in their midst who have sensibilities
that weren't there before," says Ian Buruma, author of "Murder in
Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance" and a
professor at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. "If you're
going to live in mixed societies, certain rules of civility have to be taken
seriously." That civility
is being sorely tested across the region. In the
Netherlands, a film by a radical Dutch nationalist, Geert Wilders, said to link
the Koran and violence, has provoked debate even before its release. The last
time a Dutch film mocked Islam, its director was killed. Van Gogh was found in
Amsterdam in 2004 with his throat slit and two knives buried in his chest. His
murderer, the 26-year-old son of Moroccan immigrants, had pinned a note on his
body calling for a holy war against infidels. In France,
Robert Redeker, a schoolteacher, went into hiding in 2006 after being
threatened for an article he wrote in Le Figaro saying the Koran was infused
with "hate and violence." In Denmark, the police arrested three men
last month on charges of plotting to kill Kurt Westergaard, who drew the
turban-bomb cartoon. The violence
has injected fear and anger into the debate. "Here are
these caricatures that say that Muslims are violent, and to show they are not
true, there are Muslims who say, 'We will kill you,' " says Alain
Finkielkraut, a French philosopher who signed a petition protesting attempts to
equate blasphemy with racism. "What we
are being asked is to forbid all criticism of Islam, which is an exorbitant
demand, considering that in our country, the Catholic Church and the pope are
drawn through the mud all the time," he says. Wilders's film,
which may be released on the Internet before April 1, reopens old wounds in the
Netherlands, where it's seen as a test of both intellectual freedom and Muslim
intolerance. Politicians say it threatens the peace in a society divided by
ethnic tension. "Freedom
doesn't relieve anyone of responsibility," said the Dutch prime minister,
Jan Peter Balkenende, at a news conference on Feb. 29. Buruma, who is
half-Dutch, says the film shouldn't be banned. It could get its run online, he
says, and be left at that. He says the Netherlands may find a solution that
lies not in the realm of the law but of political correctness, or what he calls
"good manners." Across Europe,
politicians try to be culturally sensitive to Muslim citizens, who total 16
million, or 3 percent, of the 495 million people in the 27-member European Union,
according to Central Institute Islam-Archives in Germany. In France, one in 10
inhabitants is Muslim, the highest proportion in the EU. Interior
Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany has proposed that Islam be taught in
schools with Christianity and Judaism. In France, soup kitchens eliminated
pork. In Britain, the archbishop of Canterbury stirred controversy by saying
Islamic Sharia law might be applied in certain cases. Meanwhile, some
Muslims, like Christian and Jewish groups, are using blasphemy, defamation and
other laws to challenge books and images they consider insulting. On March 12,
the French appeals court upheld the right of Charlie Hebdo magazine to reprint
the Danish cartoon, saying it provoked violence in Muslim countries and was
newsworthy. That failed to mollify the Union of Islamic Associations of France,
which represents 350 organizations and was a plaintiff in the appeal. "They say
their intentions were good," says Lhaj Thami Breze, its president. "I
say, in spite of your intentions, I feel as though you have attacked my
faith." Other Muslim
organizations were more positive about the decision. "The fact
that they recognized that the publication could be offensive to Muslims is
satisfactory for us," says Slimane Nadour, communications head of La
Grande Mosquée de Paris, one of the oldest mosques in the capital and a
plaintiff in the original lawsuit. Blasphemy has
not been illegal in France since the 1830s, and the country is strict about its
secularist heritage, even though it still has laws against racial and ethnic
insults. Christian groups failed to block the screening here of Martin
Scorsese's 1988 film "The Last Temptation of Christ," and in 2006, a
court threw out a case against a jeans ad showing 13 semi-clad androgynous
people around a table reminiscent of the Last Supper. Balancing
respect for religious beliefs and free speech remains delicate, given that
blasphemy laws still exist in some European countries. In Germany,
federal law bans references to religion "deemed able to disrupt the public
peace." In Greece, only blasphemy against Christianity is objectionable.
The Netherlands makes "scornful" blasphemy a crime. The last major
case, in 1968, involved a novel depicting God as a donkey with particular
mating habits. The author was acquitted when the prosecution failed to prove he
was "scornful." http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=11397130 |
