Fisk: Cartoon row childish, dangerous

Love him or hate him, you can't ignore Robert Fisk if you try to follow events in the Middle East. Irish by birth and education, he has been a war correspondent there since the early 1980s. He lives in Beirut, he speaks fluent Arabic and he sympathizes deeply with the Arab people if not always their governments. Thus he is often seen as anti-Israeli and anti-American, and he tends not to mince his words. But when he speaks, I listen. Even when I don't agree with him.

So I pricked up my ears last week when I saw an article picked up by PalestineChronicle.com, a website maintained by Arab-Americans in Seattle, on the unholy row over cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad:

So now it's cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb-shaped turban. Ambassadors are withdrawn from Denmark, Gulf nations clear their shelves of Danish produce, Gaza gunmen threaten the European Union. In Denmark, Fleming Rose, the "culture" editor of the pip-squeak newspaper which published these silly cartoons - last September, for heaven's sake - announces that we are witnessing a "clash of civilizations" between secular Western democracies and Islamic societies. This does prove, I suppose, that Danish journalists follow in the tradition of Hans Christian Anderson.

In other words, Fisk is saying, the newspapermen believe in fairy tales.

"Oh lordy, lordy," Fisk adds, using an Irish expression not often heard in political analysis. "What we're witnessing is the childishness of civilizations."

Fisk goes on to add the difference is one of values, not of free speech. "This is not an issue of secularism versus Islam," he says. "For Muslims, the Prophet is the man who received divine words directly from God. We see our prophets as faintly historical figures, at odds with our high-tech human rights, almost caricatures of themselves. The fact is that Muslims live their religion. We do not."

One danger posed by the uproar over the cartoons, Fisk says, is that it plays into the hands of extremists:

For many Muslims, the "Islamic" reaction to this affair is an embarrassment. There is good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some element of reform introduced to their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue, no-one would have minded. But it was clearly intended to be provocative. It was so outrageous that it only caused reaction.

Another danger, he says, is that the Western nations led by the United States and Great Britain have already stirred up too much hatred in the Middle East over politics. Adding conflict over religion just makes things more explosive.

... this is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntingdon garbage about a "clash of civilizations". Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that's what happens when you topple dictators). In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of "Palestine". There's a message here, isn't there? That America's policies - "regime change" in the Middle East - are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes which we imposed on them.

For the Danish cartoon to be dumped on top of this fire is dangerous.

In any event, it's not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Koran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Mohamed as a bin Laden-type image of violence. They portrayed Islam as a violent religion. It is not. Or do we want to make it so?