Draw your own conclusion
Rod Liddle defends a Danish newspaper under fire for printing a depiction of the Prophet Ithink the presence of the questionmark means I get away with it. The little depiction of mine, you see, might or might not be Mohammed, or Abu alQasim Muhammed Ibn Abd Allah Ibn Abd al-Muttali, to give the chap his full title. Just as the one next to him might or might not be the presenter of the Today programme, Jim Naughtie — it’s entirely up to you to decide; I absolve myself of all responsibility. You are the creative reader or, in this case, viewer.
There’s another get-out clause. Ancient Islamic art seemed to allow for the depiction of the Prophet if that depiction did not attempt to be life-like. I don’t think you could accuse any of my drawings of being life-like, although I suppose the one of Sienna Miller sails a bit close to the wind. Further, there is the context to consider: they are identical. Emperor Bokassa looks just like Jesus who in turn looks like Jim Naughtie; clearly no attempt has been made to capture a true likeness of any one of the subjects. Certainly not on the scale of Alexander Ross’s series of paintings of 1653, entitled A View of All Religions in the World, which shows Mohammed looking slightly uncomfortable in an ominous headdress and possessing the inevitable beard.
So, no Muslim could possibly take offence at my drawing because it doesn’t attempt to replicate Mohammed’s visage and, in any case, it might not be him at all. If they were to take offence at my drawing, they’d be as likely to take offence at a dot on a piece of paper, or even a blank sheet of A4. And my contribution to what might or might not be religious art is about as far as one can go, I reckon, without inflaming Muslim sentiment and possibly falling foul of any new blasphemy law. You’re not allowed to draw a picture of Mohammed: it is an act of heresy. And so I haven’t, or have. One of the two.
Actually, now I look at my sketch, the drawings are not quite identical. Worryingly, the one which might or might not be Mohammed seems slightly smaller than Jesus and, worse, appears to be gazing longingly towards Jim Naughtie — or maybe past Jim Naughtie towards Sienna Miller. Believe me, this was not intentional. But that, presumably, encapsulates the objection raised by Islam to such depictions. We are flawed, no matter how pure our intentions, no matter how profound our skill. Whether it be me, Leonardo da Vinci or Rachel Whiteread — simply, we are not worthy.
Certainly, Mohammed was pretty emphatic about the business. An early Hadith reports him as being well-miffed upon seeing a picture. ‘Don’t you know that angels do not enter a house wherein there are pictures,’ he asked, presumably rhetorically.
Why bother to draw Mohammed at all if it offends people and doesn’t really reveal very much? The Danes are mulling this over at the moment. Their largest circulation daily newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, invited a bunch of cartoonists to depict Mohammed and went ahead and published their efforts. One of the cartoons showed the Prophet with a bomb under his coat, which I suppose one might deem provocative. But this wasn’t what led to riots in Aarhus, protests outside the Danish Parliament, demands for an apology from the Prime Minister and a whole bunch of Islamic countries lodging protests through their embassies and even threatening to withdraw diplomatic relations. It was the mere act of depicting Mohammed at all, bomb or no bomb.
The paper insists that it did not want to cause trouble. Its journalistic editor, Joern Mikkelson, told me that he was ‘sad’ that people were offended. They decided to commission the cartoons when it was revealed that a book critical of Islam and due to be published in Denmark had trouble finding a translator, and even more trouble finding an illustrator: people were too scared to do it. ‘We felt the need to bring this to public discussion,’ said Mr Mikkelson, ‘and this is what we did. We didn’t want to annoy anybody.’ Really? I don’t believe that. Or, at least, I suspect that they knew full well it would annoy Denmark’s 200,000 Muslims but decided to go ahead and publish anyway. The intention may not have been to offend, but they knew it would offend, none the less. And, you have to ask, why shouldn’t they?
British newspapers and broadcasters have reported this story, but they have done so without replicating any of the cartoons which the Danish newspaper published. In other words, they censored the crucial bit of the story. They didn’t show us what it was that so offended Denmark’s Muslims. Was this out of sensitivity to our own Muslim population, or merely because of utter cowardice? Or a bit of both?
A bit of both. It is this ambivalence that is most interesting; in a way, more interesting than the predictable argument in Denmark about the extent to which freedom of speech can be pursued regardless of whom it offends. That is not really the point. The Danish newspaper published cartoons of Mohammed because the authoritarian, proscriptive nature of Islam rankles with the people who work for it: the executives, the journalists, the cartoonists. And rankles, too, one suspects, with the non-Muslim readers, who are angry that their long fought-for liberties are being winnowed away. Of course, the cartoons would give offence and — sorry, Mr Mikkelson — of course, you knew that they would give offence. The urge to publish was occasioned by a sense of grievance at the notion that anybody, in a liberal democracy, could object to the fullest expression of what is meant by freedom of speech. And the steadfast reaction of the Danish Prime Minister — freedom of speech is paramount, we will not apologise, is what he has said — precisely reflects that sense of grievance.
Far more than in France, the controversy in Denmark epitomises the problem of Western, liberal countries that have a growing and increasingly confident and, you might argue, vociferous, conservative Muslim population. There is no easy consensus between the two sides, no matter how loudly government ministers and (largely) self-appointed Muslim community leaders insist otherwise. We believe in profoundly different things and you can paper over the cracks only for so long; there is a gulf, and it is widening. Sooner or later one side will have to give ground, a lot of ground.
The recent government proposals for a law against blasphemy, an edict against ridiculing the beliefs of other people, leads me to suspect that over here, at least, it will be the secular democrats who cede territory. Which is why you have that inept drawing of someone who might be, and might not be, Mohammed peeking out at you from the pages of The Spectator. Hope you enjoyed it.
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