Joe Higham discusses the exceptional treatment religion gets in the media, and how it turns us into hypocrites.
It was 1988 and Salman Rushdie, a British-Indian author, was sat in a secure, undisclosed safe house somewhere in the British Isles, under overwhelming police protection. He was only able to safely leave the house when he was moved to a new property, after British intelligence detected someone had information on the location of his residence. This took place dozens of times over the nine years he was in hiding. Even if he defied security, risking his life for freedom, airlines wouldn’t even let him fly because he posed a risk to the life of their staff and passengers. Hundreds of millions of people across the globe wanted his head. The reason for such anger: he had written a book.
The media has long allowed religion to preach and spread the message of their deity since the beginning of modern printing. The proliferation of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg throughout Germany in the 15th century is just one example of this. It allowed the early ideas of Protestantism to gain a foothold in the region and present an opposition to the religious monopoly Catholicism had created for itself at the end of the Middle Ages within continental Europe. With the rise of globalisation over the 20th century, the media’s reach is not simply confined to the country of publication. Indeed, with the amount of news we gather from snippets posted on social media today, we might not fully understand issues before giving our support to events or issues on social media.
The relationship between Abrahamic religion and the modern media has often been a precarious one, a careful treading of the boundaries between presenting an opinion and an incitement of hate. Christopher Hitchens once noted that “almost every historical battle for free expression, from Socrates to Galileo, has begun as a struggle over what is and what is not “blasphemy.” The reason for this is “aniconism”: the forbidden practice of the representation of parts of religion, typically deities. Infamously, the Islamic community have taken representations most seriously and their reactions have been the most intimidating of any religious movement. This vitriol can be understood to some extent when the representation and the following anger takes place within countries that have laws prohibiting a wide-ranging freedom of expression, such as Islamic law in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan for example. When this rage spills across borders and presents itself in countries with long established freedoms of speech and expression, a dangerous situation arises.
An example of this took place in September 2005, when the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, caused widespread global controversy by posting a dozen cartoons featuring illustrations of the Prophet Muhammed; one even featured the Prophet wearing a bomb shaped turban. Although Denmark has freedom of speech and expression enshrined in their law, and actually became the first nation to do so in 1770, the consequences of the cartoons were severe. Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Libya recalled their ambassadors from Denmark, protests were widespread and resulted in over 200 deaths, despite an apology from the newspaper soon after, and there were widespread boycotts of Danish products across many countries. Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, said the uproar caused was Denmark’s worst international relations incident since the Second World War. It is worth emphasising once more that all of these deaths, riots and international crises were simply due to the publication of cartoons in Denmark.
Many of you will side with the pious on their right to be offended, and it would be both extremely ironic and totally farcical if I was to say that you cannot feel that way considering the subject of this article. I wonder whether there would be any difference to your reaction if a similar uproar took place as a result of a depiction of the Prophet Muhammed that was not that of a cartoon or image, but in writing instead? Well, in 1988, Salman Rushdie, a critically acclaimed British-Indian novelist wrote the Satanic Verses, a fictionalised novel inspired partly by the life of the Prophet Muhammed himself, which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. The title refers to verses spoken to Muhammed by the devil himself in an attempt to deceive him into including them in the Qur’an, the Islamic holy book. The response to the novel was catastrophic for freedom of speech. The book itself was banned in many countries and groups of offended Muslims burned the book in a show of public anger at its content. In an inexcusable misuse of authority, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayathollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, which called on all Muslims to kill Rushdie (and all those who were involved in the book’s publication) in exchange for money. To put it bluntly, this is state-sponsored murder against the author of a work of fiction and deserves the international community to stand together in defiance against these ‘offended Muslims.’ How anyone, regardless of their beliefs, can read that and say he deserved these reactions for the work of writing a fiction book is almost as masochistic as one can get, and is as deplorable as the act of declaring the fatwa itself. In 1991, soon after the bounty was placed on the head of Rushdie, the Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death, the Italian translator was seriously wounded after a similar incident, and the Norwegian publisher was shot in the back three times (but somehow survived). Soon after the publication, Rushdie and his wife, American author Marianne Wiggins were placed under 24 hour police protection and moved homes dozens of times in an an effort to enforce their protection. The two divorced as a direct result of the pressure being in hiding placed on the marriage. Rushdie remains under police protection to this day, in spite of having formally apologised for his actions.
Again, despite the fact this fictional novel was published by a foreign author and those who were offended did not have any obligation to read the book, the offence caused and uproar witnessed caused diplomatic ties to be strained. Despite this, very few came to the defence of Rushdie or indeed free speech itself, and it remains a defining moment and a dangerous precedent in the battle between free expression and cowering to religious zealots for fear of reprecussions.
Many academics condemned the publication of the book, despite their liberal beliefs, which you would be right to expect would have lead them to stand alongside Rushdie and in support of absolute freedom of expression. These included Germaine Greer, who labelled Rushdie a “meglomaniac”, implying the situation was a stunt, calculated by the author from the outset. Even authors whose professional ideals were being curtailed by a restriction of free expression as a result spoke out against the book. The British author John Le Carre began a public feud with Rushdie, stating: “nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity.” Even Roald Dahl condemned Rushdie, saying he was a “dangerous opportunist” and that he had stirred up the trouble to “get an indifferent book to the top of the bestsellers list,” according to Vanity Fair. These comments stink of intimidation and a fear that if they were to stand by the author the reprecussions would extend to them.
Liberalism, although being a philosophy based firmly on the freedom to express oneself, seems to have an aversion to upholding this freedom in the modern world. It was originally a popular movement because it promised people the freedom they had been previously denied. These movements that took hold to establish the freedoms we use everyday today have been protected by documents such as the first amendment of the American Constitution and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. However, toward the end of the 20th century, liberals seemingly began to abandon the protection of free expression, preferring to protect the sensibilities of the offended than the rights liberals traditionally protect. No subject should ever be out of bounds of ridicule, especially religion. Another 2500 words could easily be written on the flaws of religion, and quite frankly, it should. Religion deserves to be ridiculed because of the claims it makes. If a religion proclaims to be the one and only truth and also holds that you will go to hell when you die for not believing it’s teachings, it deserves to continuously be picked apart and ridiculed for the baseless claims it adheres to.
The controversy of the Satanic Verses may have been 18 years ago, but the ripples certainly remain to this day. The inexcusable response of the large majority of Rushdie’s literary and political contemporaries was a precedent that gave a huge amount of ground to those who would rather deny the exercise of free expression in democratic countries than see religion criticised. The effects can be seen in today’s self-censorship of the media, and although some media outlets do bravely defy this, the others help to further condemn us to be slaves to beliefs we don’t believe in ourselves.
Charlie Hebdo is the freshest example of a stalwart defiance of self-censorship in the media in recent times and the consequences faced as a result of doing so. In September 2012, the editorial team at the Parisian newspaper, published a number of satirical cartoons mocking Muhammed. France has one of the strongest freedoms of speech, which stems from the French Revolution its fundamental document entitled the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen’, which helped develop the principle of liberty across the world. In a trend that is becoming familiar, the vast majority vehemently condemned the publication of the cartoons. However, in an unsurprising change of heart in the face of the impending fundamentalist danger, they then held pens to the sky in Paris’ Place de la République and proclaimed “Je Suis Charlie” when twelve people, including two police officers and a maintenance worker were killed by French Al Qaeda militants, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi in January 2015. These two positions are mutually exclusive; if you condemn the decision to publish the cartoons, a vast contradiction is shown if you then demonstrate in favour of the newspaper following the attack. Pick a side and stick to it.
If you condemn Charlie Hebdo when the Islamic community is affected, where are you when they criticise other religions? If you say you were as angry with their criticism of Jesus as you were Muhammed, skip the rest of this paragraph. If you didn’t, and let’s face it, you probably didn’t, the research of two French sociologists doesn’t help your position. The results of their research were published in the French daily newspaper, Le Monde, and analysed the cartoons featured on the covers of Charlie Hebdo every week in the ten years between 2005 and 2015. Of those 523 covers, only 38 featured religious criticism, and of those, only seven were based solely on Islam, while three times as many focused solely on Christianity. These results show the newspaper is certainly not hellbent on criticising the Islamic faith, even though individuals are tarring the newspaper with an Islamophobic brush on the basis of the few cartoons. You cannot be offended by the cartoons themselves if you don’t speak French (see next paragraph) and, if you are, simply turn your head and look away, or pick up your pens (or in this case twitter handles and facebook accounts) to post your views on why you’re offended, i.e. spark a debate! To kill because of the representation of religion is disgusting, and to express the view that “they had it coming” or “they shouldn’t have published the cartoons if they didn’t want to die” is abhorrent and you should be fully ashamed of yourselves.
You simply cannot have a bad thing to say about the cartoons Charlie Hebdo publishes without speaking French. This should be obvious, but it seems to be a point constantly lost. As Robert McLiam Wilson wrote in the New Statesman, “If you speak French and you tell me you think Charlie is racist, I can respect that. If you don’t speak French and you tell me the same, well (how to put this politely?)...sorry, I can’t actually put it politely.” The captions that go along with the cartoons are essential to understanding the context of the cartoons themselves. I can hold an opinion on just the cartoon, as I am not analysing the content but rather the right Charlie Hebdo have to publish them. The two are completely different positions. Without being able to read the newspaper, you are just guessing what the overriding message is and the intended target is quickly lost. It must be remembered that the Charlie Hebdo itself is a satirical one. Satire is the ridiculing of people, issues, groups, and corporations in order to promote change; that fact is essential in deciding whether the cartoons are offensive or not. The famous cartoon of Muhammad that sparked the riots and deaths in 2012 was not targeting moderate Islamists but Islamic fundamentalists, who are the same people who are murdering innocent families, bombing cities across world and waging an ideological war without any moral or ethical limitations.
It should be said; the commentators who label the creators of cartoons ‘racist’ for their work depicting Muhammad simply show their ignorance on what racism really is. Racism, by definition, is based on a prejudice or discrimination against another race to your own, and so no religion should be included as a race. This means that even if they had fiercely attacked the Islam faith, which they didn’t, they could not have been racist in any way. This does not mean they absolve themselves from all wrongdoing, they can be classed as Islamophobic, but certainly not racist.
By recoiling our views we are protecting ourselves from attack in the short-term, but revealing something much more important for the taking in the long-term. If we raised our hands in defiance after the attacks, we must continue doing so in defiance the next time a group demands we refrain from voicing our opinions, and it will come soon enough. There is no middle ground; it’s one or the other. The free speech that we so often take for granted has cost lives throughout history in its implementation, and it will undoubtedly continue to cost lives in the future in order to remain, so we can say what we want, when we want. That freedom is being chipped away everyday by religion, and we have to continue to risk it all or we will eventually lose everything. Think about what you’re condemning before you condemn it and weigh up whether it’s more important to protect the feelings of the offended or offend the essence of free expression by condemning it.