Muslim Heretics Conference

The arrest of a controversial Dutch cartoonist has set off a wave of protests. The case is raising questions for a changing Europe about free speech, religion and art.

By ANDREW HIGGINS
July 12, 2008; Page W1

Amsterdam

On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor’s office closed in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist with a rude sense of humor. Informed that he was suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered without a struggle.

“I never expected the Spanish Inquisition,” recalls the cartoonist, who goes by the nom de plume Gregorius Nekschot, quoting the British comedy team Monty Python. A fan of ribald gags, he’s a caustic foe of religion, particularly Islam. The Quran, crucifixion, sexual organs and goats are among his favorite motifs.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

See examples of cartoons and caricatures from over the years that have skewered political and religious authority.

Mr. Nekschot, whose cartoons had appeared mainly on his own Web site, spent the night in a jail cell. Police grabbed his computer, a hard drive and sketch pads. He’s been summoned for further questioning later this month by prosecutors. He hasn’t been charged with a crime, but the prosecutor’s office says he’s been under investigation for three years on suspicion that he violated a Dutch law that forbids discrimination on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation.

The cartoon affair has come as a shock to a country that sees itself as a bastion of tolerance, a tradition forged by grim memories of bloody conflict between Catholics and Protestants. The Netherlands sheltered Jews and other refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, and Calvinists fleeing persecution in France. Its thinkers helped nurture the 18th-century Enlightenment. Prostitutes, marijuana and pornography have been legal for decades.

“This is serious. It is about freedom of speech,” says Mark Rutte, the leader of a center-right opposition party. Some of Mr. Nekschot’s oeuvre is “really disgusting,” he says, “but that is free speech.”

The saga has turned the previously obscure artist into a national celebrity. His predicament reprises, with a curious twist, a drama that debuted in Denmark just over two years ago. Then, Danish cartoonists published a series of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the nation’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The drawings set off a tempest of often violent protests across the Muslim world and a fierce debate in Europe about how to balance secular and sacred values. One of the Danish cartoonists fled his house and went into hiding late last year after the state security service uncovered a murder plot against him. (The elderly artist is now back at home, guarded by police.) Last month, a suicide bomber killed six in an attack on the Danish Embassy in Pakistan.

The Dutch scenario involves similar issues but has followed a very different script. This time the state has stepped in to rein in the artist, rather than protect him, and it is secular champions of free speech who are angry. They haven’t resorted to violence but have stirred up a political storm. Parliament held an emergency debate on the affair and cartoonists have bombarded the Dutch Justice Ministry with a blizzard of faxed protest caricatures.

Amke

“Denmark protects its cartoonists. We arrest them,” says Geert Wilders, a populist member of the Dutch Parliament famous for his dyed-blond bouffant hairdo and incendiary denunciations of the Quran as an Islamic version of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” The arrested cartoonist, says Mr. Wilders, is “a bit obsessed” with Muslims and sex, but “it is not bad for artists to have a little obsession.”

How to handle Muslim sensitivities is one of Europe’s most prickly issues. Islam is Europe’s fastest-growing religion, with immigrants from Muslim lands often rejecting a drift toward secularism in what used to be known as Christendom. About 6% of Holland’s 16.3 million people are Muslims, and nearly half of Amsterdam’s population is of foreign origin. Some predict the city could have a Muslim majority within a decade or so.

The contrasting Danish and Dutch responses “show that there is a serious struggle of ideas going on for the future of Europe,” says Flemming Rose, a Danish newspaper editor who commissioned the drawings of Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten. At stake, he says, is whether democracy protects the right to offend or embraces religious taboos so that “citizens have a right not to be offended.”

In Britain, a local police force got caught up recently in a flap over its use of a German shepherd puppy to promote an emergency hotline. A Muslim councilor, noting that dogs are viewed as unclean in Islam, complained that the puppy could turn off believers. The police force apologized and regretted not consulting its diversity officer.

In Switzerland, meanwhile, a bombastic anti-immigration political party is campaigning to ban all Muslim prayer towers, known as minarets. This week it gathered enough signatures to force a national referendum on the issue. The Swiss government says such a ban would violate freedom of religion and pose a security threat by provoking Muslims.

Afshin Ellian, an Iranian-born history of law professor at Holland’s Leiden University, says he fled Tehran to escape religious taboos and now worries that Europe is “importing problems from the Middle East.” He understands why Muslims, Christians and other devout believers might take offense at certain cartoons, paintings or texts, but he calls it “a matter of aesthetics not criminal law.”

The inquiry into Mr. Nekschot’s case is being led by an Amsterdam prosecutor unit that specializes in combating neo-Nazis and other hate-mongers. The cartoonist denies any links to fascist or other extremist groups. He says he loathes all ideologies and all religions as recipes for tyranny.

Mr. Nekschot, who calls the investigation “surreal,” says, “Not even Monty Python could have come up with this.” (His pen name, Gregorius Nekschot, is a mocking tribute to Gregory IX, a 13th-century pope who set up a Vatican department to hunt down and execute heretics. Nekschot means “shot in the neck” in Dutch.) Some Muslim groups have voiced dismay at his arrest as well. The head of an organization of Moroccan preachers in Holland said authorities seemed “more afraid” of offending Islam than Muslims.

“We are led by the law,” says Franklin Wattimena, a spokesman for the Amsterdam Public Prosecutor’s Office. He denies any attempt to squelch free speech and says locking Mr. Nekschot up overnight was probably a “mistake.”

If formally charged and taken to court, Mr. Nekschot risks up to two years in prison and a maximum fine of €16,750, or about $26,430, says his Amsterdam lawyer, Max Vermeij. He thinks the odds on his client being prosecuted are better than even but draws some comfort from recent Dutch court rulings in discrimination cases that mostly came down on the side of free speech.

Mr. Nekschot himself is very worried. “I’m afraid of getting a judge who doesn’t have a sense of humor,” he says.

He’s also worried that his identity will get exposed if he goes to court. This, says the cartoonist, could make him a target for attack like Theo van Gogh, a polemical filmmaker and foul-mouthed celebrity murdered by an Islamic extremist in November 2004. Mr. Van Gogh was a fan of Mr. Nekschot’s work and posted his drawings on his own Web site, The Happy Smoker.

Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin, when grilled about the cartoon affair in Parliament, promised to protect Mr. Nekshot’s anonymity so as “to guarantee the suspect’s safety.” (The Wall Street Journal also agreed not to publish Mr. Nekschot’s real name.)

But the minister, a devout Christian, added fuel to a mounting political furor by revealing the existence of a previously secret bureaucratic body, called the Interdepartmental Working Group on Cartoons. Officials later explained that the cartoon group had no censorship duties and had been set up after the 2006 Danish cartoon crisis to alert Dutch officials to any risks the Netherlands might face. The group examined Mr. Nekschot’s work, say officials, but played no part in his arrest. Headed by a senior bureaucrat from a national agency coordinating counterterrorism, it draws from the intelligence service, the interior minister, the prosecutor’s office and various other government bodies.

Until his brush with the law, Mr. Nekschot was barely known outside a narrow circle of Internet-savvy aficionados. Newspapers shunned his caricatures. “They all said ‘no way,’ ” he recalls. “They thought I was too offensive, too explicit and too strong on sensitive issues like religion.” He set up his own Web site, at www.gregoriusnekschot.nl/blog, in 2003 to break the blockade. He published two books, “Sick Jokes” in 2006 and “Sick Jokes 2″ earlier this year, but sales languished. A big book distributor refused to touch them.

Today, he’s a cult phenomenon. Hits on his Web site went from a few thousand a day to over 100,000 a day when news of his arrest broke, he says. Newspapers that wanted nothing to do with him now print his work. He’s been interviewed on television — with his face hidden — and his work is currently on display in the Parliament building, where Mr. Rutte, the politician, has set up a “free-thinkers space.” Other exhibits include poems by Mr. Van Gogh, the murdered filmmaker, and abstract paintings of seminaked women that were banished from a town hall in central Holland after complaints from Christians and Muslims.

Guessing Mr. Nekschot’s true identity has become a media parlor game — to the chagrin of one prominent cartoonist who was named in print, wrongly, as the mystery man. The case has also stirred much speculation in the media and Parliament about why an apparently dormant investigation first launched in 2005 suddenly became so urgent that Mr. Nekschot had to be snatched from his home without warning. The prosecutor’s office says it simply took a long time to figure out Mr. Nekschot’s true identity and then find him.

Others say the timing of his arrest suggests an attempt by authorities to soothe Muslims angry over the March release on the Internet of “Fitna,” a short film by Mr. Wilders, the Dutch legislator. The film, which denounces “hateful verses from the Quran,” infuriated many Muslims and also Dutch leaders, who had urged that it not be released.

Officials deny any connection. The prosecutor’s office notes that it has also taken action against Muslims suspected of discrimination. A Moroccan-born Dutchman was recently convicted of discrimination for writing in a blog that homosexuals should be tossed from rooftops and thrown down stairs. A court ordered him to do community-service work.

Mr. Nekschot makes no apologies for causing offense. “Harmless humor does not exist,” he says. “I like strong stuff.”

But, eager to stay out of prison, he’s pruned his Web site of eight cartoons that prosecutors say are the focus of their investigation. Deleted were cartoons of a Muslim at the North Pole engaging in deviant sex, and of a black youth waving two pistols at a left-wing do-gooder wearing a peace sign.

Among the cartoons that survived his cut is a drawing of Mr. Van Gogh’s jailed killer naked on his prison bed. It shows him leering salaciously at a copy of the Quran and lamenting that the holy book doesn’t have any pictures.

The cartoonist blames his woes on what he calls Holland’s “political correctness industry,” a network of often state-funded organizations set up to protect Muslims and other minority groups. One of these, an Internet monitoring group known as MDI, says it received dozens of complaints about the cartoonist’s mockery of Islam and first reported him to the prosecutor’s office in 2005.

“We’re not sure what he does is illegal, but there is a possibility that it is not legal,” says the group’s head, Niels van Tamelen. Many of the complaints, he says, came from followers of a controversial Muslim convert called Abdul-Jabbar van de Ven.

Mr. Van de Ven caused an uproar after the 2004 murder of Mr. Van Gogh, when he seemed to welcome the killing on national TV. He said Mr. Wilders, the anti-immigrant legislator, also deserved to die, preferably from cancer. Mr. Nekschot, appalled by the outburst, caricatured the convert as a fatwa-spewing fanatic.

Mr. Van de Ven says he’s glad to see Mr. Nekschot in trouble. The cartoonist deserves prosecution, he says, for “disgusting cartoons about our beloved prophet Muhammad, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him.” Politicians who cry about free speech, he says, “shouldn’t stick their noses into judicial matters.”

Mr. Nekschot says everyone is entitled to their opinions. “If people say my cartoons are disgusting that is fine by me. I see lots of things I don’t like. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com

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Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist - WSJ.com

Talk of the Nation, July 10, 2008 · Music like heavy metal, punk, hip-hop and reggae — often voices of protest — are typically considered immoral in the Muslim world. But this music may also turn out to be the soundtrack of a revolution unfolding across that world, according to one author.

Mark LeVine, an author, musician and professor of Middle Eastern history, talks about the young generation of heavy metal fans in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Excerpt: ‘Heavy Metal Islam’

by Mark LeVine

The first time I heard the words “heavy metal” and “Islam” in the same sentence, I was confused, to say the least. It was around 5:00 p.m. on a hot July day in the city of Fes, Morocco in 2002. I was at the bar of the five-star Palais Jamai Hotel with a group of friends having a drink—and only one drink, considering they were about twenty-five dollars apiece—to celebrate a birthday. Out of nowhere the person sitting across from me described a punk performance he had seen not long before we met, in the city of Rabat.

“There are Muslim punks? In Morocco?” I asked him.

The idea of a young Moroccan with a mohawk and a Scottish kilt almost caused me to spill my drink.

“Of course,” he replied. “And the metal scene here is good too.” That the possibility of a Muslim heavy-metal scene came as a total surprise to me only underscored how much I still had to learn about Morocco, and the Muslim world more broadly, even after a dozen years studying, traveling, and living in it. If there could be such a thing as a Heavy Metal Islam, I thought, then perhaps the future was far brighter than most observers of the Muslim world imagined less than a year after September 11, 2001.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at the notion of Muslim metalheads or punkers. Muslim history is full of characters and movements that seemed far out of the mainstream in their day, but that nevertheless helped bring about farreaching changes in their societies. As I nursed my drink, I contemplated the various musical, cultural, and political permutations that could be produced by combining Islam and hard rock. I began to wonder: What could Muslim metal artists and their fans teach us about the state of Islam today?

And so began a five-year journey across the Muslim world, from Morocco to Pakistan, with a dozen countries in between, in search of the artists, fans, and activists who make up the alternative music scenes of the Muslim world. My journey was long, and sometimes dangerous. But the more I traveled and the more musicians I met, the more I understood how much insight into Islam today could be gained by getting to know the artists who were working on what might seem to be the edges of their societies. Their imagination and openness to the world, and the courage of their convictions, remind us that Muslim and Western cultures are more heterogeneous, complex, and ultimately alike than the peddlers of the clash of civilizations, the war on terror, and unending jihad would have us believe.

It might seem counterintuitive to Americans, whose images of Islam and the contemporary Muslim world come largely from Fox or CNN, but an eighteen-year-old from Casablanca with spiked hair, or a twenty-year-old from Dubai wearing goth makeup, is as representative of the world of Islam today as the Muslims who look and act the way we expect them to. They can be just as radical, if not more so, in their religious beliefs and politics as their peers who spend their days in the mosque, madrasa, or even an al-Qa’eda training camp. In fact, if we think of what “radical” really means— to offer analyses or solutions that completely break with the existing frameworks for dealing with an issue or problem— then they are far more radical than are the supposed radicals of al-Qa’eda, Hamas, or Hezbollah, who are distinctly reactionary in their reliance on violence and conservatively grounded religious and political imaginations.

Reprinted from “Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam” Copyright 2008 by Mark LeVine. Published by Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

How Heavy Metal Is Working Its Way Into Islam : NPR

Islam: The Ship and the Lifeboats
11 Jul 11, 2008 - 10:02:50 AM

by Khalid Baig**

We are living at a time when the daily news about the world, especially about the Muslim world is quite depressing. In Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other places Muslim life, property, and honor have been declared fair game by those who wield worldly power. It is not just armies waging this war. A whole gamut of institutions, from sophisticated research centers to slick media, is dedicated to the campaign to sow doubts, to spreads confusion, and to denigrate Islam. In hot spot after hot spot around the world, the sword is busy prosecuting a war on Islam. The pen is busy in both conducting a war on Islam and in trying to foment a war within Islam. While the unprecedented and unexpected momentum gained by the anti-war movement has given some hope that the mad rush to slaughter may be deflected, the overall picture remains grim.

And yet these are also the times when people all over the world are coming to Islam in unprecedented numbers. At a time when Muslims have lost control of the sword and the pen, Islam is finding new followers everywhere everyday. (It is quite revealing that even as Islam continues to spread despite the sword, some people should continue to insist that it spread by the sword. As the Qur’an repeatedly reminds us, the opponents of Islam are a very closed-minded lot).

Within the Muslim world also there are signs of awakening. Muslims are coming back to Islam after having toyed with one false ideology after another. Colonialism had hit them hard. It subjugated them physically, politically, economically, culturally, and mentally. An education system that they embraced as a ticket out of their miseries during that period of oppression compounded their problems by producing self-doubt and self-hate. It produced generations of perfect strangers within the house of Islam, who were then - for this ‘achievement’ - given leadership roles in all areas of Muslim societies. They hated their languages, their culture, and their religion. It is such people who rule the Muslim world today.

Yet, the scene is changing. More women are choosing hijab and are becoming more assertive about it as a symbol of their Islamic identity. There is a greater interest in Islamic knowledge. Qur’an lectures are attracting crowds that were not seen in the past. The nature of the questions people ask about Islam are also changing. There are more ‘how to’ and ‘what to’ questions than ‘why’ questions coming from the secular educated groups. The Biswa Ijtima’ have (annual gathering of Tablighi Jamaat in Bangladesh) attracted some two million attendees. What is more, they came from widely varying segments of society. A parallel growth can be seen in Islamic activism. Politics, media, relief and charity, education, and community service are all attracting new workers and new organizations. There is a new enthusiasm, new energy, and new awareness.

Our renewed interest in our religion is great but it is good to remember that Islamic revival will not take place through the blind leading the blind.

But there are also problems within this awakening. The period of colonialism was a big crash in which our ship was destroyed. In the immediate aftermath, survival was the main goal, and people came with whatever lifeboats they could. Now is the time to pick up the pieces and build the ship again. The problem is that we have been living in the lifeboats for so long, we are confusing them with the ship. The schools for secular education were one such lifeboat. They imparted some skills necessary for survival in a changed world, although they impoverished Muslim education and society tremendously in so many ways. But today so many well-meaning people who get excited about spreading education in the Muslim world think of nothing more than establishing more of these same schools. Campaigns for ‘democracy’, whatever it means, were another such lifeboat, aimed at returning control of Muslim affairs to them thereby seeking liberation. Today, democracy or no democracy, nowhere do Muslims have any control over their affairs, but this lifeboat has become a ship and Khilafah (amir), while the Islamic system of governance, remains a strange entity. Islamic organizations were such a lifeboat, aimed at gathering like minded people so they could focus their resources and energies on some of the important things. Yet each of them is considered to be the ship by its occupants and captains, thereby creating new lines of cleavage within the Ummah.

There is another issue. Most of our new activism thrives on sincerity, concern and drive but not on knowledge or guidance. There are Islamic relief organizations providing much needed support for the destitute millions. But many do not show a sensitivity to check whether their fund raising methods are Islamic; whether they are distributing the zakat according to Shariah; whether their operation meets the Islamic guidelines. There are organizations focused on media and political activism -certainly very important fields -that sometime say things that the media or political establishment they are talking to would like to hear, even if they are totally wrong and un-Islamic. They seem to be doing as much damage as good through ignorance and carelessness.

The same observation can be made about our efforts at spreading Islamic knowledge. It is embarrassing how many of those giving lectures, issuing ‘fatwas’ (not necessarily calling them so but issuing legal opinions nonetheless), and conducting Qur’an lessons have no qualifications for the job. Yet they find a ready audience among those who confuse eloquence with scholarship.

Our renewed interest in our religion is great but it is good to remember that Islamic revival will not take place through the blind leading the blind. All Islamic work- whether propagation or political or media activism - requires guidance from the Shariah, which in turn requires knowledge and understanding. Recognizing the need for such guidance from true scholars is the first step in getting it. The questions we need to ask may not have ready-made answers but that does not justify not asking them or accepting answers from unqualified sources. There is a very good example in the work done in the field of Islamic finance during the last decades. It was the collaboration of religious scholars with experts in economics and finance that produced the body of knowledge today that did not exist before. A similar effort is needed in other fields. Muslim journalists working with scholars can help evolve an Islamic protocol for Journalism. Muslim activists working with scholars can help evolve Islamic protocol for media and political activism. Relief organizations can establish Shariah advisory boards to ensure their operations are within the bounds of Shariah.

Bringing our own house in order is the only response we can and must have to the threats, challenges, and fears we face today.

**Khalid Baig is a writer on contemporary Islamic issues and had authored several books including his most proclaimed work “First things First.”

Source: IslamiCity.com

Garowe Online - Home

• Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
• The Guardian,
• Saturday July 12, 2008
• Article history

A woman wearing a burqa. France has denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears a burqa on the grounds of ‘insufficient assimilation’. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

France has denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears a burqa on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes.

The case yesterday reopened the debate about Islam in France, and how the secular republic reconciles itself with the freedom of religion guaranteed by the French constitution.

The woman, known as Faiza M, is 32, married to a French national and lives east of Paris. She has lived in France since 2000, speaks good French and has three children born in France. Social services reports said she lived in “total submission” to her husband. Her application for French nationality was rejected in 2005 on the grounds of “insufficient assimilation” into France. She appealed, invoking the French constitutional right to religious freedom and saying that she had never sought to challenge the fundamental values of France. But last month the Council of State, France’s highest administrative body, upheld the ruling.

“She has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes,” it said.

“Is the burqa incompatible with French citizenship?” asked Le Monde, which broke the story. The paper said it was the first time the level of a person’s personal religious practice had been used to rule on their capacity be to assimilated into France.

The legal expert who reported to the Council of State said the woman’s interviews with social services revealed that “she lives almost as a recluse, isolated from French society”.

The report said: “She has no idea about the secular state or the right to vote. She lives in total submission to her male relatives. She seems to find this normal and the idea of challenging it has never crossed her mind.”

The woman had said she was not veiled when she lived in Morocco and had worn the burqa since arriving in France at the request of her husband. She said she wore it more from habit than conviction.

Daniele Lochak, a law professor not involved in the case, said it was bizarre to consider that excessive submission to men was a reason not to grant citizenship. “If you follow that to its logical conclusion, it means that women whose partners beat them are also not worthy of being French,” he told Le Monde.

Jean-Pierre Dubois, head of France’s Human Rights League, said he was “vigilant” and was seeking more information.

France is home to nearly 5 million Muslims, roughly half of whom are French citizens. Criteria taken into account for granting French citizenship includes “assimilation”, which normally focuses on how well the candidate speaks French. In the past nationality was denied to Muslims who were known to have links with extremists or who had publicly advocated radicalism, but that was not the case of Faiza M.

The ruling comes weeks after a controversy prompted by a court annulment of the marriage of two Muslims because the husband said the wife was not a virgin as she had claimed to be.

France’s ban on headscarves and other religious symbols in state schools in 2004 sparked a heated debate over freedom and equality within the secular republic. The French government adheres to the theory that all French citizens are equal before the republic, and religion or ethnic background are matters for the private sphere. In practice, rights groups say, society is plagued by discrimination.

The president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has stressed the importance of “integration” into French life. Part of his heightened controls on immigrants is a new law to make foreigners who want to join their families sit an exam on French language and values before leaving their countries.

France rejects Muslim woman over radical practice of Islam | World news | The Guardian