Why Did A German Newspaper Immediately Apologize For Placing An Ad About Gas Within A Story About Auschwitz? Why Did the Rome Football Club Accept Tough Punishment For Its Fans’ Display of Fascist Banners and Swastikas? And Why Did It Take Jyllands-Posten Four Months to Say Sorry for Printing Caricatures of Prophet Muhammad?

Philip Stone February 2, 2006 Follow on Twitter

We in the West take for granted our freedom of speech and the press. We also understand that with those rights comes a social responsibility and the media, and the public, constantly question just where the line is drawn on what is acceptable. How three separate incidents were handled this past week in Europe shows how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go.

The first incident dates back to September, 2005 when Denmark’s largest newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, invited cartoonists to submit drawings of the prophet Muhammad when an author who had written a book about Muhammad complained that no one dared to illustrate the book. The newspaper printed 12 such cartoons, one of which showed Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

The newspaper believed it was just printing satire and indeed questioned whether fear of Islamic retribution was limiting freedom of expression in Denmark. To Islam, however, such caricatures were blasphemous.

Within a couple of weeks a group of 16 Muslim organizations demanded an apology. And so the battle lines were drawn: Freedom of expression vs. blasphemy, or what many in the Middle East called “cultural terrorism“. The government said it could not intervene – the prime minister categorically saying that freedom of expression was the very foundation of Danish democracy and the government had no means of influencing the press.

Further supporting Jyllands-Posten, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) happened to hold a board meeting in Copenhagen six weeks after the publication, and became concerned when it heard the caricatures were to be discussed at an Islamic Conference summit in December. It issued a proclamation commending the Danish government’s position, and “While WAN respects all religious sensibilities, including those promoted by Islamic governments …it also deplores the lack of understanding by Arab governments that the separation of government and the press is a foundation of freedom of expression…. and The World Association of Newspapers calls on Islamic nations to respect freedom of expression and to drop its protests against the publication of the caricatures in Denmark.”

And there it basically stood until late January when the Arab world began retribution. Libya closed its embassy in Copenhagen, and Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador from Denmark. Still Danish public opinion was solidly behind the government and the newspaper – 79% supporting the government’s position and 62% saying the newspaper should not apologize.  The newspaper printed an editorial in which it said it had not intended to insult Muslims, but it did not say “sorry.” Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rassmussen kept to his position that there was no way the government could intervene. And meanwhile Danish flags were being burned throughout the Middle East, and Danes in the region threatened.

Saudi religious leaders notched the campaign up by urging a boycott of Danish goods. And that had an almost immediate affect upon Europe’s second largest dairy company, Arla that has invested widely throughout the Middle East. Within days Arla products were removed from supermarket shelves in the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. The company ceased production for the Middle East, an area in which it earns some €350 million annually.  It had announced expansion plans to increase sales to around €550 million within the next five years, but now management believes it will take several years to gain back the business it once held. The company said that although production had stopped it was keeping its 1,200 Middle east employees on the payroll.

Even though the EC warned Middle East diplomats that a boycott against one country in the EC would be considered by the EC to be a boycott against all the EC, then Danes were feeling the financial pain. That in turn got The Confederation of Danish Industries (CDI) to review its position. “Time has come for Jyllands-Posten to use its freedom of speech to explain how it views the fact that the paper’s Muhammad drawings have offended large groups of people,”  Hans Skov Christensen, head of the CDI, wrote to the newspaper, as Danish businesses complained of lost orders and canceled meetings.

Finally Jyllands-Posten succumbed and in a letter in Danish, English and Arabic printed on the front page it addressed  "Honorable Fellow Citizens of the Muslim World” . The newspaper ‘s editor-in-chief wrote, “In our opinion the 12 drawings were sober. They were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims for which we apologize“

So there it was, the newspaper had apologized. Muslim groups in Denmark said they accepted the apology and would work to better relations between Denmark and those countries that had shunned it.

The apology further stated, “ Maybe because of culturally based misunderstandings, the initiative to publish the 12 drawings has been interpreted as a campaign against Muslims in Denmark and the rest of the world. I must categorically dismiss such an interpretation. Because of the very fact that we are strong proponents of the freedom of religion and because we respect the right of any human being to practice his or her religion, offending anybody on the grounds of their religious beliefs is unthinkable to us.

“That this happened was, consequently, unintentional.”

She's never seen anything like this before

 

 

By now the Danish government had also been feeling the heat. A day after the Jyllands-Posten apology the prime minister held a news conference in English -- obviously his words intended to be heard outside of Denmark. He said that although he had stayed out of the debate on a freedom of expression basis that should not be interpreted that he had accepted what the newspaper had printed.

“I want to emphasize that the Danish government condemns any expression, action, or indication that attempts to demonize groups of people on the basis of their religion or ethnic background. It is the sort of thing that does not belong in a society that is based on respect fort the individual human being,” he said.

He also admitted that the issue was no longer one of just free speech. Now Danish products were being boycotted “it was obvious that a large number of Muslims believe their religion was offended.”

So how come it took him three months to say that? Danish Muslims had complained from the day the cartoons were printed.

The real question boils down to this: Has Jyllands-Posten apologized when it previously said it would not because of the economic harm being done to Denmark, or did it apologize because, on reflection,  it now believes it did the wrong thing in publishing the cartoons. One cannot help but feel that money is speaking louder than words or cartoons.

Expressen, in Sweden, slammed the apology saying it did, indeed, send out signals that threats work. Jyllands-Posten’s “retreat-like humming and hawing is simply an unpleasant confirmation that fundamentalist threats -- against individuals, against economic and political interests -- win through. Defending freedom of expression against fundamentalist threats is a cause. It is a matter of principle, whether it involves Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ (Ayatollah Khomeini  declared a death sentence on the author in 1989) , a film about veils and the oppression of women (Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed after making his film Submission), or some clumsy drawings in a Danish newspaper,” it said.

And then European newspapers really got into it, publishing the cartoons as a matter of principle. Germany’s Die Welt printed on its front page the turban caricature -- considered the most offensive of all 12 cartoons -- and in a commentary asked, “Is Islam capable of coping with satire?” It said “standards that Muslims require are overtaxing for open societies.”

The Berliner Zeitung also printed two of the caricatures, and France-Soir printed all the cartoons on inside pages, and newspapers in Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland followed suit. French foreign minister Phillippe Douste-Blazy said “The principle of freedom of the press, which the French authorities defend around the world, will not be questioned, “ although he added there did need to be a certain amount of tolerance.

Meanwhile, it has been suggested that Denmark builds a mosque in Copenhagen for the country’s 200,000 Muslims. Herbert Pundik, former editor of the Copenhagen newspaper, Politiken, wrote that such a mosque, costing about 50 million Danish Kronor and funded by private donors, could take some of the anti-Danish sting away. But Danish Muslims said the offer sounded too much like a payoff. Incidentally, the day after Jyllands-Posten apologized, it received a bomb threat and had to evacuate its building.

Now compare that Danish saga with these two events that happened last week. In Germany the Landeszeitung Lueneburg newspaper printed a full-page inside story about how the Nazis gassed up to 800,000 gypsies in the Auschwitz concentration camp. And covering about a third of that same page was an advertisement for the E On utility company describing how it is “taking care of the gas of tomorrow, today.”

The newspaper received many complaints and immediately issued an apology. “We apologize for this mistake, which both contradicts the article’s intention of shedding light on an almost forgotten chapter of National Socialism, and also undeservedly casts the utility in a questionable light,” the newspaper said. The utility said that since the newspaper has apologized it wanted to put the issue to bed.

And then in Rome at the Roma-Livorno football match a few Roma supporters made fascist salutes and also displayed anti-Semitic banners, including Swastikas. A banner read, “Lazio v Livomo, same initials, same oven.” The disciplinary committee of the Italian football league said that banner “evoked the genocide of the Jewish people” and the club must be punished by moving its next home game to a neutral ground and played behind locked turnstiles -- no fans allowed.

The football club said it would not appeal the ruling, which in turn was applauded by politicians. “I thank Roma for this honest and clear sign of objective responsibility,” said Pierferdinando Casini, president of the lower house of Parliament.

Giuseppe Pisanu, Italy's Minister of the Interior, says he is encouraging police to suspend matches whenever banners are displayed inciting political violence, racism or xenophobia.

So it seems apologies can be forthcoming quickly. There is recognition, for instance, that fascist salutes and swastikas are unacceptable to many people, Jews in particular. The problem appears to be that it is not well understood what is not acceptable to Muslims on religious grounds. If Jyllands-Posten had known that caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were not unacceptable to Muslims – and recent comments by editors there indicate they did not know -- would it have gone ahead with the cartoons in the first place, or was it just trying to make a point. If the latter, it failed miserably. It may be that learning about such religious sensitivities needs to take priority in more and more newsrooms.

The question is not whether we have the right to print caricatures and make satire on religion. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are rights we take for granted in our Western world. But there are social responsibility limits and it is in that gray area that so much trouble falls. In Italy and France, for instance, commercial ads that were sexual parodies of the Last Supper painting have been banned. In Greece, the Orthodox Church was successful in getting a parody book on Jesus banned.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, the renowned US Supreme Court Justice, pointed out many years ago, while we have guaranteed freedom of speech that doesn’t protect a person "falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." That still applies today.

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