Sana Jaffrey: Cartoon hypocrisies should be fixed

During the last two weeks, the world has witnessed an extraordinary celebration of the freedom enjoyed by Western media.

As millions of angry Muslims protest the vilification of their prophet, Western newspapers defiantly republish the cartoons first printed by the Danish Jyllands-Posten. What follows is history in the making, which has bewildered many. To quote the eloquence of ABC's Charles Gibson: "They are just cartoons -what's the big deal?"

It is widely believed that it is merely the pictorial depiction of Prophet Muhammad -- forbidden in Islam -- that has caused the commotion. This oversimplification must be avoided. There is a long tradition of such pictorial depiction within Islamic art. Such an illustration by Jami's Yousuf and Zulekha can be found at the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Therefore, anyone who attempts to understand the root cause of this outrage must delve deeper.

Jyllands-Posten has defended its position as being consistent with its satirical portrayal of other religious and political figures. However, Muslims' reverence for their Prophet is different from their appreciation for other religious or political figures. Amir Memon, former president of Penn's Muslim Students Association explains: "To all Muslims, Prophet Muhammad is the sacred embodiment of spiritual perfection, devoid of any human faults. Such an attack on his person has put the entire Muslim population on the defensive because a quiet acceptance of his vilification would endanger one's identity as a Muslim."

A refusal to acknowledge Muhammad's unique place in the minds of the Muslims will only perpetuate the ignorance that has resulted in this distasteful depiction of the most revered Muslim figure as a terrorist.

Certainly, the violent reaction to these publications must be condemned. Vandalism is always deplorable, whether it takes place against the World Trade Organization in Washington, D.C., and Seattle or against libel in Tehran and Damascus.

But why the unprecedented intensity of the Muslim reaction? The portrayal of Islam as a negative "other" is not a novelty in the Western literary tradition. In Orientalism, Edward Said describes this tendency as "a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient."

And, in the last 5 years alone, Muslims have seen foreign invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Western endorsement of Israeli violence and humiliation at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, all without such strong reactions.

This overwhelming assertion of Western power over the Muslim world has been accompanied by appropriate reassurances that Western countries do not view all Muslims as terrorists.

If these official declarations are representative of the mass sentiment in the West, then why did newspapers across 20 Western countries reprint these obviously offensive images that depict Islam as an inherently violent religion?

The significance of their actions in the context of this historical moment has completely escaped Western publishers, who continue to defend their secular freedom of speech. But if distasteful depictions of the Virgin Mary as a cheap prostitute or of Jesus as a rapist were to be submitted to The Philadelphia Inquirer, they would certainly not be published. In the absence of a law that prohibits such publication, these images would be regarded as unnecessarily provocative.

Self-censorship already exists in Western media, and it is conscious of Christian, Jewish and African-American sensitivities. Why can't Muslim sensitivities be given equal weight?

This is not an apology for the Muslim reaction, neither is it a justification for the continuing violence. This is, however, an attempt to stress the need for addressing the hypocrisies exposed by this incident. Muslims must review their attitudes toward other religions and ethnicities, ridiculed in Muslim press with alarming insensitivity.

They also need to realize that violence impedes constructive debate. Similarly, the West needs to re-evaluate the meaning of secularism. Does it mean tolerance of all creeds and peaceful co-existence? Or is secularism itself a creed, intolerant of religious values and beliefs?

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