| The Danish Cartoon Controversy Cartoonists Speak Out February 2006 |
Artists confront issue of how to address protests sparked by Muhammad's image
Heidi Benson -- San Francisco Chronicle -- February 7, 2006
Amid violent protests around the world over reproduction of Danish cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet
Muhammad -- which Muslims consider blasphemy -- editorial cartoonists face a conundrum:
How do they address one of the most urgent topics of the day without inciting further violence?
Among the several cartoonists interviewed Monday, none will use images of the prophet, though for different
reasons.
"There's a general aversion to iconography in the Muslim faith, and it's something that should be respected,"
said Khalil Bendib of Berkeley, who calls himself the only Muslim political cartoonist in the United States.
Born in Paris and raised in Algeria and Morocco, Bendib, 47, has lived in California since 1977. His cartoons,
distributed to more than 1,000 newspapers and appearing on www.bendib.com, are consistently critical of
President Bush and the war in Iraq.
"Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau, reached by e-mail, said he would never use images of the prophet.
"Nor will I be using any imagery that mocks Jesus Christ," said Trudeau, whose strip is published in 600 news
outlets.
"I may not agree with their reasons for dropping any particular strip, in fact, I usually don't, but I will defend their
right and responsibility to delete material that they feel is inappropriate for their readership," he said.
"It's not censorship, it's editing. Just because a society has almost unlimited freedom of expression doesn't
mean we should ever stop thinking about its consequences in the real world."
Bendip shares Trudeau's conviction. "Where do you draw the line between freedom of expression and
responsibility?" he asked.
"Is freedom an abstract absolute, or is it something that you have to ask yourself -- what is helpful, what is
truthful -- each time you pick up a pen?" Bendip said.
Americans are used to satire, said cartoonist Ruben Bolling. His weekly strip, "Tom the Dancing Bug," appears in
50 publications including the Washington Post, Salon.com and the Village Voice.
"It seems strange to us to hear that commentary about religious ideas shouldn't be expressed," said Bolling, who
often comments on religion through his character, God-man.
"I can't imagine I was ever going to do anything on Muhammad, but this does have a chilling effect," Bolling said.
Ward Sutton is unsure how he will address the controversy in his comic, "Sutton Impact," which appears in the
Village Voice and a dozen other papers.
"I'm not going to defend the cartoons published in Denmark -- I haven't seen them -- but free speech is a crucial
part of a free society," Sutton said. "I should be able to make fun of Muhammad as well as Jesus."
As cartoonists, editors and publishers struggle with the issue, moderate voices in the Muslim world, while
denouncing the recent violence, say the cartoons should not have been published.
Bendip is one of these. A longtime critic of the Iraq war, he's surprised to find himself saluting President Bush.
"It's something I never have a chance to do in my work," he said.
Bendip commends the administration for "expressing solidarity with Muslims" by speaking out against the
cartoons.
"It goes to show you that even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
Chronicle cartoonist Don Asmussen will take on the subject in Wednesday's comic, but he has decided that it
won't include an image of the prophet.
"It's disturbing to see a culture go crazy over these cartoons when all these horrible things have been done in
the name of Islam," said Asmussen, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks and other terrorist acts.
"This is about distortion," he added. "You'd wish that the kinds of riots happening now had happened when bin
Laden distorted Islam."
Peter Brookes: why the Muhammad cartoons fail
Peter Brookes, award-winning Cartoonist of the Times of London, discusses the 12 Danish cartoons, first published by a
newspaper in September, that have sparked a week of protests, flag-burnings and death threats across the Muslim world .
"I only saw the drawings yesterday. This week I was working on Iran and oil and the 100th British death in Iraq,
which were much more important to me. But this escalated yesterday and I saw them. My first reaction, I have to
say, was what feeble cartoons.
"Perhaps I don't understand Danish humour but there was only one out of the 12 - where Muhammad's turban
seems to be a bomb - that seemed to have any meaning.
"But even that one is a poor cartoon. It's ambivalent. You can read it one of two ways: either terrorism is using
the cloak of Islam, is dressing itself as Muhammad, or that Muhammad himself is a terrorist. I hate that
ambivalence in a cartoon, not knowing quite what the message is. We could be misreading the intentions of the
artist entirely.
"There is an awful duality about cartoonists: on the one hand, we feel we must be able to depict anything, we
must be free. So as a rule, I try not to be too sensitive about these things - and all cartoonists are guilty of doing
things when we have no idea what the reaction is going to be.
"Last year, for instance, when the horse Best Mate died on the same day as David Blunkett resigned, I combined
the two, and had no idea I would get hundreds of letters of complaint - all from horse lovers, of course, no one
wrote to defend Blunkett.
"And yet, as a cartoonist, I think there has to be a purpose. I can't see any reason for these images, they just
seem gratuitous. They're meaningless. Depicting Islam, there is no need to show the Prophet.
"It looks like the artists just didn't think it through. And yet, they were asked to do it precisely because an author
couldn't find an illustrator who would portray Muhammad. They must have known it was a provocation, they
should have been able to foresee something of the reaction after the Dutch experience of the Theo Van Gogh
film, and the Satanic Verses.
"Of course now there's so much happening, everything is moving so fast, that this looks like it will all go on and
on. And, ironically, we will have to do cartoons about it."
SOURCE
Cartoonist Signe Wilkinson: Muslims Should Protest With Their Own Cartoons
Signe Wilkinson, of the Philadelphia Daily News, is one of America's few contemporary women editorial cartoonists. She was
the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1992. She regularily contributes to Organic Gardening
magazine, the Institute for Research on Higher Education, and Oxygen.com, and is the author of One Nation, Under
Surveillance.
As someone who has been picketed and protested for her blasphemous, insensitive, anti-Islamic cartoons, I
have nothing but sympathy for my Danish colleagues who have incurred the wrath of the godly by publishing a
portfolio of cartoons making fun of one of the world’s great--but apparently humor-impaired--religions.
However, I also have compassion for the members of humor-impaired religions. After all, I am a Quaker.
It’s been my experience that most groups are humor-impaired when outsiders make fun of them. On MSNBC.
com, readers were asked to vote on whether they thought the Muslim protests were justified. The vote was
running 82 percent against the Muslim reaction when I checked Thursday night.
But let’s just change the image. What if it were a cartoon showing someone burning the American flag? What
if it were a depiction of Jesus with a smoking shotgun as a comment on Christians shooting abortion doctors?
What if it were the Star of David used as a hoop that a politician must jump through to get elected?
I’m guessing the approval rating would plummet. Actually, I don’t need to guess because at various times
in my career I’ve penned (and my newspaper has published) cartoons along those lines. Lack of humor
ensued after each one. A number of my cartoons have caused boycotts, lost advertising for my newspaper, and
elicited streams of phone calls and/or picketing in front of our building.
My editors have had to explain the nature of cartooning to the offended representatives of various faiths,
ethnicities, and political groups. And I am not alone. Nearly all cartoonists worth their salt have enraged some
portion of their readership, often when religious symbolism was part of the cartoon. While at least one colleague
received death threats, most of the ensuing protests are loud, sometimes intimidating, but generally peaceful.
I don’t go out of my way to poke fun at the religiously faithful. I have no grounds to criticize other religions,
when my own is such a quirky (though perfect) little cult. Unfortunately, cartoonists are easily bothered. I am
particularly bothered when some group wants to impose its way of life on me--and most particularly when its
adherents want my tax dollars to help them do the imposing. Religious groups are often among those asking for
tax dollars, or particular laws to advance their interest or legalize their morality.
As the editor of the French newspaper France Soir noted after publishing the Danish cartoons, if we were to
abide by all the rules of all the world’s religions, we wouldn’t be allowed to do much of anything.
is said, readers should know that cartoonists working for mainstream American newspapers--and there are more
than 80 around the country--generally try to avoid negatively caricaturing any group just to make fun of them.
American history is filled with examples of published images that would not run in newspapers today, our most
egregious sin being the racist portrayals (without comment) of black Americans in cartoons, advertising, and
illustrations. As the civil-rights movement revealed the injustice behind those racist images, those cartoons
went from being humorous to hideous.
Blacks weren’t alone in trying to influence how they were portrayed in popular culture. Long before 9/11,
Arab-Americans asked for cartoonists to be more sophisticated in their depiction of Middle Easterners. Early in
my career, I received a heads-up from an Arab-American group pointing out that all Arabs aren’t head-scarf-
wearing sheikhs.
At several of our The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists conferences, representatives from Jewish,
Latino, Arab, and other ethnic groups pled for relief from what they saw as derogatory stereotypes that we
cartoonists routinely used as shorthand.
Our images have changed over the years, though many of us still draw sheikhs with scarves because they
feature prominently in the news. If you wear dresses and scarves, cartoonists are going to draw you with
dresses and scarves. But I think if you did a study--and I haven't--you'd find that more cartoons about the Middle
East now feature Arabs who more resemble an American teenager at a mall.
Of course, sheikhs get to choose what they wear. Many women in Islamic societies don’t. My encounters with
Muslims have mostly come over cartoons protesting the treatment of Muslim women. After one such cartoon, a
local woman called me to defend the headscarf. I said I had no problem with anyone freely wearing a headscarf or
any other religious outfit. I then asked her, "But you wouldn’t force other women to wear a headscarf, would
you?"
After a pause she replied, "Well, if it was for her own good."
So there you have the reason I go to the drawing board every day. I am drawing to help prevent a world where
someone else decides what I must wear for my own good. And, I’m willing to risk being called anti-Muslim to
do it.
I’m guessing the Danish cartoonists were trying to do the same thing. The cartoons were criticizing violence
and suicide bombing in the name of Islam. The cartoonists have the right to publish. And, in a free society,
Muslims have a right to protest and publish their own cartoons in response. This is not a right granted to
cartoonists or protesters in some Muslim countries.
I hope Muslims will come to know that they aren't the first, and won't be the last, to be offended by a political
cartoon. I know cartoonists will take into consideration the reaction to this caricature when drawing their next
ones on Muslim issues. If the reaction of the “Arab streetâ€� continues to be violence whenever they donâ
€™t like something they see in someone else's newspaper, then I predict more such cartoons are on the way. My
suggestion is that instead of threatening to draw blood, Muslims should pick up their pens and draw return
cartoons instead.
SOURCE
Swiss cartoonist Chappatte urges calm over Mohammed images
Patrick Chappatte (known simply as Chappatte in his cartoons) is a Lebanese-Swiss cartoonist who draws for Le Temps, Neue
Zürcher Zeitung (Sunday edition) and the International Herald Tribune.
What is your view on the rising and spreading tensions surrounding the publication of the cartoons?
Chappatte: I am appalled and saddened, because we're soon going to find ourselves in a situation where, if this
continues, [more] people are going to die. Unfortunately we are no longer at the point where we can afford to
have a debate on the freedom of speech.
It is desperately important that we calm down, postpone the debate ? something it pains me to say ? and try to
enter into a dialogue.
What is your reaction to the fact that several European newspapers, including Swiss ones, have republished some of
these cartoons?
C.: I have a mixed reaction. On the one hand, it's necessary to see what is being discussed and to know what you
are talking about. Therefore it's important to look at the cartoons and to form an opinion.
But the reality is that each publication [of the cartoons] stirs up something which is getting out of control. It's an
explosive situation and it's not about trying to outdo your rivals.
So you think we have gone beyond a debate on the freedom of expression?
C.: We'll have this debate one day. But one can't remain on the level of absolute principles. There is an enormous
lack of understanding. For me as a newspaper cartoonist freedom of speech is something visceral. And in Islam,
the representation of Mohammed is absolutely forbidden, therefore that also touches the visceral.
Does the freedom of expression allow us to pass over this ban? Would you do it?
C.: That's not the real issue. I'm not Muslim and therefore nobody can stop me from depicting Mohammed in a
newspaper cartoon, a cartoon I draw because I want to express something that I feel strongly about. That's my
position.
On the other hand, the motives behind the commissioning of the Danish cartoons are dubious. Mohammed was
not brought in as a character in a newspaper cartoon. The actual goal of the exercise was to depict Mohammed
precisely because it is forbidden to do so.
It's as if they were saying to Muslims: "Look, it's your taboo! But me, I'm free to do what I want." One shouldn't be
na?ve, it was a provocation.
Personally, I'm not interested in provoking for the sake of provocation. Drawing is a weapon, but a weapon one
should use with care. In this case I find it a bit cheap to test one's freedom on the back of someone else's faith.
Some people have made political capital out of the affair...
C.: Of course. The Muslim issue of not depicting Mohammed was not controversial until now ? there have already
been some illustrations of Mohammed in newspaper cartoons which didn't cause such reactions.
But this time, some states have been quick to twist the situation in a reprehensible way and I am disappointed
that even some of the Muslim elite are pretending not to know the difference between a Danish cartoonist and
the whole country, or even the European Union. They are making a very dishonest comparison.
SOURCE
Michel Kichka: Jewish viewpoint from an Israeli cartoonist
A native Belgian and the son of Holocaust survivors, Michael Kichka made aliyah to Israel in 1974 and has been a freelance
illustrator of editorial and political cartoons, comic strips, children''s books and advertising.
Since the "cartoon controversy" affair, I've been asked to express my point of view. I want to share it with you as
a cartoonist and as a jew.
Cartoons are a wonderful communication tool. As a universal language they have the power to bridge cultures
and people. Condensing a whole comment into a single image is a very sophisticated Art. Cartoons focus on the
politically non-correctness of reality, showing the naked truth. Each cartoonists stands with his own agenda,
based on his conscience, his roots and his culture.
The Jewish People have very terrible memories of antisemitic cartoons published in the nazi press during 2nd
WW. And not only in Germany!
Today the internet has made cartoons even stronger than they used to be: every single cartoon gets an
international audience within a few seconds.
Cartoons can hurt, sometimes badly. But words can kill. Texts like Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and "The Protocoles of
Zion" are best-sellers in too many muslim countries.
Let's not make ourselves naive. In the heart of Islam outrage and Islam violent reactions, lays the clash of
civilizations. I believe the moderates belong to the majority. But it's a silent majority.
As cartoonist our duty is to react freely. But our cartoons also generate reactions. Cartooning is not just a
privilege and a duty, it is also a responsabilty.
Heidi Benson -- San Francisco Chronicle -- February 7, 2006
Amid violent protests around the world over reproduction of Danish cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet
Muhammad -- which Muslims consider blasphemy -- editorial cartoonists face a conundrum:
How do they address one of the most urgent topics of the day without inciting further violence?
Among the several cartoonists interviewed Monday, none will use images of the prophet, though for different
reasons.
"There's a general aversion to iconography in the Muslim faith, and it's something that should be respected,"
said Khalil Bendib of Berkeley, who calls himself the only Muslim political cartoonist in the United States.
Born in Paris and raised in Algeria and Morocco, Bendib, 47, has lived in California since 1977. His cartoons,
distributed to more than 1,000 newspapers and appearing on www.bendib.com, are consistently critical of
President Bush and the war in Iraq.
"Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau, reached by e-mail, said he would never use images of the prophet.
"Nor will I be using any imagery that mocks Jesus Christ," said Trudeau, whose strip is published in 600 news
outlets.
"I may not agree with their reasons for dropping any particular strip, in fact, I usually don't, but I will defend their
right and responsibility to delete material that they feel is inappropriate for their readership," he said.
"It's not censorship, it's editing. Just because a society has almost unlimited freedom of expression doesn't
mean we should ever stop thinking about its consequences in the real world."
Bendip shares Trudeau's conviction. "Where do you draw the line between freedom of expression and
responsibility?" he asked.
"Is freedom an abstract absolute, or is it something that you have to ask yourself -- what is helpful, what is
truthful -- each time you pick up a pen?" Bendip said.
Americans are used to satire, said cartoonist Ruben Bolling. His weekly strip, "Tom the Dancing Bug," appears in
50 publications including the Washington Post, Salon.com and the Village Voice.
"It seems strange to us to hear that commentary about religious ideas shouldn't be expressed," said Bolling, who
often comments on religion through his character, God-man.
"I can't imagine I was ever going to do anything on Muhammad, but this does have a chilling effect," Bolling said.
Ward Sutton is unsure how he will address the controversy in his comic, "Sutton Impact," which appears in the
Village Voice and a dozen other papers.
"I'm not going to defend the cartoons published in Denmark -- I haven't seen them -- but free speech is a crucial
part of a free society," Sutton said. "I should be able to make fun of Muhammad as well as Jesus."
As cartoonists, editors and publishers struggle with the issue, moderate voices in the Muslim world, while
denouncing the recent violence, say the cartoons should not have been published.
Bendip is one of these. A longtime critic of the Iraq war, he's surprised to find himself saluting President Bush.
"It's something I never have a chance to do in my work," he said.
Bendip commends the administration for "expressing solidarity with Muslims" by speaking out against the
cartoons.
"It goes to show you that even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
Chronicle cartoonist Don Asmussen will take on the subject in Wednesday's comic, but he has decided that it
won't include an image of the prophet.
"It's disturbing to see a culture go crazy over these cartoons when all these horrible things have been done in
the name of Islam," said Asmussen, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks and other terrorist acts.
"This is about distortion," he added. "You'd wish that the kinds of riots happening now had happened when bin
Laden distorted Islam."
Peter Brookes: why the Muhammad cartoons fail
Peter Brookes, award-winning Cartoonist of the Times of London, discusses the 12 Danish cartoons, first published by a
newspaper in September, that have sparked a week of protests, flag-burnings and death threats across the Muslim world .
"I only saw the drawings yesterday. This week I was working on Iran and oil and the 100th British death in Iraq,
which were much more important to me. But this escalated yesterday and I saw them. My first reaction, I have to
say, was what feeble cartoons.
"Perhaps I don't understand Danish humour but there was only one out of the 12 - where Muhammad's turban
seems to be a bomb - that seemed to have any meaning.
"But even that one is a poor cartoon. It's ambivalent. You can read it one of two ways: either terrorism is using
the cloak of Islam, is dressing itself as Muhammad, or that Muhammad himself is a terrorist. I hate that
ambivalence in a cartoon, not knowing quite what the message is. We could be misreading the intentions of the
artist entirely.
"There is an awful duality about cartoonists: on the one hand, we feel we must be able to depict anything, we
must be free. So as a rule, I try not to be too sensitive about these things - and all cartoonists are guilty of doing
things when we have no idea what the reaction is going to be.
"Last year, for instance, when the horse Best Mate died on the same day as David Blunkett resigned, I combined
the two, and had no idea I would get hundreds of letters of complaint - all from horse lovers, of course, no one
wrote to defend Blunkett.
"And yet, as a cartoonist, I think there has to be a purpose. I can't see any reason for these images, they just
seem gratuitous. They're meaningless. Depicting Islam, there is no need to show the Prophet.
"It looks like the artists just didn't think it through. And yet, they were asked to do it precisely because an author
couldn't find an illustrator who would portray Muhammad. They must have known it was a provocation, they
should have been able to foresee something of the reaction after the Dutch experience of the Theo Van Gogh
film, and the Satanic Verses.
"Of course now there's so much happening, everything is moving so fast, that this looks like it will all go on and
on. And, ironically, we will have to do cartoons about it."
SOURCE
Cartoonist Signe Wilkinson: Muslims Should Protest With Their Own Cartoons
Signe Wilkinson, of the Philadelphia Daily News, is one of America's few contemporary women editorial cartoonists. She was
the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1992. She regularily contributes to Organic Gardening
magazine, the Institute for Research on Higher Education, and Oxygen.com, and is the author of One Nation, Under
Surveillance.
As someone who has been picketed and protested for her blasphemous, insensitive, anti-Islamic cartoons, I
have nothing but sympathy for my Danish colleagues who have incurred the wrath of the godly by publishing a
portfolio of cartoons making fun of one of the world’s great--but apparently humor-impaired--religions.
However, I also have compassion for the members of humor-impaired religions. After all, I am a Quaker.
It’s been my experience that most groups are humor-impaired when outsiders make fun of them. On MSNBC.
com, readers were asked to vote on whether they thought the Muslim protests were justified. The vote was
running 82 percent against the Muslim reaction when I checked Thursday night.
But let’s just change the image. What if it were a cartoon showing someone burning the American flag? What
if it were a depiction of Jesus with a smoking shotgun as a comment on Christians shooting abortion doctors?
What if it were the Star of David used as a hoop that a politician must jump through to get elected?
I’m guessing the approval rating would plummet. Actually, I don’t need to guess because at various times
in my career I’ve penned (and my newspaper has published) cartoons along those lines. Lack of humor
ensued after each one. A number of my cartoons have caused boycotts, lost advertising for my newspaper, and
elicited streams of phone calls and/or picketing in front of our building.
My editors have had to explain the nature of cartooning to the offended representatives of various faiths,
ethnicities, and political groups. And I am not alone. Nearly all cartoonists worth their salt have enraged some
portion of their readership, often when religious symbolism was part of the cartoon. While at least one colleague
received death threats, most of the ensuing protests are loud, sometimes intimidating, but generally peaceful.
I don’t go out of my way to poke fun at the religiously faithful. I have no grounds to criticize other religions,
when my own is such a quirky (though perfect) little cult. Unfortunately, cartoonists are easily bothered. I am
particularly bothered when some group wants to impose its way of life on me--and most particularly when its
adherents want my tax dollars to help them do the imposing. Religious groups are often among those asking for
tax dollars, or particular laws to advance their interest or legalize their morality.
As the editor of the French newspaper France Soir noted after publishing the Danish cartoons, if we were to
abide by all the rules of all the world’s religions, we wouldn’t be allowed to do much of anything.
is said, readers should know that cartoonists working for mainstream American newspapers--and there are more
than 80 around the country--generally try to avoid negatively caricaturing any group just to make fun of them.
American history is filled with examples of published images that would not run in newspapers today, our most
egregious sin being the racist portrayals (without comment) of black Americans in cartoons, advertising, and
illustrations. As the civil-rights movement revealed the injustice behind those racist images, those cartoons
went from being humorous to hideous.
Blacks weren’t alone in trying to influence how they were portrayed in popular culture. Long before 9/11,
Arab-Americans asked for cartoonists to be more sophisticated in their depiction of Middle Easterners. Early in
my career, I received a heads-up from an Arab-American group pointing out that all Arabs aren’t head-scarf-
wearing sheikhs.
At several of our The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists conferences, representatives from Jewish,
Latino, Arab, and other ethnic groups pled for relief from what they saw as derogatory stereotypes that we
cartoonists routinely used as shorthand.
Our images have changed over the years, though many of us still draw sheikhs with scarves because they
feature prominently in the news. If you wear dresses and scarves, cartoonists are going to draw you with
dresses and scarves. But I think if you did a study--and I haven't--you'd find that more cartoons about the Middle
East now feature Arabs who more resemble an American teenager at a mall.
Of course, sheikhs get to choose what they wear. Many women in Islamic societies don’t. My encounters with
Muslims have mostly come over cartoons protesting the treatment of Muslim women. After one such cartoon, a
local woman called me to defend the headscarf. I said I had no problem with anyone freely wearing a headscarf or
any other religious outfit. I then asked her, "But you wouldn’t force other women to wear a headscarf, would
you?"
After a pause she replied, "Well, if it was for her own good."
So there you have the reason I go to the drawing board every day. I am drawing to help prevent a world where
someone else decides what I must wear for my own good. And, I’m willing to risk being called anti-Muslim to
do it.
I’m guessing the Danish cartoonists were trying to do the same thing. The cartoons were criticizing violence
and suicide bombing in the name of Islam. The cartoonists have the right to publish. And, in a free society,
Muslims have a right to protest and publish their own cartoons in response. This is not a right granted to
cartoonists or protesters in some Muslim countries.
I hope Muslims will come to know that they aren't the first, and won't be the last, to be offended by a political
cartoon. I know cartoonists will take into consideration the reaction to this caricature when drawing their next
ones on Muslim issues. If the reaction of the “Arab streetâ€� continues to be violence whenever they donâ
€™t like something they see in someone else's newspaper, then I predict more such cartoons are on the way. My
suggestion is that instead of threatening to draw blood, Muslims should pick up their pens and draw return
cartoons instead.
SOURCE
Swiss cartoonist Chappatte urges calm over Mohammed images
Patrick Chappatte (known simply as Chappatte in his cartoons) is a Lebanese-Swiss cartoonist who draws for Le Temps, Neue
Zürcher Zeitung (Sunday edition) and the International Herald Tribune.
What is your view on the rising and spreading tensions surrounding the publication of the cartoons?
Chappatte: I am appalled and saddened, because we're soon going to find ourselves in a situation where, if this
continues, [more] people are going to die. Unfortunately we are no longer at the point where we can afford to
have a debate on the freedom of speech.
It is desperately important that we calm down, postpone the debate ? something it pains me to say ? and try to
enter into a dialogue.
What is your reaction to the fact that several European newspapers, including Swiss ones, have republished some of
these cartoons?
C.: I have a mixed reaction. On the one hand, it's necessary to see what is being discussed and to know what you
are talking about. Therefore it's important to look at the cartoons and to form an opinion.
But the reality is that each publication [of the cartoons] stirs up something which is getting out of control. It's an
explosive situation and it's not about trying to outdo your rivals.
So you think we have gone beyond a debate on the freedom of expression?
C.: We'll have this debate one day. But one can't remain on the level of absolute principles. There is an enormous
lack of understanding. For me as a newspaper cartoonist freedom of speech is something visceral. And in Islam,
the representation of Mohammed is absolutely forbidden, therefore that also touches the visceral.
Does the freedom of expression allow us to pass over this ban? Would you do it?
C.: That's not the real issue. I'm not Muslim and therefore nobody can stop me from depicting Mohammed in a
newspaper cartoon, a cartoon I draw because I want to express something that I feel strongly about. That's my
position.
On the other hand, the motives behind the commissioning of the Danish cartoons are dubious. Mohammed was
not brought in as a character in a newspaper cartoon. The actual goal of the exercise was to depict Mohammed
precisely because it is forbidden to do so.
It's as if they were saying to Muslims: "Look, it's your taboo! But me, I'm free to do what I want." One shouldn't be
na?ve, it was a provocation.
Personally, I'm not interested in provoking for the sake of provocation. Drawing is a weapon, but a weapon one
should use with care. In this case I find it a bit cheap to test one's freedom on the back of someone else's faith.
Some people have made political capital out of the affair...
C.: Of course. The Muslim issue of not depicting Mohammed was not controversial until now ? there have already
been some illustrations of Mohammed in newspaper cartoons which didn't cause such reactions.
But this time, some states have been quick to twist the situation in a reprehensible way and I am disappointed
that even some of the Muslim elite are pretending not to know the difference between a Danish cartoonist and
the whole country, or even the European Union. They are making a very dishonest comparison.
SOURCE
Michel Kichka: Jewish viewpoint from an Israeli cartoonist
A native Belgian and the son of Holocaust survivors, Michael Kichka made aliyah to Israel in 1974 and has been a freelance
illustrator of editorial and political cartoons, comic strips, children''s books and advertising.
Since the "cartoon controversy" affair, I've been asked to express my point of view. I want to share it with you as
a cartoonist and as a jew.
Cartoons are a wonderful communication tool. As a universal language they have the power to bridge cultures
and people. Condensing a whole comment into a single image is a very sophisticated Art. Cartoons focus on the
politically non-correctness of reality, showing the naked truth. Each cartoonists stands with his own agenda,
based on his conscience, his roots and his culture.
The Jewish People have very terrible memories of antisemitic cartoons published in the nazi press during 2nd
WW. And not only in Germany!
Today the internet has made cartoons even stronger than they used to be: every single cartoon gets an
international audience within a few seconds.
Cartoons can hurt, sometimes badly. But words can kill. Texts like Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and "The Protocoles of
Zion" are best-sellers in too many muslim countries.
Let's not make ourselves naive. In the heart of Islam outrage and Islam violent reactions, lays the clash of
civilizations. I believe the moderates belong to the majority. But it's a silent majority.
As cartoonist our duty is to react freely. But our cartoons also generate reactions. Cartooning is not just a
privilege and a duty, it is also a responsabilty.
| Do the controversial "Muhammad Cartoons" go too far? Are they on target -- or do they miss the mark? What do American cartoonists think of them? Why is there so much outrage over these particular images, when so many post-9/11 cartoons appear to have covered the same ground? Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Page Editor Chris Satullo talks with Inquirer cartoonist Tony Auth. Listen to Audio |
