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This article was republished after changing publication software from bblog to WordPress. The timestamp is not accurate.

Norwegian bloggers have started a “Spartacus campaign”, publishing the pictures of Muhammed first published in Danish newspaper Jyllandposten.

It has been a while since Jyllandsposten published the now notorious caricatures of Muhammed, some of which were innocent, some of which were not, to quote the Danish blogger Raapil:

Several of the drawings – especially the ones by Kurt Westergaard and Rasmus Sand Høyer – can be grouped in the genre of malicious political caricatures, having proud traditions back to Der Stürmers Jew caricatures and here in Denmark with caricature drawings of Pia Kjærsgaard [rightwing politician] as a rat.

It has also been a while – half a month – since I wrote about the issue myself, even publishing a picture of Muhammed. It was not a picture of him with a nineteenth century Anarchist bomb as head, though, instead it was a beautiful piece of Persian art found in the book “Treasures of Persian Painting” (1961) and in a Sufi cookbook too! When I published the picture it was not to fight for the freedom-of-speech, neither was it to get rid of the outdated blasphemy paragraph in the Norwegian penal law.

It was to point out that there is no unison understanding in Islam when it comes to pictures of the Prophet.

Some Muslims have no problems with pictures like the one found on the Norwegian Nynorsk wikipedia where his face is blanked out. In Iran there is something close to an icon tradition, and until recently the University of Bergen had several of these pictures on their website – they removed them yesterday in a fit of misguided political correctness. Most Muslims will probably dislike cartoons like Jesus and Mo, published by the English Freethinker, but will not spend to much energy on it and will hardly start sending death threats.

My post and my publication of a picture of Muhammed did not get much attention. Yesterday someone posted in French, calling us (Norwegians, I suppose), “emmerdeurs”, a not-so-nice French word that is somewhat intranslatable, but that can be understood as “someone who covers things with shit”. It is possible that he has a point, but I suspect his Norwegian is worse than my French, and then it must be quite terrible.

That is why I do not see why he chose to comment in the first place, unless he is not the kind of guy who gets annoyed to see an old Persian and Islamic piece of art, just because it happens to break his own interpretation of Islamic law.

Anyway, after they started burning Norwegian flags on the Gaza strip (ironically outside a EU building, Norway is not even a member) the Norwegian blogosphere has gone crazy.

And when one of Norways most well-known bloggers, VamPus, who has this far operated anonymously spoke out under full name and encouraged bloggers to publish pictures of Muhammed in defence of freedom-of-speech she soon was noticed by one of the leading Norwegian newspapers, Dagbladet. Her readers have written that she is “very brave” and a “heroine” for publishing the pictures. I feel like repeating myself:

Personally I do not think it was particularily brave by Selbekk [editor of Magazinet] to publish these pictures, but the freedom of expression is also valid for reactionary provocateurs.

There is no serious threat against the freedom of expression in Norway. Not one political group is willing to limit it and at the same time has the support or resources to push this through. The one group that comes closest is not made up off flagburning jihadist Muslims from Gaza, but off candleburning, wafflebaking Christians from Western Norway who would love to wake up again the dormant blasphemy paragraph in the penal law. This case has been blown totally out of proportions, and with the recent escalation the Norwegian proverb that one feather can easily become five hens is proven yet again.

While not teaching us much about the freedom-of-expression, though, this case can teach us something about the difference between the problem of religious conservatism in the Christian (i.e. Western, to a large degree secular) world and the Muslim world.

The viewpoints of Christian and Muslim conservatives are often the same; it is not that many years since blasphemy laws were last used in neither Norway nor the United Kingdom and a few years back Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer was actually convicted – in absentia – to six months in jail in Greece, after portraying Jesus as a nude marijuana-smoking drinking buddy of Jimi Hendrix. The verdict was later overruled.

While illustrating that the Western world is not as liberal as some like to think, this example also illustrates something else. In the Muslim world, it is very likely that the verdict would never have been overruled. Religious conservatism stands stronger there, in Yemen, in Saudi-Arabia, on the Gaza strip, in Egypt… and together with lacking or non-existant democracy this creates a force that can make Saudi-Arabians stop eating Danish feta cheese. I doubt Christian conservative Norwegians could make the same thing happen in Norway. This is what Egyptian blogger Big pharaoh writes about when he notes:

See, ladies and gentlemen, this is what’s drawing this region backwards into the abyss of stupidity and irrationality. We invoke religion in everything. We see everything through the prism of religion. Our false religiosity that lacks the power of our God-given mind has crippled our ability to rationalize and make sound judgements and come up with reasonable conclusions.

The fact that Magazinet, the small evangelical Christian newspaper that has gotten the most attention for publishing the Muhammed cartoons in Norway (and probably partly did this as a PR stunt), supports the blasphemy paragrph that they themselves can be said to have violated illuminates the issue further. Some months ago, editor Vebjørn K. Selbekk took the words of former Christian Democrat prime minister in Norway, Kjell Magne Bondevik, as his own when he stated that it is “important to keep the paragraph to guard the respect for peoples beliefs and religious practice”.

If some of his readers were to draw up the laws in Norway, Gerhard Haderer would have gotten problems getting of the hook.

Tags: Ymse