Denmark hits the holy place of Muslims

In mid-February, several Danish newspapers reprinted one of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad which first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in autumn 2005. At that time their publication provoked large-scale unrest against Denmark among Muslims around the world. A picture showing the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban appeared on the pages of three national and two regional newspapers in Denmark. This was the journalists' response to information that an assassination attempt had been planned against the originator of the cartoon - 73-year-old artist, Kurt Westergaard. "We did this in order to express our clear support for freedom of speech, which we will always defend," Berlingske Tidende wrote in an editorial, explaining its decision to reprint the scandalous picture.

Three people were arrested in Aarhus in western Denmark on suspicion of planning an assassination; it is believed that they were plotting to kill Westergaard. One is a 40-year-old Danish man of Moroccan descent and the other two are Tunisian citizens. The former has been charged with terrorism, while the others will be tried at home, as they will soon be deported to Tunisia. The Danish press reports that the cartoonist has been under threat for some time and, in the last three months, he and his wife have been under round-the-clock police surveillance. The police had also mounted surveillance on the three now under arrest. "Trying to avoid any unjustifiable risk, we decided to intervene at an early stage of the planning to prevent an assassination," said the director-general of the Danish security and intelligence service, Jacob Scharf. "The plan to kill Kurt Westergaard was not just an attack on him, but also an attack on our democratic culture," the second largest Danish newspaper Politiken said in response to the assassination attempt on the Jyllands-Posten cartoonist. "Although Jyllands-Posten did not make judicious use of its freedom of speech, and this led to dramatic consequences, the newspaper deserves absolute solidarity when it is threatened with terror."

Meanwhile, many fear that the reprinting of these provocative cartoons in an insistent defence of freedom of speech will lead to a new wave of protests from Muslims. The scandal caused by the original appearance in the Danish media, in early 2006, provoked demonstrations at Danish embassies in a number of Muslim countries, as a result of which dozens of people were killed. Some of Denmark's diplomatic missions, for example in Indonesia and Pakistan, were closed. Since then, Denmark itself has been under constant threat of terrorist attacks from Muslim radicals insulted by the cartoons of the Prophet. In February 2006, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller admitted that the cartoon crisis had led the country to a foreign policy crisis, the likes of which Denmark had not seen since World War II.

One year later, a similar scandal broke out in neighbouring Sweden. In August 2007, the newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published a new cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad depicting him with the body of a dog. The newspaper explained that this was done in order to support the cartoonist, painter Lars Vilks, whose works had been rejected by the country's arts galleries for security reasons, and to demonstrate that "freedom of speech and faith in Sweden are not just empty words". As expected, the Swedish newspaper's action led to new protests in Muslim countries and threats to those responsible. For example, the terrorist group "The Islamic State of Iraq" offered a bounty of 100,000 dollars for killing Lars Vilks and 50,000 dollars for killing the editor-in-chief of Nerikes Allehanda who allowed the picture to be published. Muslims' reaction to the third action of this kind was predictable. However, the Danish media acted on principle.

So what is behind the publication of articles and cartoons insulting Muslims? What is behind this open challenge to Muslims, deliberately arousing conflict in full knowledge of the negative and scandalous consequences? In our view, the reason is not simply allegiance to freedom of speech. There is a growing aversion towards, and dissatisfaction with, Muslims, whose presence in Europe is becoming more noticeable and a source of anxiety within European society. The rapid growth in the number of Muslims is seen by indigenous Europeans as a threat to their national and confessional - Christian - identity. This leads to a negative attitude towards both Muslims themselves and their holy symbols, chiefly the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad. We won't go into detail about this attitude, but would point out that Europeans do have many grounds for dissatisfaction. Muslim communities are, unfortunately, "a foreign body" in European society from both the socio-economic and cultural-ideological points of view. The objective reality is that it is just those communities of Muslims from African and Middle Eastern countries which have most disregard for local laws and are noted for their involvement in crime, unemployment, a low level of education and other negative social characteristics.

However, Muslims also have well-founded reasons to be displeased with the authorities and societies of European countries. The fact is that many European countries deliberately resist the integration of Muslims, do not pay proper attention to the socio-economic and cultural development of Muslim communities and also create obstacles to the promotion of educated Muslims to high positions in the authorities of various European countries. A combination of these factors leads to the radicalization of some European Muslims who then protest, as a result of which indigenous Europeans take retaliatory measures. Thus the spiral of mutual alienation and conflict becomes even tighter.

The historical aspect of this problem is also important. The roots of disrespect for Muslims and their symbols are quite deep and date back to the Middle Ages. Specifically, cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad first appeared during the Crusades. One of the most authoritative scholars and historians of the 20th century, and a specialist on the medieval West, Jacques Le Goff, wrote in his monograph "Medieval Civilization": "Muhammad was one of the worst frights for medieval Christianity. He constantly haunted the imagination of Christians in apocalyptical visions. He was only mentioned in connection with the anti-Christ." The author also says that "on the margins of a manuscript dated 1162 - a translation of the Koran into Latin - a cartoon of Muhammad presents him as a monster." According to Le Goff, there was no such antagonism between Christianity and Islam until the 11th century. "But everything changed in the 11th century when the Crusades were prepared and skilfully organized by means of propaganda which prioritized Christians' hatred for the followers of Muhammad," he wrote. The dominant mythology is that of a fight between a Christian knight and a Muslim. The fight against the infidel becomes the ultimate purpose for the ideal knight. Analyzing the reasons for such an attitude, the French historian pointed out that "a non-Christian was not a real human, and only a Christian could exercise human rights". "The Christian position on the issue of slavery reveals Christian particularism, isolation, primitive group solidarity and a correlative policy of 'apartheid' with regard to external groups," he goes on. Islam "crystallized the xenophobia of the Christian world", Le Goff concluded.

But we would not like to think that the current cartoon scandal in Denmark could be the prologue to a new crusade against Muslims, or that the fight against the "infidel" will become the ultimate purpose of the modern European model.