Cartoons of Muhammad again

Would it be all right if I called Geert Wilders a piece of human waste? No? Damn. Well, then, can I call him a deeply cynical politician who is willing to get people killed to advance his political career? Okay, thanks.

Geert Wilders is a deeply cynical Dutch politician who is willing to get people killed to advance his political career. Sometimes they are Muslims; sometimes they are people of Christian heritage - that doesn't really matter, so long as he reaps the publicity. And now he has come up with a clever new way to outrage foolish young Muslims and to get them to murder people for him.

Wilders realised that a little-known Dutch law obliges the television networks to show ANYTHING that a politician wishes to include in a party political broadcast. No censorship is allowed on grounds of truth, of taste, or even of safety. So the far-right politician, whose whole political career has been based on attacking Islam, decided to air some truly nasty cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.

One shows a man labelled 'Muhammad', with snakes in his beard. Another shows a rather loony-looking young man who is clearly labelled 'The Prophet Muhammad'. A third shows somebody who is probably meant to be Muhammad on a unicycle, juggling five chopped-off heads with letters attached that spell ISLAM. Not funny, not clever, not really even topical. Just nasty.

blasphemous

Most Muslims are uncomfortable with images of Muhammad, and many believe that they are blasphemous. That doesn't mean that democratic, pluralist societies like those of the West should ban such images. Freedom of speech means that any group, including any religious group, should accept that it may be criticised, even mocked in public. You cannot demand special treatment just because your feelings will be hurt.

But you can and should expect not to be singled out for hatred simply because of your particular religious beliefs. You have the right to be protected from rhetoric that deliberately confounds innocent believers with terrorists (as Wilders regularly does). And you certainly have right to be protected from incitements to violence.

There is a world of difference between Geert Wilders and the dozen people who were murdered by Islamist extremists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last January. They were equal-opportunity cartoonists who targeted everybody with equal irreverence and a fine absence of discrimination. Wilders is a monomaniac who wants to ban the Koran in the Netherlands because it is "like (Adolf Hitler's) Mein Kampf".

But he is a devious monomaniac because the people he is really trying to incite to violence are Muslims. If he can trick ignorant Muslims into killing people by portraying the Prophet Muhammad in ugly and insulting cartoons, he wins.

The cartoons Wilders has insisted be broadcast on Dutch television were originally shown at an event in Texas last month which awarded a US$10,000 prize for the best (i.e., worst) cartoon about Muhammad. The organisers were trying to provoke a reaction, so they invited Wilders to give the event a higher profile. It worked wonderfully: two simplistic young fanatics tried to attack the conference and were shot dead in the car park.

So Wilders brought copies of the cartoons home with him, and announced that he would broadcast them on Dutch television as a defence of free speech. The broadcast was supposed to go out in the Netherlands on Saturday, but somebody at the NPO1 television network managed to mislay the tape Wilders had given them.

indignant

He was furiously indignant about that, of course, and insisted that his right as a party leader to put anything he wants on the party political broadcasts must be respected. It went out on Wednesday evening and, as expected, the rioting has begun.

Wilders knew perfectly well that this would have happened, and is content that it should. He and his anti-Muslim allies on the far right of Dutch politics are what Marxists used to call the "objective allies" of the bearded Muslim extremists screaming for blood in the streets and the more calculating Muslim leaders who urge those fanatics to go out and commit violence in the name of "defending" Islam.

Both parties, however much they hate each other, have a common interest in keeping the outrage level among their followers high and they tacitly cooperate to keep the pot boiling. The poor old media know they are being manipulated and exploited by people with truly reprehensible agendas, but they cannot simply refuse to report the news, even if it is manufactured news (as is so often the case).

And so, in a world where most people of any religion, or none, simply want to get on with their neighbours and lead a quiet life, we are fed a constant diet of lies that shows us a world full of blood-thirsty, hate-filled extremists.

Oh, and by the way, Geert Wilders is a piece of human waste.

- Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.