The Cartoons! The Cartoons!
By Callimachus | Related entries in Religion, The WorldThey just won’t go away.
In Sweden, the “row” has entangled the foreign minister and she got herself in such a nasty fix the only way out was to quit:
The row about cartoons of the prophet Muhammad yesterday claimed the career of Sweden’s foreign minister, who resigned after allegations that she shut down a far-right website for soliciting new caricatures. Laila Freivalds, who succeeded the popular Anna Lindh after she was stabbed to death in 2003, said she could no longer continue in the face of intense media criticism. Opponents said Ms Freivalds, 63, broke Sweden’s strict freedom of speech laws when her department allegedly took steps to close down a website that was trying to publish fresh cartoons of Muhammad.
And in Great Britain, a church magazine editor lost his job for a most innocent cartoon depiction of the Prophet.
A senior Anglican priest resigned yesterday as editor of a Welsh language church magazine after publishing a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad. The Venerable Meurig Llwyd Williams, archdeacon of Bangor, included the drawing, reprinted from the French newspaper Le Soir, in Y Llan, which has a circulation of 400. It showed Muhammad sitting on a heavenly cloud with God and Buddha and being told: “Don’t complain - we’ve all been caricatured here.”
Members of the Church in Wales said yesterday it was ironic that the cartoon had been used to illustrate an article calling for tolerance between members of the Abrahamaic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) on the basis of their common roots.
All copies of Y Llan (”Church”) will now be collected and destroyed.
Mr Williams’s use of the drawing was denounced as “a gross error of judgment” by the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan. “The article was perfectly OK, but for some reason the editor decided to print one of these cartoons,” he told the BBC. “It no way reflects the policy of the Church in Wales and when I saw it I was horrified. We recalled all the papers, I personally picked up some from some churches, and they have all been pulped.”
… “A letter from [Dr Morgan] was sent to all the publication’s subscribers last week requesting that they return their copies. The archbishop has also been in touch with the leaders of the Muslim community in Wales to proffer an apology for any offence caused.”
Saleem Kidwai, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Wales, said Dr Morgan had telephoned him immediately to say sorry and had apologised again at a face-to-face meeting.
Lovely, truly lovely. I suspect my Welsh Quaker ancestors, who held their freedom and their faith as dear as their lives, would be infurated at such self-castration masquerading as tolerance.
Meanwhile, frequent commenter Probligo notes on his own blog a case of a New Zealand TV outlet deciding not to run the “South Park” episode mocking Catholicism.
The outlet’s CEO says:
“We have detected a shift in the public’s perspective on matters of a religious nature. As a result, we have reviewed our internal processes for dealing with religious programmes, particularly in relation to religious satire.”
Anyone care to guess what that “shift in the public’s perspectives” might be a result of?
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 26th, 2006 and is filed under Religion, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 26th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
I have a descriptive word for these folks, but after railing against un-controlled anger on blogs I must be restrained ….. I wish I could draw !!
March 26th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Small correction, Cal,
C4 DID show the South Park “Bleeding Virgin” episode.
What I wrote about is that subsequently C4 have resiled their “protection of the right to publish” position in the face of criticism from the Catholic Church. They have issued an apology to the Church and given the undertaking that there will be closer consideration of future similar programmes.
My point, in that post, was to highlight the hypocrisy of supporting the publication of the Mohammet cartoons (and the Catholic Church down hereaways did NOTHING to prevent that publication or to support the local Islam) against getting almightily upset when a lampoon of the Virgin Mary was shown on tv.
As for “the public’s perspective” in NZ, the general feeling (from comment in the letters to the Editor and talkback radio) was that SP should never have been shown.
Personally, I see as much satirical merit in the SP episode as I did in the Mohammet cartoons; in other words very little to none. I saw no merit in the publication of the Mohammet cartoons, I see no greater merit in the SP episode.
I suspect that C4 may well have achieved one objective of showing the SP episode. It shows that religious hypocrisy is alive and well in NZ.
Has the “Bleeding Virgin” episode been shown in the US as yet? I know that Isaac Hayes “left the show” because of it… If it has NOT been shown, why not? You should demand that it is…
March 26th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Is it interesting ? is this the stuff of Cal , neocon-cal ? If it is, we have a lot more to do in Darfur ( for freedom … of course). Actually the press has been kinda boned in this country of late. Is the anti-political positioning of news make it not News ? Yep. Is the pro-political positioning of news make it News ? Nope. It is the “stuff” That we DI-gest (as opposed to ingest) that makes it “news” to us. I find it odd when one makes a point to evaluate the press with shifting criteria.
March 27th, 2006 at 12:23 am
I think the point of the actual cartoon stands.
A part of my Anglican community folds.
I don’t find that trivial.
March 27th, 2006 at 1:16 am
We agree, in photonegative. I found satirical merit in both, and merit in beating the bounds of free speech just to make sure it still exists.
You’re asking the wrong guy. I don’t watch TV. The Wikipedia entry on “South Park” suggests it was. It also mentions the NZ controversy. As for Hayes, the supposed dispute he has with the show is over another satire of another religion — Scientology.
March 27th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Dave, your “photonegative” view is apt. I put the reason into a different viewpoint.
There are far better, far more important examples than the Mohammet cartoons or South Park, that need to be considered.
This is where the debate in your country and mine becomes academic.
I have written previously about the ab-use of “freedom of the press” (which is too closely related to “…speech” to be seperable) in this country by a past (and little lamented) prime minister. PM Rob Muldoon took such exception to the reportage (and lampooning) by one particular reporter that he refused point blank to attend his press conferences if that reporter was present. That reaction from the PM was reported on tv news (state owned at the time BTW) and his polls reached the same levels as GWB has at the moment and lower as a result.
Now I understand that press attendance at White House Press Conferences is by invitation. No invite, no get through the door. So, how might that affect “freedom of speech/the press”?
If I want to question the President on a matter, there are two “levels of control”. I first have to get an invite to the press conference. Then I have to “arrange” to have my question heard. As I don’t run a kinky web site for gay men the chances at that point would be getting very thin.
But, what about a reporter from WaPo, or Time, or NYT?
If he/she starts asking questions that are even potentially “embarrassing” to the President what chance might there be of that person, or that paper even, being represented at future Press Conferences? Fairly slim I would guess.
Following that, what might happen to the circulation of a newspaper that was not able to report (in any manner at all) direct from the President’s Press Conferences? From national flag to neighbourhood rag overnight would be my guess. Not a good outcome for an Editor.
Now, none of that might be of concern to you. To me, the potential for political manipulation of the press does impact upon the “freedom of speech”, and the converse “right to the truth”.
That is why, in my mind, “stretching the boundaries” is a diversion, a bagatelle that needs careful examination to justify the motives behind it.
March 27th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Why don’t you address that one to Helen Thomas?
Seriously; have you ever actually seen a White House press conference? Or read a transcript of one?
The invites are not that hard to get. Even I’ve gotten in. That was when I had about $467 in outstanding warrants and a subscription to the “Catholic Worker.”
March 28th, 2006 at 4:46 am
Seen? A few bites on the news. One thing that fits with my point is the number of questioners who are “ïgnored” by the President.
Read the transcripts? Quite a few actually. Specially when trying to make sense of some of the things that W has been reported as having said.
Also, I have to be impressed by the number of questions that come out on paper as patsies… Those are the ones where the politician starts his reply by saying “I am very glad that you asked that…”
But I was not talking specifically of Bush; I was taking the wider, non-partisan view of just how subtle political control of the media can be. I have seen press conferences of Clinton (at the time of the Lewinsky thing) doing exactly the same. I would expect that Bush 1 and Reagan were as selective. And if there were other Democrat Presidents I have missed slot their names in …
Obviously, the idea is a non-issue in your mind.
FoxNews rules. But then that is another story altogether, huh!
I will continue to keep my scepticism as sharp as I am able.