February 23, 2006

Dear Colleague,

    The Danish cartoons have aroused deep passion and controversy. Day after day, on television I see young Moslems in nearly all parts of the Islamic world marching in outrage, burning Danish flags (where did they get all those flags?), and causing, in one way or another, more than a dozen deaths. Western nations, while upholding free speech, were mostly critical of the cartoons, calling them "insensitive" and worse. The editorial board of our own Badger Herald, which upholds the right to publish the cartoons, nevertheless describes them as "repugnant and disgusting." Strong words, indeed.

    The religious right call the cartoons blasphemous, an offense against God. Yet Muhammad himself and his followers never claimed anything higher than The Messenger of God. Moreover, blasphemy itself is a paradoxical idea. In Jewish thought--and Islam is strongly indebted to Jewish thought--blasphemy is an offense against an extremely touchy God who could take umbrage even when absolutely no offense was intended. Remember poor Uzzah? He tried to steady the Art of the Covenant when it was about to fall, and for his pains, he was instantly killed. The ancient idea of God was of an overwhelming force. One had to go through rites of purification just to approach Him (I capitalize "him" to be on the safe side), just as, nowadays, one has to go through a sort of rite--wearing white headgear, veil, and suit, for example--to approach a nuclear reactor. God Himself, being all powerful, punishes instantly. The idea that He is somehow ineffective, that He needs his followers to avenge Him by taking to the streets and burning Danish flags, well, that idea in itself, in the good old days, would have been considered blasphemous.

    There was a time when it could be highly dangerous to make fun of not only God, but even powerful men. The king could never by mocked--except by the Fool. Courtiers flattered, only the Fool could tell an unpleasant truth, turning in mimicry the king's royal scepter into a murderous bludgeon. Whom can we sneer at, laugh at, mock, if not in good conscience, then at least without penalty? Why the lower classes! Think of Shakespeare. He never made fun of the upper class, even though he might represent them as evil. The fun figures in his plays were all just plain folks--Juliet's maid, but certainly not Juliet. In the famous British humor journal, Punch, the jokes were directed almost exclusively at the working class until well into the twentieth century. The good news is that there has been progress in the West. Honore Daumier was jailed in 1843 for drawing an unflattering cartoon of Louis Philippe. Nowadays, the only permissible targets for satirization are precisely the rich and the powerful--presidents, popes, CEOs, super-evangelists, mahatmas, and, yes, even prophets.

    And here I return to the point I started with. Moslem youths are angry because in the cartoons they see not a great historical figure, triumphant in all his endeavors, who therefore needs no protection and defense, but rather they themselves--poor, politically disenfranchised, and lacking in nearly all the skills necessary for success in the 21st century. Mocking Muhammad is making fun of the down-and-out, suggesting that all they can do is to throw bombs, and that is indeed, as the Badger Herald put it, "repugnant and disgusting."

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu