Friday, February 03, 2006

Bitter Danish Biscuits

This story of the Dahish cartoon - apparently - is not ended yet. I think it is getting far beyond its natural borders. My personal opinion is that some irony is always welcome and it is a product of the people who do it. I'd swear the Danish cartoonist did not think that his drawings could have had such a big audience. It is a question of freedom of expression. Should it be applied to all the fields of a society? Almost to all, in my opinion...and I would say religion is one of these fields. It cannot be the untouchable sphere, the reign of seriousness and nothing else. Some wonderful and poetic Iranian movies (Kiarostami's for instance) are banned in Iran for some very obscure reasons, while in other countries they are considered masterpieces, and I agree.
I remember that many people made fun of Pope Wojtyla, the way he talked in Italian and things like this. Nobody ever showed a gun or a rifle in this country, one of the most religious of this continent. This is a huge difference. Burning flags or shooting is the border-line reaction, while many other people in the Arabic countries had a different reaction, less noisy and exaggerated: I know this. I think there is nothing morally wrong in some irony, and being ironic means also to say something unpleasant. The France Soir reacted in the best way, according to my point of view: in the first page there was another cartoon which said something like:" Oui, on a le droit de caricaturer Dieu". Its director has been fired because of this: probably the pages looked an example of islam-phobia, and for this reason it could have been avoided, but the idea is right!
Until it is not offensive.
  • Article Spiegel International



  • 1 comment:

    Unknown said...

    I discovered yesterday that the cartoons were five months old...it seems such a reaction was planned.