The Danish cartoon crisis was never really over

Danish papers reprinted the most inflammatory of the original 12 Muhammad cartoons last week and immigrant youths continue to riot in Copenhagen and other Danish cities.

The events surrounding the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, or the cartoon crisis, never really ended, did they? The frequency and intensity of the demonstrations subsided, but the ripples of that splash did not. A watchful eye on the news (and the blogosphere, even more so) could find something new directly or indirectly related to the cartoons almost every week if not every other day.

Since the cartoons, there has been a pronounced rightward swing in Western publishing, politics and mainstream thought as well as hypersensitivity from Muslim countries. There were the elections where the Danish People's Party used a Muhammad cartoon in its campaign posters along with other blatantly xenophobic and racist statements and imagery (right). There were trials that saw editors and protesters jailed. The timing of the Salman Rushdie's knighthood could be interpreted in two ways: 1. blindly naive, or 2. blatantly provocative.

The crisis was a turning point in relations between the West and the Islamic world, but it was also a prism through which one can consider that relationship. Although the line-of-thought that claims to be 'defending free speech' derives its legitimacy from events like Theo Van Goghs's murder and his movie, the cartoon crisis forced that debate into a wider mainstream consciousness and is its center. But is the frame of 'free speech' sufficient to consider the whole picture? What other elements might be at play in the republishing of the cartoons across Europe and in the reactions of the Islamic world? How might all this look to the average Muslim? These are questions that are all too often passed over when considering the cartoon crisis. Instead of inquiring, the overwhelmingly typical response has been simple indignation.

What triggered the reprint was the report on Tuesday of an alleged plot against the life of artist Kurt Westergaard (pictured). He drew the one of Muhammad with a lit bomb in his turban. The rioting that has continued into its 7th night, interestingly, began before any of this. It is easy to imagine, though, that these events fueled the anger of urban Muslim youths who clashed with police and burned things. Although the two events might not share a clear causal relationship, they obviously share a context.

Here, the paper responsible for the original cartoons, Jyllands-Posten, reports on the arrests and displays the offending cartoon. It also includes statements from the paper's editor in chief and from the cartoonist himself. Flemming Rose, the paper's cultural editor who commissioned the original cartoons (and who is presumably the author of this article), also blogs about it. The article presents the artist's stated intention: "What the cartoonist wanted to say with his cartoon was that many people exploit the prophet to legitimize terror." But the objectivity of the newspaper's presentation is deeply suspect and the cartoon and its implications demand critical analysis.