:: Susan Waters: Executive Director InternetBar.org ::

In the February 27, 2006 issue of the New Yorker Magazine, Jane Kramer has an article in Talk of the Town that discusses the controversy, protests, riots, and deaths associated with the publication by a Danish newspaper of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. It appears that this grew out of a search by a children’s book writer seeking an illustrator for a book about Islam for Danish school children could not find one because the project was seen as too dangerous by the illustrators the author contacted.

The Koran, which embodies the words of Allah as dictated to the Prophet Muhammad, states that there shall be no likeness of God, but does not reference depictions of the Prophet. That prohibition appears in the Hadith. But, as Persia and India adopted Islam, paintings that included depictions of the Prophet were created and used in religious devotions and in telling the story of Islam.

The tragic story of today arises not so much from the actual Danish publication of the cartoons, but from worldwide coverage of the controversy. More than 25 European papers and only a few American ones have published some or all of the cartoons. I have not seen them myself, but have read about them. Surely, some of them are offensive even if the depiction of the Prophet were not banned by religious tradition.

Ms. Kramer concludes by saying that the myth of multicultural Europe may have been shattered, but not because of a clash of civilizations. Rather, she says democracies survive only by their faith in themselves. She says, “Democracies preclude contending absolutisms and the dicta of fixed identities. They have to do with identity in flux, with culture, and cultures, constantly transforming, molting into something new — something surprising and different and open-ended and free.”

As we struggle in this new century with the issues of identity, and InternetBar.org is established precisely to struggle with those issues, this controversy demonstrates how un-ready the world is to have issues of identity challenged in provocative and insensitive ways. This does not mean that we cannot have respectful and thoughtful discussions about identity and how we must navigate into the future around these issues. It seems to me that these discussions are vital to moving all of us forward and past nationalistic, religious, or other reasons for conflict. We must seek to generate collaborative relationships that foster understanding and respect across our divides and which demonstrate the unifying human conditions that affect us all. Here at InternetBar.org we are trying to do just that. Join us in these efforts, and let me know what you think about this.

All the best,
Susan Waters