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February 28, 2006

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim-Western relations. *Unless otherwise noted, copyright permission has been obtained and articles may be reprinted by any news outlet or publication. Please acknowledge both the original source and the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). *For the latest issue, subscription information and an archive of CGNews articles, please visit our website: www.commongroundnews.org.

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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

1. The good in Muslim hearts offers a better self-portrait than violence by Ibrahim N. Abusharif
Ibrahim N. Abusharif, editor of Starlatch Press, a Muslim publishing house in the Chicago area, looks at the small Muslim forays into the arts in the West and worries that Muslims are largely missing from the diverse cultural space of American life. Abusharif encourages greater participation in the arts as a means of explaining the rich traditions of this religion, arguing that “when people are known at a visceral level - something pushed along by the puissance of art - their place in society becomes layered and authentic. Their sense of belonging strengthens, as does their voice in public debate.”
(Source: Christian Science Monitor, February 21, 2006)

2. ~YOUTH VIEWS~
Looking for comedy in the Muslim world: a movie review by Rebecca Tollefson
Explaining why the movie “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” did not improve Muslim-Western understanding, Rebecca Tollefson, a student at the American University’s School of International Service, reviews a recent attempt at injecting some levity into this cultural dialogue. Looking at some of the reasons for its failure, she also shows us the opportunities that exist to use film as a means of bridging the divide across cultures.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), February 28, 2006)

3. Kick-starting the engines of Arab reform by Rami Khouri
Rami G. Khouri, a regular columnist for the Daily Star, points to two events in the Arab world that serve as immediate examples of Arab reform because they are spearheaded by independent civil society groups and elected parliamentary majorities. If these two initiatives are successful, “the Arab world will have a valuable precedent that might inspire others to relegitimise their own political systems through peaceful, democratic, constitutional and judicial means.”
(Source: Daily Star, February 18, 2006)

4. An inclusive world by Sundeep Waslekar
As President of the Strategic Foresight Group in Mumbai, India, Sundeep Waslekar criticises the lack of ingenuity in the world today. Looking back at our collective history, Waslekar designs a new “global house” based on the foundation provided by Greek, Roman and Islamic thinkers and inventors, and built from growth and creative innovation in education, employment, art and reform.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), February 28, 2006)

5. Why all the fuss now? by Lawrence Pintak
“When it comes to the current controversy, missing from the debate is the fact that we are different,” writes Lawrence Pintak, director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo, of the cartoon debate. He raises the myriad questions that have plagued this dispute and believes that we have forgotten to acknowledge that we come from different cultures: “We see things differently. We have different thresholds for what offends. Why is that a problem? Failure to recognise this is what got us to this place of polarisation to begin with.”
(Source: Al Ahram, February 16-22, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
The good in Muslim hearts offers a better self-portrait than violence
Ibrahim N. Abusharif

Chicago - Last summer, in the wake of the July bombings in London, Muslims in both the United States and Europe made appearances on television and released statements to the press that condemned the violence. They assured people that those responsible for the bloodshed were inspired by a darkness of thought that Islam and its scripture rebuke.

The Muslim foray in the public light was formal and expected, given the gravity of the situation, but it was also too brief. Shortly thereafter, it was back to an anonymity that has kept this burgeoning community essentially veiled from society at large.

A growing discussion among American Muslims centres on this observation: we are missing from the diverse cultural space of American life. The focus on terrorism and the vague war against it threatens to relegate and typecast Muslims forever. What more can we do to encourage and empower American Muslims to produce and show their art, to express what they value through literature, theatre, film, song, visual arts, and even humour?

There have already been some efforts to respond to this concern. For example, in 2003, a theatre group, founded by a Muslim woman who is also a Chicago-area attorney, put on a play inspired by a popular cinematic hit. The production, "My Big Fat Arab-Indian Wedding," focused on the sensitive strife between Muslim immigrants and their American-born children, especially when it comes to marriage. More than 800 people attended the play performed at the University of Illinois, Chicago. The attendance surprised everyone, even the producers. And since then, more Muslim students have signed up for scriptwriting classes.

Muslim film festivals have steadily gained in number, with the talent increasing each year. For instance "Muslim Boarders," a short 2005 documentary, follows a group of young Muslim men and women as they snowboard down a slope. As they pause among snowdrifts and relax in the ski lodge they share their candid views of Muslim life in America.

Literary voices are also slowly starting to emerge. Young Muslims are inspired to write fiction and, especially, poetry, following the examples of Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore and Michael Wolfe.

The signs are there, but they're still "signs." American Muslims in their 20s and early 30s easily admit to the struggle of presenting spiritual traditions in the face of cultural anonymity and journalistic repetitions that link violence to a great world religion. But it is naive to expect the American public to independently reject mendacious labels about Islam if the flavourful and extraordinarily rich traditions of this religion and its people are kept secret.

A vigorous cultural presence, one hopes, can help a people reclaim their right to show who they really are while protecting the interior narrative of their faith from being co-opted by fringe extremists, whose deeds, then, are trumped up by media "experts" who often peddle medieval fears about Islam with impunity. When people are known at a visceral level - something pushed along by the puissance of art - their place in society becomes layered and authentic. Their sense of belonging strengthens, as does their voice in public debate.

Prominent American Muslims have advocated this cultural emergence. Among the compelling articulations is that of Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, scholar at the Nawawi Foundation in Chicago. "Sustained cultural relevance to distinct peoples, diverse places, and different times underlay Islam's long success as a global civilisation," he writes in "Islam and the Cultural Imperative." His essay makes the case for an American Islamic identity, in which Muslims are "producers of culture, not passive consumers of it."

But there are also cynics who look askance at topics like art and culture, believing them to be unimportant, if not sedating, because they detract from the "real" issues of the day, which apparently are always political, always international, somewhere over "there." It is often the case, however, that slow work - like the emergence of a distinctive voice - is undervalued. Many American Muslims realise this as they pursue and hone their art and reclaim their right to tell their stories, whether familiar or countercultural.

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* Ibrahim N. Abusharif is editor of Starlatch Press, a Muslim publishing house in the Chicago area. He has recently completed a comprehensive index to the Koran.
Source: Christian Science Monitor, February 21, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission can be obtained from contact lawrenced@csps.com.

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ARTICLE 2
~YOUTH VIEWS~
Looking for comedy in the Muslim world: a movie review
Rebecca Tollefson

Washington, DC - What “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” might have been is a first step down a new path: a way to bring two divided and mutually misunderstood cultures closer to better understanding of each other through humour, instead of the mutual suspicion and fear from misconceptions so prevalent these days. Make no mistake about it, one film is not capable of reinventing Muslim-Western relations overnight, but it would have been a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, this movie does not represent such a step. Instead, director Albert Brooks has produced a lacklustre comedy that refuses to take a stand and has very little to say. Brooks plays himself in this movie, portraying an actor and comedian who can’t seem to find a gig as of late. When asked by the State Department to head over to India (only 15% Muslim, but who’s counting?) and Pakistan as part of a committee attempting to wage the softer side of the War on Terror, Brooks hesitantly agrees, and is overwhelmed by his task: producing a 500 page report on what makes Muslims laugh.

“Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” is perhaps too promising a title, as the moments of humour in the film are few and far between, while the rest of it merely extends the initial gag (and one perhaps too close to reality to even be funny!). Perhaps the funniest scene in the movie is one in which Brooks hosts a comedy show in New Delhi, India. Having completed his most knee-slapping, guffaw-inducing comedy routine, he elicits no laughs from his audience, only drowsiness and blank looks. Their reaction to his tired and trite routine is no doubt natural, but unfortunately, this is also the most intimate look we get into finding out what does (and doesn’t) make ‘Muslims’ laugh.

The only other remotely funny scenes occur as Brooks travels around with the help of his Indian assistant, Maya (Sheetal Sheth), asking Muslims what they find to be humorous. These moments mostly result in something akin to humiliation for the various Indians and Pakistanis questioned. One thinks animals acting like people are funny. Another gives a disturbing account of a car ride gone strangely awry. These interviews seem to convey that Muslims aren’t funny, or that when they are, their humour is either disturbing or childish.

In truth, it is Brooks himself who is childish. This movie lacks humour because Brooks lacks humour. Of course, after enough complaining about their task, even the most churlish of cultural imperialists would probably find themselves getting down to the actual business of learning about other cultures. Instead, the majority of the movie seems content to pay lip service to Brooks’ career and the fact that his most recent role was playing a cartoon-fish in the Disney movie “Finding Nemo.” This is a movie that could have been about sharing in humour and cultural discovery; instead the only laughs encouraged are at the expense of a washed-up comedian and a culturally oblivious American.

The closest that this movie comes to digging deeper is when Brooks meets with Al Jazeera producers who hope to cast him as the lead in a sitcom (rough translation: “That Darn Jew!”) about a Jew who lives in an apartment complex full of Muslims. This situation provided enormous potential to move the film somewhere, but Brooks’ character refuses to rise to the occasion, and is instead merely aghast at the idea that a comedian of his salt could possibly be banished from the movies to the isle of misfit toys known as sitcom television.

This is a disappointment coming from a man who used to be able to remake Jewish misery as high comedy. Having risen from the ranks of stand-up comedians, Brooks was a regular on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dean Martin Show and was one of the original crafters of Saturday Night Live (back when it was actually funny). “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” is a far cry from Brooks’ earlier films, such as “Lost in America” and “Modern Romance”, which derived their laughs from the everyday tragedies and disasters that occur in relationships, at work and within the family. Brooks could find humour in the messiest and most awkward situations, and it is ironic, that given the chance to do the same across cultures, he instead has made a film that seems content to wallow in the misery of being a dumb American in strange places. If Brooks had displayed the grit he did in his earlier work, perhaps he could have produced a movie that’s not afraid to bridge the present cultural divide.

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* Rebecca Tollefson is a student at the American University’s School of International Service.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), February 28, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Kick-starting the engines of Arab reform
Rami G. Khouri

Beirut - Two very different political reform initiatives this week may point the way to a more sensible and humane Arab political order - and thus also a more legitimate and sustainable order - than the existing tabbouleh salad mixture of mild and severe police states, gangster fiefdoms, private tribal domains, and free-for-all shopping malls masquerading as sovereign states.

The two efforts worth watching are the decision by leading Lebanese politicians to mobilise their supporters to force the resignation of President Emile Lahoud (seen as a bitter and divisive symbol of the former Syrian dominance of the country), and an Arab Reform Initiative launched by half a dozen leading Arab research centres and think tanks, working closely with European and American colleagues.

These are important initiatives because they emerge from two sources in society - independent civil society groups and elected parliamentary majorities - that have been relatively docile in recent decades, due to the overpowering dominance of the heavy-handed modern Arab security state. The idea that citizens of a country can initiate significant change to reform the exercise of political power, in a peaceful manner, is revolutionary in the Middle East, and long overdue.

The Lebanese case focuses on the person of President Lahoud, whose six-year term was extended by another three years in 2004 by a Lebanese Parliament that was directly controlled by Syria at that time. Lebanon's forced docility changed dramatically after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri a year ago, when waves of popular protest saw a million Lebanese in the street demand that Syria's army leave their country, which it did. President Lahoud remains in power, but is widely seen as both illegitimate and ineffective.

On the one year anniversary of the Hariri murder last Tuesday, nearly one million Lebanese again gathered in central Beirut to demonstrate their determination to remain free and sovereign. They also insist on discovering the truth about who killed Hariri and other media and political figures who were murdered in car bombs during the past year.

The legitimate parliamentary majority's decision to mobilise its massive public backing and focus it on ousting Lahoud and relegitimising the Lebanese presidency, via constitutional and political measures through Parliament rather than through street rallies, is a historic test of the modern Arab political order. If it succeeds - and my sense is that it will, but perhaps not by the March 14 deadline that has been set - the Arab world will have a valuable precedent that might inspire others to relegitimise their own political systems through peaceful, democratic, constitutional and judicial means. Freedom and democracy fans around the world should watch and quietly support this crucial political process.

The other important new effort this week was the official launching of the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI), after a year of quiet meetings and preparatory work. The ARI is a network of independent Arab research and policy institutes, with partners in the United States and Europe designed to: "mobilise Arab research capacities to generate knowledge by those who are the prime targets of reform; nurture and promote realistic and home grown agendas for democratic reform; foster collaboration between Arab non-governmental institutions; inform and engage political leaders, intellectuals and active representatives of civil society and produce policy recommendations."

That's about as ambitious as it gets in this reform business, which has been a peculiarly ineffective but robust industry in this region for the past decade or so. Dozens of reform initiatives, conferences and agendas have been organised, but little real reform has happened in any Arab country beyond administrative changes making it easier to get a hunting license, renew a passport, or open a restaurant. This is because incumbent Arab governments and power elites have hijacked the reform debate, and have successfully stalled any real change in the exercise of power.

If elected politicians are the engine that pulls Arab political change (such as ousting Lahoud), think tanks and civil society groups are the caboose providing essential services from the other end of the train. The two must work together in order to achieve success.

The ARI comprises credible research centres from North Africa, the Levant and the Gulf region that focus on identifying the content and modalities of a heretofore vague reform process. How to start? Which forces to mobilise? What obstacles are to be overcome?

The initiative seeks to promote a comprehensive vision of reform that integrates the interaction between the political, economic, societal and cultural spheres, while recognising the diversity of situations among countries of the region and also raising awareness in the Arab region about successful transitions to democracy in other parts of the world. It hopes to achieve these goals through collaborative activities such as policy briefs, thematic and country studies, public opinion surveys, workshops and conferences, and occasional task forces, all aiming to formulate policy recommendations that can advance reform in the Arab world. The Web site has more information and is worth a visit (www.arab-reform.net).

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* Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for The Daily Star.
Source: Daily Star, February 18, 2006
Visit the website at www.dailystar.com.lb
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 4
An inclusive world
Sundeep Waslekar

Mumbai, India - The outbreak of hatred following the cartoon controversy shows how fragile our world is. It also poses a significant question. Do we want a divided world where graffiti and cartoons can produce an inferno? Or do we want an inclusive world where you, I and everyone have a stake in its future?

About six decades ago, world leaders got together at San Francisco and Bretton Woods to construct a new world order in the aftermath of the annihilation of the second world war. We need to come together again to prevent another tragedy rather than to construct the world after it. With unaccountable trade in the weapons of mass destruction, we are not sure if we will have a world to rebuild if a global catastrophe seizes us. Therefore, the focus of our effort must be on prevention.

We need to build a common universal house. The foundation of this house must be sustainable childhood that not only empowers students with employability but also encourages them to appreciate other faiths. About a thousand years ago, scholars in Baghdad studied mathematics from India and philosophies from Greece. Half a millennium later, the Europeans developed technology based on the foundation of the Arab scientific inventions. Our world would be very backward if we did not learn from each other.

If education can provide the foundation, productive employment will build the walls of our house of hope. There are currently 100 million unemployed young people in the age group of 15-25. About 100 million young people will join the labour force every year in the next decade. At the current rate, at least 10 million of them will be drawn into the pool of the unemployed, making another 100 million or a total of 200 million by 2015.

We have the imagination to create new industries. We have millions of acres of land in rural areas that we can make productive. We can transform agriculture into food processing. We can convert molasses into energy. We need a master plan for productive employment in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The young men in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rwanda and Sudan, Peru and Colombia are young men after all. If they can wield a ploughshare with dignity, they won't need swords at all.

While we build the walls of this house, we must also think of the ceiling. The Islamic world can boast of ancestors who were the founders of modern thought. At the beginning of 9th century, they had among them Al Khwarizmi, the founder of modern algebra. Al Kindi wrote 250 books on philosophy, physics, medicine and metallurgy. Ibn Haiyan founded chemistry. Ibn Haytham discovered the science of optics and also explored momentum and gravity of the earth 600 years before Galileo. Al Biruni determined the earth's circumference. And Ibn Sina (aka Avicenna). There will never be a man like Ibn Sina, who wrote 450 books on medicine and philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. The Islamic world has also produced some of the greatest literature from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Rubaiyat.

Can we have a House of Wisdom in every city and every town, which was a regular feature of the Middle East one thousand years ago? Can we carry out research in science, technology, philosophy and literature to reach new frontiers in every field of human endeavour? Can we have a modern Ibn Sina and Al Kindi?

We need a deliberate strategy to build and spread thousands of state of the art research facilities all over the Middle East. If the region reclaims its scientific and literary heritage and recreates the golden era that it experienced exactly a millennium ago, it can once again emerge as a new leader of thought for the entire world. It will boost the esteem of young people in the region. It will provide them with aspiration. It will replace the context of despair with the context of hope.

Our new global house must have doors and windows. The windows tell us the difference between darkness and light. We need the fresh air of reforms at all levels. At the national level, we need governance that is transparent, accountable and participatory. At the global level, we need governance that makes occupation and manipulation impossible. We need political systems that make inclusion a reality. We need a context where an individual can freely think and act. We need an atmosphere where every child can dream.

Finally, we need a house where all the adults share their responsibilities in the interest of the common good. Currently, we tend to depend on the industrial G-8 for many things. We need a new way of thought that makes global transformation a common responsibility of all. If the price of oil hovers around $60, all oil exporting countries, including those in the Middle East, Norway and Russia, will collect surplus reserves in the excess of $2500 billion by the end of this decade. Even if the price comes down to $50, they will hold $1500-2000 billion in their treasuries. We need a new, ‘energy G-8’ that deliberates on the problems of the world and allocates real funds for transformation. The two G-8 collectives can then join hands from time to time, along with another group of 8 countries that are important emerging economies. These could be India, China, Malaysia, Australia, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt and South Africa. Together the three groups of 8 can create a new G-24.

We need an inclusive world not merely because the alternative is the threat to our survival. We need it because hope is feasible. We need it because dreaming is good and aspirations are essential. We need it because every citizen of the earth can become a participant. We need it because tomorrow is ours. We need it because the impossible is often possible.

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* Sundeep Waslekar is President of Strategic Foresight Group, Mumbai. This is an abridged version of his Nelson Mandela Benefit Lecture delivered recently in Dubai. The full text is available on www.strategicforesight.com.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), February 28, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 5
Why all the fuss now?
Lawrence Pintak

Cairo - We just don't get it, do we? And by "we," I mean all of us -- Americans, Arabs, Europeans, Pakistanis, Indonesians, you name it. The cartoon controversy is just the latest evidence of that. It's almost as if we want to believe the worst about each other.

There was a book published a few years ago called, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Sometimes I think the inhabitants of the West and the Muslim world are living in different universes.

We may not be witnessing a "clash of civilisations" -- though some people certainly seem to want one -- but there is a fundamental disconnect between our societies. The cartoon controversy is just the latest example of the essential gap in worldview, perception and communication that drives polarisation.

"These are our values and we will defend them," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Muslims around the world feel exactly the same way. But then double standards, and "holier-than-thou" attitudes, abound on both sides of this tempest. The litany has already been catalogued elsewhere: European laws against anti- Semitism which don't apply to Arabs, the "other" Semites; anti-Jewish cartoons that regularly appear in Arab newspapers now leading the chorus of denunciations of the European press.

Saudi Wahabis desecrated -- neigh, obliterated – the Prophet Muhammad's tomb and today they protest about cartoons. The same Western journalists who today preach free speech caved in to Bush administration's pressure not to show POWs in Iraq and Bin Laden tapes.

The list goes on, depending how many years -- or centuries -- you want to go back.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of dialogue and understanding, we each fail to grasp what, as we say in America, "makes the other tick"; in other words, the complex mix of factors that make us what we are and shapes how we see the world. Instead, we fall back on stereotypes and clichés, viewing each other through a bloodshot lens.

And, of course, the worst among us somehow always manage to become symbols of what we -- as entire peoples, or "civilisations" -- are, thus playing directly into the stereotypes on both sides. A Boston Globe cartoon last week depicted angry Muslim crowds waving banners such as, "Kill infidels" and "Off with their heads," as one protestor said to the other: "Watch, some cartoonist will twist this around to make us look bad." Crude -- but true. Images of rioters burning embassies become a caricature of what so many Westerners have come to expect of Islam.

"I'm programmed to look upon offence as a choice," a Western colleague said in an email the other day. "The insult is from the outside, but in my worldview, how one reacts is largely a choice. Try though I do to get my head around the widespread response to the cartoons, it still seems like lunacy to me."

Most rational people in the West do not think all Muslims are fanatics but neither do they understand that, as Al-Ahram columnist Salama Ahmed Salama told me recently, "Here religion is a daily food." There are plenty of religious people in the West; some 40 per cent of Americans describe themselves as fundamentalist or "born-again". But religion is not, to most in the West, part of the fabric of life to the extent it is in the Muslim world. Westerners often use God's name as an epitaph; Muslims call upon Him a thousand times a day. "Insha'allah," God willing.

Plenty of Christians were offended by Andres Serrano's photograph "Piss Christ," which depicts a crucifix submerged in a vat of the artist's own urine, but few even bothered to write a letter to the editor, much less take to the streets. So the depth of insult felt by so many ordinary Muslims over the cartoons simply does not sink in.

When anti-Danish protestors started trashing embassies last week, those who were trying to understand simply gave up. And once those crowds started shouting "Death to America," as they did in several countries last week even though few papers in the US showed the cartoons and President Bush criticised them, many in the West shook their heads in bewilderment: "The Muslims were at it again."

But lost in all the noise is the fact that many here in the Middle East are equally baffled. "I don't get it," one of my Egyptian students said, when she learned the cartoons had appeared in several places last year. "Why did everyone get so upset now?"

Authoritarian regimes and religious radicals manipulate the emotions of understandably aggrieved Muslims for their own political gain. Reactionary forces in the West use the resultant chaos as an excuse to say, "I told you so."

"I've long been sceptical of the 'Religion of Peace' moniker for Muslims -- for at least 3,000 reasons right off the top of my head," conservative columnist Ann Coulter smugly wrote on her Web site. "I think the evidence is going my way this week."

As understandable as it is that Muslims would be deeply offended by these depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, there is a degree of manufactured outrage afoot. There have been plenty of insulting cartoons about the Prophet and Islam in recent years. A quick Google search turns up images from the US and other parts of Europe at least as insulting as those published in Denmark. Why did no one take to the streets when they appeared?

In fact, Egypt's own Al-Fajr newspaper published two of the Danish cartoons on 17 October of last year accompanied by a story headlined, "Impudence continues. Sarcasm about the Prophet and his wives through caricature." The Al-Fajr newsroom was not sacked. The editors were not jailed. Overseas Muslims did not boycott Egyptian cotton. No ambassadors were withdrawn.

Why not? The short answer is that forces that could benefit from the backlash were not then poised to take offence. In Denmark, leaders of an alienated minority community who were eager to solidify their political base came up against an arrogant government that could not see -- or did not care -- why they were upset. It wasn't the actual publication of the cartoons that ignited the bonfire, which took place in September, it was the Danish government's snub of Muslim leaders months later, coinciding with republication by a Norwegian paper.

And, as we have seen again and again in recent years, both sides quickly proclaimed they had Truth with a capital "T" on their side. Others soon chose sides.

"Europe Can Take Pride in Defending Cartoons," proclaimed the headline over an opinion column in The New York Times. Why? What is there about the provocative actions of some insignificant little Danish paper with a track record for anti- immigrant diatribes that we should defend?

This isn't about censorship; this is about good sense. As I tell my journalism students, the decision on whether to use -- or not to use -- a given picture or frame of videotape involves a conscious choice. Just because I have the right to broadcast the image of a person with third degree burns writhing in agony, doesn't mean I should.

When it comes to the current controversy, missing from the debate is the fact that we are different. We come from different cultures. We see things differently. We have different thresholds for what offends. Why is that a problem? Failure to recognise this is what got us to this place of polarisation to begin with.

Some of the erstwhile defenders of press freedom claim that to withhold publication of the cartoons is to set the media on a slippery slope to immobility. Everything offends someone, they say. It is a spurious argument. This isn't about showing the Prophet Mohamed -- countless Islamic publications have done that through history. It's about showing an overtly offensive image of him.

Chancellor Merkel has every right to defend her "values," but the world might be a bit better off if political and religious leaders spent less time defending their own values and spent more time respecting those of others -- or at least recognising that they exist.

The irony is that by publishing -- and republishing -- the cartoons, Western defenders of press freedom provide ammunition to both authoritarian regimes and extremist religious groups that would love to censor far more than just cartoons.

Tragically, it is the media -- and ultimately the people -- of the Middle East and broader Muslim world that will suffer most if those forces get their way.

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*Lawrence Pintak is director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo. His latest book is Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam and the War of Ideas.
Source: Al Ahram, February 16-22, 2006
Visit the website at www.ahram.org.eg/weekly
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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Posted by Evelin at March 7, 2006 08:03 AM