By Michelle Saturley
Staff Writer

Mirror/Michelle Saturley Mahboubul Hassan, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Manchester, said the cartoon images of Muhammad crossed the line between religious sensitivity and free speech.

At first glance, it’s innocuous fun: a pen-and-ink drawing, usually accompanied by a cleverly written sentence or two, illustrating some foible in our government or society. That’s the beauty of the political cartoon – it’s a barbed-wire message couched in an innocent format. But these funny little cartoons often pack a powerful punch – sometimes even more than their creators anticipated.

New Hampshire-based cartoonist Mike Marland has had his own run-ins with controversy over the years.

In 2002, one of his cartoons, published in the Concord Monitor, drew him into an unexpected vortex of hostility. The cartoon depicted George W. Bush fl ying an airplane into two towers marked “Social Security.”

“It raised holy hell,” he said. “At the time I created it, I thought it might raise a few eyebrows, but nothing more. Then, it started getting circulated on the Internet, and more people saw it. I got some hate mail. The Monitor bore the brunt of it. They ended up issuing an apology over it. In retrospect, I saw that it was disrespectful to those who died on Sept. 11.”

And that, according to Marland, is the power of the cartoon.

“Sometimes, as a cartoonist, you don’t anticipate the reaction you’re going to get,” he said. “You put your message out there and it takes on a life of its own. It’s like squirting somebody in the eye with one of those gag flowers. Sometimes, they’ll laugh, and sometimes they’ll get angry.”

When cartoons become the news

Unlike journalists, a cartoonist’s primary task is to present an opinion of an issue of the day, not factual reporting of an event. But that kind of freedom often goes hand-in-hand with public dissonance – sometimes expected, sometimes not. This was demonstrated all too clearly by the tumult in Denmark over the publication of a series of cartoons containing images of Islamic prophet Muhammad, in the “Jyllands-Posten” newspaper.

The cartoons, including one image of Muhammad wearing turban shaped like a bomb, accompanied an article by the paper’s cultural editor about self-censorship and free speech. The drawings set off a firestorm within the Islamic community, who found the images culturally insensitive at best, and a blasphemous act punishable by death at worst.

Professor Dean Spiliotes, research director at the Saint Anselm College Institute of Politics, said that the real trouble started when the cartoons were viewed outside of Denmark—and outside of the editorial framework in which they were presented.

“The context of the cartoons has been lost in the shuffle,” he said. “They were originally run as part of a larger story about freedom of speech.”

Crossing the line?

At first, it was a small but vocal group of fundamentalist Muslims upset by the images. But as the drawings made their way on to the Internet and into other media outlets, the outrage grew.

“To Muslims, this is offensive on the level of saying something against those who suffered in the Holocaust – perhaps even worse,” said Dr. Mahboubul Hassan, Professor of Finance at Southern New Hampshire University and president of the Islamic Society of Greater Manchester. “Imagine someone crossing that line and being intentionally offensive on that topic. Imagine the reaction of people from all faiths.”

Courtesy/Mike Marland Political cartoons use humor to get a very sharp point across, as the examples from Mike Marland show.

Though the cartoons originally appeared in September 2005, the anger seems to be growing exponentially.

“The foreign ministries of 11 Islamic countries have gone to the Danish government and asked for action,” Spiliotes said. “The Danish government refused, claiming it would be a violation of free speech.”

Hassan thinks that this act was the moment things began to spin out of control. “They should have apologized,” he said. “If they had apologized, if only for upsetting people, not for using free speech, I believe this could have been avoided.”

Since that public refusal, several death threats have been issued against those responsible for the cartoons, and many of the threatened have gone into hiding. Riots in Afghanistan and Beirut claimed several lives, and on Feb. 4, buildings containing the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were torched in protest. To date, 11 people have been killed in violent incidents linked to the cartoons. Two moderate Islamic newspaper editors have been arrested and charged with blasphemy for printing the cartoons in their publications.

Marland said he sees both sides of the argument.

“I definitely do not condone the violence. I believe in freedom of speech, but I think at a certain point, when you harp on a very sensitive subject, and don’t think about the consequences, you are just asking for it,” he said. “I don’t think violence was the cartoonists’ intention, but at the same time, it got way out of hand.”

Hassan wonders if the cartoonists are so innocent.

“I understand that the whole thing started when an author was searching for an illustrator for a children’s book about the life of Muhammad,” he said. “How does one get from that starting point to a series of offensive cartoons that are most definitely not for children? It was done intentionally and it was hurtful.”

The future: cautious or business as usual?

And while editorial cartoonists in this country aren’t looking over their shoulders in fear, they are wondering how to approach their work in the wake of the Danish incident.

“It’s beyond bizarre,” Marland said. “Here in this country, the worst we have to face if we offend someone with a cartoon is that we risk getting fired. But people are losing their lives over this.”

Hassan wonders how long this unrest will last, and if an apology from the Danish government at this point is too little, too late.

“If any good can come out of this, I hope it will be the lesson that this is not the way to unity,” he said. “Freedom of speech is not the same thing as freedom to destroy relationships. The feelings between Muslims and non-Muslims were already on shaky ground in Denmark. We should be building good faith, not tearing down the progress that’s been made.”

Spiliotes said the incident is a clear indication of the liberties we often take for granted in the U.S.

“We’ve certainly had cartoons in the past that have fueled arguments, and we certainly will in the future,” Spiliotes said. “But our culture is set up for that. We are expected to be provoked. We have a different set of norms over what we find offensive, and what’s an acceptable reaction to that.”

Hassan said he hopes cartoonists and others in the media will take a more balanced approach in the future. He said the average citizen in the U.S. is more tolerant than the media portrays, and many church groups in the Manchester area have been reaching out to the local Islamic Society to show support.

“The media shows these images of the violence, but the average Muslim doesn’t agree with those methods,” he said. “I understand the outrage, but I don’t agree with the violence. It doesn’t solve anything. People who educate themselves about the Muslim way of life will see that. I hope they do.”