An Iranian newspaper wants to publish Holocaust cartoons as a way of exploring the Western commitment to free speech. The Danish newspaper that originally triggered the Muhammad cartoons controversy says it will consider publishing them.
An excerpt from the AP story on Yahoo! News:
A prominent Iranian newspaper has said it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the Muhammad caricatures.
Flemming Rose, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, which first published the Muhammad drawings, said of the Iranian cartoons: "We would consider publishing them, but we will not make a decision before we have seen the cartoons."
In an e-mail to The Associated Press, he said such publication would "in no way (be) seen as remorse or a way to establish a false balance between our cartoons and the Iranian cartoons; it is seen as a fact of documentation so our readers can make up their own minds."
Jyllands-Posten spokesman Tage Clausen told the AP that Rose had not yet been able to reach the Iranian paper, Hamshahri.
The Danish paper has come under mounting pressure, at home and abroad, after publishing the drawings in September. Former Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen said Wednesday on national radio that "when an editor in chief admits he made an erroneous judgment ... he should quit."
In a brief reply on the daily's Web site, editor-in-chief Carsten Juste said, "I do not feel called ... in that direction."
The Globe and Mail Marcus Gee said this today about the Holocaust cartoon contest: "An interesting idea, considering that Iran's President says the Holocaust never happened."
Anyway, here's a link to Canada's hate crimes laws.
Pay close attention to this one, Holocaust cartoonists:
318. (1) Every one who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
To my mind, there's a distinct difference between satirizing religious figures and promoting hatred, although I concede that the difference may not be detectable for Islamic fundamentalists.
There's also a difference between a group being offended by a satirical cartoon (but being shrugged off by the wider populace), and drawing one specifically to promote hatred against a group by the wider society.
Along that line of thought, there's more of a direct line between Holocaust denial and hatred promotion than there is between the latter and satirical cartoons about leading religious figures (I'm speaking about the published Jyllens-Posten cartoons, not the truly ugly ones -- allegedly from right-wing Danes -- that purportedly show Muhammad sodomizing a praying Muslim. To my mind, that would qualify for prosecution under hate crimes legislation).
But then again, one radical Muslim group in Europe released some cartoons on the Internet, including one with Hitler in bed with Anne Frank, telling her to put that in her diary. The remaining neo-Nazis in Europe would probably find it funny. The vast majority of the population would not.
In much of the Middle East, cartoons attacking Jews, Israel and the West are about the only targets that are allowed by regimes like Syria and Iran.
This was an interesting comment on CAJ-L Wednesday night in response to a comment about having the "guts" to run something you don't agree with. It's about the newspaper Hamshahri:
While there is some limited expression of dissent in Iran, this newspaper is certainly not in the avant garde. It's owned by the muncipality of Tehran, from which cometh Iran's new president. It is engaging not in "freedom of expression" but in a predictable. reflexive support of President Ahmedineajad's anti-semitism.
The only "right" it's exercising is the right to toe the party line, much as Julius Streicher's Nazi weekly newspaper, Der Stuermer, engaged in "freedom of expression" to support You-Know-Who's anti-semitism in the 1930s.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presumably sees the West as suppressing free speech for not being as virulently anti-Semitic as he appears to be. Some of his statements, courtesy of the BBC:
As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map.
He has also called for Israel to be moved elsewhere. After his "wiped off the map" outburst and subsequent condemnation by the UN Security Council, Ahmadinejad said back in late October:
... "My words were the Iranian nation's words.
"Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid."
You may remember that Iran also wants to hold a conference on the Holocaust. More from the BBC:
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said debate of the issue should not be off limits.
"It is a strange world. It is possible to discuss everything except the Holocaust," he said.
"The foreign ministry plans to hold a conference on the scientific aspect of the issue to discuss and review its repercussions."
Actually, one can discuss the Holocaust, but one can't deny it happened, which mainly seems to be the life work of anti-Semites and/or neo-Nazis in any event.
(I should mention there is one country where you can't mention a certain genocide: Turkey. Novelist Orhan Pamuk had been charged with "insulting Turkishness" for saying in a magazine interview about the Armenian genocide: "One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares talk about it." However, charges were dropped on Jan. 23.)
On balance, I consider the Holocaust cartoon argument to be pretty much a red herring.