Download Erik Ottoson Trovalla, Iconoclasm and boundary maintenance

ERIK OTTOSON TROVALLA
ICONOCLASM AND BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE
NIGERIA IN THE WAKE OF THE MUHAMMAD CARTOONS
This article is part of the project
Sacred things
www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/etnografiskamuseet
Copyright © Erik Ottoson Trovalla 2013
ISBN 978-91-85344-69-7
“Sacred Things in the Postsecular Society” ran at the Museum of Ethnography during 2010 and 2011, with funding from the Swedish Arts Council.
The project was led by Associate Professor Lotten Gustafsson Reinius,
curator at the Museum of Ethnography, and comprised studies by Ylva
Habel, Ph.D., lecturer in media and communication studies at Södertörn
University College, and by Erik Ottoson Trovalla, Ph.D., an ethnologist
from Uppsala University. See also the articles Sacred Things in the Postsecular Society: An Introduction (https://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/forskning-samlingar/forskning/publicerat/heliga-ting/) by G
­ ustafsson Reinius
and The Domesticated Uncanny: VooDolls, Swedish-brand Pseudo-magic
(https://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/forskning-samlingar/forskning/
publicerat/heliga-ting/) by Habel.
INTRODUCTION
At the start of February 2006 Nigerian newspapers reported on how
traders in the northern, mainly Muslim, part of the country had started removing Danish products from their shops and market stalls in
protest against the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad which had
been published in the Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten in September
the previous year. The most striking effect was the boycott of dairy
produce, for example Arla’s powdered milk, Dano Milk. A couple of
weeks later the first serious violence broke out in the country. In connection with riots in the northern cities of Maiduguri and Katsina on
18 February, around fifteen Christians were killed. In the following
week retaliations against Muslims would claim a further hundred
lives in different places in the south of the country.
The reactions in Nigeria were part of a wave of protest that swept
over the whole world. It was most vehement in countries with large
groups of Muslims, but there were many others who condemned the
publication of the cartoons, which they saw as motivated by Islamophobia and racism (Klausen 2009:8). Just as in Nigeria, the protests
found many expressions in all these countries. Some of them took
place in the streets, in the form of demonstrations and riots. Others
took the form of debate articles, letters to the editor, and similar media features. In many places there were also boycotts on goods from
Denmark and other countries where newspapers had reproduced the
cartoons.
This study will focus on the reactions in Nigeria to the publication
of the Muhammad cartoons in Jyllandsposten in September 2005. An
important aspect of the cartoon crisis was that the events were part
of a global circulation of stances, arguments, emotions, and material,
yet all this was rooted in the local, in many different parts of the
world. Nigeria, which has witnessed increasing ethnic and religious
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tension for a long time, is an example of this. When the events in the
wake of the cartoons meshed with an explosive situation in domestic
politics, the country was hard hit. Another reason for focusing on
Nigeria is that much of what has been written about the cartoon
crisis assumes that a chasm appeared between Europe and Muslim
societies chiefly in the east. Although not explicitly stated, media
reporting was coloured by the idea of a “clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1996), between a stereotyped Muslim world populated by
“Arabs” and an equally stereotyped secular or Christian world located in Europe and the USA. The conflict was thus pictured as having
a clear east–west orientation, although most of the deaths occurred
in Nigeria (Klausen 2009:108; Rudling 2006:76).
The empirical basis of the study mainly consists of articles published in English-language Nigerian newspapers at the time of the
events.1 During a six-month stay in the city of Jos in central Nigeria
in 2007 I also had the opportunity to discuss the events with both
Christians and Muslims.
The crisis shows how materiality can be charged with religious
and political significance and how different things can move in and
out of charged spheres through the ways in which they are handled
by different actors. The cartoons led people to take up strong stances
on the Other’s religion, or lack of religion. The reactions likewise revealed the multifaceted meanings of materiality. As a result of the
boycotts, Danish consumer goods like Dano Milk were filled with
meaning on the religious plane, as manifestations of the distant enemy that had created the cartoons.
One of the things shown by the course of events is how conflicts
can fill objects with a charge. When the dichotomy “He who is not
with us is against us” began to prevail, this also affected relations
to objects. The fact that material things are so useful as means of
communication and as identity markers means that they can easI am grateful to Ulrika Trovalla for giving me access to some of the newspaper
articles I used in the study, and for providing highly valuable comments.
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ily be associated with different stances. This in turn generates new
uncertainty in relation to materiality. Are things with us or against
us (Jackson 2005:130; cf. Andersson Trovalla 2011:79–109)? In a certain situation, any object at all can take on a significance for the
antagonisms. My hope with this study is that it will shed light on the
processes in which things can be charged with meanings to become
either desirable or detestable (cf. Gustafsson 2005).
There are also obvious lessons to learn for institutions engaged
in the public debate: not just for traditional media, but also culture
and knowledge institutions such as galleries, theatres, and museums,
whose activities occasionally touch on issues of limits to free speech.
Many museums, for example, are constantly grappling with the ethical questions that arise when acquiring and exhibiting certain highly
charged categories of objects (e.g. Hallgren 2010; Masterton 2010).
“MUHAMMAD’S FACE”
On 30 September 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten published a number of cartoons under the heading “Muhammeds ansigt”
– Muhammad’s face (Rose 2005). The newspaper, one of those with
the biggest circulation in Denmark, is aimed mainly at a conservative
middle class, mostly living in rural areas (Klausen 2009:11). In an attempt to challenge what they viewed as complaisance and exaggerated deference to the feelings of religious Muslims, the editors had
decided to breach a taboo, according to which the prophet Muhammad is not to be depicted. The newspaper printed twelve cartoons,
drawn by twelve cartoonists, who had been asked by the newspaper
to portray the prophet as they saw him.
The challenge had originally been sent to the trade union in which
the relatively small collective of Danish newspaper cartoonists is organized, but only fifteen out of forty-two responded. Two of them
objected to the project itself, another declined for fear of reprisals,
but twelve submitted entries (Klausen 2009:14f.). Many of the others
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were bound by contracts with rival newspapers and therefore could
not take part, although they would have liked to (Klausen 2009:17).
The twelve cartoons show great variation in the interpretation of
the assignment and in what the artists wished to convey. Some of
them turned out to be highly offensive to Muslims, while others criticized Jyllandsposten and xenophobic currents in Denmark. Unfortunately, not much attention was paid to the variation in the messages,
partly because the discussion soon became a matter of black and
white, partly because the cartoons – as usual when it comes to satirical cartoons in the press – built on references that were very national
and difficult to understand in an international context.
An example of the latter is the cartoon showing a pupil in front of
the blackboard in a classroom. On the board is a Persian text written
in the Perso-Arabic script: “Jyllandsposten’s journalists are a gang of
reactionary provocateurs” (Alhassan 2008:45). The words “Mohammed, Valby School 7A” are written on the cartoon, with an arrow
pointing at the boy, showing that Mohammed in this case is not the
prophet Muhammad but an ordinary schoolboy, living in Valby, a
suburb of Copenhagen that often occurs in the Danish discussion of
integration. On his T-shirt, in the colours of the local football team, is
the word “Fremtiden” – The Future.2 It is quite clear that the cartoon
is critical of this action on the part of Jyllandsposten, but it is also clear
that very few possess the knowledge and the interpretive framework
required to understand the whole meaning. Another cartoon shows
a man with a stereotyped European face, wearing a turban, in which
an orange is falling from the sky. On the orange are the words “PR
stunt”. In his hand the man holds a drawing of a stick figure with a
beard, also wearing a turban. The orange alludes to a Danish saying
literally meaning “to get an orange in your turban” used of people
who enjoy a stroke of luck. The man bears a strong resemblance to
See e.g. Wikipedia: “Descriptions of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptions_of_the_ Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons. Accessed 16 May 2011.
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Kåre Bluitgen, an author of children’s books who in a prelude to Jyllandsposten’s initiative a few months earlier had complained about the difficulties in finding an artist willing to illustrate his book about the prophet
Mohammad. This cartoon likewise requires a good understanding of
Danish references if the critical tone is to be obvious.
The drawing that was to make the biggest impact internationally
shows a man with stereotyped “Arab” features, which really means
that the representation borrows expressions from a long tradition of
anti-Semitic caricatures, such as an exaggerated hooked nose and
piercing eyes. On his head he has a turban in which there is a bomb
with an ignited fuse. On the turban is an emblem with the Muslim
declaration of belief, shahada, in Arabic calligraphy.3 Although this
cartoon was viewed as the clearest evidence of genuine spite against
Islam that the protest movement believed to lie behind the publication of the cartoons, the cartoonist’s intentions were not quite so
explicit; his critique, as he himself claimed, was aimed at extreme
Islamist terrorists trying to take over Islam for their own purposes. But instead most people – not just Muslims – read the cartoon
as equating Islam with religious extremism and terrorism (Klausen
2009:20 ff.). Some of the other cartoons were also considered highly
provocative in both form and content. A couple of them include sexual allusions, very coarse in one case. Several other cartoons depict
swarthy men with exaggerated noses and drawn weapons. Bombs
occur in three of the cartoons. Yet another cartoon shows a man
with a beard and turban and with a halo drawn as a flat ring above
his head. Since the ring is drawn in perspective, as an ellipse with the
front edge disappearing into the void, the halo can equally well be
interpreted as a pair of horns.
A complication worth noticing is that, given the fact that the
prophet has so seldom been portrayed through history, it is difficult
to say with any certainty what he looked like. There are indeed deThe declaration runs: “La illaha ila Allah wa Muhammadun rasoolollah”, which
means “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God”.
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tailed descriptions in biographical accounts of the prophet’s life (see
e.g. al-Alwani 2001:23 ff.), but that literature is not widely known
in Scandinavia, so the cartoonists had no established conventions
about the prophet’s appearance to relate to. So where did they get
their ideas?
Needless to say, one falls back on one’s racial prejudices: the Prophet
must look like a “typical” Arab. But what does a typical Arab look
like? He looks like the typical Jew, of course, that one finds in the Nazi
cartoons of the past but also in the present-day anti-Jewish cartoons in
Arab countries and the underground anti-Semitic literature in Europe
and the United States. It is amazing how different ingrained hatreds
can often produce identical results. (Naim 2006:42)
When the cartoonists were left entirely to their own imagination,
the outsider perspective was palpable. At the same time, it could
be claimed that the imagery sometimes crossed the fuzzy boundary
that separates the exaggerated style that is typical (and indispensable) for caricatures from outright racist stereotyping.
According to the political scientist Jytte Klausen, who has conducted the most exhaustive study hitherto of the cartoon crisis, the leadup to the publication, like at least some of the drawings, was characterized by a striking lack of insight into the process they had started.
Although camps for and against the cartoons were quickly established, and the initiative was portrayed either as heroic and praiseworthy or as studiedly malicious, the truth is rather that the whole
history was badly thought through and to a large extent steered by
chance. The editor-in-chief, Carsten Juste, admitted this afterwards,
and explained that he would have refrained if he had known what
he knew later (Klausen 2009:3, 19). They no doubt hoped to provoke
debate, but no one foresaw that the cartoons would be republished in
143 newspapers in fifty-six countries during the following six months
(Klausen 2009:49).
Initially, however, the cartoons did not attract much international
attention. It was not until 17 October that the Egyptian newspaper
Al Fagr was the first outside Denmark to reprint one of them (Hervik
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et al. 2008:32f.).4 Before that, however, some diplomatic activity had
started. In a latter to the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, dated 12 October, the ambassadors of eleven countries with
mainly Muslim populations requested a meeting to discuss the conditions in which Danish Muslims lived. In this request the cartoons
were brought up as one of four examples of a tougher climate (Hervik
et al. 2008:32f.). A letter with similar content was also written by the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Fogh Rasmussen commented only on the complaint about the Muhammad cartoons, and
declined the suggested meeting with reference to the fact that the
Danish government could not interfere in what a newspaper chose
to publish (Hervik et al. 2008:32f.). The media scholar Peter Hervik
has argued that it was necessary for Fogh Rasmussen, for the sake of
domestic politics, to “spin” the issue as a question of freedom of the
press as opposed to a question of the government’s policies towards
the Muslim minority in the country (Hervik 2008:59). Klausen makes
the same interpretation, seeing the Fogh Rasmussen government’s
dependence on the xenophobic Danish People’s Party as the reason
for the prime minister’s attitude (Klausen 2009:66, 149). It has been
argued that this refusal to meet the ambassadors was a disastrous
mistake, without which the international protests would not have
had the scope they actually attained (e.g. Hervik et al. 2008:33). For
now the conflict reached an inter-state level.
A turning point came when a delegation of representatives of Danish Muslim congregations compiled a dossier including photocopies
of the cartoons5 and began to show it to Muslim governments and
See also Wikipedia: “List of newspapers that reprinted Jyllands-Posten’s Muhammad cartoons”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_that_reprinted_ Jyllands-Posten’s_Muhammad_cartoons. Accessed 17 May 2011.
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A further three pictures were included, which are said to have been sent by e-mail
to Danish Muslims when the reactions to the cartoons were reported in the media.
Most people, however, did not understand that these pictures were not actually
connected to the cartoons published in Jyllandsposten. This has been interpreted to
mean that the people behind the dossier wanted to spice the content. They themselves say that they wanted to show the situation in which Danish Muslims live, for
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organizations in North Africa and the Middle East. The campaign
started in Cairo on 3 December, where they had been invited by
the Egyptian government. At the meeting of the OIC in Mecca a
few days later, the dossier circulated among the delegates (Klausen
2009:37f.). The cartoons were held up there as one of several examples of what was described as growing Islamophobia in Denmark
(Hahn 2008:196; Klausen 2009:7f.). With the dossier, the cartoons
were put into a context where the vulnerable situation of Muslims
in Europe came into focus. When Magazinet, a small Norwegian
newspaper on the Christian right wing, then republished the cartoons on 10 January 2006, there was a clear narrative against which
the cartoons could be understood, and this heightened the international tensions (Rudling 2006:84; Klausen 2009:47). Two weeks later,
Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador from Denmark. In the weeks
that followed, several Danish embassies would be burnt down. Boycotts were simultaneously started against Danish products in several
countries (Becker 2008:126; Goldstone 2007:211; Klausen 2009:1;
Maamoun & Aggarwal 2008; Rudling 2006:85). The protest movement demanded an apology from Jyllandsposten, and from the Danish
government. The issue was highly fraught in Denmark, where a large
majority thought that there was no need to apologize to the Muslims
(Klausen 2009:32). Later, however, apologies of various kinds were
tendered. One came from Jyllandsposten’s editor-in-chief, Carsten
Juste, at the end of January. On 2 February Fogh Rasmussen gave an
interview on an Arabian satellite channel where he explained that
the Danish people had no intention to insult Muslims, and that he
condemned all statements and actions that offend other people’s religious feelings. Although he denied at home that this was an apology,
the statement went a long way to assuaging the anger of religious
leaders all over the world (Klausen 2009:41). Unfortunately, however,
the snowball had by now irrevocably started rolling. In late January and early February the cartoons were condemned at the Friday
which it was relevant to show these pictures too (Hahn 2008:196; Naim 2006:43).
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prayers in mosques throughout the Middle East (Klausen 2009:105).
On the first Friday in February, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, president of the
Muslim Brotherhood, delivered a sermon on the satellite station Qatar TV, in which he urged Muslims all over the world to unite in an
international day of protest against the cartoons (Klausen 2009:103).
This call was heeded in many countries.
THE MATERIALITY OF THE CARTOON CRISIS
The course of events triggered by the publication of the Muhammad cartoons clearly shows how meanings are created in people’s
interaction with material things. What began as a page in a newspaper would probably have had quite different consequences if it
had stayed within the normal readership of Jyllandsposten (Klausen
2009:11). When the cartoons were also published in electronic form,
however, they became accessible in other arenas (Klausen 2009:4f.).
But it was in the form of photocopies in a dossier that the cartoons
really ended up on the global stage:
The dossier turned up at various important junctures at meetings in the
Middle East, where angry resolutions against the Danes were passed.
And travelled back to Europe in the briefcases of Muslim association
leaders who had attended those meetings (Klausen 2009:7).
Jytte Klausen’s description makes it clear how the cartoons acquired a new agency by being copied and circulated from hand
to hand. The form was no longer the general address of the mass
media but a personal exchange between individuals. In the subsequent course of events the cartoons would continue to move back
and forth between different media and materialities, each with its
own conditions and consequences. The reactions, for their part,
had their own materiality, in the form of riots, embassy fires, cyberattacks, telephone text messages, and debates in the media, and in
the form of boycotts on powdered milk and butter. The cartoon
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crisis can rightly be called multi-material.
When the news first reached Nigeria, the reactions were vehement
but not violent. The first Nigerian comments on the cartoons could
be seen in the press on Friday 3 February 2006, the same day the
president of the Muslim Brotherhood called for an international day
of protest (Klausen 2009:103). Religious leaders in Kano in the north
of the country reacted above all to the fact that several European
newspapers had chosen to reproduce the cartoons. From their perspective it was difficult not to see this as a coordinated demonstration by the Western media. The response therefore had to be to break
off diplomatic relations and impose trade boycotts against countries
whose media had chosen to display loyalty to Jyllandsposten. “We
should paralyse them economically since this is the only thing they
sanctify,” said Muhammad Turi, one of the leaders of the Islamic
Movement of Nigeria (Business in Africa 2006).
The same day also saw the start of the popular protests on the
streets, which would continue for several days. The newspaper Daily
Trust, based in Kano, described how thousands of demonstrators
gathered after the Friday prayers and marched towards the city centre. One of the speakers declared that the cartoons were an attempt
to provoke violent reactions among Muslims, so that they could later
be accused of being terrorists. Calls for the same kind of boycotts
that Muslims had started in other countries could be seen on placards and also circulated via text messages. One example ran: “Defending the integrity of our beloved Prophet (PBUH)6 is the duty of
every Muslim. The least we can do is to boycott all products made
in Denmark and Norway, e.g. Nido, Dano milk etc.” (Kazure & Machika 2006). Of these, Nido is actually not a Scandinavian product
but a trade mark of the Swiss Nestlé corporation; this confusion was
not uncommon in the events that ensued.
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) was early to see the
PBUH is an abbreviation of the phrase “Peace and blessings be upon him”, which
devout Muslims often add when they name the prophet Muhammad in text.
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risk that the anger against European nations would increase tension between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. CAN, which is the
biggest umbrella organization for Christians in Nigeria, has militant
traits (Falola 1998:7) and has several times started actions that have
escalated violence (see e.g. Bastian 2006:47). It is important to remember that both sides of the religious divide in Nigeria have been
actively involved in the outbursts of violence that have shaken the
country, and that what made the situation so inflammable was the
mutual demonization that has been going on for some time (see e.g.
Hackett 2003; Marshall 2009; Obadare 2006). This time, however,
CAN realized the importance of condemning the cartoons (BBC
News 2006a); an olive branch that was not going to be forgotten.
In the events that followed, several commentators would remind
people of the lost opportunity for peaceful development that CAN’s
statement offered (e.g. Adegboyega 2006; Agande 2006; Daily Trust
2006b; Obateru et al. 2006).
Events in the surrounding world often have consequences for relations between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. In particular, the
idea of “the clash of civilizations” has been interwoven with domestic
Nigerian frameworks of interpretation. A long-established image is
that the northern part of the country seeks contact with countries in
the Middle East, while southern Nigeria allies itself with the Christian world, above all with Europe and the USA. Real and imagined
alliances of this kind have increased the suspicion between the two
parts of the country on several occasions. One controversial issue
that was hot in the years after 2001 was what stance Nigeria should
take on the USA’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Muslims noted that
the USA seemed primarily to be directing its war against Muslim
countries and regarded the campaigns as aspects of a religious war
(Bastian 2006:43). Christian Nigerians, for their part, feared that
Muslim extremists would build up al-Qaeda cells in the country (Andersson Trovalla 2011:59).
CAN’s attempt to distance itself from Denmark and the other
European countries should likewise be viewed in the light of this
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chasm in relation to the surrounding world. It was important to
stress that the insult should be blamed on the people responsible for
it, and thereby emphasize that the conflict was with Denmark and
not with the Christians in Nigeria. The same ambition could also
be detected in comments from Muslims. As the cartoons became a
given topic of public discussion, leading religious figures expressed
not only outrage but also grave concern about what could happen if
the protests got out of control. Several comments revealed the difficulty of finding the right balance between the two stances. In a call
for a boycott of Danish products, a leading businessman declared his
willingness to risk everything to defend the prophet Muhammad,
but added: “We must learn to live with one another with respect and
avoid anything that would set us against one another and truncate
or undermine the hard-earned and prevailing peace in our country
which is prone to ethno-religious upheavals” (Gwantu 2006b). The
solution was often to protest vehemently but also to give the messages a clear address. The protests were therefore given national markers. Placards with anti-Danish slogans were common, and the red
and white flag was burnt in the streets (IRIN 2006b). Demands were
also made that Nigeria as a nation should act by diplomatic means;
these demands were not heeded by the national authorities, but they
were by the House of Assembly in Kano State.
After a weekend of meetings, statements in the press, and street
protests over much of the African continent, many public persons
in northern Nigeria felt they were under pressure to take a stance.
On the Tuesday the speaker of the Kano House of Assembly took
the initiative to mount a manifestation that gathered around two
hundred people, including the forty members. The highlight of the
action was when the speaker set fire to a Danish flag. This unusual
event attracted considerable attention in the media, and also helped
to spread the news that the House of Assembly the day before had
ruled to impose economic sanctions on Danish companies working
in the region. An order for seventy-two buses was cancelled, and
negotiations about a hydroelectric power station worth twenty-five
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million US dollars were broken off (BBC News 2006b). In addition,
a ban had been passed on the sale of Dano Milk, Nido milk (sic) and
other products from Scandinavian countries (Musa 2006).
Reactions were also heard from private companies. Representatives of the vehicle importer Buoshishi Auto Ventures Ltd declared
that they had broken off all dealings with their Danish partner Bukkehave and intended to do no business with Danish companies in
the future. They also urged other businessmen to do likewise. The
company’s chairman, Alhaji Yahaya Muhammad, described the publication of the cartoons as an attempt to sow unnecessary bitterness,
hate, and enmity between Muslims and non-Muslims, and to demolish the peace and mutual respect that had prevailed, with few interruptions, since the prophet Muhammad’s time in Medina. Moreover,
he pointed out, Danish companies had a long history of profiting
from business with Muslim countries all over the world, and it was
strange that they should choose to destroy their good name in this
way (Gwantu 2006b).
Smaller businesses also took part in the boycott. Less than a week
after the news of the cartoons had reached Nigeria, the newspapers
reported that most of the traders at the markets in Kano now refrained from selling Danish products. For many of them, Dano Milk
had been a big seller, but now the stocks were left untouched. One
of the traders said that he had bought a large batch, but after he had
heard about the cartoons he regarded any profit from them as haram,
forbidden. “For now I would stop dealing with their products. I have
plenty of them in my store until I hear from the Denmark government and that would determine my decision,” he said (Ibrahim &
Marafa 2008). At Singer Market, where dry goods make up a large
share of the product range, traders had even destroyed two sacks of
Dano Milk when the news came (Ibrahim & Marafa 2008).
In the first half of February there were growing worries that the
cartoon crisis would trigger the kind of violence between Christians
and Muslims that had increasingly struck different parts of Nigeria.
Before the Friday prayers on 10 February, the chief imam at Abuja
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National Mosque, Sheikh Musa Muhammad, appealed to the police
to tighten security in order to prevent violent demonstrations in the
capital, Abuja. Muslim policemen in plain clothes should take part
in the prayers, he suggested, to be able to hear about any plans for
acts of violence. He himself would immediately report on any such
plans if he heard of them. No conscious and responsible Muslim, he
declared, should allow himself to be associated with demonstrations
that led to unrest. He praised CAN’s stance and viewed it as proof,
if any were needed, that the Christians in Nigeria were not their enemies (Abubakar 2006c).
At the same time, frustration grew. Representatives of the Muslim
Student Society of Nigeria reacted to the cartoon with the bomb in
the turban, which was thought to equate Muslims and their prophet
with terrorists, and threw the good name of the prophet on the rubbish heap. The publication of the cartoon was nothing but a collective declaration of war against Islam, and the world’s Muslims must
rise to defend their religion (Aliyu 2006).
A communiqué signed by religious leaders in Yobe State in northern Nigeria called the publication a threat to world peace, and urged
the nation’s president to break off all diplomatic relations with Denmark and Norway, and to continue the boycotts on Danish products.
The communiqué was issued in connection with a protest march
that assembled thousands of participants during the celebration of
Ashura – an important feast in Shia Islam, honouring the memory of
the prophet’s grandson, Husayn, who died at the Battle of Karbala
in 680. Ridiculing the prophet is a very serious offence, and Muslims
were reminded that anyone guilty of that risks being killed in accordance with Islamic law. At the same time Muslims in Yobe State
were urged to show restraint in their protests, and to bear in mind
that Islam is a peaceful religion (Bego 2006; Gusau 2006). The sultan of Sokoto also believed that Islam was under attack from Western countries and demanded that the federal government react with
diplomatic means against Denmark. In addition, the Danish mission
in Nigeria should be closed. When the surrounding world attacks,
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Muslims must defend themselves, he argued, but he too issued a reminder that Islam has always been a religion of tolerance and peace
(Mohammed 2006).
FIRE AND GREEN LEAVES
Saturday 18 February was to be a turning point. In one way the day
saw a culmination of the cartoon crisis for Nigeria, but in another
way it would lead the course of events in another – national and
profoundly tragic – direction. Exactly what happened was initially
unclear, which reflects the fact that the situation had now become
rather complex. What was obvious was that rioting had been raging on Saturday 18 February in the cities of Maiduguri and Katsina
in northern Nigeria. In Maiduguri there had been several deaths –
later the evidence seemed to suggest that around fifteen people had
lost their lives. In Katsina one person had died. In both cities there
had also been relatively extensive material damage; churches and
businesses belonging to Christians from southern Nigeria had been
particularly hard hit.
In Maiduguri the violence developed from what was initially a
peaceful demonstration against the cartoons, in connection with a
public lecture about the prophet Muhammad in one of the squares
in the city. In the middle of the lecture someone had discovered a
pickpocket. A scuffle had started and the police had used teargas
to disperse the crowd. This had the reverse effect, causing emotions
to explode. Most of the people in the square had not noticed the
episode of the pickpocket; they thought that the police had started
shooting in order to break up the whole demonstration. Small groups
formed quickly, arming themselves with sticks and other weapons,
and began looting and vandalizing. People selling petrol on the black
market – a very common sight on the streets everywhere in Nigeria –
had quickly been robbed of their wares. The immediate availability of
litre-bottles and gallon-drums of petrol probably made the destruction
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worse than it would otherwise have been (This Day 2006a).
The following week, rep1orters from the Christian newspaper The
Daily Champion described a journey through the ravaged city. Among
the smouldering remains of churches they saw people looking for
things that had been spared by the fires and the looters: chairs, musical instruments, “holy books” (Gukas & Ailemen 2006). In the Muslim newspaper The Daily Trust the leader of the Borno Muslim Forum, which had arranged the meeting and the demonstration, made
a statement deploring what had happened. It was adolescents who
were behind the riots, acting on their own initiative. The programme
on the Saturday had begun with an assurance that Christians were
not the enemy. They pointed out that CAN had condemned the cartoons, and that the Vatican had done the same (Daily Trust 2006b).
It was not by chance that the riots happened in Maiduguri and
Katsina. These two cities had been selected as the venues for public
hearings about a controversial amendment of the country’s constitution proposed by President Olusegun Obasanjo. These hearings were
to be held on the Wednesday in the week after the unrest.
For Nigeria, 1999 was an important year. The first democratic
elections since 1983 were held,7 and Obasanjo was elected president.
Elections were held again in 2003, when Obasanjo retained his position as president. The next elections would be held in 2007, which
would be the end of his time in the palace on Aso Rock in Abuja. The
constitution that had been adopted in 1999 limited the number of periods as president to two. This was what Obasanjo wanted to change.
The proposal was controversial in several ways. Obasanjo was part
of the old military dictatorship, and although he had ended his period in power by handing it over in peaceful forms, thus paving the
way for what would be a brief period of democracy between 1979 and
1983, it was suspected that Obasanjo’s move would take the country
Attempts to return to democracy were also made in the early 1990s, with parliamentary elections at state level in 1991 and a presidential election in 1993, but this
was annulled by the dictator Ibrahim Babangida.
7
18
back to dictatorship. Moreover, a third period with Obasanjo would
upset the increasingly delicate balance between the southern Christian and the northern Muslim Nigeria. An informal agreement, and
according to many an essential condition if the country was to hold
together under democratic rule, was that the northern and southern parts, regardless of which party won, would take it in turns to
fill the presidency. Obasanjo is from the south, and also a “bornagain Christian” and a devout Pentecostalist (Obadare 2006). Since
independence in 1964, most of Nigeria’s dictators and presidents had
been from the north, which Christians from the south regarded as a
serious distortion in the balance of power. Many of them therefore
spoke of Obasanjo’s return in biblical terms, as a second coming and
a fulfilment of God’s promise to free his children (Obadare 2006:669).
When the military administrators were replaced by democratically elected governors in 1999, political opinions among the grass
roots could make themselves heard. In several northern states there
had been calls for the application of sharia law in every sphere of
justice, not just in civil cases as previously. This demand should be
viewed against the background of the poorly functioning legal system (Andersson Trovalla 2011:129), as well as a long list of economic,
infrastructural, and other deficiencies, which had fostered deep suspicion of secular forms of government in northern Nigeria (Falola
1998:31). Just a few months after the election in 1999, Zamfara was
the first of twelve states to implement sharia for criminal cases (Ludwig 2008:609; see also Angerbrandt 2011). The introduction of democracy thus meant not just that the country acquired a president
who clearly represented one of the two rival power blocks, but also
that the other power block took a large step backwards. In 2006 this
gap was highly palpable.
The coverage of these events by foreign reporters focused on the
way the Muslim north distanced itself from southern Nigeria, and on
the outrage provoked by the cartoons, but largely missed the significance of Obasanjo’s ambitions. In Katsina in particular, the proposed
amendment to the constitution was perhaps the most important fac-
19
tor triggering the violence. On the Saturday the streets of the city
had been filled with placards, while cars and motorcycles had been
decorated with green leaves – a common element in Nigeria’s urban
signal system. Leaves are often a symbol of revolt, strikes, or riots,
but they can also mean that something is for sale. A branch with
green leaves is an exclamation mark that makes the observer aware
that something is going on.
What actually mobilized the masses in Katsina was Obasanjo’s
attempt to stay on as president for a third period, but since the governor of Katsina State supported the proposal, it was suspected that he
would try to stop the planned protests. Permission had instead been
sought for a demonstration against the Muhammad cartoons (Labaran 2006). After gathering in a square and talking for a while about
the cartoons, the meeting had turned its attention to the real agenda
and soon the crown was marching towards the governor’s palace.
When they got there, the demonstrators encountered shots from the
police, causing one death. The demonstration quickly turned into a
riot, with vandalism and looting (Ibrahim 2006).
On the Sunday and the Monday, the tense situation would result in
violence in Gombe and Bauchi, two other cities in the north. Many
began to fear that the situation would further escalate. The comments in the newspapers were ominous. Attempts by the arrangers
of the meeting in Maiduguri to end the rioting were little heeded,
and concern was expressed that people from the northern parts of
the country who were living in the south would suffer recriminations
(Babadoko & Sanusi 2006). Christians also issued veiled threats of
reprisals. CAN’s leaders in the hard-hit Plateau State, located in between the north and the south, declared that their weapons were at
the ready (Ajayi et al. 2006). Peter Akinola, Anglican archbishop and
national president of CAN, claimed in a statement that the recent
events were part of a long-term plan to turn Nigeria into a Muslim
nation, and that Christians could not be expected to sit passively and
let this happen. Muslims, he said, did not have a “monopoly on violence”. In the light of what happened the following day, he would be
20
heavily criticized for this statement (Ekklesia 2006; IRIN 2006a).
South-eastern Nigeria would be the scene of the next chapter in
the tragic course of events. On the Tuesday the long-distance buses
with dead bodies from Maiduguri in the baggage compartments began to arrive in the city of Onitsha to be buried by their relatives. At
the sight of the bodies, the city exploded in violence, which would
continue for two days and claim around a hundred lives (Purefoy
2006; IRIN 2006a; Onyekamuo 2006; Daily Trust 2006a). Young
people armed with clubs, machetes, and petrol drums gathered at
the bus station and headed to the parts of the city where people
from northern Nigeria lived (IRIN 2006c). The violence was extensive. The governor reckoned that ten to fifteen thousand people had
taken part in the attacks (Edike & Anayookoli 2006). Mosques and
markets where many northerners worked were burnt down. Thousands of Muslims were seen running towards the bridge over the
Niger to escape to safety on the other side. At the bridge they ran
into further attacks. Eyewitnesses described how people were burnt
to death (BBC News 2006d). Many are also said to have been thrown
off the bridge into the river (BBC News 2006c). Elsewhere in the city
road blocks were set up, where cars were stopped and searched for
people who looked as if they belonged to the Hausa or one of the
other ethnic groups from northern Nigeria (ibid.).
In the evening an uneasy calm descended on the city. Refugees
from the violence had sought shelter in the military camp. In the
morning rumours spread that some of them had sneaked out under
cover of darkness and attacked a school. The rumour gave new energy to the fury, and a new day of violence began (IRIN 2006d).
When the second day of violence in Onitsha was over, the whole
country was on tenterhooks. Over the whole of northern Nigeria,
but especially in Maiduguri, Katsina, and Bauchi where the violence
had started, inhabitants with their roots in the south of the country
feared reprisals. Thousands fled to police stations and army camps,
where they sat packed together under the sun in the barrack squares.
At many places in southern Nigeria, attacks on people from the
21
north continued on a smaller scale. Anger was still smouldering in
Onitsha, and groups of youths continued to roam the streets (Daily
Trust 2006a), but the intensity gradually faded.
VOICES AFTER THE RIOTS
In the following week there was intensive discussion in the Nigerian
press. What had actually happened? It was clear that the death toll
had been high and that the economic damage was also huge. But
how were the events related, and how were events on the local level
related to the national and international situation? The comments in
the newspapers could be grouped in two discourses, aligned in accordance with the gap between the northern and southern parts of
the country. The northern newspapers were dominated by the Muslim perspective, while the southern ones had a Christian outlook.
Yet this division was far from absolute: Christian writers occasionally wrote in northern newspapers, just as several Muslims wrote in
the southern press. It was especially writers from the Yoruba group,
which predominates in the south-west and consists of roughly equal
numbers of Muslims and Christians. For these it often felt most natural to write in southern newspapers such as The Vanguard, The Daily
Champion, or This Day. Although both discourses thus crossed the
geographical boundaries, they quickly diverged – not merely because
they described the events in different ways but also because they
concerned completely different issues. It was obvious that the divided country, notwithstanding the shared experiences of loss, fear, and
violence, had been through two different crises. The different stances
that evolved were therefore steered by different needs. The media
discourses each provided one half of the country with material to
handle the crisis, in the form of factual information, arguments, and
a context in which to place the events.
In the Christian discourse, what the news articles, leaders, columns, and letters to the editor described primarily was the initial
22
riots in Maiduguri and Katsina. What had happened in Onitsha and
elsewhere in the southern cities was considerably toned down; in
a striking number of cases it was not even mentioned. Otherwise
the reprisals were often described as understandable or necessary
to show the northern states that the south could fight fire with fire
(Adegboyega 2006; This Day 2006b). Although the violence in the
south had been the work of Christians against Muslims just as much
as the reverse had been true in the north, it was only the latter that
was described as having a religious motivation. This reflects the fact
that one of the crucial issues for writers in the southern newspapers
was who was chiefly to blame for the unrest of the previous week. It
had started in the north, but the reprisals in the south had claimed
far more lives.
The question of how the publication of the cartoons, as an event
that was distant in both time and space, could lead to what had happened in Nigeria was often used here as proof that Muslims were
basically unreasonable (e.g. Eyoboka 2006; Iloegbunam 2006; This
Day 2006b). There were reminders of other occasions when Muslims’
offended feelings had unleashed crises. An example that was cited
often was the protests about the Miss World pageant that should
have taken place in Abuja in 2002, but had to be moved to London
after bloody clashes (e.g. Adegboyega 2006; Eyoboka 2006). Another
view frequently heard was that the federal government had not done
enough to protect Christians in the northern cities. It was claimed
that when Muslims in the south or in the middle zone a few years
previously had suffered comparable violence, there had been a much
greater willingness to protect them. This, it was felt, reflected an
injustice that went far back in Nigerian history (Onoyume 2006). A
not uncommon opinion was that the riots in the north were part of a
long-term plan to transform the whole of Nigeria into a Muslim nation, and that the violence in the south was regrettable but necessary
as a way to put a stop to that agenda (IRIN 2006a). In connection
with the growing tensions between north and south in the preceding
years, the mutual distrust had risen to such heights that many people
23
thought that the other side was planning a war of extermination. In
connection with the violence, rumours had spread that the attacks in
the north had been sponsored by foreign interests intent on decimating the Christian population of the country (Eyoboka 2006). Many
of these articles and editorials called for the authorities at federal and
state level to control the extremists on both sides in the conflict, to
imprison those who were guilty and to put a stop to the spiral of violence (e.g. Adegboyega 2006; Eyoboka 2006; Olaniyonu 2006); the
responsible politicians echoed this in their rhetoric, but not in their
actions.
For people in the south of Nigeria, the crisis aroused by the events
had its roots in the trauma of the Nigerian Civil War, or the Biafran War. This war, fought between 1967 and 1970, was one of the
bloodiest in Africa’s history, and although it was primarily a conflict
between the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra and the rest of the
Nigerian nation, there was a large element of the rivalry between
north and south that had set its stamp on the country throughout
its history. When Christian writers tried to work out what had happened, their efforts simultaneously revived a history in which the
fundamental issue, whether explicitly stated or not, was whether
north and south, Christianity and Islam, could co-exist within the
same borders (Iloegbunam 2006).
The Christian discourse focused on national issues – on the division of power between different parts of the country and on the
conditions for the cohesion of the Nigerian nation – but there was no
comparable interest in the Muslim discourse. The northern newspaper The Daily Trust did however report on the demands for local and
regional self-government by groups in the south (e.g. Hallah 2006a;
Hallah 2006b). Although the articles were written in a matter-of-fact
style, the actual coverage of the topic may very well have given many
readers the impression that the violence in the south had been motivated by plans to split the country in two.
Otherwise the northern parts of Nigeria were not pitted against
the south, or Islam against Christianity, as much as in the Christian
24
discourse. In the main there were few detailed descriptions of the
acts of vengeance in the south, and few arguments were put forward
about which side had been responsible for the worst outrages, perhaps out of a desire to avoid questions about who was to blame for
the events. The voices that had been raised in the time before the
riots fell silent, and people moved towards somewhat more moderate
positions. The questions came to focus on the Muslim Ummah, the
global Muslim community, and its relations to the rest of the world.
In the north the crisis arose within Islam – how to understand the
outbreak of violence in relation to the insult against the prophet. In
the newspapers there was widespread agreement that the violence
was directed against Islam and therefore reprehensible. There was
concern that those who associated Islam with violence would have
greater support for their arguments, and it was emphasized that the
perpetrators had been poor, desperate youths venting their frustration over gloomy future prospects in a mismanaged Nigeria, rather
than being motivated by religious convictions. But agreement was
equally strong that the insult against the prophet had been unacceptable. The question was which reactions could be considered justified.
Many recommended that protests and expressions of discontent on
the streets should be replaced by a new focus on Islam’s message of
peace, patience, and forgiveness (e.g. Abubakar 2006a). Several voices
identified a serious lack of mutual understanding for the other side in
the West and in the Muslim world. Abdul-Lateef Adegbite, secretary
general of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, the most important umbrella organization for Muslims in Nigeria, spoke about how
local events nowadays are enacted on a global stage, with unpredictable results. The Danes had certainly not understood how Muslims
would react to the cartoons. In Nigeria, on the other hand, they had
not understood the laws and conventions under which the European
press works (Bilesanmi 2006).
In Nigeria, a country with a strong and multifaceted press and
a high ceiling for discussions conducted in the media, the limits to
freedom of speech were a burning issue. An essay in the otherwise
25
mainly Christian newspaper This Day began by wondering how Denmark, a small country in the north, hitherto known only through the
most innocent things, such as Lurpak butter and the stories of Hans
Christian Andersen, could find itself at the centre of a serious global
crisis. The core of the problem was that freedom of speech – one
of the most important freedoms in any society – had been used by
European newspapers to show their power over the Muslim world.
The author argued against the interpretation that cultural differences would make it difficult for Muslims outside Europe and the USA
to understand what freedom of speech means in these countries. In
fact, there is a sense of honour, respect, and consideration in all countries, and nothing more than this is required. The conclusion must be
that freedom of speech should be accompanied by respect, otherwise
there is a risk that hatred, intolerance, and the death of innocent
people will result (Agunbiade 2006).
The European reporting on the reactions to the Muhammad
cartoons was heavily coloured by a polarization between what
was often described as “the West” and “the Muslim world”, which
meant that much of the more moderate Muslim criticism was filtered
out in favour of more stereotyped images (Saleh 2008:187). Many of
the comments published in Muslim newspapers and on blogs from
different parts of the world during the cartoon crisis were not full
of intolerance and religious extremism but of nuanced discussion of
different countries’ traditions and laws about public statements. This
was the case in Nigeria too. It was noted that freedom of speech was
far from being unrestricted in the West either. Exceptions were made
in every country, for example regarding ethnic hate speech, denial
of the Holocaust, and even blasphemy. The latter was illegal in several countries in Europe, including Germany, Britain, and Denmark
– something that did not escape the notice of intellectuals in Nigeria
(Agunbiade 2006; Garba 2009; cf. Klausen 2009:143f.). Also, most
people had nothing against these restrictions. In actual fact, much of
the debate was quite close to the European mainstream; most people
regarded freedom of speech as an important principle, but felt that
26
newspapers and others, as in the example above, ought to refrain
from unnecessarily offending or provoking people. The governor of
Kaduna, Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, appealed to all religious leaders to encourage their followers to respect other people’s feelings and
said that indelicate use of freedom of speech could easily do more
harm than good (Aodu 2006). More radical voices asked why it was
all right to offend Muslims in Europe, despite restrictions that were
supposed to protect various groups against racism and intolerance.
The leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Mustapha Nasidi,
said that freedom of speech itself had not had anything to do with
the decision to publish the cartoons; the motivation had instead been
to deliberately hurt Muslims (Bego 2006). Ibraheem Al-Zakzaky,
who had long been a figurehead in the radical Shia movement in Nigeria, declared that Western countries had a long tradition of hiding
behind freedom of speech in order to ridicule Muslims. It was time
for Muslims to unite and forget their petty differences. Otherwise
the enemies of Islam would destroy them and their religion (Gwantu
2006a).
A few years later, the news site Amana Online, which covers events
of interest to northern Nigeria, would describe the Muhammad cartoons as the most insensitive violation of other people’s culture that
had happened in living memory. At the same time, the writer wondered how justified some of the reactions in Nigeria and elsewhere
actually were. The overall question was whether the forms of protest
that had been selected were in accordance with Islam (Garba 2009).
As for the riots that developed into bloody violence against Christians, the matter was clear:
Considering the peaceful nature of Islam and the behaviour of our
Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.), how Islamic are demonstrations, riots
and protests generally? How Islamic is it, to kill innocent Christians
and wantonly destroy their properties in this matter? (Garba 2009)
Slightly more complicated was the question whether the boycotts on
Danish products were justified. What effects did the economic sanc-
27
tions have on the many innocent Danes? After all, five per cent of the
Danish population were Muslims, besides which many Christians
and atheists strongly disapproved of the publication. The prophet
himself had pointed out that no one should be accused of a crime
that someone close to him had committed, if he had not had any part
in it. At the same time, the boycotts were a clear signal of how seriously insults of this kind were taken, and perhaps they could affect
the application of the Danish legislation against blasphemy (Garba
2009).
The question of appropriate reactions has come up constantly
since these events. All through the cartoon crisis, references were
often made to the statements about respect for religion that are inscribed in the UN charter from 1945, which many Nigerians meant
that Denmark and other countries were in breach of (e.g. Abubakar
2006b; Kazure 2006). When voices in Muslim media said that those
responsible for the cartoons ought to be punished, it was often with
reference to relevant national and international laws. These demands,
however, attracted very little attention in Western media, which preferred to report about blazing death threats (cf. Saleh 2008:177, 187).
MATERIAL EXCHANGE
Almost five months had passed since the cartoons were first published. The global crisis had built up slowly, almost laboriously, to
the peak that was the riots in Nigeria. Looking back at the events
that would be turning points in the development, one can see that
the consequences could often have been avoided. Instead more energy was constantly pumped into the conflict and the positions were
cemented.
From the standpoint of the different parties, the conflict sometimes looked deceptively simple. The editors and supporters of Jyllandsposten on the one hand, and the various actors in the protest
movement on the other hand honestly thought for a long time that
28
if only the other side would consider the arguments, people would
understand each other. Flemming Rose, arts editor of Jyllandsposten,
lamented the fact that relatively few newspapers over the world had
chosen to republish the cartoons. If the Muslims had seen them with
their own eyes, he thought, they would not have found them so terrible (Klausen 2009:26). The apology by the editor-in-chief, Carsten
Juste, which was published on the websites of Danish embassies on
30 January, stated that the cartoons were “sober and were not meant
to be offensive” to Muslims (Juste 2006). In an article on the protests
in Africa, Afrol News reported that Scandinavian diplomats were
doing their best to explain that the cartoons – which few people had
seen – were not as malicious as the rumours had claimed (Afrol News
2006). These views do not correspond at all to the reality – Klausen
describes, for example, how most Muslims who had only read about
the cartoons found them much worse than they had expected when
they actually saw them the first time. Non-Muslims, on the other
hand, tended to wonder what had provoked such vehement emotions
(Klausen 2009:27). This shows how difficult is it to see things from
the other person’s perspective.
Several voices in the protest movement also identified lack of
knowledge as the cause of the problems. If the Danes and others in
Europe who had republished the cartoons had had a better knowledge of the prophet’s character, it would have been natural for them
to describe him and Islam in a respectful way. This was how the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt reasoned, for example. Unlike the
more implacable and confrontational rhetorics of the Hosni Mubarak
regime, they wanted to improve relations with the surrounding world
by spreading knowledge of the prophet’s life and deeds (Klausen
2009:106). Similar suggestions came from Muslim opinion moulders
in Europe (ibid.:118) and in Nigeria (Abubakar 2006a). Unfortunately,
however, communication would not be dominated by the search for
mutual understanding, whether it was well or badly thought out, but
by mutual sensations of being exposed to aggression and repression
by the other side.
29
One way to understand the cartoon crisis is to see it as an exchange situation, where material expressions were exchanged according to a pattern where the intention was to get redress for an injustice committed by the other side (e.g. Graeber 2001; Mauss 2002;
Myers & Coombes 2001). Each step on the way was described on
either side as a response to some offence by the other side, and the
goal all the time was to restore the balance that had supposedly been
disturbed. The cartoons were initially presented as a response to
what was described as a long history of self-censorship, enforced by
a climate of political correctness. According to the editor-in-chief of
Jyllandsposten, Carsten Juste, the triggering factor had been an event
that took place a few months previously. Kåre Bluitgen, an author of
children’s books working on a book about the prophet Muhammad,
was trying during the summer to find an illustrator. According to a
rumour circulating in the press, he had contacted several illustrators
but all had declined for fear of reprisals, since Islam forbids depictions
of the prophet.8 According to Juste, it was time to put this right, and
it was against that background that the cartoons were commissioned
(Hervik et al. 2008:31; Klausen 2009:14).
When knowledge of the cartoons spread over the world, it was
followed in Muslim circles by a discussion of exactly how they
should be perceived, and what the appropriate response should be.
Although the Danish and European commentators had stressed the
prohibition on pictures of the prophet and had managed to convey
the impression that it was primarily religious iconoclasts they were
dealing with, it was not the actual depiction of the prophet that was
the major stumbling block from a Muslim perspective. The ban on
portraying the prophet Muhammad was heeded by most Muslims,
but not in every branch of Islam. He is depicted in several manuscripts from different periods, and in Teheran and Istanbul, for exam-
Politiken, another one of Denmark’s biggest newspapers, conducted its own study
of the case and was able to show that most of the statements by Bluitgen and Jyllandsposten were groundless (Klausen 2009:17f.).
8
30
ple, images of holy persons are made and sold to believers (Klausen
2009:138). The background to the ban on images is the principle that
nothing should come before God, since that can lead to idolatry, or
shirk (Plate 2006:58). But there is great variation in the interpretation
of this principle.
Moreover, images made by non-Muslims come in a different
sphere. A well-known example is the frieze of images of important
historical figures in the field of law – including the prophet Muhammad – that adorns the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2001
a fatwa9 was issued to clarify how the frieze should be viewed in
relation to the law of Islam (Klausen 2009:141). The fatwa concluded
that different traditions are entitled to their own ways of communicating. Islam is based on the word and on poetry, while pictures play
a much greater role in Christianity and have therefore acquired a
powerful historical significance in the West. There is no support in
Islam, according to the author, for preventing others from expressing themselves in keeping with their own tradition. The fatwa ended
by noting that the depiction on the frieze was done with respect
and therefore deserved gratitude from Muslims (al-Alwani 2001).
The prohibition on images, like most other religious rules, thus applies primarily to those who are bound by it by virtue of their belief
(cf. Saleh 2008:187). In the case of the cartoons, therefore, Muslims
were not reacting to a breach of any general rule about depicting the
prophet; it was the fact that the prophet, and thus Islam, was portrayed in a disrespectful way (Klausen 2009:139). Those responsible
for the publication, it was felt, had made an effort to think up the
most hurtful attack possible on Muslims, and had then implemented
it. When the reactions began to come, they were not motivated by
tricky theological issues but by what Muslims saw as the intention
behind the publication. They had been attacked and wanted to hit
A fatwa is a ruling that clarifies how Islamic law is to be applied in a particular
case, and according to most traditions it is issued by a person with authorized
training in Islamic law, a mufti. The fatwa functions roughly like a legal precedent.
9
31
back. What ensued was a series of attempts to find a suitable expression for what the insult meant.
The boycotts were to function as a way to investigate an opposing
party that was far away and shrouded in darkness, but it was not just
the sender that lacked a distinct outline. The cartoons themselves were
out of reach for most people. In Nigeria, unlike many other countries,
the cartoons were not reproduced. The descriptions in the articles also
make it clear that most of the Nigerian journalists who wrote about
the cartoons and the reactions they provoked had not seen them.
Often the people writing in the newspapers even made a point of declaring this, perhaps as a way to repudiate the cartoons. Many of the
writers thought at that time that there was just one picture, and spoke
of the cartoon in the singular. When a more detailed description of
the cartoons (or “the cartoon”) was made, it was the picture of the
prophet with the bomb in his turban that was meant. As in the rest of
the world, that was the cartoon that was considered most offensive.
The cartoons could be seen on the Internet, but not many people
in Nigeria could view them there. A study conducted in thirteen
countries in April 2006 by the Pew Research Center showed that
most people in Nigeria found out about the cartoons through the
media or friends, or in the mosque or church. Only about one per
cent had learned about them via the Internet (Pew Global Attitudes
Project 2006:32; see also Klausen 2009:115).
Few of those who participated in the boycotts, or for that matter
in the subsequent violence, had thus been able or willing to see the
pictures. No matter how palpable the events became, they took place
in the equally palpable absence of the pictures themselves. Instead
the cartoons were experienced through what could be called secondary materialities. The primary clue to how serious the insult to the
prophet was perceived to be is thus the scale and intensity of the protests, how far the emotions carried people, and how much physical
and mental energy people could translate into action. The reactions,
with their powerful material element, can thus be understood as a
concrete investigation of how the cartoons were to be understood.
32
ICONCLASTIC PRACTICES
Boycotts are nothing new in relations between Muslim societies
and the Euro-American world. Back in 1908, when the Habsburgs
annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, what was described as a “Muslim
boycott” began against merchants in the Ottoman Empire (Koese
2008:750). And Denmark had felt the power of trade sanctions during
the oil crisis of 1973–1974, when the prime minister had declared his
support for Israel (Klausen 2009:4). In the days of the cartoon crisis,
Denmark was no less vulnerable to measures of this type: a small,
export-dependent country, with the giant Arla dairy corporation being particularly exposed towards Muslim countries, was heavily affected by the sanctions (e.g. Maamoun & Aggarwal 2008). When the
manager of the Al-Othaim Holding Company, which owns several
Saudi chains of department stores, withdrew Danish goods from the
shelves saying that “Denmark has freedom of the press, but Muslims
have the freedom to buy or not to buy” (Hasan & Tago 2006), it was
thus not just an example of a late modern, market-liberal way of pursuing politics, but an established way of reacting.
In Nigeria a period of three weeks had seen a long series of different reactions. In the first two weeks after the news of the cartoons
reached the country, there were various trade boycotts. But when the
issue of the cartoons meshed with Nigeria’s explosive domestic politics and the tense situation between Christians and Muslims inside
the country, a spiral of violence arose and quickly got out of control.
At the same time, there was a change in the tone of the newspaper
reports on what was happening. The cocksure voices for and against
were replaced, if only for a while, by hesitant, uncertain ones. It was
easier to find a stable standpoint in a conflict in which one side was
far away than when the entire political, religious, and human complexity had to be taken into consideration.
The power of materiality was obvious time after time during the
course of events. The need to express one’s feelings fostered a strong
need to identify an enemy, and people looked for the sender of the
33
cartoons among the Danish products available on the market. The
goods became representatives of the Danish cartoonists, editors, and
politicians of whom there was only a very vague picture. The boycotts were a way to get to know the Other through the traces and
signs he had left behind.
The first step was to identify which goods were Danish. Text messages began to circulate with lists of trade marks. Newspaper articles
listed a long series of products, everything from Lego and other toys
to furniture. People also learned how to identify the country of origin
through the numbers under the bar code. The few people who had
access to the Internet could download posters with a collection of
Danish logotypes (e.g. “Ahmed” 2006).
As in many of the other countries where the protests became vehement, it was dairy products from Arla that the Nigerian public quickly
focused on. The Dano Milk powdered milk ended up embodying the
antagonism. There are many explanations for this. One was that it
was relatively cheap and therefore a common commodity in contexts
large and small. Sold even in the simple kiosks of unplaned boards
that line markets in Nigeria, and depicted on billboards everywhere
in the streetscape, it was accessible and present for many people.
This simultaneously made it possible to abstain from it in some relevant sense. While the large and expensive goods and projects, such
as vehicles and orders for hydroelectric dams, could only be boycotted by rich people and public authorities, almost everybody could use
powdered milk to express their opinion.
It is not uncommon for commodities to find themselves at the centre of symbolic warfare in global conflicts. When France refused to
take part in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, some Americans suggested that French fries should henceforth be called freedom fries (Jackson 2005:88). Anti-French currents in the USA also put the makers
of French’s Mustard in the firing line, forcing them to issue a press
release explaining that the trade name is a surname and has nothing
34
A can of Dano Milk bought in Nigeria in 2007. Photo: the author.
to do with the country of France.10 During the protests against the
Muhammad cartoons there were similar changes of name. In Iran,
for example, Danish pastries were renamed the Prophet Muhammad’s
Roses (Rudling 2006:87).
A semiotic reading of Dano Milk’s packages gives a further clue
as to how it became a suitable symbolic target for the protests.
With pictures of Danish landscapes and the red and white colours
of the Danish flag, the aim was to highlight the national origin of
the product, as a way to establish brand identity. It is not difficult
to see how these signs could be re-interpreted and find themselves
representing all that was Danish, European, white, and by extension Christian ( Jönsson 2005:37ff.; cf. Dyer 1997). It was thus easy
Wikipedia: “Freedom Fries”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries. Accessed 13 June 2011.
10
35
to associate the product with a sender, on both a concrete and a
symbolic level.
As Håkan Jönsson has shown for Sweden, milk has long been a food
with a powerful symbolic charge. In the twentieth century it became
associated with health, modernity, progress, and Swedish national
sentiment (Jönsson 2005). Melanie DuPuis describes an interesting
development in the USA, in which milk during the era of industrialization was recharged, from having been regarded as dangerous, dirty, contaminated, and unsuitable as human food, to acquire
roughly the same connotations of modernity and health that it has in
Sweden (DuPuis 2002). If we turn our gaze towards Africa we see a
different picture and a different history. Milk products have occasionally been at the centre of controversies in which the profit interests
of international corporations have collided with individuals’ health.
The scandal in the 1970s and 1980s about Nestlé’s breast-milk substitute is one example (Ermann & Clements II 1984; George 1978).
The melamine scandal in 2008, when imported milk from China
gave rise to many cases of poisoning, is another.11 The connotations
of safety, standardization, and health that milk evokes in a European
or American context are thus contrasted with a more complex image
in Nigeria. Milk, whether it is imported or indigenous (which is very
unusual because of the very small domestic production) can sometimes be dangerous and contaminated.
The cartoons very effectively illustrated several different axes of
conflict and were, as Jytte Klausen writes in a paraphrase of Claude
Lévi-Strauss, good “things to think with” (Klausen 2009:3), but the
same can be said about the powdered milk. Through a variety of
circumstances it ended up clearly materializing several important relationships: between a large-scale, global economy and a small-scale
household economy, between Europe and Africa, and, through a
The Chinese company behind the contaminated milk was also linked to Arla
(Wiese 2008:87).
11
36
series of semantic shifts set in motion by the chain of events, between
Islam and Christianity.
When things move between different identities, actions are also
recharged. As physical objects in the surroundings, the various
consumer goods could be touched, handled, manipulated, and destroyed. As a result of the cartoon crisis, the powdered milk that had
recently been an everyday household product was charged with the
presence of something malicious. It went from being an “object of desire” to become an “object of revulsion” (Classen & Howes 2006:200;
cf. Gustafsson 2005:40). The milk become a symbol of a perceived
Euro-American hostility to Islam and a materialization of the Other’s
ill will. It thus became a religious act to reject it. In the same way,
continuing to use it became a way to take a stance. In the spring of
2006 many people wanted to show their opposition to the protests
by declaring that they intended to continue buying Danish products
– just as demonstratively as other people boycotted them. One example was the blogger ParaPundit, based in the USA, who declared
that it was time to support Denmark by a “buycott” of Danish goods,
and listed as many of these as he could think of. The lists that circulated among the advocates of the boycott were reused here, but for
the reverse purpose (“ParaPundit” 2006). The conservative journalist
and blogger Michelle Malkin, also from the USA, replied a couple of
days later with an even longer list under the heading “Don’t forget:
Buy Danish” (“Michelle Malkin” 2006). Danish commodities were
thus able to attract and embody a great deal of the symbolic conflict
provoked by the cartoons, and ended up symbolizing the relationship between a Christian or secular Euro-American position and a
Muslim one. Powdered milk was thus clad with a religious significance that was as sudden as it was palpable.
The cartoons aroused strong feelings all over the world. It has
been claimed that they effectively put the finger on a number of
burning themes in the encounter between different world views.
They quickly generated a polarization that prompted a reciprocal
exchange of stereotypes (Eide 2008; Klausen 2009:10). The same can
37
be said about the reactions; they too put the finger on important processes. In Nigeria, different interpretations are constantly heard of
the national in relation to both the regional and the global. The boycotts became a way to grasp what was Danish, but simultaneously
created a self-image of Nigeria, or at least northern Nigeria, as a part
of the Muslim world. This immediately clashed with other national
self-images, both Christian and secular.
The phase in the conflict that was characterized by boycott and
destruction of goods that embodied a distant enemy in Denmark
developed, as a result of the riots, into another one, in which the
aggression was directed against physically present enemies. This
phase too shows the potential that lies in handling the Other’s materiality; in the same way as violence in different forms had been
directed against Danish consumer goods, it was now the Other’s
houses, shops, mosques, churches, and physical bodies that were the
target of the attacks. This is a recurrent pattern in Nigeria, where
one of the first reactions during the confrontations was often to attack the most obvious symbols of the Other, that is, churches and
mosques (Andersson Trovalla 2011:73ff.).
How then should we understand the material expressions that
were exchanged between Jyllandsposten with its supporters and the
protest movement? An idea that presents itself is that it was not material things that were exchanged. It was actions. But these had strong
links to the respective objects and actually reflected different ways
of handling materiality. What was exchanged was a mutual rejection
of the Other’s symbols and matter. The cartoons were a rejection of
Muslim piety in relation to how the prophet Muhammad was supposed to be represented. The reactions were multifaceted, as we have
seen, but the response that primarily reached the senders in Europe
was a rejection of Danish milk. In these processes of reciprocal border work, a specific meaning was gradually tied to the respective
symbols.
The actions by both sides can be described as iconclastic practices,
whereby people turned a destructive force on the Other’s symbols.
38
Bruno Latour writes in the preface to the book Iconoclash about actions that can equally well be destructive as constructive (Latour &
Weibel 2002:14f.), an ambiguity that also made itself felt in the case
of the cartoon crisis. The violence aimed at each other’s symbols had
many layers. Initially the cartoons were not an attempt to destroy
the other side’s pictures, but to undermine what the pictures stood
for. The boycotts on dairy products were not aimed at symbols the
Danes themselves had chosen, but at objects that came, during the
course of events, to represent Danishness for the protest movement.
The editors and supporters of Jyllandsposten succeeded in making
the Muslims seem like religious fanatics. By boycotting powdered
milk for religious reasons, and moreover ritually destroying it in the
streets of Kano and other cities, the protest movement treated this
consumer good as if it were a religious object. In this way it was possible to portray the Danes as one of the Muslims’ clichés of the West:
that the only sacred thing for them is money, which is in itself a caricature of the Other’s religiosity. In both cases one can see a double
movement, charging the symbols with meaning and simultaneously
sabotaging them, all to ensure that the effect of the actions is intensive and will arouse the right emotions.
HUMOUR AS BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE
Closely connected to the position in the conflict that supported Jyllandsposten was an idea of humour as a democratic tool. Not only
writers, cartoonists, and political commentators but also ordinary
citizens reacted strongly to the idea that the time-honoured right to
joke could be restricted. Images arose of dictatorships where those in
power repressed political satirists. Implicit in this line of thought was
the way humour is aimed upwards, as a weapon of the weak against
those in authority (Scott 1985:350; cf. Bakhtin 1984; Mbembe 1992:8
f.). One can scarcely overestimate the significance of this figure of
thought when trying to understand why such strong support was
39
mobilized for Jyllandsposten and the cartoons. A European self-image
since the Enlightenment also includes the notion that humour is an
essential condition for a modern, rational discussion climate (Billig
2005:175; Smith 2009:150). From there it is only a short step to the
use of humour as a disciplining tool, aimed at people who are not
considered civilized enough to fit in. Flemming Rose argued that
people in a democratic society must be prepared to put up with being
insulted and ridiculed (Klausen 2009:7). If one imagines the situation
as one where the humour is aimed upwards against people in authority and power, it is easy to agree. But in this case the cartoons instead
became a challenge to the Danish Muslim minority to prove to readers of Jyllandsposten that they were integrated and civilized, which in
itself provoked many people. Dipesh Chakrabarty has described the
relationship between Europe and the colonized world as one where
someone says “not yet” to someone else, where democracy, equality,
and autonomy are self-evident rights – but “not yet”, not until one is
disciplined, organized, and civilized enough (Chakrabarty 2000:8).
The same relationship can often be seen in integration contexts; new
levels of likeness are constantly being invented, which people have to
reach before they can be seen as a natural part of the nation.
Closely related is the idea of humour as a unifying force, something in which people can meet, but which also clarifies the boundaries between who is included and who is excluded. Sharing humour
is often regarded as a sign of compatibility (Billig 2005:185 ff.). This
led to a lively discussion of whether the cartoons were funny or not
(Smith 2009:164) – a question that may seem of minor significance
in the light of the very serious consequences that ensued, but one
can understand the significance if one links it to practices of inclusion and exclusion, and the question of which side to stand on. Moira
Smith has argued that the cartoons were an attempt to summon
“humour support” from those whose values coincided with those of
Jyllandsposten, and to provoke “unlaughter”, a noticeable absence of
laughter, from those who were not in on the joke. “When the laughter is not shared,” she says, “it constructs exclusion as much as inclu-
40
sion” (Smith 2009:150; cf. Billig 2005:192 ff.). The cartoons created
a situation where the Danish Muslims’ exclusion was manifested in
that a dividing line was drawn between those who laughed and those
who most palpably did not.
LIMITS TO SECULARISM
What is a religious antagonism? It is not always a matter of outright
disputes on matters of belief. Instead there are often several dimensions that merge, for example conflicts over economic or other resources or ethnic differences. The question is how these different
axes became associated with each other. In this process, material
objects can become significant. In the boycott on Danish products,
pictures of religion merged with pictures of what Western materialism stood for. All this was moreover enacted against the background
of “the new world order” after 11 September 2001 (cf. Bastian 2006).
In Denmark an opposition arose between the positions of “Danish”
and “Muslim”, which is in itself interesting in many ways. The first
question to ask is along which axis the two met, or, to put it differently, in what way Danish as a nationality could become the opposite of
Islam as a religion. The answer is presumably that the Danish position
contained many unspoken assumptions about which religion was regarded as normal and reasonable. There is an interesting dynamic in
this which is relevant for much of Europe, not least Sweden. In the
shadow of the secularization processes, many religious expressions
have been reinterpreted and identified as traditions or customs that
are neutral in terms of religion. In a situation where not so much is
said about national or religious identity, these merge in actions that
can be both or either. Clear examples are the assemblies in church
to mark the end of the school year, or the Saint Lucia celebrations
in preschools, both full of religious symbolism and practice, yet both
regarded by most people as an expression of Swedish tradition rather
than religion. Being a member of the Church of Sweden (primarily),
41
without being particularly active, has been described as a fundamental way to practise Swedishness (Davy 2000:3). Excessive deviations
from this low-intensity Lutheranism are viewed as extreme; neither
atheists nor devoted free-church visitors fit into this normality, much
less practitioners of other religions than Christianity.
The concept of secularism means, on the surface, that politics and
society are not structured by religion. But even in secular states, the
absence of religion in the institutions of society is mostly far from
absolute. Instead it is clear that secularism in fact consists of delicately balanced agreements in which religion is neither completely
present nor completely absent (Goldstone 2007:230 f.). This in turn
means that the concept of secularity is always filled with meaning
in specific, often local, contexts, and against a background of traditions, social structures, and religious conceptions (Asad 2003:25; Urban 2008). In Scandinavian countries the national self-understanding
balances on the boundary between the modern, secular heritage and
the Christian heritage. For many people, these two currents have
merged to the extent that it is difficult to see where one ends and the
other begins. In concrete terms, this means that other religions are
often perceived as being more “religious” than Christianity, which
is perceived as cool, balanced, and rational. This in turn means that
secular as a category can contain far more Christian elements than,
for example Islam. This also applied in large measure to the EuroAmerican media, where accounts of the cartoon crisis often equated
Islam with exaggerated religiosity, while there was a corresponding
equation of Christianity and secularism. Between the lines one can
detect a multitude of attempts to understand the religious through
the secular, and vice versa.
Although the publication of the cartoons was at first intended as a
joke, as a little light reading towards the end of the silly season (Klausen 2009:15), there was nevertheless a serious side right from the beginning. It is a question of interpretation whether the underlying ambition was a concern for freedom of speech or if it was more a matter
of xenophobia. But the intention behind the cartoons must surely
42
have been to trigger a situation where the “Danish” position seemed
moderate and concerned about freedom and democracy, while the
“Muslim” position seemed extreme and reactionary. The boycotts
then positioned Denmark as the kingdom of Mammon, where only
economic gain was sacred.
Throughout the series of events, the conflict was enacted along
many different axes. To begin with, a boundary was manifested
within Denmark, between a “native” majority and the “immigrant”
Muslims. The conflict was just as quickly plugged into a European
anti-racist discourse that was sometimes guilty of lumping all the
Danes together. Along a third axis, the international protest movement first tried to get an apology, then to find redress through sanctions. Several other axes arose in different countries both inside
and outside Europe, where the cartoon crisis became significant
in domestic politics (Naim 2006:42). In some European countries
(including Denmark), where weak governments were dependent
on right-wing extremists and xenophobic parties (Klausen 2009:66,
149), people were quickly forced into black-and-white discussions.
In Egypt the Mubarak regime saw a chance to position itself as a
champion of Islam and thus undermine its chief rival, the Muslim
Brotherhood (Klausen 2009:168). In Nigeria, where the vast majority
of all the deaths took place, the cartoons became part of the existing religious antagonisms between Christians and Muslims and a
decades-old national power struggle.
The polarization that was mobilized in connection with the cartoon crisis succeeded, in an important sense, in making its mark on
the subsequent discussion climate. The idea of a strong boundary
between freedom of speech and democracy on one hand and Islam
and repression on the other was still rarely questioned. Something
that stands out when one studies what was said by different voices at
the time is how great the similarities actually were in people’s views
of the conditions for and limits to freedom of speech. In Nigeria and
many other countries with a large Muslim population, a great deal
of the debate was very similar to what was expressed in Europe: a
43
wish to safeguard freedom of speech but an understanding for the
various exceptions that are made in every European country, for example prohibiting hate speech, denying the Holocaust, and so on.
The media’s “self-censorship” is another aspect – weighing up the
public interest against the possible negative consequences of publication is a natural and ever-present part of the normal work of editing a
daily newspaper, as the editor-in-chief of Jyllandsposten, Carsten Juste,
agreed (Klausen 2009:8). A telling example, and one that is rather
embarrassing for Jyllandsposten, is that two years earlier the newspaper had refrained from publishing cartoons of Jesus – because it was
thought that Christians might be offended (Klausen 2009:43; Naim
2006). But when the Western media wrote articles about burning
embassies and riots, they simultaneously refrained from reporting on
the sober discussion that actually went on, where people spoke about
articles of Danish and international law and about how to prevent
the demonization of Muslims and Islam.
The events surrounding the cartoons and the reactions to them
have several important links to museums. Alongside being relevant
for a growing discussion of the significance of materiality for people’s
communication, traditions, visions of the future, and self-understanding (e.g. Edwards et al. 2006; Henare et al. 2007; Miller 2005), the
events illustrate the rapidly changing conditions for how one can act
in different public spheres. A possible answer to the question of how
the cartoon crisis could arise at all is that the editors of Jyllandsposten
misjudged the fundamental question of who they were talking to (see
Eide et al. 2008:13). The intended audience was primarily the Danish
majority population, in which they expected that different stances
would crystallize. In second place they must have expected some reactions from the minority group of Danish Muslims. What they did
not expect was that the cartoons would be moved to other contexts
and incite the anger of people all over the world. What happened can
be described thus: the original public sphere – the readership of Jyllandsposten – spilled over into other, larger public spheres. That shift
led to a change in the rules for what could be said.
44
The course of events has lessons to teach concerning other forms
of behaviour in public arenas, for example museum exhibitions. With
the globalization of different media flows, it is not possible to determine once and for all the boundaries to a public sphere. This also
means that one cannot control the premises for the discussion, nor
how a statement can be interpreted. One of the figures of thought
that came to mind when the mass media described the heated protests against the cartoons was that of the butterfly whose wing-flaps
start a hurricane on the other side of the earth (e.g. Reynolds 2006):
the reach of the cartoons did not seem to be in proportion to the normal position of the Jutland newspaper, and many people, especially
non-Muslims, had difficulty understanding how offensive other people could find them. The problem with the figure of thought in this
context is that it gives a discharge from responsibility. A burning
question is how we should view the link between the decision to
publish the cartoons and the many deaths that can be ascribed to
the protests. To what extent does the responsibility lie with Jyllandsposten? The answer may be said to be somewhere between totally and
not at all. The possibility that a museum exhibition can have the same
disastrous consequences is wholly conceivable. This demands a great
deal of preparatory work and reflection.
45
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