Masked Palestinian militants take up positions outside the EU Commission's office in Gaza City to demand apologies from the governments of France, Denmark and Norway, after newspapers in these countries printed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
As a cartoonist working for Al-Jazeera, how did you respond when you first saw the Danish caricatures of Muhammad?
Shujaat Ali: It is the responsibility of journalists to be ethical. Religion is a very sensitive issue, and I think no truly professional cartoonist in the world would ever try to pick on a religion like this. There's an informal code of ethics among cartoonists in the media, and it includes two kinds of censorship: one is self-censorship; the other is professional censorship. Religion is one of the very important things that we should respect and not criticize. I grew up reading the cartoons of Herbert Herblock and they really impressed me. There are many cartoonists, in the US and Europe, who are really very professional. They would never treat a religion like this.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You speak of "censorship" as if it's a good thing -- as a kind of act of self-discipline.
Shujaat Ali: Yes, yes, yes. It is a journalist's responsibility to follow this code of ethics -- it's very important.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does this "code of ethics" still apply when Muslims criticize their own religion?
Shujaat Ali: Let me tell you a funny incident. When I started drawing for Pakistan's News International newspaper in Islamabad, I took the liberty of attacking the Islamic party there during elections. I was the first to do it. I fully agree with President Pervez Musharraf, when he talks about certain (violent) people taking the religion in their own hands. So I started criticizing the Islamic political parties in Pakistan -- and criticized them for steering the religion in the wrong direction. My paper refused to publish one of them, so I ran it in another newspaper. It created an uproar and the Islamic party attacked the newspaper's offices with guns.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You say cartoonists should show sensitivity in their drawings, but the US State Department has accused you of lacking it in your own cartoons. After you drew a comic depicting dead US soldiers and another with gas tanks superimposed over the collapsing Twin Towers in New York, Washington complained and Al-Jazeera removed them from its Web site. Were you thinking about the sensitivities of an American audience when you drew those?
Shujaat Ali: My actual target in those particular cartoons was the US government and not the US people. I found the decision by my boss, our editor in chief, to be unacceptable -- and he was highly criticized for it. Professionally, it was not the right step because a professional organization must protect its journalists. We were analyzing the feelings of the US people in those cartoons. That's why the US government complained about that, but we didn't hear any complaints from normal American people for running it.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Many critics here in the West point out the hypocrisy in the current protests from the Arab World. Arabs are now complaining about negative stereotyping of Islam. But Jewish groups here accurately complain about anti-Semitic portrayals of their religion in caricatures that often appear in Arab newspapers. A lot of cartoonists in the Arab world are clearly anti-Semitic.
Shujaat Ali: I would agree about that, and I feel sorry about it. We should respect people from other religions, whether they are Jews, Christians or whatever. We should have a code of ethics among cartoonists, and we need to ask ourselves how far it is acceptable for us to go and what kind of limits we should set. It's fine for cartoonists to target politicians or governments, but they should leave religion alone. Cartoonists really need to be respectful in this regard.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But here in the West, cartoonists have the legal right to satire, regardless of the subject. And it's the government's job to protect the right of free speech. How can the government and people of Denmark be held responsible for caricatures that one newspaper decided to publish?
Shujaat Ali: If the government doesn't take steps to stop the media from attacking a religion, which can lead to a major conflict between people, it could damage their international reputation.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The West has fought for hundreds of years to secure the freedoms of opinion and speech that are now the foundations of our civilization. Across Europe right now, many see the protests from the Arab World as an attack on our democratic values.
Shujaat Ali: Freedom is very important. And I am fighting for it here. But the problem is that we must set limits. If you want to criticize the people, if you want to criticize the government, if you want to criticize certain things as a cartoonist, you just can't go beyond certain limits. An excess of anything is bad. If you just keep pushing without limits, it can be harmful. When artists use this kind of (religious) issue in their cartoons to provoke, and they know that it will hurt the feelings of people in the other religion, then they've crossed the line and this has to go to the higher authorities responsible for this.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In response, Arabs have burned effigies of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, boycotted Danish products, threatened their nationals and burned the country's flag. The Muslim reaction to the cartoons has been shocking to many in the West. Extremists attacked the EU offices in Gaza Strip and Indonesian Muslims stormed the Danish Embassy in Jakarta. Do you feel these reactions have been exaggerated?
Shujaat Ali: I think correcting the Danish cartoonists and trying to show them the feelings of the masses is a good thing. We cannot tolerate any disparagement of the Prophet -- for whom we have the highest respect. In every religion, even Christianity, there are some people who are very emotional about their religion. Within my own community, I criticize people who are going beyond limits. They should be criticized, of course. (Muslim) extremism is also bad. We are not angels, but we are also human. As humans, we must respect each other. And our religion.
Interview conducted by Michael Scott Moore.
Post to other social networks:
Stay informed with our free news services:
| All news from SPIEGEL International | Twitter | RSS |
| All news from Under the Scope section | RSS |
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
