One of the more interesting aspects of the controversy surrounding the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad by Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten is the realization that no medium today can assume it addresses a circumscribed audience. Never meant to be seen in Lahore, Damascus or the Gaza Strip, the cartoons had their largest impact thousands of miles from Copenhagen, before their significance was felt back home, politically and economically. “This is the first time I've witnessed a story in a newspaper with a circulation of 150,000, in a country of just above five million people, becoming a global issue,” JP editor Flemming Rose told Newsweek. One more aspect of globalization to consider.
Traditionally, journalists were trained to address specific audiences, to learn their interests, vocabulary, sense of humor, likes and dislikes. In the electronic age, journalists will also have to consider the impact of their broadcast or publications on societies and cultures other than their own. It took four months for the Muslim World to show its ire at the September 2005 publication of the cartoons; but it finally did, prompted by incensed imams and Arab television broadcasts. It was news, after all, said Faisal Al Qasim of Al Jazeera TV, and “it could not be ignored.”
Did the Arab media fan the flames, and help make the reactions more brutal? An estimated 200 people died in demonstrations across the Muslim World.
Host of LBCI’s Al Hadath Shada Omar says this was a typical case of cultural misunderstandings. “The West does not understand the Muslim mind and vice versa.” Omar tried to provide both sides with the opportunity to express their views. She hosted a Danish journalist in one of her “many shows devoted to issues of clash of civilizations” where he was asked to make the case for freedom of expression as understood in Denmark. Saudi scholars offered a Muslim perspective. Omar contacted Jyllands-Posten to invite an editor to her program, but was told no one there wanted to talk. Omar believes LBCI covered the controversy in depth and objectively. Al Jazeera TV, on the other hand, she says, did things differently because they “wanted to mobilize people, because of their Islamic agenda.”
Omar is not alone in finding blame with Al Jazeera. The London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al Awsat accused Sheikh Youssef Al Qaradawi, a regular guest in the Al Jazeera weekly program Al Sharia wa Al Hayat, of having played a major role in inciting Muslims to show their anger. On February 26, Al Qaradawi told his host, Abdel Samad Nasser that Muslims should make clear they were angry, and should show the West that they could not get away with “insulting 1.3 billion people.” He derided some Muslim scholars who had gone to Copenhagen to discuss the issue with Danish editors. “What is there to discuss? They should first apologize.”
Those who know Al Qaradawi, know him to be a far more subtle and open-minded scholar than this incident would indicate. In the same program he called on Muslims to work toward greater understanding and dialogue with the West, and argued in favor of freedom of expression, “but not the freedom to insult me, or the freedom to curse my sacred beliefs.” There is no absolute freedom of expression in any society, and there shouldn’t be, because that freedom might do great harm to others, he said. He called on the United Nations to play a more important role in guaranteeing respect for all religions by everyone.
What is interesting, and maybe surprising to some, is that an all-news channel that has as its motto ‘The Opinion, and the Other Opinion’ makes no allowance for religious debate in its programs, and in fact has a ‘spiritual guide’ in the person of Sheikh Al Qaradawi. If the station were to really live to its motto, it should invite someone to spar with Al Qaradawi.
Al Qasim, host of Al Jazeera’s popular Al Itijah Al Mouaqess, believes the station did a professional job. “This was TV material and we had to cover what was happening.” However, he believes the way the events played out were not all coincidence.
“Without wanting to be a conspiracy theorist, I don’t believe the publication and the instigation to the reactions was all innocent, and were maybe meant to create a wedge between Europe and the Arab World.” Although Qasim believes his station did a good job of providing an opportunity for all sides to present their views, he believes more should have been done across the board in tackling issues of freedom of expression and the rise of Islamophobia in Europe. “But the most important issue that was not discussed was why do Arabs agree to be humiliated by their corrupt regimes on a daily basis, but are ready to raise hell for cartoons drawn in a small newspaper in Denmark?”
Abdel Bari Atwan, editor in chief of Al Quds, another pan-Arab newspaper based in London, said the reason stations did not want to discuss freedom of expression was because Arab regimes do not care to have it discussed. “They would then be forced to raise the issue internally.” Television stations in the Arab World, says Atwan, have to deal with Islam carefully. “The Islamophobia that exists in the West exists among Arabs too. They are afraid of Islam, and want to keep Islamists on their good side.” Besides, he adds, “all the stations are owned or partly owned by Saudi Arabia.” The Saudis decide when the religious issue is played up and when it is not. “Why wasn’t there much fuss when the Americans flushed the Koran down the toilet in Guantanamo?”
One of the challenges of the electronic age is that people around the globe will have the opportunity
to monitor media in different communities. Al Jazeera TV, for example, a station in Arabic and for Arabs, is carefully watched, analyzed, and criticized by a large number of Westerners who don’t even know the language, and don’t have access to it on their home television set. It is all a bit strange, but journalists, including Flemming Rose, have to start adapting.

Riam Dalati contributed to this article