Asharq Alawsat: News Media and Internet Helped Shape Cartoon Controversy (Updated 2/9)

"Behind the Headlines: How Arab Media Covered the Danish Cartoon Controversy" - Alsharq Alawsat (London), 8 Feb 2006

No one expected that a series of cartoon drawings would be transformed into a popular and political issue when they were first published in September. What happened?

Politically, the issue was first raised by the members of the Muslim community in Denmark who criticized the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten for publishing the 12 drawings of the Prophet Mohammed four months ago. The Egyptian ambassador in Copenhagen also played an important role by initiating diplomatic discussions, at a time when the government in Cairo and the opposition were engulfed in a heated election campaign. The issue disappeared from the radar until Sheikh Youssef al Qardawi, the mufti of al Jazeera TV, seized upon it and called for Muslims worldwide to protest.

Internet forums played an important role by publishing a number of stories attributed to the Queen of Denmark stating she despises Arabs and Muslims. The website alsaha.com was primarily responsible for stirring up popular sentiment. Based in the United Arab Emirates, the site is an extremist Salafi forum that discussed issues related to extremist Islam. It opposed US presence in Iraq and backed the kidnapping of foreigners. Despite the UAE government’s opposition to religious extremists, it has allowed alsaha.com to continue to incite readers through its threatening messages and al Qaeda clips. It is believed that more than 100 thousand internet users visit the site each day.

When the controversy began to gain momentum, the Qatar-based al Jazeera TV increased its coverage. Even the day after the Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen appeared on the rival al Arabiyah channel and apologized, al Jazeera continued to state that he would not apologize. The truth is somewhere in the middle: the premier indicated he could not apologize on behalf of the newspaper, which had already issued an apology. In spite of this, al Jazeera continued to mention the Danish insult and Muslim anger.

The response to al Jazeera’s distorted coverage came in a program produced by the BBC from Doha. In a roundtable discussion chaired by Tim Sebastian, which included representatives from both al Arabiyah and al Jazeera. After a discussion of the cartoon controversy, the participants agreed that al Jazeera was inflaming opinions.

For their part, Arab newspapers reported on the drawings and the ensuing worldwide condemnations with varying degrees of objectivity. The issue and its ramifications were mostly debated in editorials and opinion pieces, with headlines containing provocative language. In addition, it is worthy to note that Jylland Posten’s apology was not reported in a number of Arab newspapers.

It is also worth mentioning that mobile phone text messages (SMS) played an important part in inflaming public opinion throughout the Arab world and circulating rumors, such as the one claiming groups intended to burn the Quran in the center of Copenhagen.

Coverage of the cartoon controversy was not exclusive to television and newspapers. In fact, the reporting included all mediums. It was more a campaign than coverage.

Added 9 Feb 2006:

"E-Mail, Blogs, Text Messages Propel Anger Over Images," by Kevin Sullivan (in Copenhagen) - the Washington Post, 9 Feb 2006

Mohammad Fouad Barazi, a prominent Muslim cleric here, received a text message on his cell phone last week. It was a mass mailing from an anonymous sender, he said, warning that Danish people were planning to burn the Koran that Saturday in Copenhagen's City Hall Square out of anger over Muslim demonstrations against Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

Hundreds of people -- Muslims and ethnic Danes -- turned out in response to the messages and the rampant rumors they sparked, and by the end of Saturday, police had arrested 179 people. In the end, no Koran was burned.

The messages, which were received as far away as the Gaza Strip and recounted on al-Jazeera satellite television, illustrate how modern digital technology -- especially cell phones and Internet blogs -- helped turn an incident in tiny Denmark into a uniting cause for protesters around the world in days or even hours.

From London to Kabul, Afghanistan, to Jakarta, Indonesia, the digital revolution has given unprecedented access to information -- accurate or not -- to anyone with enough money to buy a secondhand cell phone. Where faxes and coffeehouse leaflets were once the lifelines of protest organizers, a new generation of technology has taken hold, doing for the speed and scope of global communication what airplanes did for travel.

Real-world conflicts such as the cartoons controversy almost instantly echo in cyberspace. Radical Islamic Web sites feature photos of beheadings and calls to violence. A posting on one, alghorabaa.net, called for an "embassy-burning day" to protest the Muhammad cartoons and offered wording supporters could use in a text-messaging campaign urging people to throw molotov cocktails and storm embassies, according to the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. group that monitors such sites.

E-mails, blogs and text messages have been used to press a boycott of Danish goods in Arab countries and a "Buy Danish" campaign in the United States. Text messages were used to organize anti-Danish protests in Brussels, while Canada's largest Muslim umbrella group sent e-mails to 300,000 members urging them to avoid such demonstrations. Text messages and blogs were also used to organize protests during violent unrest in Paris last fall.

"These messages are now part of the conflict," said Manu Sareen, a member of the Copenhagen City Council. "The problem is that you can't always rely on them. Nobody burned the Koran, but it doesn't matter because the rumor was out there."

Barazi, a Syrian-born cleric who came to Denmark 15 years ago, said in an interview that he was inundated with calls last week from followers who had received the same text message on their phones. Later, he received a call from a reporter from al-Jazeera, the world's largest Arabic-language news channel, asking to interview him on the subject.

In an on-air telephone interview, with perhaps millions of people watching across the Middle East, Barazi said, he related the threat to burn the Koran. "I said it might happen. I don't think so, but I don't know," said Barazi, who said he urged viewers to remain calm.

Barazi strongly disagreed that repeating the message on al-Jazeera made the situation worse. He said he cautioned against violence during the interview, and later told worshipers at Friday prayers that as far as he knew no one actually planned to burn a Koran and to stay away from the square that Saturday.

But others, including Naser Khader, a moderate Muslim member of Parliament, said mentioning the rumors on al-Jazeera added to anti-Danish feelings and encouraged attacks on the Danish Embassy in Syria on Saturday. Government officials, who declined to be identified because of the delicate nature of the situation, expressed the same sentiment. Barazi denied that his interview contributed to the Syrian incident....

Also see:

"At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized," by Hassan M. Fattah - the New York Times, 9 Feb 2006. The article is worth clicking through to (or looking up at a library); it gives a detailed account of how activists and government officials contributed to the growth of the cartoon protests.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 8 — As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk in the hallways was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.

The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed "concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries" as well as over "using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions."

The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance. But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — and the role its member governments played in the outrage — was something of a turning point.

After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.

In recent days, some governments in Muslim countries have tried to calm the rage, worried by the increasing level of violence and deaths in some cases.

But the pressure began building as early as October, when Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors and Arab ambassadors lobbied Arab governments.

"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference when the O.I.C. took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam.

He said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction — of course they were offended — and then you had regimes taking advantage saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about.' "

The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam....

Comments

[judy]

That some people were upset or offended by the cartoons did not surprise me. However the mass text messaging etc does. The individuals behind this are inciting people to gather and cause harm to others and should be found out. I'll be looking for the journalist or blogger that does this! Great post!
Judy
gag@judyanddan.com