As most of us remember, in 2005 there was a huge furor when a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published twelve cartoons showing the Islamic prophet Muhammad, some of the images fairly innocuous, others using Muhammad to make a critical statement about Islam. (The most famous of the latter depicted Muhammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb.) Much of the Muslim world objected to showing an image of the prophet — which some of the faithful interpret as forbidden by the Qur’an — and to the perceived insult to faith conveyed by some of the cartoons. This led to to rioting throughout the Muslim world, and to the deaths of over 200 people.
Now, as reported by Wednesday’s New York Times, Yale University Press is publishing a book about these cartoons, The Cartoons that Shook the World, but will not show the cartoons in that book. (Other images of Muhammad that apparently do not depict him as a harbinger of violence were also kept from inclusion.)
John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.” The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.
Gratuitous? In a book about them? I cannot imagine a book about the history of racist political cartoons in America, for instance, that wouldn’t show some of these cartoons. And I have often seen images of anti-Semitic cartoons in discussions about the Nazi persecution of Jews (see here, for example).
According to the Times, images of Muhammad have been published before without causing problems:
Although many Muslims believe the Koran prohibits images of the prophet, Muhammad has been depicted through the centuries in both Islamic and Western art without inciting disturbances.
The controversy, then, seems to be less about showing the prophet himself than about inciting disturbance by publishing cartoons that criticize Islam. But it is bizarre to have an academic discussion about these images without showing them, especially when the Press tells readers that (wink wink) you can easily find the images elsewhere.
You can see the article about them in Wikipedia here, and the 12 Danish images here. There are lots of comments about this decision on Richard Dawkins’s website (h/t: Dawkins webmaster).
How cowardly.
Not that it will do much good, but I will boycott Yale University Press because they are too cowardly to stand up for freedom.
What is strange is that those cartoons are not even that good. They didn’t “shake the world”, only the ignorant and fanatics threw their temper tantrums.
As Jerry mentions, loads of drawings of Muhammad has been published before, but it has already been thoroughly settled that the cause of the furor was Imam’s living in Denmark who went on a tour to Muslim countries to show them off, thereby causing the reaction (and note that one of the most offensive to Muslims was a picture of a bearded man participating in some French (I believe) festival to imitate the devil, and had no relation to Denmark or Muhammad).
What is strange is that those cartoons are not even that good. They didn’t “shake the world”, only the ignorant and fanatics threw their temper tantrums.
What an irrelevant subjective statement coupled with a weird view of what it means to “shake the world,” Bob. Obviously, people shook the World, but I don’t think there can be much fruitful denying that the World was shook.
I just laughed. It didn’t shake me. I expect that reaction from the brain washed, whether they be radical Muslims, orthodox Jews or fundamentalist Christians.
The pictures did not shake people in the US or in other parts of North or South America or China or Japan or most of Europe or much of Africa.
As far as the media, many of them behaved poorly, running in fear. That was more “world shaking”.
The public is not a good indicator of what is world shakingly important anyway – parts of the world shook about an overweight, middle aged, poorly educated woman who sang in Britain’s version of “Idol”.
The Yale decision may be a negative precedent for future academic explorations into controversial subjects. Yale should be scolded and shamed because of this.
My response at http://theobservedblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/cartoons-that-shook-university-in-its.html
You might not be able to fault Yale University.
From the Yale University Press website:
This is a pathetic and profoundly anti-intellectual move.
Then again, they gave Bush a degree…
and you’re right, there’s a whole scholarly discourse on racist cartoons and no one seems to have a problem with reprinting *those* images.
What a brave decision, indeed! I also refused to include any tapir photographs in my “Anthology of tapir photography 1950-1970”. Just look’em up on the internet, thou idle fools! Plain words, and about time.
So Yale is going to bow down to a posture of political correctness in order to appease the radical Muslims. Pretty spineless of an educational institution located in a secular country. What’s next, kissing up to Brad Parsley and Ray Comfort?
Read my response to #4
What pussies. Are they afraid the muslims will kill them or something? Burn down a few buildings maybe? They’re only drawings and in the case of the cartoons they hardly even make the grade of “mediocre”. So they would rather revise history instead and leave out anything which they think might incense a number of nutters who have really weird-ass beliefs. Shut the hell up lest you offend someone. What a stupid hypocritical false modesty.
I’m baffled. How can you pretend to have a objective treatment in a book, if it is affected by policy _in the very same area it is analyzing_!?
That book is useless by default.