The making of a modern picture dispute: caricature and religious sentiments

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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The twelve cartoons printed by a Danish newspaper and the reaction of the Muslim world reminds of the picture dispute that took place in the 5th century between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Then the Roman Catholic Church was getting anxious about the Orthodox Church getting stronger. The latter was using the art of the icons within a highly decentralized church organization that allowed even in remote corners people to show their devotion. Devotion means giving money and once collected made the Orthodox Church quite powerful. It was a matter of many small donations ending up with a larger sum than if some wealthy princes gave big donations to the Roman Catholic Church. The dispute erupted over the use of icons at aesthetical and religious levels. It was made by the Roman Catholic Church into a principled stand about what pictures are to be used by any church to substantiate the belief of the people. Two main principles were upheld: 1) no picture should be made of God and 2) no painting must appeal to the senses in a way that is offensive to the belief in God.

Any art historian knows how the arts and artists weaved themselves out of this institutionalized form of censorship. Understood as the power to define what is art, it meant in reality ensuring that the concept of God would remain an abstract one.

Now, in this most recent dispute between the Western secular world and the Muslim world there is one similar principle involved, namely what the Muslims wish to be respected and to be adhered to, namely that no picture is made of Mohammed.

Why the key concept of any religion has to remain ‘abstract’ should be asked since it is a stated knowledge that power of anything meant to unify people depends upon its degree of abstraction under which then everything falls or is subsumed. An example of this has been given by Pope Benedict who speaks about God giving his unconditional love to mankind. That means mankind can do everything possible, including bad deeds, but this God will not fail in his love. It is given unconditionally. This Western God as brought into Africa, into Asia, into Latin America and which has been revered by a variety Western Churches from the Roman Catholic Church to the Lutheran or Protestant one, was considered for a long time to be most superior as its degree of abstraction was so high, that everything could be unified and dealt with.

The moment God or Mohammed would be given a picture, it would be a concretization of an interpretation. Some people would say, yes, that is the image of God they had in mind when praying to him, but many others would say, no, they had never such image in mind. Dispute between different interpretations would follow and surely the unity of that church congregation threatened. There is a need to keep things abstract especially if there would be no way to resolve any dispute about what would be a ‘correct’ interpretation.

Something of that reminds of Plato’s ‘cave analogy’ in which he describes people being chained to the floor of the cave while they are engaged in a guessing game as to what images represent: a jumping deer, a bush, a house on fire? Plato narrates that one man was wondering if these images are truly reflections of reality. His questioning led to the breaking of the chains. He got up and started to take a path going up and leading him out of the cave. As he came to the spot above the cave floor he saw that men were jumping in front of fires and thereby projected the images on the opposite wall of the cave. Now he understood on how these images were created. They were so arbitrary and thus he realized that no one on the cave floor could ever know what was a true interpretation. Truth was established down there by consensus i.e. by people agreeing this one guess was correct and all others wrong. So the man said to himself, this could not be all. Again his questioning probed him to go on. Once he came to the exit of the cave, the real light was blinding to his eyes. More so after he had stepped out of the cave and after getting slowly, very slowly used to the sun light, he saw such a beautiful landscape: a valley through which was running a brook and beautiful vegetation all around. He could not believe his eyes. He started to think all those people down there in the cave don’t know about this beauty on earth. He wondered whether he should stay and enjoy this beauty or else return and tell the others what he discovered. So he decided to return, says Plato, and once he got down to the floor of the cave, the man wanted to convince his fellow men that these are but images projected onto the wall by men jumping in front of the fire lit above them and they should forget this guessing game for there awaits them outside the cave a much more beautiful world. The people at the bottom of the cave saw him only as spoiler of their guessing game. They started to shout him down but when he questioned their way of deciding what is the right guess of an image, they got so angry at him that they beat him to death.

The reluctance to hear the truth seems most fervent in all religions throughout the history of mankind. Moreover, a lot of killing has gone on in the name of the religion. Religious wars have been waged against the unbelievers. The crusades were destructive forces of cultural heritage. The library of Constantinople, an unbelievable treasure probably as great as the one which existed in Alexandria, was burned down by the knights when they blazed a trail from where they had come from to where they were going.

Why a belief can unleash such forces of hatred and destruction, that question accompanies any studies of religious wars or wars caused by religion. Constance de Volney was asked by the French Assembly when wishing to draft a new constitution after the French Revolution to give advice how a new constitution should look like if war is to be avoided in future. To find answers, he returned to ancient ruins of former empires and asked them what was the reason for the downfall of these once mighty states. The answer he deduced out of the ruins was that whenever religion was involved, inequality was a given beginning with declaring a difference as this is ‘my table’ and ‘you may only sit at the table if I allow you’. Religion and ownership in a spiritual sense goes even further. For each religion claims it to be truest, the closest to God and hence has all the Rights to tell all others what to do, how to behave, when to pray to this one and only God. Constance de Volney discovered that these religions rested their arguments on one basic fallacy: they deduced the claim to be truest from the fact that people were willing to die for them. The more were willing to die in the name of that religion, the truer that religion must be for after all what greater gift any man can make if not sacrificing his or her life in the name of that religion. Constance de Volney concluded that any future constitution must exclude allegiance to religion as principal of value and should not be taken as prerequisite for man to take on identity as recognized by that constitution. There have been made many efforts to bring religions together, into dialogue with one another, as a way to overcome conflict and war, alienation and misunderstanding. Martin Buber was a philosopher of religion who sought to bring together the three main strands in Europe: Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish believes.

In this discussion at philosophical level, Ernst Bloch became an important voice as he pointed out in contrast to Christianity there was Aestheism about whom he made an important distinction, for they believe in God, but without any institution i.e. church. The significance of Bloch in the current dispute cannot be emphasized enough. He was the one who observed in his book ‘Lessons of Materialism’ that “the Arabic scholars had rescued the Greek light and at the same time changed it”. Many philosophical texts of Ancient Greece reached Europe only thanks to the Arabic world having translated these texts into their own language and in that way these texts were preserved.

Bloch was one of the few Western philosophers who knew in a more extended way the development of thought in the Arabic world. He underlined the fact that the Arabic scholars and philosophers differed from those of Europe at least until the 9th century. He said the Arabic philosophers like al-Gahiz were natural scientists and philosophers, not as in Europe where philosophers were equally followers of theology, St. Augustine with his ‘Confessions’ an example. Al-Gahiz created beautiful small stories picked up from what people in the streets would tell each other and made them into jewels of wisdom by giving them all the metaphorical richness they entail when perceived that they address in an innocent, even indirect way the huge social issue of lack of just distribution between the rich and the poor.

It should be recalled that Mohammed arising in the fourth century B.C. was a spokesperson for the poor but upon entering the city and the proximity of power allowed men with property to enter the rank and file of his followers, so that these believers would not have to fear confiscation of their properties. That was a serious compromise which has always played a role in religion when determining its existence on who has the ownership over the land. This is perpetuated in land having only value if used. One of the highest Islamic laws is that anyone has the Right to seize land if not used over a period of time e.g. four or more years.

To come back to Ernst Bloch, he noted the changes in the Arabic world once scholars started to become Fundamentalists in the spirit of Orthodoxy. It meant already then some guardians of the Koran felt developments were going beyond the borders and laws as laid down by this original text. Different theological schools sprang up. They vary in the degree to which the Koran as original text should be taken literally i.e. as a text laying out the fundamental laws which everyone has to follow compared to those schools open to various interpretations.

The Bible or the Koran are perceived as original texts from which many things follow. Like a fountain, people seem to take from there not the water but the inspiration on how to live. In both religious and legal terms it means literally finding the laws everyone must abide to if Mohammed is to be respected by all. So it can become possible that devotion to this religious belief must not only be shown during prayer times, but also in the entire attire e.g. how women are dressed when in the streets. In that sense unity prevails and God, Allah, Mohammed are the Greatest.

To understand this sense for unity not the mass conformity should be taken as departure point, but in real descriptive terms what people feel if they see others behave in such a different way as if they are following another God, interpretation thereof, or even worse are non believers. If people abide to certain laws, but see others not doing the same and as a result they get rich while the God abiding ones remain poor, jealousy is created and social tensions arise. The problem of unity is, therefore, how to prevent the corrosion of not only laws but also of the values that go with them and which influence people in how they behave, think and even enjoy life. As such it suggests that people are generally frightened by such signs of heterogeneity that they associate with such a state chaos, anarchy, lawlessness and above all abuse.

So it is a people’s revolt if they wish to impose a restriction on everyone what each individual may or may not do.

Michel Foucault has pointed out the consequences if the practical discourse fails to write a new text in order to create a new sense of unity in a modern sense. The return to the first original text, the Bible or the Koran, comes when not only heterogeneity but also lack of consensus as to what are the common values prevails. Historical development could be seen as people depart from the original text and interpretations on the increase with experiences varied, ‘the unification of apperception’ (Kant) will not be easy. Different laws will exist and affect people’s minds differently so that there is no longer the same account even when applying one and the same law. What people cannot stand, is one thing: arbitrary rule. There has to be common rule, a common law and everyone must abide to the same law in order to prevent that someone takes advantage from a situation in which there does not exist this unity. Since the Dialectic of Securalisation has started to differentiate the relationship between religious and political law, church and state as two different institutions became in Western Civilization a new way of governing people. Democracy as a system of power which can be elected as much as thrown out of office by election depended upon one core element: freedom of conscience of the individual. This meant individual freedom became the basic Right of everyone and with it goes the Right for the Freedom of Expression. Political opinions, opinions about reality, should not be pre-determined by what values they have to adhere to or in another way show reverence to before speaking up or speaking ‘your mind’.

All this can be followed, by the way, in the arts. Once no longer aesthetical principles as defined by the church determined what artists may say, may not, the emancipation of the art became another dialogue with people on how they can understand themselves. There is one famous painting by Giotto who in the early 13th century showed how power looked inside the church compared to how people on the outside perceived that power. It was made concrete on hand of a cross hanging on the church’s outer wall. While from inside it was a mere attrape hanging on a thin wire, the people on the outside revered it as if the symbol of pain and power. Giotto’s painting was a way to invite people to look behind the symbols of power very much as Plato would describe that man getting off the cave’s floor to discover that the images people were guessing are created in fact by men jumping in front of fires.

This questioning of God by showing what people do in the name of God continued. There is the difference between those who design and watch over the people that they do their reverence in a proper way and those who become a part of the believers. Strength is derived out of this sense of unity even though it may be but mass conformity and still in real life a far cry from real solidarity.

Dostoevsky in ‘the Grand Inquisitor’ states that the one who preaches to the people what laws to follow never believes himself that what he asks the people to believe. The real unbeliever is the highest priest. That questioning has taken on many forms of expression, including the making of something abstract, therefore powerful, because feared and revered at one and the same time by everyone, into a caricature. The Polish philosopher Kolakowski would say caricature is an expression of dismay by people who have lost paradise i.e. sense of unity and in trying to evoke a sense of unity cannot make a painting but merely a caricature of what they image things to be. This is an important observation when reflecting what is the language of cartoons by which Walt Disney became so famous with figures of speech like Bugs Boney saying ‘What’s up Doc?’ or Mickey Mouse being the hero of situations never located in reality but in an imagined world of all possibilities colliding constantly with impossibilities. No wonder such a language has been used in satire or in other forms of disputes especially if something is being contested.

To come back then to this modern picture dispute, the cartoons published first in a Danish newspaper provoked such reactions in the Muslim world that a further understanding thereof is needed. Especially now that it has become a fully blow-up issue beyond all proportions, and the same cartoons also reprinted in several newspapers out of the principle of ‘freedom of expression’, the Muslim reaction speaks about not only the law no painting should be made of Mohammed, but about having been personally insulted and therefore not only the Danish newspaper, but the entire nation and more so the whole of Europe should apologize.

If developments over time can be interpreted, then cartoons and more so political caricatures have been used especially against politicians or other famous people if they are at risk to take themselves too serious. But the context has become over serious since 9/11 with Bush and his administration using the language of caricature when speaking about “us” as believers in democracy and ‘rule of the law’ and those evil powers. The moment such religious language enters the public domain, there is always the risk of polarizing people by splitting them into two camps. Gross generalizations will add to this down side of abstraction seeking to unify not only people but nation states around the world in this fight against terrorism by encouraging over simplification. Add to it a special brand of moralism, then Christian Fundamentalism in politics means claiming everything is black and white, hence easy to predict what choices need to be made in order to continue governing this world.

It should not be forgotten that some entrepreneur in America immediately produced toilet paper after 9/11. What was so unusual about this paper? It had printed on it the face of Bin Laden and anyone familiar with the saying ‘wipe my ass’ knew what was meant by that. It channeled anger and more so many other feelings into what became an unified form of American Patriotism as basis of legitimacy to go to war over this attack on the Twin Towers.

Since then, and especially after the invasion of Iraq March 2003, all in the name to make the world safer, the troops from America, UK, Poland etc. have been engaged in a dirty fight and most often terrorism was linked to Islam or more precisely to the Holy Jihad as declared by Bin Laden and co. Even though many Muslim believers distance themselves from Bin Laden’s call for war against the unbelievers i.e. the people of the West, generalizations prevail especially when enemy pictures are needed to keep up a fictitious war. Here one should only remind the series of cartoons British Tabloid bring repeatedly about Germans whenever there might be a good occasion to link the past, the fight against Hitler, Fascism and Germans with current events e.g. a football match between England and Germany. Such caricature serves nothing but keeping up prejudices and to let deeper emotions revolt over and again if only to stand up collectively against this old and new foe.

All this needs to be kept in mind on how feelings can become dangerous weapons in a process of polarization. The protest of the Muslim world against those cartoons is only a further escalation in a war of emotions. It includes the news spread about prisoners being abused not only in Guatanamo Bay, but elsewhere in Iraq jails and it adds to the entire matter even more fuel when news is spread that torture was accompanied by secretion of the Koran if the prisoner happened to be a Muslim.

But before any further heated arguments become so loud and so shrill that no counter argument is audible, and since already people can make death threats out of the belief not they personally, but collectively they have been insulted by these cartoons, a poet should be listened to.

Brendan Kennelly in his epic poem ‘Judas’ speaks about this voice of betrayal as a peculiar way to educate people. He re-accounts himself how at school he was taught constantly not to listen to this voice of betrayal with Judas being identified as the figure to be avoided. Brendan concludes that in the process of indoctrination he became oblivious to one crucial fact, namely he stopped seeing how many of his own dreams he had already betrayed even before coming an adult. This leads to Brendan Kennelly in reflection of what violence erupted in Ireland, specifically in Northern Ireland (and this as a conflict between religions) to say that the most difficult thing to unlearn is ‘learned hatred’. By having made innocent civilians into enemies in order to go to war in Iraq, the production of enemy pictures has started to dominate not only in the rhetoric of President Bush, but has influenced greatly the perception of all those serving in a war of occupation. “We will hunt them down” fuels that mission with the kind of blind élan that seems to forget to ask the crucial question whether or not at the root of the permanent war which Rumsfeld is so fond of in promoting, that the dream of peace in the world is constantly betrayed, and not only by the insurgents, but by also all those business people making a fortune out of the weapons trade?

Hatred is not only between Israelis and Palestinians by now a fence transformed into a wall of separation due to not knowing any more another answer to suicide bombers, but it can be a force that killed Rabin with the murderer justifying it by claiming to know that Rabin had violated not secular, but religious law connected with what is the claim of the Holy Land. Lately, with Sharon already in coma, BBC interviewed settlers about their views of this man who made them clear land. One woman said Sharon has become one who no longer follows higher authority but who became more interested in real terms on how he is perceived by the world and so he is to her one no longer upholding religious law. Such argumentations are important especially if ‘higher authority’ is put over and beyond human dialogue, reason and insight into what is the solution, namely the land belongs to all and ownership should not exclude others from living on this earth. But this is not so easily communicated as seen by Indians preferring open land without fences while settlers do not enjoy that beauty but want to stake out their claim by building immediately fences and walls. They did this when going out West in America and the same happens when bulldozers rage through the olive grooves where Palestinians used to seek shade.

So the problem is deeper and most difficult to resolve especially if, as Brendan Kennelly points out, prejudices are ‘converted’ into convictions, beliefs for if challenged at that level, those holding these convictions will not recognize in what they wish to be respected and be upheld without doubt as former prejudices. Instead they will feel insulted. This then is what goes so wrong in our world filled with doubt. Out of reasons of lack of certainty religious beliefs are resorted to in the absence of any workable ideology and then higher authorities demand just respect, no questioning, no cartoon, and certainly once felt insulted no apology will do to reverse the trend of feeling enraged. Instead the masked men shooting their rifles in the air on top of the EU building feel that they have a cause to be enraged because they have converted already any challenge to what they take too serious as a threat in what they want everyone to believe.

It should be reminded that caricatures perpetuate themselves in even jokes about others. As a saying goes about Germans, their jokes are no laughing matter. Eichmann had the Jewish orchestra play Verdi’s Requiem in Theresienstadt before they were transported off to Auschwitz to die. Eichmann and the German SS thought this was a great joke and thereby shows that this joke about German jokes as being no laughing matter has a serious basis. To realize it and then go on living means to bring the human spirit in touch with human reality as the best way to follow sober truths where laughter means happiness and seriousness a thought well founded in the wish to respect and to uphold human dignity. Things should be taken as they are meant while interpretation thereof should never stifle the freedom of expression of the other. Only when listening to what the others says, can it be seen what is meant. Still a word of caution is needed. Michel Foucault mentioned it: people begin only then to speak with each other again if no victory over the other is necessary.