Karen Armstrong on the offending cartoons

February 6, 2006

Karen Armstrong is a leading British commentator on religious

affairs and author of Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet

Each side needs to appreciate the other's point of view. I think it

was criminally irresponsible to publish these cartoons. They have

been an absolute gift to the extremists - it shows that the West is

incurably Islamophobic. It sends a very bad message.

But, more seriously, it is letting ourselves down. We trumpet abroad

about what a compassionate culture we are. But these cartoons

depicting Muhammad as a terrorist are utterly inaccurate, feeding

into an Islamophobia that has been a noxious element in Western

culture since the time of the Crusades. It can only inflame matters

at this very crucial juncture of our mutual history.

On the other hand, in a secular Europe, freedom of speech has

developed as one of our sacred values. We fought hard for it, but we

have to remember it carries responsibilities. For example, do we

have a right to say whatever we want even if it is false and

dangerous?

More importantly, however, freedom is as sacred a value for us as

the Prophet is to Muslims.

We are seeing here a clash of two different notions of what is

sacred and this is part of the modernising process.

Modernisation and secularisation has this bumpy ride where people at

different levels of modernisation are clashing. In other parts of

the world where modernisation is not yet complete it is not regarded

as a crucial as other sacred realities.

And now we are all living in this multicultural society cheek-by-

jowl with one another, not even within a single country but we are

linked to one another in our global village. We have to learn to

live side by side better than this.

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