Religion and (Mis)recognition: Axel Honneth and the Danish Cartoon Controversy (original) (raw)
Related papers
On Taboos: The Danish Cartoon Crisis 2005-2008 1
Dialog, 2009
The international crisis following the publication of 12 Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (September 30, 2005) raises the general question of how to exercise the freedom of expression in relation to religious taboos. After briefly reviewing the Cartoon Crisis from September 2005 to the bombings on the Danish Ambassay in Pakistan in June 2008, the article addresses Lutheran resources for coping with secularisation and desecularisation, in particular as regards the taboos that persist as a part of religious and humanistic values. The thesis is that the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms has given rise to two models of interpretation that have both been historically active. The doctrine of the two regiments has been interpreted both as a 'liberalist' argument for a principled separation of religion and politics, and as a 'social-conservative' (later Social Democratic) argument for the view that the state should take care of its citizens' welfare through education, the legal system and social services. In today's global and multi-religious world, this leads us to ask the question to what extent a welfare society, for the sake of peace and social order, should, or should not, protect religious sensitivities. Should religious communities always be kept out of public life, or can they be recognised as non-governmental organizations in civil society, hence as potential partners for the state?
Perspectives on Politics, 2015
The 2005 Danish cartoon crisis has been the topic of much discussion among political science scholars. In September 2011 we ran a symposium on Jytte Klausen’sThe Cartoons That Shook the Worldthat centered on the tensions between multiculturalism, civility, and freedom of expression disclosed by the controversy. Paul M. Sniderman, Michael Bang Petersen, Rune Slothuus, and Rune Stubager’sParadoxes of Liberal Democracy: Islam, Western Europe, and the Danish Cartoon Crisis(Princeton 2014) revisits the Danish crisis. Drawing on randomized experiments linked to broader survey research, the authors offer a nuanced account of Danish public opinion, and argue that the sensitivity of Danes to civil liberties concerns explains why the cartoon controversy did not result in an anti-Muslim backlash. The topic, the argument, and the methodology are important, and so we have invited a range of political science scholars to review the book. — Jeffrey C. Isaac
Normative Significance of Transnationalism? The Case of the Danish Cartoons Controversy
Ethics & Global Politics, 2009
The paper concerns the specific transnational aspects of the ‘cartoons controversy’ over the publication of 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Transnationalism denotes the relationships that are not international (between states) or domestic (between states and citizens, or between groups or individuals within a state). The paper considers whether the specifically transnational aspects of the controversy are normatively significant, that is, whether transnationalism makes a difference for the applicability or strength of normative considerations concerning publications such as the Danish cartoons. It is argued that, although some of the usual arguments about free speech only or mainly apply domestically, many also apply transnationally; that standard arguments for multicultural recognition are difficult to apply transnationally; and that requirements of respect may have problematic implications if applied to transnational relationships.
The Danish Cartoon Controversy: Globalized Spaces and Universalizing Impulses
Research and Reviews: Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicological Studies, 2007
This paper is occasioned by a conversation that I had with my (Anglo) American neighbor during the Danish cartoon crisis. As an Arab American, I am for him both an encyclopedia and a sounding board for all things Middle Eastern and Muslim. "Wanna see some drawings of the prophet Muhammed?" he quipped. After I politely demurred he asked, "what are you people doing over there rioting over a stupid cartoon?" What bothered me was not so much his argument that "Muslims are behaving like children" as the unexamined idea that it was only Muslims that were acting. Europeans (and by cultural extension Americans) by this measure simply are, their perceptions, identities, meanings, and actions are fixed and thus should be held universally. At the time of his question, the cartoon crisis, in which derogatory cartoons commissioned by a Danish newspaper editor and were reprinted across Europe, had begun taking on quite serious dimensions. Riots were springing up acro...
Images That Come Unbidden: Some Thoughts on the Danish Cartoon Controversy
borderlands.net.au
The 2005 Danish cartoon controversy remains much discussed. In this paper I shift the focus of discussion from the question of speech, as to whether the cartoons constitute free, hate or even blasphemous speech, to the aspect of them as images. Substituting 'cartoons as images' for 'cartoons as speech', I interrogate an underlying assumption in the discussion that Muslim everyday life and religiosity does not provide a conscious address to images. The central effort in this paper is to show that religious texts and manuals oriented to guiding everyday life evince sensitivity to the appearance of images and their possible effects upon piety. There is recognition that images that come unbidden require attention in terms of ascertaining provenance, the correct interpretive framework and the rightful course of action. Furthermore, these texts even proffer images of their own to be consciously worked upon by believers in order to produce proper attachments to subjects of veneration. I end on the speculation that rather than see these modalities of relating to images as a minor tendency within the Islamic tradition, they may be thought of as the practice of imagination that has as strong a claim upon Muslim pursuits of religiosity as sense perceptions, intellectual cognition, even ardent faith. borderlands 9:3
The Case of the Danish Cartoons Controversy: The Paradox of Civility
Islam and Public Controversy in Europe, 2014
The so-called ‘Danish cartoons controversy’ set in motion by the publication of twelve drawings under the title ‘the face of Mohammed’ by the Danish broadsheet Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 has become one of the iconic controversies surrounding Islam in Europe. But the cartoon controversy was not only one controversy, but many. The paper argues that there are different controversies depending on what the object and the scope of the controversy are. But there are also different controversies depending on how a given object of controversy is framed, e.g. in legal terms and some in non-legal terms, and what is taken to be at stake in the controversy. The paper focuses on the non-legal terms of the cartoons controversy and considers how one might understand what was at stake in the controversy thus understood. An important part of the non-legal controversy can be captured and understood by interpreting it in terms of the concept of ‘civility’ as a social theoretical concept and analytical category. The introduction of this analytical perspective gives a more complete picture of what was actually at stake in the cartoons controversy. The introduction of the concept of civility makes it possible to understand how some views and interventions in the controversy were displaced or misrepresented, which gave defenders of Jyllands-Posten a rhetorical advantage that allowed them to dominate the controversy, at least in Denmark. But the very framing of the debate in terms of civility also leads to a problem due to the discursive logic of civility claims. This ‘paradox of civility’ is a practical problem facing any attempt by minority groups to raise issues of civility. This discursive phenomenon might have empirical explanatory significance, since the logic of claims of civility might explain some of the dynamics in the cartoons controversy and perhaps also some other public controversies about Islam in Europe.
Free speech in a tolerant society: the case of the Muhammad cartoons
In this article are set out the legal repercussions of the known as “the case of the Mohammed cartoons” and also the parliamentary discussions at the Danish Parliament about the articles in the Penal Code against blasphemy and racism. It is also analysed the subsequent debate focused in self-censorship of public opinion about the issues related with the Muslim immigration and, in the final section, it is proposed which should be the attitude of the media with regard to the integration of minorities from other cultural, ethnic and/or religious provenance.