The Danish School of Journalism released an online study this week showing that 143 newspapers in 56 countries have reprinted the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The study revealed that although 14 regional and local publications reprinted the drawings, no national newspaper in the United States has. The cartoons were first published in a Danish newspaper last year and sparked international protests, some of which turned violent and deadly.
As the controversy continues, the Danish government has agreed to host a conference in Copenhagen next week which will bring Muslims and Christian Danes together to discuss the issue in an effort to foster mutual respect between Muslims and Christians.
Recently, William Greene, President of RightMarch.com, joined CFIF Corporate Counsel & Senior Vice President Renee Giachino to discuss the controversial cartoons. What follows are excerpts from the interview that aired on "Your Turn – Meeting Nonsense With Common Sense" on WEBY 1330AM, Northwest Florida's Talk Radio.
GIACHINO: I am sure that you have heard or read about the protests throughout the Muslim world in response to cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper last fall. The cartoons are caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammad and, as you've probably heard, the Muslim faith does not allow Mohammed to be depicted in any form. Recently, there were violent protests in Tehran at the Danish Embassy. Newspapers in much of Europe re-printed the cartoons. My next guest joins us this afternoon to discuss these cartoons.
Please welcome Mr. William Greene, President of RightMarch.com. Thank you for joining us this afternoon.
GREENE: Thank you for having me on.
GIACHINO: Mr. Greene can you first share with us some information about your organization, RightMarch?
GREENE: RightMarch is basically an on-line conservative activist organization. Our e-mails go to about a million conservatives nationwide. We send out action alerts on bills and issues and things of interest to patriotic Americans nationwide that they need to take action on.
GIACHINO: The website is RightMarch.com for the listeners out there who are tech savvy and want to learn more about the organization.
I gave a little bit of an overview on this, but I think that you can offer a lot more. How and when did this all start?
GREENE: Well it started back in September of last year. There was a Danish newspaper whose editor had a sneaky suspicion that cartoonists were self-censoring because of the very large Muslim population in Denmark and really throughout Western Europe. So he asked every Danish cartoonist who is out there if they would draw a cartoon that incorporated Mohammed into the cartoon in some way. And he only got a dozen responses back out of all of the Danish cartoonists. So they printed those twelve Danish cartoons that included Mohammed in them. Really they were focusing on the radical Muslim perception of world view and the Islamo-fascist world view. For example, having a picture of Mohammed in a turban and the turban was actually a bomb.
So that happened and really no one responded. But then you had some radical Islamist who went and did a speaking tour and really started to foment a lot of resentment among the Islamic populations there to start demonstrating violently against those cartoonists. So we have seen in the last couple of weeks that that has been the result. So it has really been stirred up by these radical Muslims.
GIACHINO: Someone suggested to me, and I don't know if you can confirm this, but they said that some of the most offensive cartoons were counterfeit – that is that they were not among the twelve that were submitted?
GREENE: There have been some fake ones out there and additional ones drawn since then. Obviously since the uproar started there are other cartoonists who have really stepped into the fray as well. So that has started fomenting even more resentment and even more violence. The most ironic thing I think is that the original cartoons were really depicting Muslims, specifically the Islamo-fascists, as being violent and over-reactive. And the response that they got to this in the Middle East is that these Muslims became violent and over-reactive. So I think they sort of self-fulfilled what these cartoons were all about to begin with.
GIACHINO: They hit a raw nerve that's for sure.
Many of our listeners have not had the opportunity to see the cartoons. Why is that?
GREENE: It is interesting. You know the Danish editor originally found that there is some real self-censorship going on. I don't know if it is result of all of the threats or what. Or maybe just Islam is a special case. Especially in Western Europe and maybe even more so in America, cartoonists have no qualms about drawing political cartoons and about drawing cartoons that are deprecating to all sorts of different faiths, especially Christianity. You see Jesus drawn in deprecating ways, you see pictures shown in newspapers that are so-called art that will have a crucifix and a jar of urine or it will have the Virgin Mary with dung all over her and they are more than willing to print those knowing how offensive that is to Christians. Yet at the same time they will turn right around and say in the very same paper as we recently saw with The New York Times that they are not going to show these cartoons because they do not want to be offensive to any particular faith. They are really being hypocritical about this.
GIACHINO: New to our website is a cartoon section and it really has been very popular. I think people find it an interesting form of free expression and I want to talk a lot about that in just a minute.
Mr. Greene, I have a caller on the line. Is it okay if we take his question?
GREENE: Absolutely.
GIACHINO: Go ahead caller, it's your turn.
CALLER: I spent a lot of time in the Middle East and isn't it true that it is the Sunni sect that does not allow any images of Mohammed and the Shi'ites do allow it?
GREENE: That is actually true and it actually goes even further than that. There are only certain sects of Sunni that do not allow images of Mohammed. In fact, there are a few sects within the Shi'ite sect that do not allow it. But what we see, if you look in any history of religion book, you see artwork and drawings and paintings – beautiful artwork, that include pictures of Mohammed in there and that's from the Islamic world down over the centuries. So it really is not a case that they do not allow any pictures of Mohammed. What it is is they are reacting to how Mohammed – really the Islamic faith, and how it was being portrayed in their eyes as being violent. And so they have reacted to that.
Unfortunately for them they have merely reinforced the stereotype of those cartoons because they are going out there and being violent and calling for even more violence.
CALLER: Absolutely. And I think that the key word of what I observed with the Muslim faith is hypocrite. Even during their Ramadan they are supposed to be fasting during the day and yet there is no barrier at night because Allah cannot see them and they are raising all kinds of you-know-what.
GREENE: That point that you raised, that it was really more the Sunnis than the Shi'ites who have a problem with images with Mohammed, what really has been interesting is that you have seen all of these demonstrations throughout different Islamic countries in the Middle East, the demonstrations that have had no violence whatsoever have been in Iraq where democracy is finally taking hold.
That is what I think gets to the root of this issue. One of the things that folks in the west are so upset seeing what is going on over there is that freedom of the press and freedom of speech are bedrock principles of democracy and I think people are starting to wake up to the fact that we are dealing with a culture and civilization that really does not have much of a concept of what democracy entails. That's what we are facing in this clash of civilizations.
CALLER: Those leading this global reconquest of their former lands have let the cat out of the bag in that they said that they were going to use the democracy – our own laws, against us in Europe and in the United States. Those are freedom of speech and immigration laws. They are going to use those to bring us down. That is what this whole thing is. This is orchestrated – they are fear mongering. They are trying to intimidate us.
GREENE: I really appreciate what you are saying. I think something that folks really need to remember is that we are at war now. We are not at war with Islam; we are at war with Islamo-fascists. It is the Islamo-fascists who have really taken over and they are not just some minority that does not have any say in the Muslim world. They really are the leading spokespeople for the Muslim world. We are not hearing the moderate voices speaking out in a big way. In fact, we are starting to see that they are falling in line with a lot of what we are seeing from the Islamo-fascists.
My real hope here is that this is a real wake up call for the West. Look, this is who we are facing, this is what we are up against, you see how they react to any true exhibition of true bedrock principles and we need to keep that in mind as we are out there in this new world war that we are engaged in.
CALLER: One last thing and then I will go. We see the fear that the Europeans have of the Muslim uprising in France and England and now in the Scandinavian countries because they have let so many Muslims into their countries. We need to severely check out the backgrounds of any Muslims who come to this country so that we are not held hostage by a hostile 10, 13, 15% of Muslims.
GREENE: I think that is a great point. I would also say that there is a great book out now that is called The West's Last Chance. I cannot remember the gentleman's name but he is the editorial page editor of The Washington Times.
GIACHINO: Yes, he was on our program to discuss the book. His name is Tony Blankley.
GREENE: That's right. And the first chapter of that book was like almost, with one or two shades of difference, a prediction of what we are seeing going on across Western Europe right now. My real hope is that like what happened back in the 1930s and in the early 1940s when you saw fascism starting to spread across Europe one of the big things that you saw in opposition to that was the cartoonists -- caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini and the leaders of fascism and an effort to expose who they were and where they were coming from. I think that is one of the things that we have seen with these initial cartoons and cartoons that we have seen since then and I am hoping that they have an effect across Europe and people do really wake up to what is happening here.
GIACHINO: A copy of Tony Blankley's interview is on our website and you are exactly right – the entire first chapter that he lays out like it is doomsday and that it probably won't ever happen but we will look at the worst case scenario of bombings in Europe because the Muslims are offended by art work and statutes of naked men and women in public places. Lo and behold, this is just a small twist on that. Wouldn't you agree?
GREENE: That is exactly right. I read that book right after this stuff started happening. I read that first chapter with my mouth open wide the entire time thinking that he was just looking into a cloudy crystal ball.
GIACHINO: I asked him not to write another book – it scared me.
You have called for extensive publication by mainstream newspapers of these cartoons. In a country dominated by at least the theory of free speech, how should we address those who say that respect for religion has to trump free speech in this situation?
GREENE: I find it interesting when anyone says anything like that. Usually the people who are saying that are not the ones who have had to deal with the kind of insulting caricatures that people of faith have had to deal with for many, many years. Most of the time the people who are saying that we have to be respectful of religion are the ones who have encouraged the publication of insulting cartoons, especially insulting to Christianity for many years. So it really is pretty hypocritical most of the time.
The big thing that we are really encouraging folks to do – and we have hundreds of thousands of members, and we have already seen over 13,000 letters to the editor go through our website telling local newspapers that they need to be printing these cartoons and caricatures, not because we are trying to insult anyone or anything like that but really it boils down to "here is a news story." When you have a news story on a crucifix being put into a jar of urine and they have a story about it, they don't just describe it but you see pictures of it everywhere. This past week there was the so-called art of the dung on the Virgin Mary. None of those so-called stories just described it; they had pictures of it there. Yet we are seeing in almost every single case in the talking about the riots that are going on over these cartoons they are not showing what was the original first cause of this news story. They are refusing to do so in most cases whereas they had no problem printing all those other ones. So it is just a matter of hypocrisy. I think it is a matter of political correctness. And it is a matter of liberal hypocrisy for the most part that we are not seeing them printed.
What we are saying is that they need to be consistent and not be hypocritical and we need to stand with the Danes who were willing to go as far as they did for freedom of speech, freedom of press and bedrock principles of democracy because the Danes – besides the British, are probably the best friends that we have in Europe. Denmark is just a great country; my father-in-law is Danish so I get to say some of this stuff. They celebrate the Fourth of July over there – our independence day, because they love America so much. So I think it is time for us to stand with them.
GIACHINO: We have seen a lot of anti-Jewish material in the news and we have seen a lot of anti-Christian material as well. I was surprised this week when I read the Vatican's response to this whole situation. The quote in The Wall Street Journal was that "The right to freedom of thought and expression . . . cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
GREENE: The question you have to ask then is who gets to determine what is offensive. What is happening now is that it is not just some nice Muslims or clerics or even regular people who are determining that. We have radical Muslims, Islamo-fascists burning down embassies and holding up signs demanding that heads be cut off and they are the ones who are determining what cartoonists get to draw and whether it is offensive or not. That is the kind of thing that we need to stand up to.
You know when the pictures of Mary with the dung were in The New York Times last week you did not see thousands of Catholics run down to The New York Times building in New York and start throwing fire bombs and demanding people's heads be cut off. You might have people picket and you might have people write letters to the editor but they did not send letter bombs to the editor.
That's because it is a foundational principle of democracy and that is why these things need to be printed. You have a legitimate story going on and it is okay to print the part of that legitimate story that lends itself to that story.
GIACHINO: Because there is so much censorship going on I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there and a lot of untruths. I am trying to get my facts in order. We can all disagree on our opinions but you have to have the facts, facts, facts. What do you know about the information that an Iranian state newspaper is holding a Holocaust cartoon contest?
GREENE: They are. They announced that they are having a contest – this is in response to the Danish newspaper cartoons, they are going to hold a contest for people to draw cartoons about the Holocaust. You know, as offensive as that is, it again is hypocritical on their part. The reason that they are doing it is because they were upset because they were offended by some cartoons. So their response is that they are going offend others with cartoons. And these are people who didn't have anything to do with it. The Jewish population in Denmark is probably the smallest of any country in Western Europe. So that is just goofy to begin with that that is what they are choosing to do. I would think that if they were going to hold a cartoon contest on caricatures of Uncle Sam as Satan or something maybe that would be a response. And lastly, I really want to know where these protestors in the streets are getting all of these Danish flags that they are burning. Are these things readily available in the Middle East?
GIACHINO: I hope they are buying them. Maybe that will support the economy.
GREENE: That's the other thing – they are calling for boycotts of Danish products. The two biggest Danish exports are beer and bacon. So you have Muslim countries calling for boycotts of beer and bacon, I don't think it will make too huge of a dent in the Danish economy.
GIACHINO: Earlier in the interview you made the point that there is a conflict all right, it just may not necessarily be between civilizations but it may be between one. Here it pits those who are Islamic barbaric and some who are a little more civilized. My question is this – if Islam is a religion of peace, why do not the peace-loving Muslims speak out more against the violence undertaken in the name of their Prophet Mohammed?
GREENE: That is the right question to ask. There are some speaking out and we are not here to lump all Muslims together. I've got friends who are Muslims and not all Muslims are Islamo-fascists. But the Islamo-fascists have become the loudest voices in the Muslim community and it really is time for the moderate Muslims to speak up and not be afraid and they need to take down the people who have set themselves up as their leaders.
GIACHINO: Thank you very much for spending time with us this afternoon.
GREENE: Thanks for having me on; I appreciate it.
March 2, 2006