John KoenigBeneath the controversy surrounding the cartoons that spurred violence across the Muslim world lies long-standing social tension between Europeans and Muslims, an associate professor of religion at UW-Oshkosh told a nearly full Hibbard classroom Thursday night.
Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan, who has studied extremism for years both from the U.S. and in the Middle East, said European fears of Muslim immigrants eventually dominating their countries is the true driving force behind the controversy.
“There are worries that the Muslim immigrants will overtake European countries,” he said. “It’s not on the surface, but it’s there.”
Kaplan said those concerns, on a basic level, are part of what led the Jyllands-Posten, a conservative Danish newspaper, to publish cartoons depicting the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
Islamic teachings prohibit the depiction of the prophet – a result of the religion’s formation following widespread idolatry.
What’s more, many of the cartoons seemed to perpetuate negative stereotypes of Muslims, he said.
Kaplan proceeded to show the audience the cartoons that incited the negative reactions, as well as reactionary cartoons from the Muslim world (which Jyllands-Posten decided ultimately not to print) and a video he said many Muslims find offensive.
One of the more notorious cartoons that offended the Muslim world featured the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Others represented the stereotype that Islam promotes the subjugation of women.
Kaplan outlined the sequence of events leading up to the violence that plagued the Middle East, saying that the government – which he considered conservative by American terms – failed to heed the complaints of Muslim groups following the publication of the cartoons.
This led a group of Muslims to spread word of injustice, eventually leading to riots throughout the Middle East that governments likeSyria and Iran exploited to the point of serious violence.
The main point of contention, he said, is what Muslims see as hypocrisy in Europe.
Those who argued in favor of running the cartoons said they did so to promote free speech, even though making statements that might incite racial strife in other cases, especially in relation to the Jewish holocaust, often is punishable by law.
These inconsistencies, he said, communicate a message of discrimination to the Muslim world.
“(The cartoons were part of) a flood of anti-Islamic material in Europe,” he said.
Europeans commonly espouse three basic stereotypes of Islam, he said, which include the ideas that Islam oppresses women, conflicts with democratic ideals and is inherently tied to terrorism.
Audience reactions were mixed, with some advising Kaplan to offer a more thorough context for the images he was presenting and the arguments he was making.
Ali Abootalebi, an associate professor of political science and native of Iran, said he felt Kaplan presented religious and political topics without properly distinguishing between them. Terrorism, he said, is the result of political forces in the Middle East, not religion. Referring to political and religious symbols and concepts interchangeably, then, unjustly could have linked terrorism to religion in the “fresh minds” of uninformed audience members.
“The presentation confounded religion with politics . in terms of causes and consequences of Muslim reactions,” he said. “You have to very clearly state to the audience what is religious and what is political.”
Sophomore Sage Al-Benali, who lived for several years in his family’s homeland of Kuwait, said he came to Kaplan’s presentation expecting to be offended simply because of the subject matter, but felt refreshed afterward.
“As a Muslim and as an Arab, I was offended before he even spoke,” he said, explaining that Kaplan’s treatment of Islam was fair. “After hearing him, that’s when I knew I was in the right place.”
