Tsjoe! It’s been a searing week for the Mail & Guardian, as we found ourselves in the eye of the South African storm over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The letters pages are alight with anger; our online forums clatter with fury.
It is our established practice that if we trample on the religious or ethnic sensibilities of any group of South Africans, we will apologise unconditionally. Last year, we apologised to the Jewish community over a cartoon that had caused offence. It is in the same spirit that we offer our apologies to Muslims offended by our publication last week of one of the cartoons whose appearance in a Danish newspaper sparked widespread protest in Europe and the Middle East.
Many, perhaps most Muslims regard the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in images as sacrilegious. We should have foreseen that this would cause offence. Our apology is unequivocal.
What we are also unequivocal about is that we intended no harm: we were not making a point, as were the European newspapers, about superior Western values, or European culture, or nasty Muslims, we were showing readers what the global furore was about.
Many readers apparently draw no distinction between the original publication of the cartoon in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which seems to have been mischievous and deliberately provocative, and its reproduction in the M&G.
To repeat a blasphemy is not necessarily to blaspheme — it depends on the intention. It should be obvious that our coverage last week in no way identified or sympathised with the cartoons or their message.
Some now argue that the content of the cartoon was simply too hurtful to a section of the population to reprint, and we accept this.
But this is not always a simple issue to decide. To take an example: two weeks ago we published an article from The Guardian that quoted certain race “scientists” as arguing that black people are less intelligent, on average, than whites. That is a view that is deeply hurtful to blacks, but black readers understood that the M&G was merely reporting it, not endorsing it — indeed, we utterly reject such thinking. But should we have avoided publication on grounds that it might cause offence?
Balancing the public’s right to know against the duty not to injure people’s religious, racial or ethnic sensibilities is often a difficult and delicate matter.
We remain a nation in the making; we are setting our norms and standards, defining our rights and responsibilities. Freedom of speech is not absolute, but it will take negotiation to decide where the dividing line lies. What should be beyond dispute is that this line cannot be drawn with the barrel of the gun.
This newspaper will always fight for the vital freedom of expression, and we do not believe that it is one that can be brushed aside with as little thought as many readers suggest.
Engagement is part of our DNA, as is debate and negotiation.
The sad thing is that there has been no attempt, among those calling for a boycott of the M&G, to look at the publication as a whole.
The newspaper has an exemplary history of opposing oppression and human rights abuses across the world, including United States imperialism and warmongering in the Middle East, and of support for the downtrodden people of Palestine. It is not a clone or offshoot of a European-based Islamophobic publication, and should not be treated as one.
Indeed, South Africans have tended to follow the European and Middle Eastern cue, even though conditions in this country could not be more different.
With US military adventures ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the diplomatic harassment of Syria and Iran, and continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, Muslims there feel under siege. Islamic communities in Europe, subjected to regular religious scorn and racial abuse and violence, feel marginalised and threatened. But none of that applies in South Africa — the Constitution, which some readers deride in our letters columns this week, has been crucial to ensuring that racial and religious minorities are free from persecution and oppression, and are part of the political mainstream.
And while there is global Islamic solidarity, the Muslim community here does not have to adopt the tactics of the embassy-burners when engagement, education and negotiation are powerful and available tools.
It was thuggish intimidation to hold up, at gunpoint, newspaper delivery trucks in Lenasia this week. The insults, intimidation and threats directed against the M&G‘s editor are unacceptable.
By the same token, last Friday night’s pre-emptive gag on Sunday newspapers was unnecessary — there is not an editor in South Africa who would have refused deputations from community leaders.
Such behaviour is an affront to our constitutional democracy and a flagrant violation of Islamic values, which deserves the condemnation of all right-thinking Muslims.
Because of the inter-group tolerance and reconciliation that has been fostered in South Africa since 1994, the country offers a unique opportunity for dialogue between different cultures, religions and political outlooks. It holds out the possibility of a meeting of the minds between reasonable, moderate men and women of all faiths and persuasions. South Africans should not allow themselves to become needlessly polarised because of a fight they did not start, which erupted thousands of miles away, and which does not reflect the dynamics of their society. And most of us are probably on the same side when it comes to recognising the rise of Islamophobia in Europe and the context of the cartoons.
We must co-exist, not live in parallel universes. There need be no battle between Qu’ran and Constitution.