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[Back to index of March articles] Cartoon controversy By Paul Donnelly For 25 years, the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington has fostered dialogue on faith and freedom, civil liberties and civil disobedience, tolerance and truth. So it was a fitting forum where a wide cross-section of the region's faith communities, alarmed by the riots in reaction to the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, could come together to be heard and to listen. On Feb. 15, Briggs Memorial Baptist Church hosted an IFC "Freedom of the Press and Religious Sensibilities" panel anchored by Time magazine editor Michael Duffy and moderated by Rajwant Singh, president of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation. "This is an example of what we hear described as a 'clash of civilizations,'" said Singh, a Sikh, using Harvard professor Samuel Huntington's phrase for the conflict with Islam. Duffy added that the controversy over the cartoons, particularly one which portrayed the Prophet Muhammed with a bomb for a turban, raised questions of political as well as religious tolerance. "I think it's impossible to overstate how little we knew about this part of the world, and of course it's hard to separate from our involvement with the war in Iraq" the Washington bureau chief told a crowd of several dozen clerics and theology students. "Millions of Americans look at the embassy burnings and they're saying - 'and we're trying to create democracy there?'" Bruce Lustig, senior rabbi of Washington Hebrew Congregation, noted that dialogue among the faithful of different religious traditions should "not always be crisis-oriented…Perhaps this is a question of mutual tolerance versus pluralism." The rabbi pointed out that pluralism recognizes many beliefs are exclusive: "There are moments when we can only have mutual tolerance. We can't wash over our differences." There was applause when Rizwan Jaka, president of ADAMS, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, praised Time for refusing to publish the cartoons, even though Fox News and others had done so. Duffy explained: "There is a push by some conservative folks to publish these… I think it's a horrible way to teach freedom of expression." Imam Muhammad Magid, the prayer mark on his forehead looking remarkably like a permanent Ash Wednesday smudge, added from the panel: "I would like to give the press some credit," since major news outlets such as the Washington Post and the New York Times decided that stories about the rioting did not need to run the actual provocation. V.S. Raghavan of the United Hindu-Jain Temples said he was "appalled" that a publication would commit such a sacrilege, and he added that he was also appalled at the violence the cartoons have caused. "It seems that the only way to get attention is to smash and burn things," he said. Asked about a compromise reported by the Dubai-based al-Arabiya magazine, in which the state-backed Muslim leaders of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Oman called for UN legislation, also endorsed by the Organization of Islamic Conferences, to ban caricatures of Jesus and Moses, as well as Muhammad, Rabbi Lustig said: "I worry about the efficacy of international law," although he added that he saw even proposing the petition as "a healthy sign." "But as a father, I cannot legislate good behavior. We all have to lead by example," he said. Singh added: "Of course, this is a teaching moment for the Muslim nations, as well, for all the parties to see that freedom of expression includes freedom of religious expression." Reached after the conference, Bishop John B. Chane said: "There is a very important distinction between a 'clash of civilizations,' and religion being a fault line in all of the conflicts that are currently fraught with violence throughout the global community." The Bishop also stressed the importance of discretion: "You know, the Anglican Communion can stand many things, but it can't stand bad taste. The publishing of these caricatures was truly in bad taste: It shows a lack of understanding on the part of those who published them." The violent reaction to the cartoons indicates the vast and largely political struggle within Islam itself, Chane said: "The struggle within Islam is the struggle within Christianity; it's the struggle with fundamentalism - except that we do it in a different cultural context." [Back to index of March articles]
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