Weapons of Mass Defamation: Aspects of the 2006 'Cartoon Crisis'

Authors

  • MIKAEL ROTHSTEIN University of Copenhagen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.4627

Abstract

The so called 'cartoon crisis' that arose in the wake of the publication of twelve satirical drawings of the Prophet Muhammad has been discussed in numerous ways. So far, however, the debate has not included a deeper analysis of why the desecration of Islam's prophet ignited such a response. Contrary to the claims of Islamic dogmaticism, the attributions regarding Muhammad's properties as a human being in Islamic culture in certain ways supersedes the cult for Allah. Muhammad is perceived as the perfect human being, and everything good about humanity consequently has Muhammad at its root. The disfavouring of Muhammad therefore is the disfavouring of any Muslim and of humanity as such. The article argues that the cartoons were interpreted more than anything else as a mockery of human dignity, and that the response was in defense of that rather than of Islamic dogmaticism.

Downloads

Published

2007-01-01

How to Cite

ROTHSTEIN, M. (2007). Weapons of Mass Defamation: Aspects of the 2006 ’Cartoon Crisis’. Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion, 43(1). https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.4627

Issue

Vol. 43 No. 1 (2007)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2007 Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.

Author's Guarantee

  • The Author acknowledges that the Work will be publicly accessible on the Internet and that such access will be free of charge for the readers.
  • The Author guarantees that the Work is her/his original work that has not been published before and cannot be construed as copying or plagiarism. Furthermore, the Author confirms that the Work contains no statement that is unlawful, defamatory or abusive or in any way infringes the rights of others.
  • The Author confirms that she/he has secured all written permissions needed for the reproduction in the Publication of any material created by a third party.

User Rights

Under the CC BY 4.0 license, the Author/s and users are free to:

  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially,
  • However, the Work must be attributed to the original Author and source of publication.

The license of the published metadata is Creative Commons CCO 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Author Rights

The Authors maintain the right to:

  • copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the Work,
  • the right to use the substance of the Work in future own works,
  • the right to self-archiving/parallel publishing (publisher's PDF allowed).

Rights of Publisher

  • The Publisher reserves the right to make such editorial changes as may be necessary to make the Work suitable for publication in the publication, e.g. style of punctuation, spelling, headings and the like.
  • The Publisher will publish the Work if the editorial process is successfully completed and reserves the right not to proceed with publication for whatever reason.
  • The publication entitles the author to no royalties or other fees. This agreement will be governed by the laws of Finland.