Muslims, the Roundabout Dogs, and Freedom of Speech
Muslims' loud protests became headlines in Swedish newspapers when artist Lars Vilks portrayed Islam's prophet Mohammed as a Roundabout dog. But the voices that wanted to question this interpretation remained silent. Out of that silence grew a gross image of Muslims as a uniform and easily provoked mob.
On August 19, 2007 the Örebro newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published a now widely known editorial article with the headline "The Right to Ridicule a Religion." The editorial article expressed disappointment that a number of art exhibit spaces had chosen not to show three drawings by artist Lars Vilks. Next to the text, the newspaper published one of Vilks's drawings of Mohammed as a dog in a roundabout.
Representatives of Muslim interests in Örebro gathered for a manifestation. The atmosphere was tense, and other media's publications of the drawings in support Nerikes Allehanda's publication lined up as if on a string of pearls.
As death threats against Lars Vilks and editor-in-chief of Nerikes Allehanda Ulf Johansson came in, so did official complaints from Iran's President among others. Swedish editorial staff formulated headlines like "They Rage Against Sweden" or "Al-Qaida Threatens artist Lars Vilks to Death."
Point 13 of the Code of Ethics for Press, Radio and Television in Sweden urges the Swedish journalism corps to "recount the opinions of all parties." A review of the news material shows that this rule was not strictly followed.
Quick Response has reviewed 177 news articles about the roundabout dog debate that were written during the fall of 2007* in order to see which image of Muslims, cultural as well as religious, these articles portrayed. The assessment reveals failure to create meaningful context, imbalance in the amount of space given in media to Muslims, and confusion of religious and political interests. Examples of these cannot be found within the individual articles; rather it is the collective image as a whole that formulates something that is likely to be false.
In the fall of 2007, the normal reader had to go through nine articles before she read one that tried to place this Muslim "rage" within its context - for example by explaining that Muslims are a socially vulnerable group in Sweden, or by going into the loaded symbolism that portraying Mohammed as a dog, rather than for example as a cow or cat, implies.
The same reader may have noticed that despite the fact that nearly all articles talked about Muslims in some form, Muslims' comments were only present in barely one-fourth of the articles. Effectively, this means that Muslims to a very small degree get the opportunity to describe their reactions in their own words.
This critical one-fourth of the texts in which Muslims were quoted was in many cases populated by representatives of countries from which Swedish Muslims have fled or emigrated, such as Iran, Syria, Algeria, or Egypt. Ambassadors, government representatives or envoys from these non-European countries owned 28 percent of this already small portion.
Author and Historian of Ideas Mohammed Falzlhashemi does not believe that the debate about Lars Vilks's drawings resolved any problems. According to him a ceasefire is currently in place. He points out that a long tail of populist political groups used the discussion of freedom of speech and used it to their advantage.
Swedish newspapers wrote headlines about the nationalist party the Swedish Democrats when the Swedish Postal Services as well as the private direct mail company Swedish Direktreklam refused to distribute their newspaper SD-Kuriren where Vilks's drawings were published. In addition, the party's chapter in the city of Malmö left a mark by suggesting in the Municipal Council that the drawings be exhibited in Malmö City Hall.
"The xenophopbic groups have found ‘Muslims'' weak spot. We have an election coming up and someone like the Swedish Democrats, which are about to be voted into Parliament, could use something like this to fish for votes. I think the same scenario will be repeated, with new actors leaning on freedom of speech," says Falzlhashemi.
* The survey was done in the following way: a search was done in the archives Presstext and Mediarkivet between the dates of 19 August 2007 (the date of publication in Nerikes Allehanda) and 1 September 2007 on the combination "lars vilks rondellhund*." The (177) news articles have been reviewed and categorized according to a number of criteria, such as who is active, if people can be identified as Muslims in the quotes, if any attempts at contextualizing are made and so on. Quotes are counted when quoted directly.
This is a shortened version of an article first published in 20081104. The Swedish version here.