Twenty years since the Mohammed cartoons
Twenty years ago, when the Mohammed cartoons hit the newspapers, I didn't understand what was actually at stake.
I believed - like so many others - that it was merely about misunderstandings, cultural differences, a lack of tolerance. I looked sideways at those who backed the cartoons. Because I was trapped in my own culture's self-reckoning - in the narrative that all evil must always be found in ourselves, never in the other. What we today know as the self-loathing, oikophobic narrative.
But the years have shown me something else.
That it wasn't about a random dispute over satire. Not about integration or dialogue. It was about a pattern - a faith - a force that for 1,400 years has stood immovable - a pattern of advance, expansion, colonization, submission and transformation of the societies where Islam gains foothold.
And that pattern does not change. Not then. Not now. It cannot be changed. Because Islam neither can nor will be reformed, because its foundation is defined as God's perfect word. Unassailable. Unchangeable. Deadly dangerous to challenge.
In your grandparents' lifetime alone, several nations that were once moving toward modernity and Western standards have moved toward Islamic dictatorships - Iran after the revolution in 1979, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Sudan after 1989, Pakistan under Zia ul-Haq - and even Turkey, which Atatürk once made secular, has slid back into Islamization. The result is always the same - women's status is reduced and problematized, sexual minorities are persecuted, the rule of law crumbles, freedom rights disappear and what can best be described as fear permeates everyday life.
It is not accidental.
It is a pattern.
With an entirely predictable outcome.
That happens EVERY time.
That is why the Mohammed cartoons still stand as a symbol. Not only of free speech - but of Europe's blindness. We believed it was about satire and misunderstandings. In reality, we were confronted with a force that for 1,400 years has done the same thing - and has never compromised on its foundation.
Note.
Our ancestors in Europe knew the pattern. In Spain and Portugal, Christian kingdoms had to fight for nearly 800 years to reconquer their lands from the caliphate. In the Balkans and Central Europe, the battles against the Ottomans lasted for centuries. Had they not done so, large parts of Europe today would have been Arabic-speaking or Turkish-dominated - and our civilization would have looked radically different.
Let me briefly list everything we would have missed out on, if one had not stood firm on one's faith, one's culture, one's nation and the right to define its arrangement oneself.
There would be no Christian Renaissance in Italy - as Islam's takeover of Southern Europe would have blocked contact with the Greek and Roman roots that awakened Europe.
There would be no Gothic cathedrals like Notre Dame or Chartres etc. as the entire Christian cultural heritage, architecture and theology would have been crushed or subjected to Islamic dominance.
There would be no university tradition in Western Europe - the first universities (Paris, Bologna, Oxford) grew out of Christian cathedral and monastery schools, which could not have existed under Islamic rule.
There would be no Reformation - Luther, Calvin and the entire Protestant movement rested on a Bible-centered tradition that would have been suppressed or made impossible.
There would be no Enlightenment - philosophers like Descartes, Locke and Kant stood on the shoulders of Christian theology and scholasticism, and without the Christian view of freedom and reason, Western humanism would never have taken form.
There would be no scientific revolution - Newton, Galileo, Kepler and the entire natural scientific tradition grew out of a Christian conviction that the universe is created in order - by Logos - and therefore can be explored rationally.
There would be no invention of modern democracy - the idea of human equality, freedom of conscience and civil rights came from Christian theology and Western philosophy, which would not have gained foothold under Islamic rule.
There would be no Industrial Revolution - as it built on the seeds laid by both science, Protestant work ethic and Western principles of freedom.
There would be no America as we know it - Columbus, the Mayflower, the entire Christian colonization and later the idea of freedom and constitution in the USA rest on a Western cultural heritage that would have been crushed at the root.
There would be no Western art, music and literature as we know it - from Bach and Mozart to Shakespeare and Michelangelo. This entire culture is permeated with Christianity and would never have arisen in an Islamized context.
In short - without the Crusades and the Christian defense against Islamic expansion, there would have been no West. No civilization as we understand it. No freedom. No democracy. No science. No modern art or culture.
Europe would have been an extension of the caliphate, and world history would have looked radically different.
So.
With that in mind - that nothing in the faith's arrangement has changed - we must, 20 years after the Mohammed cartoons, again pose a single, inexorable question to the naive politicians in Denmark and Europe:
Why on earth should a pattern - a faith - a political law-religion that has repeated itself for 1,400 years without a comma changed in its foundation, stop now - when on top of it all we have let it grow expansively in our midst in Europe for the last 20 years?
I perhaps didn't fully understand it then.
But I understand it today.
And I know I am not alone. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions feel the same. They see the pattern.
And they demand an answer.
It requires leaders with wisdom and courage to stop a pattern that has repeated itself for 1,400 years.
Are there any adults present? 🤷🤓
❤️🔥🪽
