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SOFT REPRESSION AND MOBILIZATION: THE CASE OF TRANSNATIONAL ACTIVISM OF DANISH MUSLIMS DURING THE CARTOONS CONTROVERSY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2010

Lasse Lindekilde
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Extract

For several months after the September 2005 publication of twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the debate was largely confined to a Danish context. Early international protests of the cartoons were voiced by government officials in several countries, including Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt. However, until late December 2005, in what I will call phase one of the controversy, Danish Muslims fought a primarily domestic battle for some kind of recognition from the newspaper and the Danish government that the cartoons had hurt religious feelings. In October 2005 an ad hoc coalition of Danish Muslim organizations, with The Community of Islamic Faith (Det Islamiske Trossamfund) and its affiliated imams at the lead, tried to put pressure on the Danish government through ambassadors from Muslim countries posted in Denmark. The ambassadors' request for a meeting with the Danish prime minister was turned down, as were other attempts by Danish Muslims to raise claims with the government.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 2010 , pp. 451 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

NOTES

Author's Note: An earlier version of this article was presented in May 2007 at the international conference “Muslim Mobilization and Claims-Making in Secular Europe and Beyond: An Inter-Disciplinary Challenge?” at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute in Florence. The conference was organized by Valérie Amiraux and Lasse Lindekilde in the framework of the MUSMINE initiative. The author thanks Professor Werner Schiffauer, Professor Donatella della Porta, and three anonymous referees for very helpful suggestions and insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

1 For a presentation of the claims-analysis approach, see Koopmans, Ruud and Statham, Paul, “Political Claims Analysis: Integrating Protest Event and Political Discourse Approaches,” Mobilization: The International Journal of Research on Social Movements, Protest and Collective Behavior 4 (1999): 597–626Google Scholar.

2 In the newspaper landscape, Berlingske Tidende placed itself between the poles of Jyllands-Posten, which insisted on the subordination of other values/rights to freedom of speech, and Politiken, the main voice criticizing the cartoons and the Danish government's handling of the crisis. Berlingske Tidende chose not to publish the cartoons out of respect for Muslim feelings but supported both Jyllands-Posten's right to publish them and the government's “nonintervention” strategy.

3 For example, see Strawn, Kelley D., “Validity and Media-derived Protest Event Data: Examining Relative Coverage Tendencies in Mexican News Data,” Mobilization: The International Journal of Research on Social Movements, Protest and Collective Behavior 13 (2008): 147–64Google Scholar.

4 For an overview of this literature, see Davenport, Christian, “Repression and Mobilization: Insights from Political Science and Sociology,” in Repression and Mobilization, ed. Davenport, Christian, Johnston, Hank, and Mueller, Carol (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, White, Robert, “On Measuring Political Violence: Northern Ireland 1969–1980,” American Sociological Review 58 (1993): 575–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See, for example, Hank Johnston, “Talking the Walk: Speech Acts and Resistance in Authoritarian Regimes,” in Repression and Mobilization, ed. Davenport et al.

7 See, for example, Olesen, Thomas, “Transnational Publics: New Spaces of Social Movement Activism and the Problem of Global Long-Sightedness,” Current Sociology 53 (2005): 419–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; della Porta, Donatella and Tarrow, Sidney, Transnational Protest and Global Activism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004)Google Scholar; and Guiraudon, Virginie, “Weak Weapons of the Weak? Transnational Mobilization around Migration in the European Union,” in Contentious Europeans—Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity, ed. Imig, Doug and Tarrow, Sidney (Boston: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 163–83Google Scholar.

8 Bauböck, Rainar, “Towards a Political Theory of Immigrant Transnationalism,” International Migration Review 37 (2003): 683–87Google Scholar.

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10 See especially Koopmans, Ruud and Statham, Paul, “Challenging the Liberal Nation-State? Postnationalism, Multiculturalism and the Collective Claims-Making of Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in Britain and Germany,” American Journal of Sociology 105 (1999): 652–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “How National Citizenship Shapes Transnationalism: A Comparative Analysis of Immigrant Claim-Making in Germany, Great Britain and The Netherlands,” Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 17 (2001): 63–100.

11 Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

12 Risse, Thomas and Sikkink, Kathryn, eds., “The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction,” in The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Changes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See, for example, Lichbach, Mark, “Deterrence or Escalation? The Puzzle of Aggregate Studies of Repression and Dissent,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 31 (1987): 266–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Hess, David and Martin, Brian, “Repression, Backfire and the Theory of Transformative Events,” in Mobilization 11 (2006): 249–67Google Scholar.

15 For an excellent study of the relevance of “soft” repression, see Myra Marx Ferree, “Soft Repression: Ridicule, Stigma and Silencing in Gender-Based Movements,” in Repression and Mobilization, ed. Davenport et al.

16 For example, see Schiffauer, Werner, “Suspect Subjects: Muslim Migrants and the Security Agencies in Germany,” in The Social Life of Anti-Terrorism Laws, ed. Eckert, Julia M. (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2008)Google Scholar.

17 Ruud Koopmans, “Repression and the Public Sphere: Discursive Opportunities for Repression against the Extreme Right in Germany in the 1990s,” in Repression and Mobilization, ed. Davenport et al.

18 For a description of the term “scale-shift,” see Tarrow, Sidney and Tilly, Charles, Contentious Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), 217Google Scholar.

19 Substantial disagreements over how to react to the Muhammad cartoons existed internally in the protest coalition and between the coalition and other Muslim organizations that chose not to join.

20 Hvorfor tegningerne? Hvorfor Muslimer? Hvorfor al-Azhar?, internal newsletter of The Community of Islamic Faith, 2 March 2006, http://www.wakf.com (accessed 3 March 2006).

21 See also Thomas Olesen, The Porous Public and the Transnational Dialectic: The Mobilization of the Muhammed Cartoons Conflict, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark, Working Paper 24.

22 Muslimer vil skabe forsoning, website of Muslims in Dialogue, http://www.m-i-d.dk/ (accessed 9 February 2006).

23 The cross-time analysis uses a four-phase periodization of the controversy as its “unit of time.” The periodization builds on the application of two criteria of demarcation: 1) the scope of contention and 2) the intensity of contention. In simple terms, phase one (30 September–25 December 2005) is characterized by a local/national scope and by a relatively low intensity of contention, phase two (26 December 2005–3 February 2006) by an international scope and medium level of intensity, phase three (4–25 February 2006) by an international/global scope and high level of intensity, and phase four (26 February–20 March 2006) by a national scope and low to medium level of intensity.

24 Nielsen, Helle Lykke, “Rejsen,” Information om Indvandrere 14 (2006): 4–11Google Scholar.

25 Hanna Ziadeh, “Danske muslimer beskyldes for arabisk smædekampagne,” Berlingske Tidende, 17 January 2006, 4.

26 Jespersen, Karen and Pittelkow, Ralf, Islamister og naivister (Copenhagen: People's Press, 2006), 27Google Scholar.

27 See Buzan, Barry, Wæver, Ole, and de Wilde, Jaap, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998)Google Scholar.

28 Nasar Khader, quoted in Susanna Arpi and Christian Brøndum, “Ny forening vil mobilisere det tavse mindretal” (New Organization Will Mobilize the Silent Minority), Berlingske Tidende, 3 February 2006, 6.

29 The “radical flank effect” was described for the first time in Herbert, Haines, “Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights: 1957–1970,” Social Problems 32 (1984): 31–43Google Scholar.

30 “Opfordring til Danmarks Muslimer” (Invitation to Denmark's Muslims), press release issued by Critical Muslims on 14 February 2006, http://www.kritiskemuslimer.dk (accessed 15 February 2006).

31 This is the case with, for example, Will Kymlicka's latest book, Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

32 Ahmed Akkari, interview with the author, 27 December 2006.

33 Quoted in Elisabeth Lumby, “Muslimer i oprør over Islamisk Trossamfund” (Muslims in Uproar over The Community of Islamic Faith), Berlingske Tidende, 21 February 2008, 3.