The butterfly and the tornado: The gensis of the Danish cartoon crisis

A butterfly basks in the sunshine of the tropics. It flaps its wings and stirs a tiny gust that triggers a chain of events, each bigger than the last until a tornado tears across the dry plains of Texas.

That's the classic illustration of chaos theory. It is also a good way to understand the origins of the arson, murder and rioting that exploded across much of the Muslim world earlier this year. It started in Copenhagen with a butterfly by the name of Kaare Bluitgen.

Bluitgen is a novelist who also writes children's books. By writing one children's book in particular, the butterfly flapped its wings.

Bluitgen, 47, lives in Norrebro, a Copenhagen neighbourhood whose cheap rents attract bohemians and immigrants. "I thought, I'm living in this neighbourhood. The majority of my children's schoolmates are Muslims. Everybody in Denmark is talking about Islam and nobody knows anything."

So he would write a biography of the Prophet Muhammad for middle-school children. "We say the immigrants have to learn about Danish heroes like Soren Kierkegaard, so I think we have to learn about their heroes, too."

Bluitgen is a thin, bespectacled man whose slow and gentle manner is reminiscent of Mr. Rogers, the kind man who welcomed generations of toddlers to his neighbourhood. Sitting in a Norrebro cafe, he struggles to be heard over the din of Danish hipsters chatting and sipping Tibetan tea. "I decided only to use Muslim sources," he says. "Just make it plain. As they see it. As hundreds of millions of Muslim children all know it."

But Danish children's books are illustrated. And as everyone in the world now knows, most Muslims believe Islam forbids any depiction of Muhammad.

Bluitgen knew this. So did Danish illustrators. They also knew how far Muslim extremists could go when offended: In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and butchered in the streets of Amsterdam.

Van Gogh was murdered after relentlessly attacking and insulting Islam, however. Bluitgen only wanted simple, respectful illustrations of Muhammad.

"I asked some illustrators and they said we don't want to do this." One mentioned the fate of Theo van Gogh. Another brought up an incident in which a Jewish university professor in Copenhagen was assaulted by five Muslim students after he read from the Koran in class.

Finally, after a few months of searching, Bluitgen found an artist. But before the work was done, that artist grew frightened and withdrew. "We found a new one who would like to do it if he could anonymously and we said OK. We shouldn't have done that, of course. I can see that today," he said, because it is still a form of self-censorship, "but we did."

At a party one night, Bluitgen met an old friend from his days in leftist politics. He complained about the troubles he had finding an illustrator. The friend is now a reporter for a Danish wire service. "He said, that's a story. I couldn't see the story."

A few days later, the story appeared in most of Denmark's newspapers and prompted short-lived debate about self-censorship.

Two weeks later, Bluitgen's mother called. Buy the Jyllands-Posten, she told him, referring to Denmark's biggest conservative newspaper. Bluitgen, an old-school socialist, never touched the Jyllands-Posten.

He discovered the newspaper had tested the issue of self-censorship by daring 40 Danish illustrators and cartoonists to portray Muhammad. Twelve responded. Their drawings were in the newspaper on the morning of Sept. 30, 2005.

Some were simple illustrations, including one of a bearded man leading a donkey through the desert. Others were more pointed, barbs flying in various directions: One cartoon depicted a cartoonist looking back fearfully as he draws; another shows a boy named Muhammad pointing to a blackboard on which is written, in Persian, "Jyllands-Posten's journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs."

But there was also a cartoon of Muhammad running to the gates of heaven and telling suicide bombers to "stop, we ran out of virgins." Another showed a bearded man with dagger drawn and eyes covered by a black bar standing in front of two veiled women. Perhaps most infamously, there was a portrait of Muhammad in a black turban that, on closer inspection, turns out to be a lit bomb.

When the tornado touched down, these cartoons -- the last one in particular -- would be mentioned over and over in news stories.

But what had caught the eye of Bluitgen's mother were two other cartoons that took aim at her son. One showed Bluitgen in a turban and holding a piece of paper with a turban-wearing stick figure on it. In a reference to an Islamic parable, an orange falls onto Bluitgen's head. The orange is labelled "PR stunt."

"I thought it was funny," he says, smiling. "And then I ..." He gestures, closing an invisible newspaper. That was the last he thought of it.

The controversy built slowly, in a chain reaction now well known: local protests, petitions by Danish imams to the embassies of Muslim countries, a rebuff of Muslim ambassadors by the Danish prime minister, a delegation of Danish imams touring the Middle East, an international boycott. Then in February 2006, the tornado touched down. At least 139 people are believed to have died, mainly in Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Every day for months Bluitgen would open the newspaper and think it couldn't get any worse. And every day it got worse. "It was surreal."

And hence the notion that a butterfly can cause a tornado. The key is having the right conditions in place before that initial, tiny action. In Denmark, the conditions for one man to cause a globe-spanning conflagration with a children's book had been in place for some time.

Most Canadians think of Denmark as the little kingdom of Hans Christian Andersen and the birthplace of Lego. It is also seen as one of the nice social-democratic countries of Northern Europe. Beyond that, there isn't much to say.

Danes, naturally, have a more expansive view. In their self-image, Denmark is a peaceful, orderly, prosperous country with a strong social conscience -- as demonstrated by its comprehensive social-welfare system and its generosity in foreign aid giving (second only to oil-rich Norway).

Denmark is, in short, the model global citizen -- a point underscored by the young Dane who interrupted my interview with Kaare Bluitgen to solicit funds for the rehabilitation of child soldiers in Africa.

But for those who follow the increasingly important issues of immigration and the Islamic presence in the western world, Denmark has quite a different reputation. "Since the arrival of ethnic minorities," says a recent report from one European anti-racism group, "Danish society has dramatically changed from being tolerant to one of the most xenophobic in Europe."

Traditionally one of Europe's most ethnically homogenous countries, Denmark -- like other Western European countries -- recruited so-called guest workers in the 1960s. Coming mainly from the Balkans, Turkey and Pakistan, these workers were almost exclusively poor, badly educated, unskilled men from rural regions steeped in ultra-conservative, tribal cultures -- the mirror image of the highly educated, urban, liberal and secular country they were coming to. But no one was worried by the cultural chasm between the two sides: These foreigners, after all, were only going to stick around a few years and then leave.

Instead, the foreign labourers brought their families to Denmark. Their intention wasn't to stay permanently. But the expected return was pushed back, year after year, and slowly, without anyone really noticing, the temporary residents formed immigrant communities.

Their numbers were bolstered in the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and war in the Balkans led to a massive surge of refugee claimants arriving in Denmark and elsewhere in Western Europe.

By the late 1990s, the enormity of the change was apparent to everyone -- and not everyone liked what they saw. For some Danes, the reaction was born of a simple fear of foreigners. Others were more open to the idea of immigration and multiculturalism but they saw only too clearly that "new Danes," as they were politely called, were far more likely to be unemployed, on welfare or involved in crime.
[Top]

In 2001, the new fear helped elect a centre-right Liberal-Conservative coalition government, with immigration reform as its chief mandate. It also boosted into third place (with 12 per cent of the vote) the Danish People's Party (DPP) -- a far-right party which officially declares it "will not accept a transformation to a multi-ethnic state" and has a long record of letting slip embarrassingly xenophobic and racist comments.

The government's reforms were passed in 2002, but doing so required the DPP's support in parliament. The reforms would have been controversial on their own. They ranged from modest restrictions on migrants' access to Denmark's astonishingly generous welfare system for the first seven years of residency to a higher threshold for obtaining Danish citizenship and, most explosively, barring Danish residents from bringing foreign spouses to Denmark unless both spouses were at least 24 years old. But in the eyes of critics in Denmark and abroad, it was the association with the DPP that tainted the government.

Denmark was no longer the model global citizen in the eyes of many. It was a cold little bastion of bigotry.

As events unfolded elsewhere in Europe -- the murders of politician Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, the second-place showing of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the French presidential election, terrorist attacks in Spain and the United Kingdom, riots in the suburbs of France -- activists, NGOs, pundits and professors claimed to see an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim backlash building across the continent. Xenophobia and racism were on the rise. Some even claimed to detect the shadow of fascism.

And Denmark was the leading edge.

When a group of Danish imams took their now-famous tour of the Middle East after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, they complained about far more than one page in Jyllands-Posten. Muslims were harassed and persecuted in Denmark, they claimed. And their audiences listened, in part, because Denmark's reputation had preceded the imams.

North Americans may have been mystified that perfect Denmark was the source of an offence that sparked deadly riots across the Muslim world. It seemed bizarre. But to others, it was almost predictable.

Does Denmark deserve to be known as a little land of closed minds and Muslim-bashers?

Rikke Hvilshoj doesn't resemble anyone's image of a bigot, but the petite, 36- year-old blond represents a government that has been accused of bigotry.

The Danish minister of refugee, immigration and integration says her government's program is far from the radical rejection of immigration and multiculturalism it has been made out to be.

"What we see is communities in Denmark that live in the Danish geography but in their minds they live in another part of the world," she says. "And that is a problem. For me, successful integration is that everyone in Danish society feels a part of the same community, that they see themselves as active citizens in this society."

That doesn't mean the end of multiculturalism, she insists. "We are not trying to assimilate people. That is not our vision. As a Liberal, as I am, we shall always respect different religions, different cultural backgrounds."

What's needed, she says, is an agreement among all Danes, whatever their faith or culture, that certain values are fundamental and must be respected. "They are not especially Danish values," she says, "but they are Western fundamental values. It's democracy. It's freedom of speech, freedom to choose your religion, or to not choose your religion, that's just as important. It's rule of law.

"And it's equality between men and women. I want to make sure Denmark is a place where there is room for different cultures, different religions, but I also have a limit."

In the past, Hvilshoj says, "we have said, OK, if it's your culture, if it's your religion, we won't interfere. So for too many years, we shut our eyes to forced marriages, to girls who were not allowed to take an education, not allowed to take part in youth life like it is in Denmark. And so my reaction is that's not acceptable in Danish society. I have as a politician a responsibility to make sure a Muslim girl and a Muslim woman are given the same opportunities and they, on an individual basis, have the opportunity to choose what they want for their life."

Language is also critical: People can't live together if they can't speak together. In the past, however, the Danish government didn't encourage guest workers and their families to learn Danish because, after all, they were supposed to leave. As a result, the minister says, "we have people here in Denmark who have been here for 10, 20, 30 years who don't speak one word of Danish."

That's all changed. "If you want to get a permanent resident permit, you have to take a test in the Danish language," Hvilshoj says, and the government goes to great lengths to ensure people pass. "We offer three years of free education in the Danish language. I don't know anywhere else in the world that offers that."

The most controversial provision of the government's reform was the restriction on admitting foreign spouses when either spouse is younger than 24. It seems to be a clear infringement on the autonomy of adults and it's contrary to EU policy, which sets 21 as the minimum. But the minister is adamant that it is necessary.

"We saw generation after generation of immigrants still finding their spouse in their native country. In the end of the '90s, we began to discuss forced marriages and saying this is not acceptable. We saw people being put into forced marriages, or arranged marriages, at a very young age, so especially the girls didn't get the opportunity to take an education," Hvilshoj says. The age restriction was imposed "in the belief that if young people get to the age of 24 they are more mature and more able to fight against their parents' will if they don't agree."

Integration isn't only about immigrants, of course. A mental shift is also required of ethnic Danes, who have never in their long history had substantial numbers of people who don't look like them living in Denmark and calling themselves Danes. "For many Danes, it's still new to see a man with dark skin not speaking fluent Danish, or to see a Muslim woman with a head scarf, and to say that they are just as Danish as the majority. But I believe we have actually moved during the last years in a direction of more and more acceptance. And I believe that why this is happening is that we take up the problems and the challenges and discuss them, instead of saying this is a taboo, let's not talk about it."

This generational shift is one of the most consistent themes heard in Europe today. Among natives and immigrants alike, everyone seems to agree that young people increasingly find it perfectly normal to live, work and play with others from diverse backgrounds. A basic tolerance is growing. And it shows in opinion surveys that consistently find -- across Europe -- unease with multiculturalism and immigration is highest among the oldest and declines rapidly with the age of the respondent.

Those surveys -- analysed in a 2003 report for the European Union's European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia -- belie Denmark's ugly new image.

Opposition to multiculturalism is actually lower in Denmark than in most other European countries. And support for the deportation of all immigrants -- backed by an astonishing 50 per cent of Greeks and 22 per cent of all Europeans -- is lowest in Denmark, where it is approved only by a tiny fringe.

The report also found that in Denmark, between 1997 and 2003, opposition to multiculturalism and support for deportation steadily and significantly declined. This hardly supports the image of an anti-Muslim backlash. Neither does the fact that in the tempestuous years between 2001 and 2003, racist attacks fell 55 per cent in Denmark.

It's equally hard to paint Europe as a continent in the grip of an anti-Muslim reaction. A report released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center of Washington, D.C. found "there is little evidence of a widespread backlash against Muslim immigrants among the general publics in Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain. Majorities continue to express concerns about rising Islamic identity and extremism, but those worries have not intensified in most of the countries surveyed over the past 12 months, a turbulent period that included the London subway bombings, the French riots, and the Danish cartoon controversy."
[Top]

What has grown in Europe is a sense that multiculturalism must exist within defined limits. The 2003 report found that large and growing majorities in Europe supported the idea that "the limits to multicultural society have been reached." An even larger, and growing, majority agrees that if migrants' religious or cultural practices violate the law, they must give them up. The highest level of agreement was in Denmark.

The collective attitude that emerges from the report is remarkably similar to that expressed by Hvilshoj. "For me, successful integration is that the immigrants and refugees who come to Denmark become a part of Danish society, they become active citizens. And that we agree on some common, fundamental values." This is multiculturalism -- but it is multiculturalism within a liberal-democratic framework.

Still, there's the problem of accounting for the growth of the Danish People's Party -- which repeated its success in a 2005 election -- and their equivalent in other countries. Surely that demonstrates growing intolerance?

There's no contradiction, insists Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen, a Dane who converted to Islam 24 years ago and is now vice-president of "Muslims in Dialogue," an organization working to create a fit for Islam in Danish society. "We have people trying to reach across the middle and say we're all here together, we're living together, we're marrying together, we're buying goods together, so let's make it work. This is a big group, and, thank God, I do believe it's the biggest group," says the community activist and former principal of an Islamic school. "But at the same time, we find that the extremists, our right-wingers and their right-wingers, are also gaining."

The extremists on either side of the divide are saying exactly the same thing: Islam and liberal democracy cannot co-exist, so Muslims must choose either their faith or their country, but not both. "They support each other," Pedersen says.

Nowhere is the decidedly mixed reality more evident than in Kaare Bluitgen's neighbourhood. Originally a working-class district, Norrebro is today a mix of immigrants, mostly Muslim, and Scandinavian hipsters looking for a little Soho in Copenhagen.

At its heart is Blaagaards Square, a leafy space filled with funky statues and lined on one side with painfully cool cafes.

To foreign eyes, it's just the kind of delightful spot that draws tourists overseas to sit on patios and watch the afternoon slip by.

Do Danes really consider this an immigrant ghetto? I ask Bluitgen. He assures me they do.

The foreign reporters who flocked to Copenhagen were often disappointed when they got a look at what they were told was one of the most notorious Muslim neighbourhoods in the country. It's far too tidy and prosperous. And far too mixed: How can you get a decent ghetto shot when there's a tall blond in the frame?

It's also hard to spot that universal symbol of Islamic menace, the veil. There are a few, Bluitgen says, but "they're Danes. It's only converts."

Still, there are real problems beneath the placid surface. Bluitgen experienced them first-hand as chair of the parents council at the school a street away from Blaagaards Square.

Danish parents are fine with minorities in the schools, Bluitgen says, until they stop being the minority. Then "white flight" sets in. It's happening at his school.

"It's mostly liberals with education who are very supportive of integration," he says. "They are left-wing. They have all the right opinions and only read the good newspapers. But they don't want their children to stay close to Muslim children. Always, they say they love this neighbourhood, which is 50-50, but they don't want their children to attend the public school in this area."

Bluitgen faults Muslims, too. "They don't want to mix. There's no wish to see another way of living." Bluitgen's teenaged son has Muslim friends who are not allowed to visit. "People are afraid we might give them some pork or something like that."

In schools, this wish to live apart creates serious problems. Muslim parents won't let their children attend sports events or school outings. They got the school to close on their holidays. They insisted Friday classes end at noon "so children could attend the mosque. And I said no, this is not a Muslim school."

By contrast, he says, "the Chinese don't come with demands. They don't want the schools to close on their holidays," Bluitgen says. "There's really no problem with Buddhists or Hindus or Christians or leftists.

"It is sad to say, and it's not really allowed to say, that the problems are with the Muslims. Not with all the Muslims. But they are."

Bluitgen doesn't sound defensive or exasperated or angry. Only a little sad. "There is no other way other than to meet each other," he says. "That's why I have my children attend this school. In everyday life, you have to meet the so-called others, the strangers. You have to live with them."

So isolation abounds. But hate? Bluitgen's experience during the cartoon crisis suggests it is far more rare.

The illustrators and editors who produced the Muhammad cartoons were subjected to worldwide death threats and went into hiding with police protection. Most are still under some protection -- including the cartoonists whose drawings instead took jabs at Jyllands-Posten and Bluitgen. Just last week a court dismissed a law suit brought by several Danish Muslim organizations against editors at the paper for publishing the cartoons with the intention of causing offense to Muslims.

But Bluitgen never hid. There were "a very few death threats." He was never assaulted or insulted. Despite his notoriety, he and his family went about Norrebro as they always had.

"My son is at a high school where the majority is Muslim. My daughter is in school. And their mother is a teacher at a Muslim school. And they never heard anything." Not even a schoolyard taunt. "It was pushed by these Danish imams," Bluitgen insists. "They wanted to make some position for themselves."

Danish Muslims were offended, but they reacted as any other offended person would. "I think most said, well, maybe I won't buy Jyllands-Posten," Bluitgen says, laughing. "Although they didn't do that before."

"Right after the cartoons were published, there was a demonstration of about 3,000 Muslims in the streets of Copenhagen," notes Rikke Hvilshoj, the minister of immigration. "That is the way to do it. That is a part of freedom of speech and democratic values. They have the right to say we are offended by these cartoons, in a peaceful way."

And that's it. "A lot of international journalists" came to Copenhagen at the height of the crisis, Hvilshoj says, expecting "to see burning in the streets and riots and everything." Nothing remotely like that happened in Denmark. Some of the radical imams may have worked hard to stir things up elsewhere, but there was little evidence of extremist feeling among the great majority of Danish Muslims.

The crisis did cause support for the Danish People's Party to spike, but it fell just as quickly. Surveys that asked minorities whether they experience discrimination even found these feelings declined during the crisis -- the continuation of a trend that has lasted several years.

As for the children's book that started the global saga, The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Mohammed was finally illustrated and published with a cover that features Muhammad riding the buraq, a winged creature said to have taken the prophet to heaven and back in a single night.

few stores said they wouldn't put the book on display, but none refused to stock it. Eight thousand copies have been sold. No one has protested. It is, after all, just a children's book.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

Back to Features

Home

Copyright © 2005  Dan Gardner
Website Design & Management by:  GRA Web Site Design Ottawa