Consider this, if you will. Two well-known British artists run an exhibition in London called Sonofagod: Was Mohammed Hetrosexual? It is a small but sumptuous show of computer-generated images of Mohammed, commonly standing alongside the two artists, dressed smartly in their characteristic three-buttoned suits. The colours are rich and pervasive. The effect is rather like walking through rooms lit only by bright, stained-glass windows.
Mohammed’s head (when he has one, sometimes there are two) is, by and large, indecipherable. Sometimes he appears to wear a strange, animal-like mask, sometimes the face of another, vaguely religious figure. Other religious symbols are dotted about the exhibition, as are lush, jewel-encrusted swords and hearts, engraved horseshoes, goblins, and elves. One item, the (sub)title piece, has ‘Mohammed says forgive yourself’ written along the top and ‘Allah loves f***ing! Enjoy’ along the bottom. The exhibition earns a few, ineffectual protests and is largely ignored by critics and Muslims alike.
Now consider this. A British newspaper prints a dozen cartoons satirising Jesus. One has him tossing unbaptised infants into the fires of hell. Another shows him giving the Great Commission to his disciples, handing them various rifles and semi-automatic weapons in the process. A third sees him reclining at Simon the Leper’s house in Bethany, dressed rather like a pimp, being anointed, in an obviously sexual way, by the woman with the jar of nard.
In response, Christian Voice march on the newspaper’s offices, waving placards which promise to castrate and behead its staff. The editor receives death threats, the newspaper bomb warnings. When a few foreign newspapers publish the cartoons in solidarity they too are attacked. British embassies in South Korea, Brazil and Nigeria are razed to the ground, and British goods are boycotted worldwide. America threatens to sever diplomatic links. The original newspaper apologises for the offence caused, as does its government, but to little avail.
The absurdity of these two scenarios should serve to illustrate where we are today. Substitute Jesus for Mohammed, and the first offers you a reasonably accurate portrayal of Gilbert and George’s new exhibition at the White Cube Gallery in London. It is a visually luxurious experience that, like much else in modern British culture, tries to substitute a bit of religious controversy to make up for its authors’ lack of talent or imagination.
The fact that the Christian community’s response has been so underwhelming is, I would suggest, down to four reasons. Either Christians recognise the artists’ right to express themselves as they see fit, or they find the images mildly provocative rather than offensive, or they are tired of such banal attempts to hijack notoriety for a shortcut to fame, or they haven’t heard of the exhibition.
The contrast with the hysterical and violent reaction to the Mohammed cartoons first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 could not be greater. There have been complaints, strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, marches, flags burned, windows smashed, embassies torched, ambassadors recalled, and people killed. The reaction is, to most Westerners, literally incomprehensible.
As is often the case, our reaction to art is more revealing that the art itself. The non-reaction to Gilbert and George suggests we recognise such hackneyed self-publicity for what it is. It suggests that people in Britain expect Christians to turn the other cheek (the astonishment when many didn’t over Jerry Springer – The Opera merely serves to prove the point.) And it suggests that the freedom to express ourselves however we like, largely irrespective of who we offend or what we mock, occupies the seat of glory in our culture.
The (over)reactions to the Mohammed cartoons show, on the other hand, how sensitive many Muslims are to any image of their prophet; how much they hate the liberal secular idea that nothing should be beyond ridicule; and how indignant they are at what they see as yet another example of ‘arrogant Western imperialism’.
When we ask in which society we would rather live there is, surely, no competition. ‘Freedom of speech’ is a monstrously over-used and over-hyped phrase in 21st century Britain, but it is only when you get a glimpse of the alternative, that you realise how precious it is. It may come with a seemingly interminable string of petty attacks from would-be artists wanting to freeload their way onto the front page, but the alternative, of enforced silence is not appealing.
That said, it is arrogant to claim we have nothing to learn from the Muslim reaction to the cartoons. The manner of the reaction has not, of course, been inspiring, and nor, arguably, is its justification. Yet the fact that something other than unrestrained personal liberty lies at the heart of Islamic cultures is surely worth considering.
If freedom (to offend) reigns supreme in a culture, that culture soon becomes one in which offence is normalised, and the only good is that of the sneering, clever, knowing comment. Similarly, if the individual, rather than the group, reigns supreme, the individual good trumps the common good, and society disintegrates into millions of individuals each trying to do the best for him or herself whilst becoming slowly dislocated, disillusioned and unhappy in the process. Ultimately, if a culture holds nothing sacred, it has a vacuum at its heart.
The problem for modern Britain is that ‘tolerance’ and ‘freedom’, the only candidates to replace the four traditional markers of British identity – monarchy, parliament, Protestantism and empire – are precisely the empty, manipulable and fundamentally self-orientated values that have got us into this problem in the first place. Even assuming we agree that we need something sacred (but not necessarily divine) at the heart of our culture for it to survive and flourish, we have little idea what it should be.
