It was only a matter of time, I suppose.
Iran’s biggest-selling newspaper has waded into the Muhammad controversy by launching a competition to find the 12 “best” cartoons about the Holocaust.
Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor for Tehran’s Hamshahri newspaper, said that the deliberately inflammatory contest would test out how committed Europeans were to the concept freedom of expression.
“The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons,” he said.
This story made me think back to the day I visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps – killing camps, really – in Poland.
It was without doubt one of the most humbling and traumatic experiences of my life, but I remember clearly as I and my friends left the camps – we left it joking. Dark, dark jokes to be sure, but they helped us cope with and rationalise the horrors we saw that day.
So, to Farid Motazavi, I say publish your cartoons. They’ll be grotesque, no doubt. A few of them may make genuine points, and make Europeans wince in shame. One or two of them might even be funny.
But will they spark a free and open debate in Iran about the holocaust?
It was without doubt one of the most humbling and traumatic experiences of my life, but I remember clearly as I and my friends left the camps – we left it joking.
Funny, I recall the same thing happening when I visited Dachau. Mind you, I was with a gang of 30 lads in their late teens, and was seriously hungover bordering on drunk at the time.
But will they spark a free and open debate in Iran about the holocaust?
Likely as much as the Danish cartoons have sparked an open debate in the west about Islam. The debate has nothing whatsoever to do with freedom of expression. It is inflammatory and antagonistic….blatantly similar to depictions of Huns and Japs during the Second World War.