Death Of A Cartoonist

Anthony McIntyre ✒ Last week the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks died in a car crash along with his two police bodyguards.

He had lived under police protection since 2007 when one of his cartoons depicted Islam's prophet, Mohammed, as a hybrid composition of human and dog. The cartoon itself seemed to suggest an Islamic attack dog, the head of which was Mohammed. Just one take amongst many, it achieved what it presumably set out to - annoy the perpetually offended, who it never takes much to rile.

Distasteful as it might have been in the eyes of some, it hardly amounted to such a diabolical abomination that the death penalty should be suggested as a suitable and proportionate response.

Photo: Times

Still, this is what Vilks faced: ‘due to the fact that he made use of his freedom of expression and his artistic freedom’, theocrats in Iraq moved to put a bounty on his head, emulating the murder mission initiated by Iranian clerics when Salman Rushdie published his novel Satanic Verses. In 2009 and 2015 he had escaped murder attempts launched by religious zealots. During his time under siege other cartoonists were murdered by theocrats, most notably the staff of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

This type of religious thuggery is what led to him travelling along a Swedish motorway with a police accompaniment.

The artist and two bodyguards were travelling in an unmarked, bulletproof car that collided with a truck and burst into a fireball from which none of them escaped — a denouement as conclusive as the finale to any Scandi noir TV drama.

His death was reportedly greeted with online religious hatred from his critics along with conspiracy theories suggesting that he might have been the victim of murder. Swedish police have dismissed the murder suggestions while his partner suspects excessive police speed on a motorway, a habit the police there seem not averse to.

That aside, his death has helped focus attention on the role of cartoonists in Sweden and the malevolence they come up against from hate theology. A number of figures in the Swedish cultural world told the Times of the fear that has crept into Swedish society. Artists and writers have found themselves on the receiving end of theocratic violence and other acts of intimidation designed to suppress their artistic expression.

The partner of Vilks, using a pseudonym for fear of what could happen to her, said “Sweden has changed a lot … It’s more and more difficult today to say what you think and feel. You have to be very careful.”

Supporters of Vilks felt that he did not get the support he felt he should have. According to the Times Sweden’s left-leaning political and cultural establishment had abandoned him. According to a friend “It was as if he had some disease ... If you touched him, you got it as well — became a persona non grata or a pariah.” This was the outworking of Sweden’s “politically correct appeasement mentality: defeatism in the face of zealots, people who play the ‘we are the oppressed’ card”.

As for Vilks, he defended himself against accusations that he had it in for Muslims and was a purveyor of what is termed Islamophobia:

I’m actually not interested in offending the prophet. The point is actually to show that you can. There is nothing so holy you can’t offend it.

This is at the heart of the matter and typical of a healthy secular outlook. If society cannot mock ideas of whatever hue then it will inexorably be corroded and cornered by those behind the ideas that cannot be mocked.

Not what we would want from a society that prioritises secularism and democracy over obscurantism and which allows the profane to co-exist with the sacred without having to defer to it.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.