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Chapter 2

The Mohammed Cartoons and the Eastern Libyan Uprising

The Libyan rebellion is officially known as the “February 17 revolution” in honor of February 17, 2011: the scheduled date of protests in Benghazi that are widely credited with having sparked the anti-Qaddafi uprising. In fact, the mere announcement of the “Day of Rage,” as organizers dubbed it, had provoked counter-measures by the Libyan regime, and, spurred on by events in neighboring Egypt, protests—as well as violent clashes with Libyan security forces—had already begun earlier.

But the date of February 17 was not chosen at random. The 2011 Benghazi protests commemorated protests that occurred in Benghazi five years earlier on February 17, 2006. The target of the 2006 protests was none other than the “Mohammed cartoons,” the Islamist source of outrage par excellence.

The February 17 protests in 2006 would lead to the storming of the Italian consulate in Benghazi by an angry mob. Two days earlier, then Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli had appeared on Italy’s RAI Uno public television wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon of Mohammed printed on it. As Calderoli explained, the gesture was meant as a statement in favor of freedom of expression.

Calderoli’s intentions were also clear from the cartoon he chose for the t-shirt. It was not one of the famous twelve cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that first sparked the so-called Mohammed cartoon controversy. Rather, it was a cartoon that was published on the front page of the February 1 edition of the French newspaper France Soir and that represented an obvious commentary on the controversy. The France Soir cartoon shows Mohammed in heaven in the company of other religious figures, one of whom—apparently Jesus—tells him, “Don’t grumble, Mohammed, all of us here have been caricatured.” The edition of France Soir likewise reprinted the Jyllands-Posten cartoons on inside pages. On the very day of its appearance, France Soir editor-in-chief Jacques Lefranc was fired by the CEO of the paper, who offered his apologies for the publication of the cartoons.

Not all publishers were so squeamish, however. On the same day, February 1, several other European papers, including Germany’s Die Welt and Italy’s La Stampa, likewise reprinted some or all of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, and they did so unapologetically. In the following days, still more papers followed suit, some of them citing Lefranc’s sacking as having provided the impulse for their decision. “We’re not doing it as a provocation,” Peter Vandermeersch, the editor in chief of the Flemish daily De Standaard explained, “But our press freedom is in danger and we have to be able to react.”

The reprints added fuel to the fire of a controversy that—after appearing to have nearly died out around the New Year—was being energetically stoked by Muslim activists. Chief among the latter was the Qatari-based Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. An Egyptian by birth, al-Qaradawi went into exile in the 1970s, fleeing the Egyptian government’s repression of the Muslim Brotherhood. Although he holds no formal position within the Brotherhood, al-Qaradawi is widely recognized as the “spiritual leader” of the organization. He is reported to have turned down the formal leadership of the Brotherhood’s Egyptian “mothership” on several occasions, most recently in 2004.

On January 21, 2006, in his capacity as president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), al-Qaradawi issued a statement calling on Denmark and Norway to take a “firm stand” against the “insults to the Prophet” represented by the cartoons and threatening a Muslim boycott of Danish and Norwegian products if this failed to happen. The small Norwegian newspaper Magazinet had already reprinted the Danish cartoons earlier in the month. Remarks by the Danish prime minister defending freedom of expression were cited in the IUMS statement as further “injur[ing] the feelings of millions of Muslims around the world.”1

Two weeks later, following the reprinting of the cartoons in Le Soir and other European papers, al-Qaradawi upped the ante, moving from economic threats to threats of a different order. In a new statement issued by the IUMS on February 2, al-Qaradawi called on Muslims to make the following day, a Friday, an international “day of rage” against the cartoons. In his own Friday sermon on February 3, al-Qaradawi set the tone. “The ummah [the Islamic community] must rage in anger,” he urged,

It is told that Imam al-Shafi’i said: “Whoever was angered and did not rage is a jackass.” We are not an ummah of jackasses. We are not jackasses for riding, but lions that roar. We are lions that zealously protect their dens, and avenge affronts to their sanctities. We are not an ummah of jackasses. We are an ummah that should rage for the sake of Allah, His Prophet, and His Book.2

Al-Qaradawi’s call for “rage” was broadcast by the Qatari-based satellite channel Al Jazeera. As the host of a popular weekly program on “Sharia and Life,” Al-Qaradawi has long been a fixture on the channel. Previously best known in the West as the principal conduit for the video messages of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Al Jazeera would now serve as the most powerful bullhorn at al-Qaradawi’s disposal, assuring that the “cartoon jihad” he had unleashed would resonate throughout the Arab-speaking world.

On the appointed Friday, February 3, Al-Jazeera dedicated extensive programming to the requisite anti-cartoon “rage,” broadcasting not only al-Qaradawi’s sermon, but also kindred statements by other Muslim notables. The Qatari university lecturer Ali Muhi Al-Din Al-Qardaghi described the cartoons as part of a “Crusader Zionist campaign” launched by “a Jew in Denmark.”3 In a sermon delivered at a Damascus mosque before a crowd chanting “Death to Israel! Death to America!”, Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al urged European countries to “hurry up and apologize.” Noting that the Muslim ummah would soon “sit on the throne of the world,” he warned, “Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good.”4

Spurred on by al-Qaradawi and Al Jazeera, Muslim protests against the cartoons were raging around the world by the time of Calderoli’s fateful television appearance on February 15. Danish diplomatic representations had been set on fire in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran. “When they recognize our rights,” Calderoli said, alluding to the protestors, “I’ll take off the shirt.” His act of defiance was widely reported in the Arab media, including on Al Jazeera.5

Roberto Calderoli wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon of Mohammed printed on it, February 15, 2006.

But it appears to have been a more traditional means of communication in the Arab world that brought Benghazi’s faithful out onto the street two days later: Friday prayers at the local mosques. February 17, 2006 was a Friday. According to an eyewitness account, in the late afternoon thousands of young men descended upon the Italian consulate from the mosques.6

After attempting to break down the front door, rioters set fire to the building. One of the persons trapped inside was the wife of Italian consul general Giovanni Pirrello. “We feared for our lives,” she would recall.7 In an amateur video of the assault, rioters can be heard yelling “Allahu Akbar!” as the building burns.8 One rioter menacingly waves a machete.

The Italian consulate in Benghazi on fire, February 17, 2006.

A further attempt to break into the building occurred on Friday night, after the fire had subsided or was put out. While speaking by phone with an Italian journalist, a consulate employee still trapped inside related what was happening. “Do you hear those pounding noises?” he said, “They are trying to break down the door.”9 Another amateur video, this one filmed at night, appears to document the second attempt. Cries of “Allahu Akbar!” ring out as a group of young men pound against the door with a battering ram.10

Sometime in between the first and the second attempt, Libyan police evacuated Pirrello, his wife, and the bulk of the remaining consulate personnel. It was perhaps at this time that police opened fire on the rioters, killing a reported eleven people and wounding many others. According to the Italian consul general, the police had first attempted to disperse the rioters using tear gas, but had been overwhelmed by their sheer numbers.11

Rioting would continue in Benghazi through the weekend and into the following Monday, when the rioters would turn their attention to symbols of Christianity, laying waste the city’s only church. “No one could stop [them] . . .,” a witness to the attack on the church observed, “They want to teach the crusaders a lesson.”12 A report from Vatican Radio spoke of two priests managing “to hide and miraculously to escape from the enraged mob.”13 Both the church and a Franciscan convent attached to it would be set ablaze.14

On Wednesday, February 23, a triumphant video clip celebrating “Italy’s defeat” appeared on an al-Qaeda-linked Internet forum. The video documented the damage inflicted on the Italian consulate in Benghazi. According to reports in the Italian press, it began with a written exhortation to “Kill the infidels.” A comment in the forum celebrated Benghazi as “one of the Libyan cities most famous for jihad.” The remark suggests that the author already knew what American counterterrorism analysts would only discover a year-and-a-half later, when captured al-Qaeda personnel records revealed a heavy flow of jihadists from Benghazi to Iraq to join the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Iraqi al-Qaeda affiliate. The soundtrack to the Benghazi video is reported to have used some of the same religious chants used in the propaganda videos of the al-Zarqawi group.15

As indicated by the date chosen for the 2011 protests, the deaths of the rioters at the Italian consulate five years earlier represented one of the major simmering grievances driving the eastern Libyan opposition to Qaddafi. In an interview that he gave to the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche in March 2011, Qaddafi would recognize the fault of the police and regret that they had not used rubber bullets or water cannons to disperse the rioters.16

Italians would not soon forget the trauma of the 2006 Benghazi riots. This helps to explain the Italian government’s initial refusal to support a military intervention in Libya and its reluctance to recognize the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council. Alluding to the creation of an “Islamic Emirate” in eastern Libya in the earliest days of the rebellion, then Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini warned, “We don’t know more [about it]. But we know that they are dangerous. There are elements of al-Qaeda there.”17

It is one of the many ironies of the Libya War that Italy would eventually be pressured into joining its NATO partners in providing air support to a rebellion that was largely sparked by measures taken by the Libyan government to protect Italian citizens from a lynch mob. It is a measure of how thoroughly misinformed the American public was about the Libya crisis that shortly after the start of the NATO bombing campaign, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could with a straight face include Italy in a list of NATO countries that had allegedly pushed for military intervention, because it was “in their vital national interest.”18 Never mind that Italy had concluded a “friendship agreement” with Libya only three years earlier and received nearly 40% of its oil imports from Libya.

But undoubtedly the greatest irony of the Libya War is that the NATO bombing campaign was led by none other than Anders Fogh Rasmussen: the same Anders Fogh Rasmussen who in his capacity as then Danish prime minister had drawn the ire of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and other Muslim activists by defending the right of Jyllands-Posten to publish the “Mohammed cartoons.”

On October 12, 2005, less than two weeks after the original publication of the cartoons, eleven ambassadors and representatives from Muslim countries and the Palestinian territories addressed a letter to Prime Minister Rasmussen, urging him to call Jyllands-Posten to order and requesting an “urgent meeting.” In his written response, Rasmussen underlined that “freedom of expression is the very foundation of the Danish democracy.”19 Not only did he decline to intervene in the matter. He refused even to meet with the signatories of the appeal.

“This is a matter of principle,” Rasmussen explained at the time, “I will not meet with them because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so.” “As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press,” he added, “nor do I want such power.”20

Barely six years later, on October 30, 2011, Rasmussen, at this point serving as secretary general of NATO, declared the NATO operation in Libya to be one of “the most successful” in the history of the alliance. He did not mention that this “success” facilitated the victory of the very forces that in 2006 had made “crystal clear” that they do not share his principles.

Ten days earlier, on October 20, rebel forces shot and killed a captive Muammar al-Qaddafi. Before doing so, they subjected him to a savage beating, much of it documented on video. The capture of Qaddafi had been made possible by a massive NATO aerial attack on his convoy, as it attempted to flee the besieged city of Sirte. The fact that the convoy was leaving the city in broad daylight lends plausibility to rumors that a deal had been struck to offer Qaddafi and his remaining forces safe-passage in exchange for the surrender of the city.

As the secretary general of NATO would know, the killing of Qaddafi in captivity was a war crime per Western conceptions of the laws and customs of war. But the rebels who first tormented and then murdered Qaddafi would undoubtedly have been less interested in the niceties of the Geneva Conventions than in the rulings on Islamic jurisprudence of Sharia scholars like Yusuf al-Qaradawi—Rasmussen’s old nemesis from the days of the “cartoon jihad.” Per Qaradawi, the summary execution of Qaddafi was not only halal—permitted—it was obligatory. In a fatwa issued on Al-Jazeera on February 21, shortly after the outbreak of the unrest in Libya, he called on “whoever can fire a bullet” to kill the Libyan leader.21 It was, in effect, the fulfillment of al-Qaradawi’s fatwa that brought to a close Rasmussen’s “most successful” operation in NATO’s history.

1. IUMS statement signed by IUMS President Yusuf al-Qaradawi and IUMS Secretary General Mohammad Salim Al-Awa. According to a report published the same day by IslamOnline.net, the statement was originally issued on January 21, 2006. The Muslim-themed website was founded by Qaradawi and served at the time as one of the principal platforms for his edicts and exhortations. A widely available English translation of the IUMS statement is dated January 29, 2006.

2. MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), Special Dispatch no. 1089, February 9, 2006. See too Jytte Klausen, “Muslims Representing Muslims in Europe,” in Abdulkader H. Sinno, Muslims in Western Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), p. 105.

3. See “Qatari University Lecturer Ali Muhi Al-Din Al-Qardaghi: Muhammad Cartoon Is a Jewish Attempt to Divert European Hatred from Jews to Muslims,” MEMRI TV, clip #1030.

4. See “Hamas Leader Khaled Mash’al at a Damascus Mosque: The Nation of Islam Will Sit at the Throne of the World and the West Will Be Full of Remorse When It Is Too Late,” MEMRI TV, clip #1024.

5. In addition to citing Al-Jazeera, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera cites a figure of over 200 Arabic-language newspapers that carried the story. Corriere della Sera, February 17, 2006.

6. Corriere della Sera, February 18, 2006.

7. Corriere della Sera, February 18, 2006.

8. The video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIMBR17KV0U.

9. L’Unità, February 18, 2006.

10. The video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q-wbcT9wcg.

11. L’Unità, February 18, 2006.

12. Corriere della Sera, February 21, 2006.

13. Radio Vaticana, February 22, 2006.

14. See, for instance, “Incendiati una chiesa e un convento di francescani in Libia”, Zenit (Catholic news agency), February 26, 2006. From the reports in the Italian press, it would appear that the church and the convent were the targets of repeated attacks—so too was the Italian consulate, even after its abandonment by the consulate personnel.

15. From the Italian reports, it appears that the exhortation to “kill the infidels” was written in a sort of pidgin English mixed with Arabic. The Turin-based La Stampa rendered it, for instance, as “Kill the Kafron for muslem ” (La Stampa, February 24, 2006). “Kafron” is presumably an attempted anglicization of the the Arabic word Kuffar, meaning “infidels” or “non-believers.” See too La Repubblica (online), February 23, 2006 and Il Giornale, February 24, 2006.

16. Le Journal du Dimanche, March 5, 2011.

17. Interview with Franco Frattini, Corriere della Sera, February 23, 2011.

18. Meet the Press, NBC, March 27, 2011.

19. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, letter to eleven ambassadors and representatives, October 21, 2005.

20. The Copenhagen Post, October 25, 2005.

21. “Leading Sunni Scholar Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi Issues Fatwa to Army to Kill Libyan Leader Mu’ammar Al-Qadhafi,” MEMRI TV, clip #2819.