Debating the Danish Cartoons: Civil Rights or Civil Power?

The controversy that accompanied the publication and reprinting of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed as part of a 2005 editorial in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has been widely interpreted as yet another illustration of an ineliminable tension between multiculturalism and liberalism. Such an interpretation would have us believe that what is at issue in defending the cartoons is our commitment to civil liberties as a mainstay of liberal democracy. But is this really what is at issue? A closer examination suggests that what is actually being defended in this case is not civil liberty but civil privilege. In particular, what is at issue is the privilege to exclude and define Muslims.