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
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.
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
