Speaking to the journalist Lara Marlowe about the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which republished the Danish images and added some of its own, Kenny covered a great amount of ground, exploring the sensibilities involved and their political motivation.
It is a banality to say, as Richard Crowley did in a report for Morning Ireland (RTE R1, Mon- Fri), that neither side understands the motivation of the other. The gap between Islam and the West may be wide, but it is not incommensurable. Kenny was more interested in the degree to which the two sides did understand one another, but chose not to admit it. The very words used to define the issue, such as “blasphemy” and “offence”, have different connotations in Islamic and Christian (or post-Christian) societies: it takes a methodical broadcaster like Kenny to tease out these differences and their implications.
As Marlowe told him, France takes a particular pride in its revolutionary tradition, its secular constitution, and its history of literary anti-clericalism. The editor of Charlie Hebdo invoked the spirits of Voltaire and Emile Zola, thus positioning himself with the angels of secularism against the demons of fundamentalism.
This makes the cardinal error of drawing universal conclusions from a French experience. Traditionally Catholic societies such as France and Ireland take images of divinity for granted: blasphemy, or satire, involves the appropriation of those images for other purposes.
But in Islamic tradition the images themselves are a blasphemy: their abuse is grossly offensive, to a degree that only malice and the desire to insult can explain.
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As Kenny wryly observed, there are hypocrites on both sides of the argument: politicians who use the issue to stoke up fires of their own. Both the European far right and the Syrian and Iranian regimes have an interest in escalation.
As Kenny demonstrated in the piece with Marlowe, he is capable of probing an issue deeply by asking intelligent, well-informed questions.
At the other extreme, Vincent Browne’s programme on the subject (Tonight, RTE R1, Mon-Thu) generated much fury and little understanding. The show had too many panellists, some of whom barely got a word in edgeways. Of those that did, the writer John Waters had potentially the most interesting point of view, arguing that western society infantilises extreme Islam by giving in to its “tantrums”.
Yet Browne — partly because of time constraints — seemed determined to misconstrue his point.
The irony is that Kenny, with just one 15-minute slot in a magazine programme, was able to cover so much ground. Browne, even with a truncated show, has much more latitude. Yet the result is that complex issues are reduced to just so much hot air.