The original sinner, a Danish newspaper which first printed the blasphemous cartoons and caricatures of Prophet Mohammad, has apologized. Most mainstream Western commentators have also nailed the provocation to the wall by rejecting the argument of “freedom of expression” advanced by the offending newspapers. Finally, the European Commission has formally distanced itself from the sin of commission by the newspapers. Why then is Muslim anger boiling over into the streets of some Muslim countries almost four months after the event? Has this something to do also with the nature of politics in those Muslim countries where the protest has been the loudest and most violent? Consider.
The embassies of Denmark and Norway were attacked by mobs and burnt down in Damascus and Beirut, the capitals of Syria and Lebanon where anti-Israel, anti-American sentiment constantly spills over into violent resistance. But it is curious, isn’t it, that the site of the original anti-Islam offence was not the US or any American newspaper but Europe and a section of its media. Similarly, the Islamic outrage has been most manifest in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where at least twenty people have been killed so far. The government of Iran and the Iranian people are anti-US for many reasons, so the outrage was both genuine and state managed, and aimed to convey a strong message. The other countries are also swamped by anti-Americanism for different reasons. More significantly, they are ruled by pro-US dictators who have cracked down on militant Islamists and Al-Qaeda terrorists at the behest of Washington. That is why protestors in these countries have burnt effigies of President Bush, President Musharraf, President Mubarak and President Karzai. That is also why agitators have not just focused on Danish or European targets like phone companies and banks but mainly attacked and looted American multinationals like KFC, Pizza Hut, MacDonalds, etc. By and large, too, the protests have not been mass based – demonstrations everywhere have been relatively small in number; while the demonstrators have mainly belonged to organized religious parties and groups with overt national political agendas aimed at overthrowing pro-US secular dictators in these countries.
In other words, organized political Islam across the world, but mainly in countries where anti-Americanism runs high, has clutched at a private provocation in Europe to advance its global agenda of resistance to Western secularism and American imperialism. But the critical word is “America”, not Europe. The Iranian and Syrian governments are anti-America. So they have been happy to sponsor anti-America protests on every possible pretext. The Pakistani, Egyptian and Afghan governments are pro-America. So the religious parties out of power have tried to destabilize them by targeting their sponsor America. Under the circumstances, all these protests are only marginally about any global “clash of civilizations” or any search for a globalised “Islamic identity” by Muslims and more about a national confrontation between competing ideologies, established dictatorships and the impulse for democracy in Muslim states.
Nonetheless, Western governments in general and United States administrations in particular must accept primary responsibility for this state of affairs. The sense of Muslim outrage flows from unjust imperialist policies by Europe and Britain in the inter-war period when the Muslim empire in the Middle East was carved up into nation states like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, etc with pro-West Muslim autocracies and dictatorships in pursuit of Western strategic or economic objectives watch-dogged by Israel. In the cold-war period, the “West” and the “United States” remained the focus of power. But in the post cold war period, by virtue of its status as the sole superpower, the US became the sole object of resistance when it began to pursue unilateralist doctrines of aggression and domination. The situation worsened when the US put all its eggs in the baskets of unpopular and corrupt dictators in the Muslim world, thereby diminishing the space for efficient democratic pluralism. This constriction of democratic space in Muslim countries combined with imperialist interventions by the US created the impetus and space for radical political Islam to grow and prosper. Disciplined and militant religious parties are now everywhere in the Muslim world trying to edge out passive or secular democratic oppositions to pro-US dictatorships. In this way, global civilisational Islam seeks to exploit weaknesses and provocations in the West to extend its national political agendas.
Unfortunately, however, it pays pro-US Muslim dictators to keep the national spectre of radical political Islam alive and kicking. This strategy serves two purposes: it diminishes the democratic space for mainstream secular oppositions to the dictators while scaring the US into increasing its support for the dictatorships. Is it any wonder then that in Pakistan, where General Pervez Musharraf enjoys the thumping support of the Bush administration, a few hundred activists and supporters of the militant religious parties should have been allowed to ran amuck and create anti-American havoc in Lahore and Islamabad, the two centres of power of the ruling junta, on the pretext of the cartoons?
The issue of the offensive cartoons is no longer one of freedom of expression or religious sensitivity. It has been usurped by the proponents of imperialism, dictatorship and “civilisational conflict” for their own unholy agendas.