The last two weeks have left me overwhelmed and bemused. A grainy, amateur 14-minute YouTube film clip, ‘Innocence of Muslims’, satirizing Muhammad catapults to the headlines and is alleged to have been produced by a Californian Egyptian-born Coptic Christian now in hiding. Anti-US protests and violence erupt from the Middle East to Pakistan, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Tens of people are dead and hundreds have been wounded.
Provocative anti-Islam cartoons are published in France by Charlie Hebdo magazine as a preemptive counter-strike at Muslims in the name of ‘freedom of expression’. There is a fresh piece of news every day and from whichever angle I look at the situation, it is deeply disturbing and worrying.
I have to confess that my first response to hearing about the film and the attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi was: Why so much ugly violence over a low-budget video made by a random guy with a grudge? Why has this film provoked the murders of four Americans in Libya and ‘death to America’ chants and burning of Obama effigies in Kabul?
While I understand that the film is offensive to Muslims and am sorry that it was made and shared so maliciously, it was not endorsed by any organizations or by the US government. President Obama and Hillary Clinton have made public statements to this effect. Even some of the actors claim to have had no idea what it was about.
It is hard not to see the breadth and intensity of Muslim responses as an overreaction. The violence that has resulted in the death and wounding of hundreds of people – Americans and locals alike – is horrific. What’s more, these protests have only succeeded in ensuring that this insulting clip has captured the avid attention of millions of people across the globe.
The important question to ask, then, is where to go from here? Do we simply need to acknowledge that the differences between cultural, national and religious traditions are insurmountable or can we imagine a more hopeful way forward together? Is there anything we can do to try and ensure that the violence stops and similar protests do not recur?
I think it is necessary to start by recognizing that what may not seem significant to people who inhabit one worldview can be deeply insulting to those who inhabit another. We need to seek to understand current expressions of anger on their own terms rather than trying to squeeze them into our own interpretive frameworks. David Kirkpatrick quoted Ismail Mohamed, a religious scholar, in the New York Times on 16 September as saying, ‘We don’t think that depictions of the prophets are freedom of expression. We think it is an offense against our rights.’ This is not to advocate an anything-goes-culturally relativist soup or to do anything but condemn the murders outright. It is simply to say that it is important to honor the fact that blasphemy is a serious offence in Islam.
We shouldn’t stop here, however. If we do, we risk reinforcing constructions of the ‘Muslim World’ and the ‘West’ as binary, unavoidably opposed blocks unable ever to understand one another or come to common interest or action. The idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ (Samuel Huntington) is popular with a nuance-averse media obsessed with drama and sound bites, and only depressingly takes us deeper into fear and hostility.
Look at the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo. They were deliberately designed to be inflammatory – baiting Muslims – and thrust French Muslims between a rock and hard place. As people who embody both Islam and the West, deftly and creatively negotiating between these and other identity-facets, how are they supposed to respond when their loyalties are presented as incompatible? The cartoons were unkind and unnecessary.
More positive and creative next steps are possible and could make a real difference. We should recognize that the film, protests and counter-protests are moves being made within a minefield of misunderstanding, complexity, fear and shifting politico-economic power. Things are not as simple as they appear at first glance and we need to dig beneath the current situation to grasp the root causes of the protestors’ frustrations. The film has acted as a touch paper for a plethora of deeper, rumbling, building frustrations against the West in certain countries. It has been received as yet one more insult to peoples already feeling oppressed and simultaneously used and neglected.
How hard have we grappled with the legacy of Western political and economic imperialism – past and present – not least in terms of oil-driven policies that have significantly determined where we engage militarily and economically, and which powers are propped up or challenged? It would be valuable to engage in some serious self-examination and explore our own culpability in the frustration in the Muslim world. Seamus Milne, reflecting on the war on terror, sanctions, invasions, drones and internment without trial in the Guardian on 18 September, put it provocatively: ‘As is obvious from the slogans and targets, what set these protests alight is the fact that the injury to Muslims is seen once again to come from an arrogant hyperpower that has invaded, subjugated and humiliated the Arab and Muslim world for decades.’ Colonial legacies are alive and well.
What’s more, all of us – and particularly the media – need to do a better job at representing all people in all their complexity. There are many different kinds of Muslims, Christians, Westerners, Middle East and Malay nationals, each individual holding varied, complex and changing sets of perspectives and ideas. While some in the Middle East have become violent, many Muslims there and across the world are calling for peace or holding organized protests – just in the same way that many Christians did against the power of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 or the wealth of the 1% in the Occupy Movement last year in the US and UK.
Some of the protestors in Benghazi have actually attacked the base where the militia believed to be responsible for the death of the four Americans is based, angry with this group for taking matters too far. Others have explicitly stated that this is not about Muslim against Christian. Blasphemy against any of the Abrahamic Religions – including Christianity – is considered equally offensive: the Da Vinci Code was banned in 2006 in certain Middle Eastern countries. While Muslims have a sense of humor and many Islamic scholars offer critiques of their own tradition, not all Christians and Westerners are able to laugh at themselves or imagine a head of state that is Jewish or Sikh or Bahai.
All this proves that the ‘Muslim world’ and the ‘West’ are not tankers set on an inevitable crash course. Our perspectives can, in fact, be mutually enriching and help us to challenge one another in healthy ways.
Take the discussion of freedom of expression that is underlying all of this. I value freedom of speech as a cornerstone of democracy and I value respect for religious identity, practice and belief. Currently presented as conflicting, I remain sure that these two ends or perspectives are compatible. More than this, being free to speak and being free to live without insult to one’s religious identity are actually two mutually enriching sides of the same coin: they are the ‘freedom to’ and the ‘freedom from’. Legislation against hate speech exists in the US and UK – aiming to provide freedom to live free from fear – just as freedom of speech is an avenue for fulfilling the human calling to be thoughtful, critical and creative and to work together for the flourishing of all. Working out the fine line between freedom from and freedom to requires conversation in which everyone shows respect for everyone else.
While there are no easy answers, the future does not have to look bleak. I hope that the violence stops soon and people put down their weapons in Afghanistan and Tunisia, and at the same time, I am going to be keeping my eye on foreign policy issues and the ways in which politicians suggest that the West should act beyond their shores to address some of the structural injustices and geo-political and economic issues that could fuel or defuse further such protests.
In the longer-term, I am hoping for a good dollop of sensitive listening and generous negotiation and for a rediscovery of the virtues of humility, repentance, forgiveness and gentleness in local, national and international public squares. And I am going to challenge myself to do something – however small – each week to reach out to my neighbors of other faiths to build relationship, understanding and solidarity. Imperialism and violence do not have to have the final word.
————————
Susanna J. Snyder is a regular contributor to There is Power in the Blog.
Share This
Share this post with your friends!