BY HUSAIN HAQQANI
The riots ignited by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s
derogatory images of Prophet Muhammad have escalated into violent protests
that are no longer aimed at the offending newspaper or even against its
homeland, Denmark. Attacks by protestors in several Muslim countries,
including Pakistan and Indonesia, against American and other western
interests as well as Christian churches indicate that the cause of the
protests is something other than spontaneous outrage at an insult to
Islam’s prophet.
Jyllands-Posten’s editors justified their cartoons on grounds of
freedom of expression, a position supported by many Europeans and some
Americans. But others, such as Edward Miller writing in New York’s
Jewish Week, argued that the controversy was "a question of respect,
not freedom". According to Miller, "Freedom of expression theoretically
protects the right of a non-Jew to desecrate a Torah scroll. Yet we would
all view freedom of expression as a hollow defence to such a vile act".
At the heart of Muslim street violence, however, is the frustration of
the world’s Muslims over their steady decline for three centuries that has
coincided with the rise of the West’s military, economic and intellectual
prowess. Religious riots might seem like a common feature in the Muslim
world today but in the era of their global ascendancy Muslims did not riot
to protest non-Muslim insults against Islam or its prophet.
There is no historic record of random attacks against non-Muslim
targets in retaliation for a non-Muslim insulting Prophet Muhammad though
there are many books derogatory towards Islam’s prophet from the era of
Islam’s great empires. Muslims under the Ottomans, for example, did not
attack non-Muslim envoys – the medieval equivalent of today’s embassies –
or churches upon hearing of European sacrilege against their religion.
Clearly, violent responses to perceived injury are not integral to
Islam. A religion is what its followers make it and Muslims opting for
violence have chosen to paint their faith as being prone to anger and
susceptible to violence. But like Jewish and Christian scriptures, Islam’s
sacred texts speak of divine retribution as well as of god’s mercy.
References to holy war are interspersed with exhortations to charity,
kindness towards others and respect for life.
Every chapter of the Koran begins with the words, "In the name of Allah
(God), the most compassionate, the most merciful", encouraging believers
to practice mercy over retribution. Prophet Muhammad is referred to as "Rehmatul-lil-Alameen"
or "the one bringing compassion for all worlds". After announcing his
prophethood, Prophet Muhammad prayed for those who insulted or opposed
him. In one famous episode, he went to inquire about the health of an old
woman in Mecca who threw garbage on him every day, after she failed to
show up for her daily insult. Such compassion won converts to Islam and
contributed to the faith’s expansion.
But since the 17th century, Muslims have consistently lost their
pre-eminence to western nations. Frustration with their inability to
succeed in the competition between nations has led some Muslims to seek
symbolic victories. The momentary triumph of burning another country’s
flag or setting on fire a western business or embassy building is a poor
but widespread substitute for global success that eludes the modern
world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. Violent protest represents the lower rung of
the ladder of rage – terrorism is its higher form.
Islamists and authoritarian Muslim rulers both have a vested interest
in continuously fanning the flames of Muslim victimhood based on real or
perceived grievances in an era of general Muslim decline. For Islamists,
wrath against the West is the basis for their claim to the support of
Muslim masses. For authoritarian rulers, religious protest is the means of
diverting attention away from political and economic failures. For
example, the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) account for one-fifth of the world’s population but their
combined GDP is less than the GDP of France.
The 22 Arab countries, including the oil-exporting Gulf states, account
for a combined GDP less than that of Spain alone. A little less than half
of the world’s Muslim population is illiterate. The number of books
published in the Arab world, with more than 250 million people, is less
than the titles printed every year in Greek, which is the language of only
16 million people.
Although a thousand years ago Muslims led the world in the field of
science and mathematics, they are noticeably absent from the list of
recent inventors or innovators in science and technology. To make matters
worse, only a handful of Muslim majority countries fulfil the criteria for
freedom set by the independent group Freedom House. Mainstream discourse
among Muslims blames everyone else but themselves for this situation. The
image of an ascendant West belittling Islam with the view to eliminate it
serves as a convenient excuse for the ummah’s weaknesses.
Few Muslims would have heard about Jyllands-Posten’s offending
cartoons, published last September, if Islamist activists had not
publicised them worldwide for greater effect.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has pointed towards the role of
Syria and Iran in exacerbating the violence over a less known Danish
newspaper’s insult to Muslims. The Syrians, who normally do not allow
protestors to congregate in Damascus, allowed an unusually large
demonstration that ended with the torching of the Danish embassy. But the
rulers in Tehran and Damascus are not the only ones taking advantage of
the offending cartoons and the fervour generated by their publication
among a section of Muslims. Several authoritarian Muslim regimes allied
with the United States have also used the opportunity to create the
impression that their masses are unruly fanatics who cannot be controlled
except with an iron hand.
That is the only explanation for the ease with which violent
demonstrators in the Pakistani city of Lahore controlled the streets for a
day, burning western businesses and attacking cars at random. Egypt, too,
allowed angry demonstrations although it normally does not allow its
citizens to publicly express their sentiments. After putting down the
orchestrated violence, the Mubarak and Musharraf regimes will most likely
tell the US to tone down its rhetoric about democratising the Muslim
world. Democracy, they will argue, would only bring Islamists chosen by
angry anti-western mobs into power.
But the wave of anger in the Muslim world of the last few days provides
justification for greater democracy, not less. Only when the Muslim world
embraces freedom of expression will it be able to recognise the value of
that freedom, even for those who offend Muslim sensibilities. Only in a
free democratic environment will the world’s Muslims be able to debate the
causes of their powerlessness, which causes them greater anger than any
specific action on the part of Islam’s western detractors.
February 28, 2006.
(Husain Haqqani is a former Pakistan diplomat, scholar and author of
Pakistan: Between Mosque
and Military.)
http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/research/id.18/corner_detail.asp