The Childishness of Civilizations

For the past two weeks it seems like the words "Clash of Civilizations" and "Huntington was right" have been ringing in my ears. Violent protests, demands for beheadings, and torched embassies have been cited as evidence to this alleged cultural divide - all in response to twelve satirical cartoons. I have always had problems with Huntington's theory, so from the beginning I was wary of fitting the issue into such a neat binary. In my mind at least (I won't argue that this is the case for everyone), it seems that the cartoons are offensive because they are insulting to Muslims; while the depiction of Mohammad may be impermissable to some Muslims, in this case it is a secondary issue. I agree with Robert Fisk, who writes that, "it's not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Koran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Mohamed as a bin Laden-type image of violence." Rather than a fundamental cultural clash, the whole thing seems more like what Fisk calls "the childishness of civilizations," or, as Reuters had it "a dialogue of the deaf," where one side is arguing about free speech and the other about religious tolerance.

Although I hadn't seen the cartoons during the first days of protests, I couldn't help being reminded of the demonstration that occurred here at Columbia two years ago after the publication of a racist cartoon in a campus humour newspaper. The argument that "Hate Speech is not Free Speech" seems to apply in both cases; after all, as Fisk points out, many European countries have laws prohibiting holocaust denial. Clearly free speech has its limits- there should be no surprise if offensive publications provoke protest.

Of course violent protest is a slightly different issue. Classroom walkouts and sit-ins on the the steps are very different from burning down embassies and calling for mass beheadings. Violent behavior of this kind is not only destructive, but also reinforces the original stereotype - i.e. that Muslims are violent.

Speaking to this hypocrisy, many top-ranking Muslims have denounced the violence and entreated their followers to demonstrate peacefully. Mohammad Rashid Qabani, Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim cleric, said no matter how strongly Muslims felt about the cartoons they must exercise restraint: "We don't want the expression of our condemnation (of the cartoons) to be used by some to portray a distorted image of Islam." Similarly, the world's leading Islamic body, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference condemned violent reactions, saying that, "Overreactions surpassing the limits of peaceful democratic acts ... are dangerous and detrimental to the efforts to defend the legitimate case of the Muslim world."

So, why then does it seem as though violent demonstrations are raging across the Middle East? Media sensationalism may be part of the problem. Although it's easy to come away from incident with visions of militant protests and burning embassies across the Muslim world, in fact the protests have been less far-reaching than one might think. John Simpson of the BBC writes that, "despite how it looks on television news, the response to the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad has mostly been non-violent so far. There were no demonstrations at all in a sizable number of Muslim countries. In Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq, the demonstrations passed off quietly.There has been serious trouble in Gaza, Damascus and Beirut, but in each case, local tensions clearly boiled up and found their expression in this particular issue."

A second factor is that there are a number of "fake" cartoons circulating. The cartoons actually published by Jyllands-Posten were inflammatory to begin with, but the "fakes" (or at least those I have seen) are blatantly offensive. If the impression was created that the fake cartoons were actually published by mainstream newspapers, fierce reactions would not be surprising. In December and January, radical Danish imams traveled to the Middle East to complain about the cartoons. One of the clerics, Ahmed Akari, later told the BBC that in addition to the twelve published cartoons, they also brought three caricatures- probably drawn by extremists as part of a hate mail campaign- to demonstrate the attitudes that Muslims in Denmark face. Although Akari insisted that the clerics were not trying to inflame a violent reaction in the Middle East, the confusion between the real and fake cartoons may be a large part of the problem.

A third factor to consider is that the violent demonstrations occurred in places where there there was unrest before the cartoon was published. "All these countries have domestic problems," said Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds. "Most of them are dictatorships and are under pressure from the world to do certain things. In that situation it can be good for them to draw attention away from these problems and direct it at something else." Lebanon is a prime example; tension between Christians and Muslims has been a longstanding problem, and the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri only exacerbated social and political unrest. Vivienne Casparian, a witness of the February 6th cartoon protest in Beirut told the BBC that the majority of the demonstrators were peaceful, but that a small minority seemed to be trying to "stir up conflict between Christians and Muslims." A protester named Rana told the BBC that, "There were two protests. The first one, that we were on, was peaceful. Then the others came." Another witness, Charles Accra, thought that the militant protesters were "foreigners, or people who support the Syrians. They want war - it's better for them if the Lebanese are fighting each other." In fact, of those who were arrested, only twenty percent were Lebanese. Reuters reports that, "security forces arrested 174 protesters: 76 Syrians; 38 Lebanese; 35 Palestinians and 25 stateless Bedouins." A fourth witness, Bilal Daibo, added, "I would say I speak for 95% of the Sunni Muslim population when I say we are against any sort of destruction in Lebanon, against Muslims or Christians... It was an uncivilised act by a small group of people... On the other hand, I think I speak for 95% of the Muslim population when I say we are against what the newspaper did - not only against Muhammad - if it was against Jesus it would be the same."

Maybe it would have been the same if the cartoon had been about Jesus, but that is a scenario that will never exist- at least not in the western media. The BBC reports that in 2003, the Danish cartoonist Christoffer Zieler offered some satirical cartoons of Jesus Christ to Jyllands-Posten. One of the paper's editor's rejected the cartoons, saying, "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry." This incident makes the later arguments by the newspaper championing press freedom democratic ideals sound somewhat hollow, at least to my ears. To me, the escalation of the cartoon row and the immediate cry of culture clash sheds more light on the depth of European multiculturalism than it does on any purported "clash of civilizations." I don't mean to ignore or condone the violence that has resulted from the cartoons, but rather to argue that the debate surrounding them has missed the point. I have to agree with Phillp Kennicott, who writes:

"People on both sides want to picture it as a fundamental conflict of values, between absolute religious beliefs and absolute political principles, between God's word (as interpreted by man) and the freedoms enshrined in Western democracy... But even people who hold fast to the bedrock principles of liberal democracy may feel the exasperating hand of a darker manipulation here. Because when forced to an impasse, the cartoon battle becomes exactly what ideologues in both worlds would like it to be: a proxy for the Clash of Civilizations. Religious fundamentalism forced the issue; political fundamentalism inflamed it. An apology for giving offense is now capitulation to religious tyranny; the basic instinct of moderation is equated with cowardice. A little ink on paper is inflated to proof of a basic cultural incompatibility."

I am a bit confused about what these demonstrations have to do with civilization in the first place. Protests against percieved prejudice are not unique to Islam, and it would be an injustice to Western Civilization to consider them so. To paint the cartoon demonstrations as evidence of a clash of civilizations betrays a misunderstanding of both "Western" and "Islamic" history, as well as a blindness to the role of Muslims in today's global arena. Many of the countries where the demonstrations occurred are saddled with authoritarian rulers or one-party political systems which, in many cases, have been created or supported by European and American intervention during the past century. And now, even in supposedly tolerant democratic countries, Muslims are ridiculed as being equivalent to terrorists. Martin Luther King Jr. called riots "the voice of the voiceless." So should rioting come as a surprise in countries whose citizens have little or no political voice? I don't mean to defend violence in any manifestation, however it seems childish to conflate the frustration of the majority with the actions of a militant minority. Or to view protests against perceived prejudice as evidence of a clash of civilizations.

(Demonstrators in the West Bank; three of the original cartoons; two of the fakes)