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Why Are Muslims So Enraged?
Posted by: Myriam Francois-Cerrah
Tags: Arab Spring,film,Human Rights,islam,Libya,middle east,muslims,revolution,USA,violence Posted date:
September 15, 2012 |
14 Comments
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The protests across the Arab world are about much more than the constructed dichotomy of free speech versus Islam
It would be very easy to cast, as many commentators have, the latest riots in response to the notorious Islamophobic film as another example of intolerant Muslims lacking a funny bone. The Rushdie affair, the Danish cartoons – surely the latest saga fits neatly into a pattern of evidence suggesting Muslims are over-sensitive and violent. After all, critics will argue, Christians are regularly derided through the arts and media and they don’t go around burning embassies and killing people.
Only the situation is hardly analogous. The power relations in which a dominant majority can be perceived as insulting and humiliating a disgruntled and feeble minority, cannot be ignored in the analysis of Muslim responses to offensive art works. But the truth is, the protests across the Arab world are about much more than the usual ‘free speech versus Islam’ babble. In fact, at the heart of the unrest is a powerful current of anti-Americanism rooted in imperialist policies and bolstered dictatorships.
Firstly, although the film may have been the catalyst for the riots, it would be wrong to assume that all the riots have exactly the same cause. The murder of American embassy staff in Libya appears to have been the work of an Al Qaeda fringe that had been plotting the revenge of one its senior leaders. They apparently used the protest against the film as a smokescreen for the attack. What brought regular Libyans to the embassy was, undoubtedly initially, opposition to the film. However there and elsewhere, the anger of the masses has appeared to morph into something much broader: a reflection of anti-American sentiment grounded in the USA’s historically fraught relationship with the region.
This is hardly the first demonstration of anger against Western targets in any of the countries at hand. It is only possibly amongst the most mediatised because of the spin placed on the story, represented as it has been, as some sort of reflection of the fundamental intolerance of Islam.
For those with a short memory, it was only last month that a pipe bomb exploded outside the US embassy in Libya and both the Red Cross and other Western aid organisations have come under fire there in recent months. It is certainly a misnomer to think that NATO intervention in support of the rebels against Gaddafi somehow erased deep-seated grievances against the US, not least the sense of humiliation of the Arab world against decades of Western domination. Sure, we may have helped get rid of Gaddafi when it was expedient, but for a long time we traded quite happily with the man while he brutally repressed his people. In some cases, we even helped him do it. A recent Human Rights Watch report, Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya, details the stories of Libyan opposition figures tortured in US-run prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere and then delivered back to Libya, with full awareness that they were going to be tortured or possibly killed.
Even in the ‘new Libya’ not all sections of the revolution feel the outcome of the elections was truly representative of popular feeling. Not to mention Egypt, where Mubarak, whom Hilary Clinton once described as a “close family friend”, tortured and killed innumerable dissidents in a US-backed dictatorship. To think the elections which happened just months ago would transform popular opinion concerning the US’s role in the region is ludicrous. And that’s before we even get to Iraq.
Broken by poverty, threatened by drones, caught in the war between Al Qaeda and the US, to many Arab Muslims the film represents an attack on the last shelter of dignity – sacred beliefs – when all else has been desecrated.
It is no surprise that some of the worst scenes of violence come from Yemen, where US policy has resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians, fuelling anger against a regime whose brutality and corruption has left the country ranking among the poorest in the Arab world. A country from among those with the least access to computers and the internet, it is also entirely likely that many protestors never even saw the film. It also seems unlikely anyone believed the film was actually produced by the American government. Though many might have believed the US government could restrict the film’s diffusion, censorship being common in many of these countries, the focus on American symbols – embassies, American schools, even KFC – suggests the roots of popular anger is not hurt religious pride over a film. Rather, the film has provided an unwitting focal point for massive and widespread anger at US foreign policy in the region. If the Arab revolutions let the dictators know how people felt about their repression, these demonstrations should be read as equally indicative of popular anguish with the US. The film is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back – to stand in consternation at the single straw is to be naïve or willfully blind to the accumulated bales which made the straw so hard to carry.
This is not an attempt to minimise the offense caused by the film. Mohammed is a man whose status in the eyes of many Muslims cannot be overstated. When your country has been bombed, you’ve lost friends and family, possibly your livelihood and home, dignity is pretty much all you have left.
The producers of the film may have known very little about film-making, but they knew lots about how to cause a stir. Despite its obscure origins, mediatised references to an ‘Israeli’ director living in the US, to a ‘100 Jewish donors’ who allegedly provided ‘five million dollars’ to a hazy ‘Coptic network’ – all played into a well-known register. When two out of five Arabs live in poverty, a five-million dollar insult has more than a slight sting to it. Those who sought to bring winter to an Arab spring, and possibly destabilise a US election, were keenly aware of the impact those words would have, situating the film within ongoing tensions between Israel and the Arab world and stirring up the hornet’s nest of minority relations in a region where they remain unsettled.
In a tweet, the Atheist academic Richard Dawkins decried the events by lambasting “these ridiculous hysterical Muslims”. In so doing he, like others, not only failed to read these events for what they are – predominantly political protests against US meddling – but he also failed to recognise the basic humanity of the protestors. To dismiss deep anger as mere hysteria is to diminish decades of oppression experienced by many Muslims, particularly in the Arab world, often with US complicity.
If you deny any relationship between the systematic discrimination of Muslims and stigmatisation of Islam and the overreaction of the Muslim community to offensive jokes, or films, or cartoons, then you are only left with essentialist explanations of Muslim hysteria and violence. These protests aren’t about a film; they’re about the totality of ways in which Muslims have felt humiliated over decades. Humiliation doesn’t justify violence, but it certainly helps explain it.
Reporting on the ‘incident’ as somehow indicative of Islam’s essential incompatibility with the West not only conveniently omits the realities of Muslim oppression globally, but also reinforces them. Before we start searching for the nebulous network behind the film, or the reasons why “Muslims are so prone to getting offended”, we would do better to actually search for the conditions that have contributed to rendering the mass dehumanisation of particular groups of people socially unobjectionable and do well to remember that the right to protest, angrily even, is just as central to the concept of free speech, as the right to make offensive movies.
Image from: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/us-identifies-anti-muslim-filmmaker/story-fnd134gw-1226473817626
About the author
Myriam Francois-Cerrah
Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a researcher, writer and DPhil student at Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco. She is a regular speaker on various issues, contributing to Newsnight, Index on Censorship, The Independent and others. Myriam's personal blog can be found here. Follow her @MFrancoisCerrah.
Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a researcher, writer and DPhil student at Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco. She is a regular speaker on various issues, contributing to Newsnight, Index on Censorship, The Independent and others. Myriam's personal blog can be found here. Follow her @MFrancoisCerrah.
14 Comments
E+
If only we could all be as tolerant and open minded as secular people like you.
nitin
Well, what you say makes sense only to an extent. In India, there is no American opression. Still, a torn book resulted in deaths of 6 innocents. In Sydney, there is again no opression by US, and thousands protested on streets. Which makes me wonder what is the real cause. The real cause is that Muslims have preferences in following order: Allah, Prophet, Quran and then nation and fellow countrymen. Its eveident all over the globe.
opiya
That the US has invaded so many Muslim majority countries is sufficient to arouse the indignation of Muslims around the world, regardless of their location. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and the multitude of Western backed dictators – these are not simply markers of the suffering of those specific nations, but that of any entire religious community which has suffered the particular oppressive attention of the States for many years. As for those in countries like Australia, plenty have parents from many of the countries invaded by the States.
I don’t agree with the method of protest and violence in many of these places. But it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the discontent did not materialise out of thin air.
Sean
How many countries did the muslim prophet Muhammad invade?…how many tribes did he wipe out.?…how many people were slaughtered?…butchered? How many were forced to convert by the edge of the sword?
Wasn’t that very offensive to the people. The attackers rejoiced but the attacked mourned.
Those who are now enraged by are those who enraged others earlier. The chickens have come home to roost. What goes around comes around. Be not mocked whatever a man sows that he or his generations reap. No offense intended!
E+
Well in answer to your questions, The Prophet of Islam did not invade any countries, did not force anyone to convert and wiped out no tribes… Please read a history book.
Sean
that should read CITIES not countries ….and yes he was instrumental in leading many of his supporters in a trail of bloodshed and tears …
plz read ur Koran.
there are over 100 verses that encourage & promote FIGHTING including Quran (2:216) – “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.”
The worse of the lot include the Mogols , Othman/Ottoman and others…who invaded many countries and enforced conversion to islam.
Its there in the books of History. Read it.
Sean
HISTORICALLY….How many countries did the muslim prophet Muhammad invade?…how many tribes did he wipe out.?…how many people were slaughtered?…butchered? How many were forced to convert by the edge of the sword?
Wasn’t that very offensive to the people. The attackers rejoiced but the attacked mourned.
And they were enraged but what could they do?
Those who are now enraged are those who enraged others earlier.
PRESENTLY …How many minority groups in islamic nations are being persecuted and prosecuted….. their churches, are bombed, burnt, their leaders and people are killed, butchered, beheaded, hounded out, their homes are stoned, torched, vandalised, they are treated unfairly…as second class citizens.. they are framed with trumped up charges,
Isn’t that very offensive to the people. Muslim attackers rejoice after the damage is done but the attacked remnant mourn and are forced to convert to Islam or flee for their lives and service to their God..
SERIOUSLY, should these people have a right to become enraged as muslims do? and become lawless mobs, enough to riot, burn, kill, destroy property of muslims? Should they then issue fatwas, death threats to islamic leaders and governments? Should they plot and conspire to raise up christian taliban, christian al queda and other christian terrorist organizations?
What is to be their recourse. Maybe one or some may take the chance and make a movie, as occurred. Western countries may not be christian, but they have learn some things from the Bible…such as
…….the right to respect a man’s belief even if we dont agree with it.
…….the right to co-exist with someone of another faith even if we dont believe in it.
thats why muslims can build a mosque in the US, but building a church in a muslim country
is a difficult assignment.
…….the right to respect the sacredness of life so we dont go about killing others just because there
is a protest or disagreement.
…… the right to call to God in prayer when we are offended
…… the right to appeal to the law or the courts for judgment
……. eye for eye and tooth for tooth is not normal western culture though some may practice it.
So muslims are enraged but they have enraged many also, including their own citizens. Many mock muslims today but muslim themselves have done much to others.
The plain truth is this…the chickens have come home to roost. What goes around comes around. Be not mocked whatever a man sows that he or his generations reap. No offense intended!
If muslims want respect from others they must first give respect. If muslims expect non muslims to treat muslim citizens well…then muslims must treat citizens of other nations and minority groups well.
In perspective, it will be as Jesus said in the Bible, LOVE thy neighbor as thyself ” and “give and it will be given back to you…good measure , pressed down, shaken together and running over, will men (others) give back to you. ( Luke 6:38)
E+
“The plain truth is this…the chickens have come home to roost. What goes around comes around. Be not mocked whatever a man sows that he or his generations reap. No offense intended!
If muslims want respect from others they must first give respect. If muslims expect non muslims to treat muslim citizens well…then muslims must treat citizens of other nations and minority groups well.
In perspective, it will be as Jesus said in the Bible, LOVE thy neighbor as thyself ” and “give and it will be given back to you…good measure , pressed down, shaken together and running over, will men (others) give back to you. ( Luke 6:38)”
Is that why a group of fundamentalist christians decided to make a film in order to offend Muslims? The Muslim reaction has been ridiculous, but so is your comment. People all over the world have been and are being oppressed and people from all sorts of religious and irreligious backgrounds are doing the oppressing. The sooner we understand that there are deeper reasons for people’s actions and behaviour the better.
Opiya
I would also add to the comment by E+ – please pick up a book on the complete life story of the Prophet Muhammad as a matter of urgency. Your lack of knowledge on both history and the Quran is sadly apparent and would amount to an extended essay if one were to sit down to refute. Muhammad by Martin Lings is a recommendation: http://amzn.to/OUTHa1.
Pulling out random out of context verses from the Qur’an will do you no favours in your argument either. Again, something to refer to a complete and reliable [rather than a random decontextualised and fault-seeking version] account of the Prophet’s life for, along with a complete translation of the Qur’an. Here’s a recommended copy by Oxford Uni Press: http://amzn.to/SWdLyV. I could easily draw out random verses from the Bible and make Christianity out to be some bloodthirsty ideology – and there is ample historical evidence to further prop that notion up [crusades, anyone?]. But that would be just as disingenuous and ignorant as what you have just written.
Alan MacDonald
The Global Empire that does not wear ‘Red Coats’ (nor funny looking helmets)
The issue is not anti-Americanism, but rather an undiagnosed but roiling anti-Global-Empire issue throughout the Middle East (and much of the rest of the world).
There should not be any surprise at the level of resistance, and even street rebellion, in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and the rest of the region — which is being misdiagnosed (or simply distorted by the media) as anti-Americanism.
What’s the big surprise in these attacks in Libya and the Middle East?
What’s the big surprise in violence against all troops, from all Western NATO countries?
When indigenous people view, even partially, the entire array of forces in their lands as representing an “Occupying Global Empire”, which talks of modernizing and changing their culture, but effectively uses vastly superior military power to control the direction of any changes, it should not be surprising that there is a uprising against what they perceive as Global Empire interference, or even exploitation of their relative weakness. The same could be said of colonial Americans facing what the “Occupying” British Empire described as merely “influence”, or governing assistance in the colonies — or what the “Occupying” German forces of the 1940’s merely described as co-ordination with the ‘Vichy’ government (which that Empire had conveniently put in place to suppress resistance).
When you are running a global Empire the Viceroy (as the British Empire called the ‘vice royal’ representative of the Empire) is bound to be a target for the territorial subjects who despise the Empire, just as many ‘Vichy’ officials were targeted by the French resistance — like forces of the perceived Global Empire in the Middle-East are targeted in “Green on Blue” resistance.
The only surprise, as I see it, is that most Americans have no idea that their former country has been ‘captured’ and now fully “Occupied” by a DGE (disguised global Empire), by a corporate/financial/militarist Empire, which hides behind the facade of its ‘bought and owned’ modernized two-party ‘Vichy’ sham of faux-democratic and totally illegitimate government — just as the Nazi Empire earlier tried to disguise itself with the crude and single-party ‘Vichy’ facade regime in ‘captured’ and “Occupied” France c. 1940.
A critical issue that the domestic Occupy movement has to correctly ‘frame’ (as George Lakoff would say) is the key issue of the unjustness of military and money-power, and such framing must ‘change the mindset’ or analogy of what has now been very guilefully framed by the ruling elite 1% as a founding freedom issue of America.
The distorted framing of the 1% is that America was founded on an individualistic ‘freedom’ to succeed by hard work, and that this constitutes the ‘American Dream’, and furthermore that this system should be impressed on a global level. This perverted vision of such an ‘American Dream’ is absolutely wrong, but supported with powerful propaganda all the way back to the Heratio Alger fable.
The real and counter-version of the American Dream was of a commonwealth of individual people to achieve freedom from the entrenched, elitist, un-fair, and most importantly un-democratic hierarchy of the British EMPIRE. To achieve a ‘new world’ where a group of people could throw off the bonds and power-based ‘might makes right’ fearful and unsustainable political philosophy of hierarchical rule that had ruled since the age of the Roman Empire in the ‘old world’.
[As an aside the perversion and corruption of the original ‘American Dream’ of a new world devolved into our current corrupt, shabby, and hustling grifter vision of a death-spiraling unsustainable world is beautifully critiqued in fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Gatsby”, and in non-fiction by Morris Berman in “Why America Failed; The Roots of Imperial Decline”].
The Occupy movement needs to “expose”, and then confront this sophisticated and money-powered distortion of what America and Americans originally envisioned and worked toward as a ‘new world’ can only be accomplished by clearly, compellingly and honestly pointing out that what the ruling elite 1% is currently enforcing through their money-power is exactly the inverse of the real ‘American Dream’ and showing the vast multitude of Americans that the 1% ‘framing’ and propagandistic dystopia is precisely the same as a continuation of the wealthy, entrenched, and unsustainable British Empire’s vision of keeping the American colonies ‘captured’ and “Occupied” for the unjust, un-democratic, entrenched, greedy, and violent control of King George and the 1% who already controlled the wealth of England and half the world.
The only difference between the British Empire’s 1% capture and “Occupation” of our colonial lands and the current 1% ‘empire-thinkers’ capture, control, and violent oppression of what we think of as ‘our country’s commonwealth and freedom’ is that neither the existing Occupy Movement, NOR ANY OTHER MOVEMENT, has yet exposed, educated, and confronted the far more sophisticated propaganda of this 21st century DGE (disguised global Empire) only posing as our fading country.
Best luck and love to the fast expanding “Occupy Empire” educational and revolutionary movement against this well disguised Global 1% Empire that doesn’t wear Red Coats.
Liberty, democracy, justice, and equality.
Over
Violent/Vichy II
Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
PS to understand what some articles call a “long siege” of the GAP countries along the 5000 mile swath from Mauritania to the very boarders of China and India one must only read Thomas Barnett’s 2004 Naval War College strategy and book, “The Pentagon’s New Map”, which fully defines the “Old Core’s” (the DGE’s) global soft/hard war plan for the post-nation-state 21st century.
realskullzero
have to agree with some points from the author, this issue should be looked at in the context of world politics and power struggles, what happend in Benghazi is hardly a surprise, So much for the Western countries who cuddled up with extremist elements such as Al Qaeda to get rid of Gaddafi, probably to be replaced by a far worse social unrest….just hope that the process of democracy will flourish in this oil rich land and not become another authoritarian puppet of the western regimes…or far worse
Sean Cambridge
Islam though believed otherwise was never a peaceful religion. In fact it is a religion of submission in which total submission of the believers or the non-believers is expected. In a state as such gruesome opposition to the free thinking man, it is ironic to indicate that a person with Islamic upbringing would react to a religion based criticism in a lukewarm manner. If you are in a Islamic nation, if you feel like you are threatened, I think what you feel is correct. It is because though you believe otherwise, human being includes a sense of freedom that over-rides any so called divine word. You are reaping the benefits of incorrectly forcing the world to believe what you believe.
Opiya
Your comment is rather confused and reflects more your view of Islam than the other way round. Yes, Islam is about submission – but of the believer to God so that they worship Him alone and observe His laws of worship. The non-believer does not come into that equation. If you don’t believe in God generally, then this concept of submission to God is perhaps something you will not quite understand or simply misunderstand.
Furthermore, no one is ‘forcing’ anyone to believe anything. That would be pointedly unIslamic: ‘There is no compulsion in religion’ (Quran – 2:256).
You also might want to refer to history a bit before using words like ‘never’. It reveals ignorance.
No. It IS hysteria. Furthermore we have a duty in the secular world further to enrage muslims until they eventually become inured.
Let’s not forget, after all, that all theistic religion is utter, unmitigated nonsense. It’s time for these people to grow up.