Muslim rage.........Why won't they calm down

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Muslim rage

Why they won’t calm down

Mischief, not madness, often underlies Muslim anger

Sep 15th 2012 | from the print edition

Thousands demonstrated in Iran's capital Tehran after the country's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, called for the death of Salman Rushdie, author of the novel "The Satanic Verses" Source: Getty Images
In 2002 in the city of Kaduna in Nigeria more than a hundred people died in clashes between Christians and Muslims protesting Nigeria's hosting of the Miss World beauty contest Source: AFP
The contestants instead headed to Britain Source: AP
Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker whose film "Submission" portrayed a Muslim woman being abused, was killed in November 2004 Source: Getty Images
Thousands gathered to pay homage to him Source: AFP
Hundreds of Afghan university students protested in Kabul following a report that American interrogators at Guantànamo Bay prison had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet. May 2005 Source: REUTERS
The report was featured in Newsweek, but the magazine later retracted the story Source: AFP
Danish flag burnt in front of the Danish embassy in Tehran during a protest over the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. February 2006 Source: AFP
Thousands of Sudanese marched in Khartoum calling for the execution of Gillian Gibbons, jailed for 15 days for allowing her pupils to name their class teddy bear Muhammad. November 2007 Source: AFP
Scene from South Park, an American cartoon, in which the Prophet Muhammad appears censored or dressed as a teddy bear but his voice is not heard. April 2010 Source: Landmark Media
Iranians protest at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran after an American pastor, Terry Jones, threatened to burn copies of the Koran. September 2010 Source: AFP
Hundreds of Afghans demonstrated in the capital Kabul after Friday prayers to protest the burning of the Koran by American pastor Terry Jones. April 2011 Source: REUTERS
Afghans burn an effigy of Terry Jones during a protest along the Kabul-Jalalabad highway. April 2011 Source: AFP
Rioters burn down the American consulate in Libya in protest against an amateur film insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The ambassador and three of his colleagues were killed Source: REUTERS
Thousands of demonstrators protested against the film in Iran Source: EPA
In Egypt protesters scaled the walls of the American embassy in Cairo and removed and destroyed its flag Source: REUTERS
September 2012 Source: REUTERS

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TO OUTSIDE eyes it is as bizarre as it is repellent. A single event, book, cartoon, film or teddy bear, which represents nothing but its originator, who may not even be American, sparks lethal outbursts of mass protest. What, to prejudiced Westerners, could better exemplify Muslim backwardness and depravity?

The latest bloody furore was provoked by the belated release on the web of an amateurish film, probably made by a Coptic Egyptian resident in America, attacking the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, brute and pervert. Yet the film had been available (with stunning lack of success) for months, though dubbed in Arabic more recently. Undoubtedly offensive, it could count as an incitement to religious hatred—illegal in some countries, though not in America. But it is no worse than plenty of other material only a mouse-click away.

So why the ire? In a hallmark essay in 1990 called “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, Bernard Lewis, an Anglo-American commentator on Islam, blamed a mentality twisted by history. He cited the obligation of holy war, dating from the faith’s turbulent birth and shaped by centuries of setbacks ranging from the retreat from Europe to Western imperialism, and even the challenge to Muslim male authority from rebellious children and emancipated women. The result was an inferiority complex, in which humiliation was compounded by Western ignorance.

There is also a less apocalyptic explanation. Muslims’ resentment at slights to their religion is readily aroused by reports of desecration of the Koran or books, films and pictures that include a blasphemous (ie, any) depiction of the Prophet Muhammad or of God. Yet outbursts of rage can also be stirred by political grandstanding and mischievous politicians preying on an ill-informed and aggrieved populace.

It is certainly odd, for example, that the latest film suddenly began attracting attention in the run-up to September 11th, an anniversary almost as politically charged in the Muslim world as it is in the West. It was energetically publicised (albeit in caustic terms) by two Salafist (hardline Islamist) television channels.

Most outbursts of Muslim rage bring political dividends to someone. The Ayatollah Khomeini, for example, reaped the benefits of his fatwa demanding the death sentence on Salman Rushdie for his book “The Satanic Verses”, published in 1988. Pakistani politicians gain from whipping up sentiment against Christians—and against politicians seen as soft on them.

The furore over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten , was also curious. It held a cartoon competition (about supposed Muslim intolerance) in September 2005. Protests erupted four months later, sparked by a dossier that included pictures the paper had never published. The row, which cost at least 100 lives, was a boon for those with mischief-making agendas.

Ignorance of the way the West works in many Muslim countries makes rabble-rousing easy. Protesters at the American embassy in Cairo on September 11th erroneously believed the offensive film to have been shown on “American state television”: in a place with a weak tradition of independent broadcasting, that claim is not as absurd as it might be elsewhere.

The casualties of such outbursts are not only innocent lives and lost livelihoods. The truth suffers too. A reluctance among many Muslims to accept that America could be a blundering victim of atrocities rather than a wily perpetrator meant that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers were widely reported from the outset as an inside job, facilitated by Israel’s intelligence service, to stoke up Western hatred of Islam. Three-quarters of Egyptians now believe that conspiracy theory. It is a headache for their new president, Muhammad Morsi, as he plans to visit New York for the United Nations General Assembly (see next article). For many Americans, only an explicit disavowal of his past support for such theories would signal that he is a decent man worth dealing with.

from the print edition | Middle East and Africa