Cynics Unlimited

On September 30, 2005, Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons unfavourably depicting Islamic religious figure, the Prophet Muhammad. Depicting the Prophet Muhammad in any way, shape or form is condemned in Islamic practice. The initial printing went largely unnoticed. On January 10, 2006, a Norwegian news publication became the first of many European publications to reprint the cartoons which followed suit February 1. Reaction among Muslims was vehement and violent.

On January 26, Saudi Arabia became the first Islamic nation to recall its ambassador to Denmark. January 30, Palestinian gunmen raided the EU’s Gaza offices demanding an apology. On January 31, the Jyllands-Posten apologized for offending the Islamic community, shortly thereafter, the Danish Prime Minister condemned demonizing any religious or cultural group. This, however, did little to prevent further uproar. Danish dairy company Arla, among others, has seen its profits plummet due to boycotts. Protestors in Syria besieged Danish and Norwegian foreign embassies February 4. The following day the same happened to the Danish embassy in Beirut.

Opinions on the cartoons are varied. Various European and North American newspapers have expressed support for free speech and secular democracy. Others have expressed dismay at the insensitivity of publishing what could be construed as hate literature. Extremists throughout the world have called for, “Death to Denmark,” and for the “hand that drew to be severed.” Who is in the right?

The issue is especially contentious in the wake of rioting that rocked Paris in the fall of 2005. Members of France’s sizable Muslim community were largely responsible for the rioting. This, of course, in addition to talk among the OECD of sanctions against Iran, a Hamas victory in Palestinian elections with Ariel Sharon in a coma and an American occupation in Iraq. One need not be reminded of the events of September 11, 2001, or the American “War on Terror”.

This is only the latest event in a long-standing historical divide between Europeans, Christian, secular or otherwise, and Middle Eastern Muslims. In fact, this conflict dates at least to 635, when Islamic troops under caliph Abu Bakr seized Demascus and defeated the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Yarmuk. This was the first of many in a long series of battles between Byzantine and Islamic forces, culminating in the conquest of Constantinople and its conversion to Istanbul in 1473 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. At least nine crusades resulted from this period of conflict.

The Ottoman Empire persisted until 1922, frequently sparring with the neighbouring Austro-Hungarian Empire which lasted until it lost World War I. In the 1820s France, Great Britain and Russia intervened militarily on behalf of Greeks struggling for independence from the Ottoman Turks. Not the first or last time such an alliance of European powers confronted the Ottomans. The Spanish inquisition, founded in 1478, was largely a tool to unite the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile under a single religious banner following years of Islamic dominion in the region. Europe owes much of its modern day political character to opposition of Muslim religious and political forces.

Conflict meant exposure, and increased involvement with Eastern powers meant a reintroduction of classical thought into western European society. These events precipitated the European Renaissance and the development of humanist philosophy. Conflict also meant trade. Trade meant an injection of capital and technology, such as the Arab sail-building and navigation techniques that allowed the Portuguese to round the Cape of Good Hope, Columbus to reach the Caribbean and Magellan to circumnavigate the globe. As the European locus widened, humanism developed into individualism and secularism and eventually the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. By the end of the 18th century Enlightenment ideas such as secularism and democracy took hold across the European continent through revolution and reform.

Modernist notions of progress paved the way for industrialization. Throughout the 19th century a clear gap developed between the industrial imperial powers, concentrated in Europe, and the rest of the world. The 20th century changed little. The end of World War I established the United States of America as an industrial power on the world stage, and placed a great deal of the Middle East under European control by mandate of the League of Nations. The end of World War II saw the US and the USSR rise to global dominance poised to do battle in a grand ideological conflict. In addition, Allied action created the state of Israel. Through two world wars and the creation of modern day states such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Egypt, Europeans and Americans found themselves altering the political character of the Middle East.

The creation of Israel, possibly the single most divisive political issue in the world today, spurred immediate military violence and drew the lines upon which modern day ideological warfare would be fought. Terrorism became a watch word in the West because of Yasser Arafat and the PLO and events such as the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Growing industrialization meant that the Middle East also possessed a highly valued commodity, oil. High crude prices in 1960 created American and European pressure to create the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a worldwide pricing regulatory body. The Yom Kippur War of 1967 led Arab members of OPEC to create their own overlapping Organization of Arab Petroleum Producing Countries.

The Middle East, trapped between Eastern and Western Europe, was of utmost strategic importance to both major Cold War powers. Americans and Russians frequently tested their arms in Israeli and Egyptian conflicts. Brits and Americans installed successive regimes in both Iran and Iraq and backed these regimes in conflicts against one another. The Cuban Missile crisis ended in a Russian pledge to remove weapons from Turkey. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 preceeded the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and, with American funding and training, created the Osama Bin Laden of today.

Which brings us to September 11. To invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. To bombings in Spain and Britain. To riots in France. To Danish cartoons. Back to today. Back to the question of who is in the right. Is this a conflict of ideas? Of religions? Of cultures? Of politics? Of history? It is all of these, to be sure. Who is in the right? Not the bigots who publish hate literature in European newspapers. Certainly not the reactionaries who incite violence among fellow Muslims.

Who is in the right? Those in the right are those who recognize the commonalities of their respective cultures who share so much history. Those who realize that the highest ideals are love, compassion and understanding, according to Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhmmad, Spinoza, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant and Jean-Paul Sartre. If Danes are entitled to publish disrespectful cartoons, disrespected Muslims are entitled to react. Muslims, to be sure, have a great deal to be angry with the Western world about. If by one’s reaction, however, one serves only to further alienate and anger, one does Muhammad injustice in more ways than one. Hatred is a vice in any language, religion or culture.

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This column was reprinted with permission from the author. Dashmaster will be collaborating with myself and others on a new website called “With Good Reason”, scheduled to be launched March 2006. More details are forthcoming.
-Cynapse