What went wrong?

Barney Zwartz

For 1000 years Muslims were entitled to think of themselves as civilisation’s last word. They were triumphant militarily, politically, economically, had taken half Christianity’s lands, and claimed God’s final revelation to humanity, superseding all other religions.

In the 20th century it became clear within Islam that things had gone badly wrong, according to the famous Orientalist Bernard Lewis. Compared their great rival of Christendom, the world of Islam had become poor, weak and ignorant: humiliated in battle, impoverished and corrupt economically, and ruled by tyrants. What went wrong?

Islam emerged from Arabia in the seventh century like a sprinter from the blocks. Muslim armies took Christian Palestine, Syria, Egypt and north Africa, Spain, Portugal and Sicily. Turned back in France, they sacked Rome in 846, fought off the Crusaders, captured the Byzantine empire, Greece, Russia and much of eastern Europe, and twice reached the gates of Vienna.

The foremost economic power, Islam also reached the highest level so far in the arts and sciences. But gradually, over the centuries, it was dislodged from Spain, Russia, Greece and eastern Europe. The Ottoman empire collapsed after World War I, and Turkish reformer Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate.

As Lewis observes, “who did this to us?” is a common human response when things go badly. Muslims have variously blamed the Mongols (who invaded in the 13th century), the Turks, Western imperialism _ first France and Britain, then the United States _ and “the Jews” (especially after the humiliation suffered when five Arab armies could not prevent half a million Jews establishing Israel in 1948). But, he observes, these were symptoms of Islamic weakness, not the cause.

Some in the Middle East have blamed Islam itself as an obstacle to freedom, science and economic development, but if so, asks Lewis, how was Muslim society formerly a pioneer in all three?

Increasingly, he says, Muslims are asking a better question: “What did we do wrong?” which leads to “how do we put it right?”

“If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression,” Lewis says.

“If they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies and resources, they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and the Middle Ages, a major centre of civilisation.”

“A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress: ossified, totalitarian and intolerant.”

These are strong words _ and no more palatable to Muslims because they come from one of their own, the dissident Ibn Warraq in Germany’s Spiegel.

But such claims have been gathering pace this week after the violent reaction by some Muslims to the publication _ in the name of free speech _ in several newspapers of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, first printed in a Danish paper in September. (It is blasphemy in Islam to produce an image of the Prophet.)

Mobs in Damascus and Beirut burned the Danish embassy and a church, others firebombed a French cultural centre in Gaza, the Taliban offered 100 kilograms of gold to anyone who killed those responsible for the cartoons, and there were violent protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia. Protesters in many countries marched with placards calling for those who insulted Islam to be killed.

In doing so they reinforced the stereotype of Muslims as backward, bigoted and violent that so many Muslims have been working to overcome.

A dozen rather amateurish drawings in an obscure Danish paper laid bare a conflict between two principles sacred to their respective cultures: reverence for religion in Islam and free speech in the West. Some believe they could usher in the long-anticipated “clash of civilisations”. Others consider this alarmist, and claim the present clash is merely between extremists at both ends of the debate, and that Islam, like Christianity, is characterised by diversity.

In Australia, no newspaper published all the cartoons, though Brisbane’s Courier-Mail printed one. It passed almost without comment, perhaps because the religious temperature is lower in Australia and most Muslims feel less marginalised. The clash seemed a distant scenario.

Not so for Ibn Warraq. “Are we in the West going to cave in to pressures from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom – freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?” he asks.

“Unless we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamisation of Europe will have begun in earnest.”

Left-wing commentator Christopher Hitchens agrees. On Slate.com, he wrote that a good Muslim should abstain from what his religion prohibited. “But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.”

The clash thesis is equally entrenched in the Muslim world. Wassim Doureihi, the articulate Australian spokesman for the ultra-radical Hizb ut-Tahrir group, agrees with Orientalist Bernard Lewis (see panel). He says there always has been a clash of civilisations and always will be, that the West’s only rival is Islam.

“There is no possibility of harmonious co-existence between Islam and the West because there is a fundamental conflict. Ultimately, one has to prevail,” says Doureihi, whose group is banned in several countries. It has few members in Australia but is influential internationally.

“There is Islam and the rest of the world, which we seek to liberate and provide a moral example.”

The problem with the clash of civilisations thesis is that it is too absolute, and misses the nuances. Further, the danger is that it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A closer look at the cartoons crisis reveals more diverse positions on both sides.

Constant talk of the clash of civilisations annoys Abdullah Saeed, director of Melbourne University’s Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam. Islam is no more monolithic than Western society, he says.

“I don’t think this is a clash of civilisations. It’s just a group of people finding something offensive. Which Islamic civilisation are we talking about, or which Western civilisation?”

Professor Saeed says where the reaction was violent, that was unjustifiable and showed that lessons from the Salman Rushdie affair have yet to be learnt.

It is obvious that the resentment that sparked the cartoon protests goes much deeper than the cartoons themselves, which were just the immediate flashpoint. There is 9/11, humiliation at suspicion of Muslim migrants in Europe, anger at Iraq and Palestine, and historic resentment of the West. Olivier Roy, a scholar of Islam, wrote in Newsweek that for European Muslims the issue is about discrimination _ the cartoonists contributed to a wave of Islamophobia sweeping Europe.

Melbourne Muslim spokesman Waleed Aly, who last month returned from pilgrimage to Mecca, says the feeling is entrenched in the Muslim world that the “war on terror” is nothing more than a war on Islam. “That, rightly or wrongly, in much of the Muslim world is totally incontestable. If you tried to argue against that you just wouldn’t be listened to,” he says.

The clash of civilisations explanation is a superficial one that does not capture any of the nuances, says Aly, from the Islamic Council of Victoria. Rather, he believes, this is a clash of prejudices.

“You have this strident free-speech rhetoric, but it would be impossible to imagine an equivalent cartoon to the one showing the Prophet with a bomb in his turban about another faith group.”

Equally, he recognises the hypocrisy of complaining about the cartoons given the lack of respect shown other faiths in many Muslim countries, especially the depiction of Jews across the Middle East.

Aly says both free-speech fundamentalists, who do not want to recognise any limits, and Muslim fundamentalists are using the cartoons to embolden those who are most prejudiced. “Both sides have prejudices, both are giving expression to this prejudice, and both are trying to couch it in the language of principle, but it’s not at all.”

He ridicules the idea that Islam needs defending from the cartoons. “Either it’s a great faith with real insights or it is not. The scribblings of the Danish cartoonists won’t affect that.”

Meanwhile, he says, the affair has triggered debate in the Muslim world. First there was a lot of anger, but as it escalated out of control many Muslims began to feel it made them look foolish and achieved nothing.

Aly is surely right that the clash is only serious at the margins. The middle ground on both sides has been reasonable: most non-Muslims see no reason to give gratuitous offence, and most Muslims have not reacted. Most Muslims in the West _ like most Christians when their religion is belittled _ simply shrug and carry on. They understand the importance of free speech.

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen said this week that mockery of the church is something Christians have to put up with. “We’ve had blasphemy laws which arose from Christian society which says God is angry is people blaspheme him and will punish society. We don’t live in that sort of society now. There could be a law which prevented people making a mockery of the object of my affections (Jesus), but it would be enormously hard to police and where do you draw the line?

“Free speech is only possible in a moral society where people actually care for each other. You will have freedom of speech abused in an immoral society, but even so, it’s so important that people who suffer from it have to put up with it.”

A significant clue to the real agendas is given by the five-month delay between the first publication and the violent protests. Olivier Roy says it defies belief that such secular regimes as Syria could be so deeply outraged in their religious sensitivity.

“The condemnation, of course, sprang from more pragmatic interests _ to be on the right side of religious fervour, to deprive their own internal enemies (largely militant Islamists) of a weapon and to maintain leverage over their own immigrant communities in Europe.”

Roy says both liberal and conservative Muslims in Europe increasingly resent meddling from the “motherland”. Many of them suggest the West offers Islam a chance to modernise precisely because Muslims there have freedoms unknown in Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia. And it’s those freedoms Arab governments are trying to suppress under the pretence of protecting Islam.

Scot Burchill, lecturer in international relations at Deakin University, says the reaction exposes the extent to which liberal democratic culture is confined to the West. Despite democratic transitions, for example in Asia, there is a long way before there is room for the sort of satire about public and religious leaders the West takes for granted, he says. Burchill believes certain clerics exploited the cartoons for other reasons, and governments such as Syria followed for their own reasons. The Iranians will do so too, he says. “Most Muslims who were violent have not even seen the cartoons _ the violence is absurd.”

He says the issue plays into the belief that the West has no respect for the sacred – and at the heart of religious fundamentalism in Islam is the belief that the sacred is threatened by secularism.

“The violence represents a failure of political leadership in those countries or deliberate exploitation, which is pretty reprehensible when it costs people’s lives,” Burchill says.

Why has there been no reaction in Australia. Simply, Australian Muslims have nothing to react against, says Waleed Aly. Nor, according to Abdullah Saeed, does Australia have the anti-immigrant feelings of many European countries. “Many Muslims in Australia did not welcome the violence in Syria. In London we had demonstrators calling for beheadings, but people are more sensible here,” Saeed says.

Roy says the worst lesson to draw from the cartoon crisis is already the most common: that it’s a deep clash of civilisations. Not true, he says. “Instead of demonstrating the unity of the Muslim world, the protests underscore its division: a recidivist old guard determined to protects its power and hidden interests versus the growing community of modernist Muslims. They consider themselves first and foremost to be Europeans _ and they quite simply do not want to be treated as immigrants, or insulted.”

Barney ZWARTZ, religion editor The Age (Melbourne)

Reprinted with permission