The rhetoric concerns belief in God and religious symbols. But on a deeper plane it has reference to individuals, living in a cultural circle filled with inferiority complexes, who feel personally offended. Many Europeans have difficulties in understanding the intensity of the reaction of the Muslims. For Christians in Europe, Jesus is probably not an immediately or easily accessible object of identification; he did not live on our latitudes and spoke a language that is totally marginalized today. As an example for ordinary people, Jesus can be apprehended as inimitable.
For today’s Arab Muslims, however, Muhammad is no culturally distant figure. He lived in this region and spoke a form of Arabic that is possible to understand even today. Muhammad, the simple merchant whom God had chosen, grew up as an orphan. He married and had a family and through his normality became a very immediate figure for the faithful, also for modern Arabs “The Prophet was like one of us”, not divine, and therefore it should in principle be possible to live like him, say the Muslims.
Therefore, if you smear Muhammad and deform his face, it is “I” - a now living Muslim who is attacked. The cartoons turn into an encroachment on my deepest identity. It does not matter if I am really an active practitioner of Islam, who faithfully follows the shari’ah and Muhammad’s example. It is not in the first place a matter of theology and religious ethics but of psychology – and politics, of course.
The Arabs, who in October decided to make an affair of the cartoons, probably misjudged the solidarity of the EU with one of the smallest member countries, which can be an expensive business in the long run. But in the short-term another misjudgment is more dangerous: it is not the most devoted followers of the Arab socialist regimes in office who are on the march today – but the rank and file of the Islamist movements. And they have tasted blood after the landslide victory of HAMAS in the Palestinian elections.
There are underlying connections between the progress of HAMAS among Palestinians (and for Hizbollah among Shi’a Muslims in Lebanon and for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), two phenomena that can be noticed with many Arabs: the feeling of humiliation and religion as a refuge.
Humiliation and degradation
Humiliation is called ’ihāna in Arabic – that is what many Muslims felt when they saw the malicious portraits of the Prophet Muhammad in Jyllandsposten, even if the Prophet himself is inviolable and his honour remains spotless. Degradation is called ’idhlāl; as an illustration my Arab friends mention the treatment to which Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghuraib were subject. But the most common example, a topic for innumerable debates, inflammatory speeches, lectures and articles, is this: when Palestinians are degraded at Israeli road blocks, all Arabs feel humiliated.
The press and the broadcasting media continuously come out with information about “Arab brothers” who are humiliated in Gaza and on the West Bank. The pictures from Iraq have a shorter history and are not as emotionally loaded. But these reports function as a projection screen for the frustration, a screen which, moreover, is sanctioned from above and which does not immediately have to lead to a political uprising at home.
Egyptian and other Arab Muslims of today have over and over experienced what is called collective humiliation: at the repeated military losses against Israel, when the statue of Saddam was overthrown in Iraq, or when Egypt did not get one single vote, as the Federal International Football Association chose a hosting nation for the World Championship in 2010. But most Egyptians also experience a personal everyday degradation – not as obviously offending as the Israeli occupation – but still crushing: soldiers are treated as dogs by their officers, students as cattle by their teachers, service staff as slaves by rich Arabs from the Gulf, women as servants by their husbands, children who are beaten or get lower marks if they ask too much. A student visits an Internet café and finds an interesting website; then the sign of the censorship comes up and says: “This site is not open for Egyptians”. Young Saudis have the same experience, when they are surfing beyond the sphere in cyberspace that is permitted by the censorship.
It is also humiliating to watch the TV commercials night after night, knowing that you will never be able to buy any of those gadgets, which distinguish the new globalized world, maybe not even a cell-phone … that you will never be able to travel or learn to speak “the language of the new world” (Farag Fouda), neither English nor the high-technology language that goes with it. It is humiliating to be unemployed, but it is also frustrating to have a permanent job as a doctor or teacher and earn some hundred pounds per month, that is, far less than the monthly rent in most towns. What mentality does it create to be forced to corruption in order to support one’s family? Don’t forget that Saddam Hussein was forced with violence to go out and steal to get something to eat, when he was a school child!
The magazine Wara al-Khabar of the Arab TV-channel al Jazeera on 30th January dealt with Jyllandsposten. Symptomatically enough, the Islamic debater (from Amman) took up the concept of “dignity” (karấmah) as the crucial point. His message was simply that Muslims feel robbed of their dignity – by the cartoons and even more by the (putatively) disregarding attitude which makes up the “iceberg under the water surface” that Muslims in Europe feel every day.
Experts on religion
According to the Arab Human Development Reports (2002-), published by UNDP, the Arabs lag behind in largely all spheres of society. The worst is the area of democracy/civic influence, equality and ability to read/development of knowledge. You can hardly speak of a civil society with popular movements as a basis for awareness rising and influencing public opinion. Neither are they internationally very prominent in the arenas of sport or culture. But there is one area where Arabs – both Christians and Muslims – really feel superior, namely religion.
A useful definition of religion says that it offers “another world in which to live” (Santana), and that is just what many Arabs of today need as a counterbalance to the reality of everyday life (cf Shaalan). V S Naipaul sharply catches this attitude, which can become a kind of compensatory arrogance: ”Yes, we fell behind intellectually in terms of pursuit for material and secular education. But in terms of being more human, more responsible persons. I think we are a lot better than them. Morally we are a lot better than them”.
Religion, in this case Islam, offers a world where the injustices and disappointments of reality have been adjusted, a world where one can even take revenge. You can at least be a “world champion in religion”, if nothing else. But if you are offended in this area too, then the cup is full to the brim. And that’s exactly what happened, according to my Muslim friends, when the cartoons of Muhammad became publicly known.
The cartoons in Jyllandsposten
“It is humiliating, of course”, sags a highly educated Egyptian middle class woman, who normally is not very religiously engaged. “They should not touch the Prophet.” It reminds me of the Muslim immigrants in Bradford, who could hardly read or write, but who made a bonfire of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1987). Shabbir Akhtar analysed this in a booklet, Be Careful with Muhammad, a recommendation that is still valid. Whatever you say in this affair, you cannot belittle the Other’s (in this case the Muslim’s) feeling of humiliation. As one of my young male employees said: “Certainly you can criticise Islam and Muslim societies and tell us that we are backward, etc, but you don’t have to stab the knife right into our most tender spot. Then you enforce a reaction, which we – the very most of us – would have wished to avoid. Regardless of how actively believing you are – in our country religion is the life of people. When the prayer call sounds, we automatically turn down the stereo, even if we are rather slack in issues like the prohibition of wine and such things.”
You can argue about the freedom of press and the freedom of expression with European Muslims, who have their own safe personal and social identity, and who accept the rules of the secular democracy, where everyone has to argue and tolerate contradiction, but they are in minority just now. Another discourse is dominating among spokespersons for Muslim communities, as when in Sweden parallels are drawn between Jyllandsposten and the anti-Jewish Nazi campaigns. Clever rhetoric, maybe, but objectively unfounded. Still, there is a huge difference in the social and political starting point between the European Jews of the 1930’s on one hand, and on the other, Muslims living in today’s Europe. There are about 50 states with a Muslim majority – comprising almost one billion people – who can take diplomatic action, and with economic sanctions, to defend their belief and their fellow-believers. The diplomatic visit of the ambassadors to Copenhagen made this obvious.
If it was Egypt that initiated the campaign against Jyllandsposten, it should be seen against the background of the then ongoing parliamentary elections in the country. In the first round it was clear that the Islamist movement (the Muslim Brotherhood, MB) was stronger than the government wanted. The National Democratic Party, NDP, then took a number of measures to prevent MB from having too much progress. Jyllandsposten gave the NDP-government an excellent opportunity to show the surrounding world – but most of all the population in the country - with the big drum, that one is at least as eager in one’s zeal for Islam and Muslim values as MB.
As living in the secularised Europe one should perhaps remind oneself that this campaign takes place in a cultural circle where blasphemy is punished with death (cf the so-called Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan). In Egypt there is a kind of Islamic action called hisbah, that is, somebody makes himself a solicitor for God and – on behalf of God – prosecutes someone for a crime against this God. At the entrances of all big groceries in Alexandria, including the French-owned shopping-centre Carrefour, one can nowadays see giant signs with the text “Because of the Danish abuse of the Prophet Muhammad Danish products are prohibited”. It has the same kind of health declaration that we are used to concerning halal-meat: “Totally free from pork” …
One can, though, ask oneself if the violent reaction among millions of Muslims is proportionate to the provocation. Some cartoons in a Danish paper, which hardly is read by a worldwide public, can hardly be compared to a military invasion of Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Iraq) or an occupation of Palestinian territories, can they? The explanation might be found in exactly this: you cannot beat the Big Enemies, in this case USA and its allies in the first place – on which one, besides, is heavily dependent (this is especially true for Egypt). The result is a long pent-up national anger, which is now given an appropriate vein. Denmark is not powerful enough or economically important for the Arab world to be protected by enlightened self-interests. A cynical – and obviously incorrect - calculation might have led Arab regimes to the conclusion that Europe would be prepared to sacrifice a pawn. Thereby one would get a channel at an appropriate distance through which to divert this strong discontent, which otherwise could have turned into dangerous political energy (like the example of Hamas).
The election victory of HAMAS
The religious symbols of Islam are deeply rooted in the Arabic mother tongue, they are domestic, they are understood by everybody: rich and poor, young and old, women and men, townspeople and villagers. Islam is authentically Arabic, not imported like socialism or liberalism. The secular ideologies have not given the Palestinians either freedom, dignity or welfare. What remains is the religious card, which HAMAS has played skilfully. Most Arabic commentators that I have read make the following analysis of the result of the elections:
The Palestinian voters punished al-Fath for its corruption and political incapability. They punished Israel for its arrogance and degradation of the occupation. They punished the international community for its obvious lack of genuine political will and sincerity regarding the peace process. An argument against HAMAS has been that Israel would refuse to negotiate with them. But will there really be any difference from the past? the Arabs ask themselves. Israel did not want to negotiate with al-Fath either, not even with Abu Mazen. Will any representative for the Palestinians ever be kosher in the eyes of the Israelis?
If the US and EU now decide to stop their financial assistance to the Palestinian territories, this might not be noticed much on the grassroots level. Have these millions ever reached the really needy? Have not UNRWA-leaders and other privileged Palestinians for decades laid hands on this so-called assistance and put it in their own pocket?
Some expect that HAMAS in office will be forced – or voluntarily choose – to modify their programme and learn to compromise in order to function as a party of government and avoid international isolation. But one should not be too sure; there may be allies who support their tough line.
Balanced and well-formulated, wearing a green baseball cap with an Islamic slogan, the spokesperson of HAMAS, Ismail Haniyeh, declared at the press conference of the victors at the night after the elections: “We live in a political reality that we must handle. The occupation and its consequences is our reality just now, and we will tackle it. But in our own reality, the world we look forward to and want to create, there is not split among the Arabs, there the umma of the Muslims is not divided into national states.
What did he see before himself? Well, not necessarily a new caliphate.
An interesting reinterpretation of the expression “wipe out the state of Israel” was conveyed to me the other day through Rosemary Hollis (research director at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, England). This interpretation implied that HAMAS might be thinking (or could be brought to think) that the nation-state as a construction is on its way to becoming obsolete; we need other geopolitical entities. In the light of such a development – which is already in progress in Europe – both Israel and Palestine might become uninteresting as polities in the traditional sense – and so the state of Israel will be “wiped out”. It sounds almost as Martin Buber’s and Moses Mendelsohn’s thoughts about the Jews as a moral salt in the world community or Asher Ginsburg’s (Ahad Ha’am) cultural Zionism. Maybe it is utopian. For political Zionism it is, of course, unthinkable. But as a challenge for confirmed nationalists and étatists on both sides, it might possibly provoke new thinking face to face with seemingly hopelessly locked positions.
Jan Henningsson, Director Swedish Institute, Alexandria.
Published in Swedish as No 12 in Ministry for Foreign Affairs ANA series
Translated by Kristina Lundqvist at LPI