| July 16, 2008 | Wednesday | Rajab 12, 1429 |
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Cultural confusion and blasphemy
IN THE British media, there is currently an agonised debate on the controversy surrounding the appointment of women as bishops in the Church of England. Despite the emotive nature of the discussion, the only unseemly incident happened when a heckler interrupted a speech being made by a gay American bishop to a congregation of Anglican clergy. The sad truth is that if anybody had raised the question of women leading the prayers at mosques, there would have been riots in most of the Muslim world.
When a car bomb devastated the Danish embassy in Islamabad on June 2, its repercussions were felt more in the West than in Pakistan itself. Over the years, Pakistanis have become so accustomed to terror attacks that they tend to take such atrocities in their stride. And the fact is that by publishing a sacrilegious cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) again after the violent reaction last year, the Danes had not made themselves very popular in the Muslim world.
The most common reaction to the embassy bombing, even among the educated, was: “It’s a terrible thing, but why did the Danes insult our Prophet?” The more zealous Pakistanis welcomed the attack with glee, saying, in effect: “Serve the Danes right!” Even when Al Qaeda accepted responsibility for the attack, there was very little sense of outrage. The fact that all eight of those killed were Muslims and Pakistanis (one of the victims was a Danish citizen of Pakistani origin) seemed to count for very little.
Two days after the attack, a text message zipped from one cellphone to the next across the country, announcing that the boycott of Danish products in the Muslim world had cost the Scandinavian nation a billion dollars thus far. No source was given for this information, but the jubilant tone was clear: “Keep it up!”, the message concluded.
It is difficult for a westerner to understand the depth of the anger most practising Muslims feel about anything that is seen as an insult to their Prophet. In Europe, in particular, religious belief has weakened to the point where stand-up comics regularly poke fun at everybody from Jesus to the Pope. “The Life of Brian”, the hilarious Seventies comedy by Monty Python parodying Christ’s life and times, remains an iconic film. For a generation brought up in this utterly secular environment where belief is an insignificant aspect of life, Muslim reaction to a few badly-drawn cartoons in an unknown Danish newspaper has been absolutely baffling.
While Europe has been growing away from its religious moorings, Islam has been witnessing a resurgence. The younger generation of Muslims is, by and large, much more rigid in their faith than their parents were. At the same time, countries like Pakistan have fewer contacts with the West at the personal level. This growing distance has made it easier for extremists to demonise the West, casting it in the role of Islam’s arch-enemy. Thus, each conflict involving Muslims is presented as an anti-Islam conspiracy, whether it is the western presence in Afghanistan or Iraq, the oppression of Palestinians, or the Russian excesses in Chechnya. All form part of the sinister anti-Islam narrative.
In this super-charged atmosphere of paranoia and violence, the publication of the cartoons in Denmark is seen as a deliberately provocative act. Muslims would never dream of running similar caricatures of Moses or Jesus, both prophets of Islam. So they cannot imagine why Christians would gratuitously insult the most revered figure in Islam. Even for sophisticated Muslims, the freedom of speech does not include this kind of behaviour. In a recent conference organised by the Cordoba Initiative and the Malaysian government in Kuala Lumpur, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ex-diplomat and sometime head of the intelligence service, declared: “I can never accept that freedom of speech is morally right when it offends my faith.”
To put things in the Pakistani context, one unfortunate citizen was recently sentenced to death for making remarks that witnesses swore were disrespectful of the Prophet. Under the country’s blasphemy laws, anybody guilty of insulting the Prophet or desecrating the Quran faces the death penalty. Over the years, this legislation introduced by General Zia over 20 years ago has been used by people to settle scores or grab their neighbours’ property. Invariably, the death sentence is converted to a life term on appeal, but in the fanatical environment that prevails in much of rural Pakistan, a charge of blasphemy is hard to shake off. Innocent people have been beaten or burnt to death by rampaging mobs enraged by rumours that a copy of the Quran had been burned.
Against this backdrop, the bombing of the Danish embassy in Islamabad makes for a kind of rough justice in the eyes of most Pakistanis. Never mind that Pakistan’s image abroad, already at a record low, has taken a further plunge. Never mind that all those killed were Muslims, and had nothing to do with the publication of the offending cartoon. Never mind, too, that most Pakistanis have not even seen the cartoon in question. The mere fact that a bomb has destroyed Danish embassy was enough to satisfy millions of Pakistanis.
In parliament, some members from religious parties their numbers drastically slashed in the recent elections urged the government to break off diplomatic relations with Denmark. Even columnists and TV anchors who are staunch supporters of the freedom of speech argued for anti-blasphemy laws in the West.
Sadly, this is not the first cross-cultural misunderstanding between the West and the Islamic world, and nor is it likely to be the last.
