JULES EVANS, LONDON
HEY, IT WAS JUST A JOKE…
A newspaper in darkest Denmark publishes a cartoon, and embassies in Syria and Lebanon burn. Welcome to 21st century globalization.
You are no doubt aware of the situation – a Danish newspaper published a cartoon showing Mohammad with a head-scarf shaped like a bomb. Some Muslims in Denmark staged angry protests. Then the issue got picked up by papers in Norway, France, Germany and elsewhere, many of whom re-printed the offending cartoon, saying it was their right to do so.
Suddenly the issue went ‘viral’– it was diffused over the internet, and sent all over the world wide web.
The Middle East reacted with predictable fury. In Syria, an angry mob performed the customary burning of the hated foreigners’ flag (I wonder where one can buy a Danish flag in downtown Damascus…) as well as burning an effigy of the Danish prime minister. They even went as far as torching the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut. Now protestors are being killed in Afghanistan, as they try to attack NATO bases. These cartoons, and the Arab reaction to them, have helped bring relations between Europe and the Middle East to a new low, if that was possible.
It was so obvious the Arab world was going to react with incandescent rage. The Middle East has become, I am sorry to say, the problem kid in the global class-room, the one it is incredibly easy to tease into a fury. You just have to poke it once, and out come the Fatwas, the burning effigies etc etc. It’s almost irresistible to continue teasing them, just to see them lose their tempers. ‘Psst, problem kid, Mohammad’s an idiot’. ‘What? How dare you! Fatwa! God is Great!’ Their faith is so ridiculously brittle and prickly, so insecure and defensive, it invites attack.
On the other hand, the European stance on the matter is equally ridiculous. The original cartoon was racist. It was also incredibly stupid, and guaranteed to worsen ethnic relations. The Danish government should have banned it. But journalists and commentators all over Europe insisted it was their ‘fundamental right’ to be offensive, that the ability to insult other people’s beliefs was a fundamental part of Europe’s way of life.
What absolute nonsense. Do we forget how recently we, with all our progress and civilization, had major sense of humour failures over religious satire? In the UK, for example, Monty Python brought out a satirical film about Jesus called The Life of Brian. When the film was brought out in the 1970s it caused a huge scandal in the UK, and was very nearly banned. In other words, it was only very, very recently – perhaps as late as the 1990s – that Europe became so aggressively and shamelessly irreligious that we don’t blink an eye-lid at blasphemy, and even think it’s our ‘right’.
So we have a genuine clash of fundamentalisms here. On the one side, an incredibly prickly Middle East for whom religion and prophetic truth is of fundamental value. On the other side, an incredibly shallow Europe for whom secular society and liberal rights are of fundamental value.
And this to me is the crux of it: the two worlds are inextricably connected. Arabs may try to cut all links with the West by torching our embassies. Europe may try to cut links with radical Islam by kicking out mullahs like Abu Hamza. But the internet has joined us like a pair of handcuffs. Moreover, Europe needs the Middle East’s oil, and migrant Arabs need Europe’s work opportunities.
Even more than that, we both need the other side’s perspective, because both sides have become unbalanced.
Europe, I suggest, has lost its way, it has lost touch with any spiritual side of life. I was in Vienna airport last week, and there was a pornographic store in the departure lounge – right there, next to the Duty Free and the Newsagent, as if buying porn was as normal as buying a bottle of perfume.
This, to me, is indicative of European culture – it’s become a facile ‘anything goes’ culture, in which freedom is equated with the compulsive breaking of all taboos. But what are you left with? A de-sacralized world of pure materialism, a world of neurosis, consumerism and false gods.
The Middle East, on the other hand, has too many taboos. It clings so dogmatically to its religious truths that its societies have become scientifically and materially backward, and its populations poorly educated and ignorant.
Both sides are clearly unbalanced, and both sides clearly need to take a bit of what the other side has. It’s like one of those American movies where an odd couple has to learn to work together, despite their hatred of each other.
At the moment, we seem content to attack one another, because we see in each other only the hated opposite. We don’t want anything to do with one another. We want to sever all links, have done with it. But that’s not possible. There’s no way back to a pre-globalized world. Either we learn to live with each other, and learn to balance our cultures’ respective imbalances, or we destroy ourselves. That is the test.
Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow
February 8, 2006
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