The insult, the injury and the indignities of empire

 At a small Arab cafe in Malaysia’s trendy Bukit Bintang area of Kuala Lumpur, a group of Malaysians are relaxing, puffing away on their shisha, or water-pipe. But their faces are tense as their discussion turns to Newsweek’s recent “Muslim Rage” cover that has created controversy across the Islamic world.

“Do they just not have a clue?” said Yussif Ahmad Aziz, a 22-year-old political science student in the city. “It’s like these people in the west want to get Muslims upset, they want to have fighting words and they want to insult.”

For these university students, Newsweek’s recent cover has become a new point of contention among Muslims in the country. For Ayub Salim, a recent graduate and journalism intern with a leading daily in Malaysia, the magazine failed in its duty to uphold honesty and impartiality.

“I have nothing wrong really with using the cover ‘Muslim Rage’ but what really angers me is the writer of the cover story, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is someone who knows how to insult Islam all too well and she has done so in the past. Her being the one to write the article is a sign that the magazine wanted to continue to stir hatred and anger,” he argued.

The magazine claimed that their issue “accurately depicts the events of the past week.” Last week, Muslims across the world took to the streets to protest an anti-Islam film that insulted and defamed Islam and Prophet Mohamed. Protests were held in over 20 countries, and in a few places turned violent.

Malaysia saw a number of small demonstrations against the film, produced by a Coptic Christian in the United States, but they remained peaceful.

The Newsweek issue has hit a nerve with Muslims across the country, with one online Twitter user writing, “we talk about creating acceptance and understanding of events, but then the magazine goes and insults.”

For these students here, they told Bikyamasr.com that by having Ali write the cover story, the magazine has lost all its credibility in the situation.

“It is clear to me that whoever made the decision for this cover and this article has no idea about Islam, because their goal appears to be to inflame Muslim hate and anger,” Aziz continued.

Newsweek went a step further, arguing that the cover was to spark debate. “Our covers and hashtags bring attention and spark debate around topics of major global importance and the internet is an open forum for people to continue their own discussion,” spokesman Andrew Kirk told AFP.

But for Aziz, Salim and millions of Muslims in Malaysia and across the Islamic world, it highlights the growing gulf that exists between the west and Islam.

“They obviously don’t understand, or want to avoid a real discussion on Islam and what Muslims think. Ali does not represent Muslims and this is another blatant attack on our way of thinking and what angers us,” said Salim.

During colonial times, scathing critiques of Islam were often met by Muslims with thoughtful and measured responses.  Recent events run contrary to the "long tradition of Muslim tolerance for insults" against their faith and its founder [Reuters]

Like clockwork, the scene repeats itself every so often. The blissful ignorance that embodies the triumphalist march of Western liberalism to every corner of the world is rudely confronted by mobs of angry Muslims bent on destroying the very freedoms underlying a civilisational project more than two centuries in the making.  According to this narrative, the inevitable rise of societies in which freedom is valued above all else is frequently frustrated in the streets and public squares of Cairo, Kabul and Jakarta. The chronic overreaction by Muslim protesters against a novel, a cartoon, or a crudely shot film is perceived by many in the West as a sign of the hopelessly widening gulf of values between two civilisations.  By examining these protests within a vacuum and focusing exclusively on the domain of culture, a subjective category in which any party can affirm its own superiority, the United States and its European allies hope to absolve themselves of any culpability for the recurring hostility expressed by populations in the Middle East and beyond.  To deny historical experiences and current political realities allows one to miss the point entirely: that the offence caused by the steady flow of anti-Islamic cultural production is quite literally adding insult to injury. And it is much easier for all of those involved to focus on the insult rather than the injury.  Little new in the film There is little new in the amateurish hate-filled film that emerged out of the bowels of an Islamophobia industry that has picked up considerable steam in the last decade. Aside from trading the physical soapbox for the digital one of YouTube, anti-Islamic screeds have not evolved much since the era of the Crusades, relying primarily on a thoroughly discredited historical narrative of Prophet Muhammad’s life and mission that acted as a kind of medieval war propaganda.   Inside Story - Is the reaction to anti-Islam film justified? But the irony seems to be lost on those so eager to condemn the recent overzealous reactions by protesters. The narrative recycled by the Islamophobes of today was originally designed to justify religious violence and continues to act as the cultural lubricant for an imperial project that has exploited, dispossessed, colonised and occupied millions of people.    Anyone seeking to understand the recent upheavals need only contrast the latest response with historical ones. Internal Muslim condemnations against the protests have relied primarily on Muhammad’s example of ignoring insults against his person. But in fact, there is a long tradition of Muslim tolerance for insults against their faith and its founder.  The ninth-century Martyrs Movement in Islamic Spain was notable, not for the deliberate incitements made by Christians seeking to sacrifice themselves to spark a revolt among their co-religionists, but for the considerable lengths they had to go to in order to provoke a response from the Muslim rulers. Their anti-Islamic spectacles in Andalucia’s market places and public squares were largely ignored and state officials repeatedly overlooked the verbal assaults in the hopes of preserving social harmony.  Even by the late 19th century, when European colonialism was in its upward swing, scathing critiques of Islam were often met with thoughtful and measured responses. To French philosopher Ernest Renan’s argument that Islam was inherently opposed to rationality, science and philosophy, the religious reformer Jamal al-Din al-Afghani replied by offering a counter-narrative of early Islamic history, while also arguing that the latest failings of Muslims should be attributed to their own shortcomings and not to their faith.  Aside from demonstrating the historical consistency in the reactions to such insults, this anecdote provides another lesson of relevance to the contemporary era. Namely, that as many critics ponder how it is that a verbal attack on the religion can engender far more outrage than the physical assault on its adherents, it has been shown time and again by these protests that it is far easier to stand up for Islam than it is to stand up for Muslims.  Imbalance of power  This has been particularly true as the power dynamic underwent a marked shift throughout the 20th century, when borders were drawn and states were formed in the interests of colonial powers and not the people who lived within them. After the era of independence, when non-representative regimes were installed and propped up across the Middle East, the power imbalance remained the defining feature of the relationship. The frequent interventions and the curious interactions within them provide damning proof of how the insult takes precedence over the injury.  "The narrative recycled by the Islamophobes of today was originally designed to justify religious violence and continues to act as the cultural lubricant for an imperial project that has exploited, dispossessed, colonised and occupied millions of people." The sexual humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison elicited universal outrage but the notion that an illegal occupying power could arrest and detain Iraqi citizens at will was not cause for concern or protest. When it emerged that American military personnel had urinated on the corpses of Afghan citizens, generating protests throughout the country, the US government was quick in its condemnations of this desecration, but few people if any wondered why there were so many dead Afghans in the first place.  The unspoken agreement, it appears, is that the seemingly insurmountable imbalance of power between the sponsors of empire and its victims remains outside the scope of popular discourse in favour of the emphasis on the cultural disparities. And lest it continue to be argued that the cycle of conflict and confrontation is one between the forces of Islamic extremism on the one hand, and the culture of freedom, tolerance and pluralism at the heart of Western values on the other, it is worth recalling the numerous instances of religious zeal expressed by a militant Christianity acting in the name of its own historic sensitivities.  It has been noted in recent years that contingents within the US military have taken to wearing pins bearing the symbol of the Templar Knights. Long before George W Bush invoked the Crusades in one of his first post-9/11 speeches, Henri Gouraud did the same as he led French forces into Syria after World War I.  One of his first destinations was the grave of Salah al-Din, the great Muslim hero who fought European Crusaders eight centuries earlier. Upon approaching the tomb, Gouraud was reported to have declared, “The Crusades have ended now! Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent”.   The lesson from all of these expressions, past and present, is that what gives weight to the insult is the injury that precedes it. Until that becomes the focal point of our collective indignation, the cycle will only continue to repeat itself. Like clockwork.  There are no clear geographies that confine the protests to the 'Arab world' [AFP] The recent wave of protests spreading throughout the Muslim world questions many assumptions we commonly make about national and global politics. We all want to know why and how it started; what groups and organisations are behind the riots and attacks against American targets and most importantly, how do we deal with such a rapid and unpredictable escalation of symbolic and physical violence? However, these may be the wrong questions. The alleged anti-Islam film is nothing more than a 14 minutes long video widely circulated on the internet. We know very little about the producers. Conspiracy theories will keep on multiplying around the identity of the production team, the director and cast. Either way, this search for the people behind the movie misses the point. When content goes viral on Facebook, we don't usually ask who sent it or why. If it provokes our thoughts and feelings, we engage with it. We might like it or dislike it, comment on it, perhaps share the content further. Something similar happened with the trailer of the "Innocence of Muslims", except that action well exceeded the boundaries of the virtual world. What is it that makes us react to media content over the internet? Why are so many people worldwide reacting so vigorously against this video? I think that it shows the crucial role played in everyday politics by people's deep-seated attachment to powerful images, symbols, messages and ideas. The latter are often glossed over as mere emotional hang-ups, the inevitable side-effects of human politics that can be corrected and harnessed through the development of sound democratic institutions. Contemporary reality The dominant western assumption is that - despite the complexity of today’s world - individuals, groups and institutions have clearly defined identities and consciously pursue specific interests and act upon them. For many politicians and analysts, these are the dimensions that are most important to a deeper understanding of political events.  Inside Story - Anti-Islam video: A test for Arab leaders This point of view overlooks an important social fact: in the "real" reality out there, messages, ideas, emotions and reactions spread virally, just as they do in our "Facebook" worlds. Contemporary identities are multiple and fragmented. There are undoubtedly numerous groups and institutions that do try to direct collective action and mobilise military, economic and social resources in pursuit of their interests. There are also billions of people that, not unlike Facebook users, move in and out of groups, social movements, actions and protests. Sometimes endorsing a cause and then supporting the opposite cause, without a clear linear rationale. Today's social world is not rational, certainly not in the way we assume it to be. Focusing attention solely on terrorist groups and Islamic fundamentalist preachers inciting people for their own undemocratic goals does not bring us closer to a deeper understanding. It serves the purpose of providing a sensible explanation for what is happening to citizens of Western "liberal democratic" states. We are told that if we catch the leaders of the protest, and make sure that these countries adopt the same democratic institutions that we have at home, it will all be fine. These messages reveal at best a delusional understanding of contemporary reality, and at worst are a lie distracting our attention from the worrying realisation that Western leaders in fact have little or no control over such events. We are seeing people storming the streets with anti-American messages in the same countries where mass rebellions against dictators and authoritarian regimes were hailed by the West as the "Arab spring" only some months ago. We cannot separate these events, they are part of the same reality. We cannot easily distinguish the "democratic" desires of the people rising against their tyrants from the "fundamentalist" delusions of crowds blinded by inflammatory rhetoric and bad leaders. Alternative means of violence  It is just as hard as trying to categorise our own Facebook activity in some linear model that would clearly and neatly explain who we are and who we will vote for in the next elections. We will most likely fail. Sometimes we engage in contradictory thoughts, and that's just the way it is - we don’t think about it, we just do it. Nor is the US response on the whole any more "rational". Obama and his entourage went to great lengths to explain that the US and its representatives have nothing to do with the movie, which they condemned as "disgusting and reprehensible". At the same time, the president also tried to reassure Americans that security is being stepped up by sending warships to Libya in the wake of the embassy attacks. The truth is that this is not a struggle between US interests and its military establishment on one side, and the anti-US Islamist "insurgents" and fundamentalists fighting for their own interests, using alternative means of violence and political consensus, on the other. At least not in the sense in which we usually mean it. We often tend to think of these interests as the primary "stuff" of which social reality is made. The imagery attached to these struggles, circulating in the form of videos, books and other media, is seen as a derivate of the real material struggles for power and resources on the ground and indeed it may well have been this way in the past. Today however we live in a different world where the production of images and symbols shapes who we are, what we do in our lives and how we act as political beings. To put it more crudely, Facebook is the "real" reality, and the "physical" reality out there has just become an extension of our Facebook worlds. From this perspective, the reactions of the protesters make more sense: their anger and concerns originated in this "virtual" world and then they took to the streets.  Inside Story Americas - What is fuelling  anti-American protests? This is not to say that material factors don't count. It is clear that poverty, corruption, exploitation, military repression and colonialism are all realities that have shaped and negatively affected the lives of protesters. And yet the eruption of these repressed feelings were spurred and driven by a visceral reaction to a video. It is the production of images that drive the material reality and not the other way around. The US reaction follows a similar pattern. The protests exploded on September 11, the anniversary of the tragic attack on the Twin Towers. American officials are responding to this symbolic assault beyond the material implications of the shocking killing of an ambassador and the physical threat posed to its diplomatic staff throughout Muslim countries. Warships and marines are being sent to the region making it clear that the attack will not succeed, that the sentiments and ideas behind the "American nation" will not be stopped by unacceptable verbal and physical violence. Collective discontent Symbols and images do not follow the logics of rationalist enlightenment upon which the ideals of liberal democracy have been grounded. Meanings carried with imaginary narratives are never straightforward, they mix in strange and unpredictable ways, leaving us with a sense of mystery and puzzlement. There are no linear boundaries in the imagination of protesters that make absolute distinctions between US embassies and those from other Western nations. There are no clear geographies that confine the protests to the "Arab world". The Taliban attacked a British base in Afghanistan as a reaction to the movie, just as thousands of peaceful protesters gathered in London responding to the same imagery. There is no orchestrated conspiracy, and therefore also no easily identifiable source of these attacks. Military deployment is not a rational strategy to use in combating an invisible enemy - and Obama knows that. It is used as a show of force, a symbol, part of the same struggle, the same emotional politics that feeds the protesters' fury. He needs to assure his fellow citizens of his unequivocally American qualities in the lead up to presidential elections. These trends are not just happening "out there", outside the comfortable borders of Western democracies, nor are they confined to one region and to the ideological conflict between the Christian West and Islam. They are at the very heart of our global society. Interesting parallels can be drawn with the unplanned, spontaneous way in which tens of thousands of youth subverted the social order for five days with widespread looting and rioting across major English cities in August 2011. Or with the dramatic build-up of the May 2008 xenophobic attacks against foreign Africans living in South Africa which spread very rapidly and violently. These are different contexts, different symbols and different struggles. Yet, in all these cases the eruption of collective discontent lacks clearly defined political actors. They all bring together different - and sometimes conflicting - interests, intentions and motivations that cannot be arranged into a single coherent narrative. Before we can understand and deal with such events "rationally", we need to explore new and better ways of looking at these dynamics and how they are shaping our everyday lives.