| Blaming Muslims, scapegoating Americans Sumanto Al Qurtuby ; A Visiting Research Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA |
JAKARTA POST, 28 September 2012
At any moment in Western history, some people have been targeted for broad-based hatred: Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, Africans, Irish, Slavs, Gypsies, peacemakers, communists, liberals, radicals, homosexuals, and, unfortunately, so forth. Today, anthropologist John R Bowen wrote in his 2012 book Blaming Islam, the main targets of abhorrence are Muslims.
Bowen’s observation, on some points, might be right. In the eyes of some non-Muslims and Westerners nowadays, the image of Islam, more or less, resembles al-Qaeda, Taliban, and other Islamist extremist groups that (1) exert violent means to achieve their goals, (2) advocate oppressing and torturing women, (3) condemn Westerners and non-Muslims as infidels, (4) struggle for an Islamic state or application of Islamic Sharia, (5) oppose Western values of democracy, secularism and liberalism to name but a few.
The tendency to view Islam as “a religion of the sword” colored by acts of terrorism and violence, it should be noted, is not a new phenomenon that emerged following the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Instead, such biased views and stereotypes are deeply rooted in propaganda of media, speeches of conservative evangelists, and works of (some) early and modern orientalists since the rise of so-called “Western civilization”, which regards Islamic civilization as a “Green Peril”, borrowing the term of Nader Hashemi, for the existence of Western gestalt.
For early or even current “unfriendly orientalists” and “religious propagandists”, Islamic civilization is perceived to be an incarnation of what Western civilization was not. While they considered Western civilization as peaceful, progressive, dynamic, rational and humane, Islamic civilization was deemed as violent, aggressive, decadent, stagnant, irrational, mythical, despotic and inhuman.
This perception certainly is only a half-truth. However, unfortunately, such biased views of Islam have gradually undergone a process of internalization in the minds of some Western people today, and then, have subsequently formed an attitude of hatred, enmity and prejudice toward Islam and Muslim societies.
Mohammed Abu-Nimer, director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American University, Washington, D.C., in his book Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam (2003, 2) reveals that there are some reasons why some Westerners and non-Muslims view Islam and Muslim societies pejoratively.
The reasons are, Abu-Nimer said, because of “selective reporting, lack of scholarly works on nonviolent and peaceful issues within Islam, the legacy of colonial subordination of Islamic countries to the West, ignorance of cultural differences, the failure of Muslims to convey their messages, and the violent Arab-Israeli conflict”.
The movie, as we can see on the Internet, portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a buffoon, a “bastard”, greedy, bloodthirsty, a womanizer, a homosexual and a child molester. Such negative portrayals of the Prophet actually had been written in a number of books by some non-Muslims or Muslim apostates (e.g. Ibn Warraq’s edited book, Leaving Islam or Anwar Shaikh’s Faith and Deception).
But such rude depictions of Islam never resulted in the massive public protests or popular rage among Muslims (this perhaps due to limited access to the books and, for sure, no actors that mobilized masses).
Now, with the Internet and YouTube, people can easily post or broadcast any intolerant idea or controversial product that is accessible wide-reaching audience.
No doubt, the posting of Innocence of Muslims on YouTube was meant to incite fear, anger, and hatred of Islam and Muslims, and to provoke Muslims worldwide, and so it did.
The civilian protests — exploited by conservative religious groupings and violent extremists — have spread from North Africa to Southeast Asia, often leading to mob violence and the death of innocent civilians.
While Muslims around the world still protest in streets, French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. Issues of the magazine, as the Huffington Post reported on Sept. 19, “hit newsstands with a cover showing an Orthodox Jew pushing a turbaned figure in a wheelchair with several caricatures of the Prophet on its inside pages, including some of him naked”. No doubt, the cartoons also triggered mass demonstration in France.
It seems that the attacks on the US Consulate General in Benghazi ,Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff, and the major riots in Cairo and elsewhere look similar and share in common the incitement and exploitation of popular outrage among many Muslims, as we previously witnessed during the Salman Rushdie affair in late 1980s and Danish cartoon affair in 2005.
They, as Georgetown University professor of religion John Esposito recently noted, “exploit deep-seated popular anti-American sentiment, based on decades of resentment over US and European foreign policies in the Middle East” (Aljazeera, Sept. 15). The primary drivers or motives behind the attacks, Esposito claims, are political agendas reflecting the shifting political landscape in the Arab world.
Indeed, as Esposito has noticed, there are some ambiguities with regard to the Muslim protests to the movie. The Muslim protesters and rioters not only denounce the film but also scapegoat American societies and US government which they said were behind the making of the movie aiming at ridiculing Prophet Muhammad and insulting Islam, despite the fact that President Barack Obama and many Americans have condemned the movie.
The men behind the movie have been identified as (1) Alan Roberts, a 65-year-old porn director, and (2) Sam Nakoula, a hard-line anti-Muslim Egyptian-American Copt and convicted embezzler. In contrast, Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles denounced the film, and noted that the Christian teaching is to respect people of other faiths.
The duo maybe has been paid by some shadowy anti-Islam non-Muslim figures with fat pockets and a hidden agenda to destabilize Arab, the Middle East, or even the “Muslim world”. But still, it is unfair to point their fingers at the US government and American people as a whole.
As Esposito has observed, I suspect that the initial protests against the movie have been manipulated by some anti-American Muslim hardliners for their political agenda and individual interests.
If my suspicions are correct, then the plan of whosoever lurks behind Nakoula and Roberts, as well as the America haters may have been successful. It is easy to provoke masses in order to commit violence and hostility, but it is extremely hard to create “peace provocateurs” and incite people for tolerance and harmony! ●
Bowen’s observation, on some points, might be right. In the eyes of some non-Muslims and Westerners nowadays, the image of Islam, more or less, resembles al-Qaeda, Taliban, and other Islamist extremist groups that (1) exert violent means to achieve their goals, (2) advocate oppressing and torturing women, (3) condemn Westerners and non-Muslims as infidels, (4) struggle for an Islamic state or application of Islamic Sharia, (5) oppose Western values of democracy, secularism and liberalism to name but a few.
The tendency to view Islam as “a religion of the sword” colored by acts of terrorism and violence, it should be noted, is not a new phenomenon that emerged following the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Instead, such biased views and stereotypes are deeply rooted in propaganda of media, speeches of conservative evangelists, and works of (some) early and modern orientalists since the rise of so-called “Western civilization”, which regards Islamic civilization as a “Green Peril”, borrowing the term of Nader Hashemi, for the existence of Western gestalt.
For early or even current “unfriendly orientalists” and “religious propagandists”, Islamic civilization is perceived to be an incarnation of what Western civilization was not. While they considered Western civilization as peaceful, progressive, dynamic, rational and humane, Islamic civilization was deemed as violent, aggressive, decadent, stagnant, irrational, mythical, despotic and inhuman.
This perception certainly is only a half-truth. However, unfortunately, such biased views of Islam have gradually undergone a process of internalization in the minds of some Western people today, and then, have subsequently formed an attitude of hatred, enmity and prejudice toward Islam and Muslim societies.
Mohammed Abu-Nimer, director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American University, Washington, D.C., in his book Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam (2003, 2) reveals that there are some reasons why some Westerners and non-Muslims view Islam and Muslim societies pejoratively.
The reasons are, Abu-Nimer said, because of “selective reporting, lack of scholarly works on nonviolent and peaceful issues within Islam, the legacy of colonial subordination of Islamic countries to the West, ignorance of cultural differences, the failure of Muslims to convey their messages, and the violent Arab-Israeli conflict”.
The movie, as we can see on the Internet, portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a buffoon, a “bastard”, greedy, bloodthirsty, a womanizer, a homosexual and a child molester. Such negative portrayals of the Prophet actually had been written in a number of books by some non-Muslims or Muslim apostates (e.g. Ibn Warraq’s edited book, Leaving Islam or Anwar Shaikh’s Faith and Deception).
But such rude depictions of Islam never resulted in the massive public protests or popular rage among Muslims (this perhaps due to limited access to the books and, for sure, no actors that mobilized masses).
Now, with the Internet and YouTube, people can easily post or broadcast any intolerant idea or controversial product that is accessible wide-reaching audience.
No doubt, the posting of Innocence of Muslims on YouTube was meant to incite fear, anger, and hatred of Islam and Muslims, and to provoke Muslims worldwide, and so it did.
The civilian protests — exploited by conservative religious groupings and violent extremists — have spread from North Africa to Southeast Asia, often leading to mob violence and the death of innocent civilians.
While Muslims around the world still protest in streets, French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. Issues of the magazine, as the Huffington Post reported on Sept. 19, “hit newsstands with a cover showing an Orthodox Jew pushing a turbaned figure in a wheelchair with several caricatures of the Prophet on its inside pages, including some of him naked”. No doubt, the cartoons also triggered mass demonstration in France.
It seems that the attacks on the US Consulate General in Benghazi ,Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff, and the major riots in Cairo and elsewhere look similar and share in common the incitement and exploitation of popular outrage among many Muslims, as we previously witnessed during the Salman Rushdie affair in late 1980s and Danish cartoon affair in 2005.
They, as Georgetown University professor of religion John Esposito recently noted, “exploit deep-seated popular anti-American sentiment, based on decades of resentment over US and European foreign policies in the Middle East” (Aljazeera, Sept. 15). The primary drivers or motives behind the attacks, Esposito claims, are political agendas reflecting the shifting political landscape in the Arab world.
Indeed, as Esposito has noticed, there are some ambiguities with regard to the Muslim protests to the movie. The Muslim protesters and rioters not only denounce the film but also scapegoat American societies and US government which they said were behind the making of the movie aiming at ridiculing Prophet Muhammad and insulting Islam, despite the fact that President Barack Obama and many Americans have condemned the movie.
The men behind the movie have been identified as (1) Alan Roberts, a 65-year-old porn director, and (2) Sam Nakoula, a hard-line anti-Muslim Egyptian-American Copt and convicted embezzler. In contrast, Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles denounced the film, and noted that the Christian teaching is to respect people of other faiths.
The duo maybe has been paid by some shadowy anti-Islam non-Muslim figures with fat pockets and a hidden agenda to destabilize Arab, the Middle East, or even the “Muslim world”. But still, it is unfair to point their fingers at the US government and American people as a whole.
As Esposito has observed, I suspect that the initial protests against the movie have been manipulated by some anti-American Muslim hardliners for their political agenda and individual interests.
If my suspicions are correct, then the plan of whosoever lurks behind Nakoula and Roberts, as well as the America haters may have been successful. It is easy to provoke masses in order to commit violence and hostility, but it is extremely hard to create “peace provocateurs” and incite people for tolerance and harmony! ●