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The Comic Jihad

Throwing Oil on the Fire

By Kristina Bergmann in Cairo, Egypt

The crisis in the Middle East intensifies as Syrians commit an arson attack against the Danish embassy. Many Arab governments are encouraging the protests, but in the end their efforts could backfire.

The anti-Danish protests in Muslim countries escalated to a new level of intensity on Saturday after protestors set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria. In Damascus, protesting masses stormed, ransacked and torched the diplomatic outposts in the most violent attack yet in the wake of a Danish paper's publication of caricatures that disparagingly portray the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. In the Gaza Strip, hundreds of demonstrators burned the flags of European countries and threw stones at the offices of the European Union.

Saturday's dramatic tensions followed Friday prayers in the Arab world that were largely devoted to the castigation of the Scandinavian country and the rest of Europe.

The imams spoke loudly and fiery about the insolence of the West for insulting Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Some criticized European governments for shirking their responsibilities as the press mocked Islam. And speaking to crowds at the great mosque of Qatar, prominent hard-line Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi described the Danish cartoonists as "blasphemers" and Europeans as "cowards". He said it was shameful to use the guise of freedom of speech as a cover to insult God.

Despite their anger, it was clear to see that the preachers were extremely pleased about the outrage uniting the entire Muslim world. They called on their followers to join the protests against the caricatures and Europe and the masses responded in kind. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Cairo, Baghdad and in the West Bank following Friday prayers.

Even in far away Indonesia -- the world's largest Muslim nation -- emotions boiled over.  More than 150 radical Muslims forced their way into a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta to denounce the caricatures of Muhammad printed in the major Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September. As they were forcefully removed from the premises, they pelted guards with rotten eggs and tomatoes as a parting gesture.

Denmark's Jyllands-Posten first printed the controversial caricatures in autumn. The paper's editor in chief said the paper wanted to illustrate a dialogue about freedom of opinion after the author of a children's book complained he couldn't find any illustrators willing to depict Muhammad in a book he was writing. If there hadn't been a large Muslim community in Copenhagen, he said, these pictures never would have come to such international attention. But the jokes made of their prophet -- one featuring a bomb on his head and another with Muhammad brandishing a sword -- deeply insulted the Muslim diaspora.

The Muslim community has taken up the cause of their Danish brethren with vim. Although there is no absolute ban on images in the Islamic world, television producers and filmmakers adhere to religious fatwa rulings and pictures of Muhammad and his family are still taboo. In the Koran there is only one mention of the issue -- it denounces the practice of depicting gods, which was widespread before Islam. Accordingly, the prophet Muhammad banned images in favor of the art of the written word and calligraphy. Ridicule, jokes and caricatures about religion are still highly taboo in the Muslim world.

Boycotting Denmark

After seeing the comics, members of Denmark's Muslim community began spreading word about them. They told people about them by phone, they discussed the caricatures in cafes and they wrote about them on their Web sites. Islamic extremists and everyday Muslims in the Middle East and Asia quickly learned of the caricatures, and it didn't take long before their objections turned to violent demonstrations and calls to boycott Danish products.

In Saudi Arabia, stores had to pull rotten yoghurt and milk from Arla Foods, a Danish dairy company, after customers refused, day after day, to purchase the company's products. The Saudis then sent text messages on their mobile phones to family and friends to report on the success of the boycott, which spread like wildfire to Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. For Arla Foods, the experience has been a painful one -- the boycott of its products in the Gulf region, especially its popular cheeses, is causing the company to lose €1.5 million a day. Arla sells one-third of all Danish exports in the region. The company has stopped deliveries and has been forced to lay off 150 employees from its Arab operations.

At first, Europeans protested the apparent narrow-mindedness and harsh reactions from Muslims around the world. A number of European papers reprinted all or a few of the 12 characters. At the same time, some editorialists began asking themselves what the sense was of insisting on the apparent western freedom of opinion. Admittedly, the caricatures weren't just mediocre, they were also tasteless. Whether intentional or out of ignorance, they imply that it is the Prophet of Islam who is calling on his followers to commit suicide bombings.

It's taken for granted in enlightened western society that it is our fundamental right to be able to criticize everything and everyone. France Soir summed up the issue in its own caricature, which depicts Christian and Jewish prophets attempting to comfort Muhammad in heaven by telling him that they too have had to endure many a bad joke. The truth of the matter is that no one in the west wants to admit that for Muslims, their religion is holy and irrefutable. In their eyes, poking fun at their religion is both incorrect and unwise.

Widespread distrust of the West

But religious outrage isn't the only reason behind the intensity of the protest reaction (in Yemen, for example, 100,000 women took to the streets to protest the caricatures). Tensions are already high among Muslims, especially those in the Arab world because of the conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East.

There is a broadly held view that the west generally despises Muslims and, specifically, blames their religion and piety for troubling political developments in the Arab region.

Countless Muslims experienced this firsthand when they tried to travel to the United States after Sept. 11, 2001. Obtaining a visa was difficult enough without having to face the indignity of indiscriminate searches for bombs and weapons. But Muslims see things differently. They believe that it is the West that wants to dominate the Orient, mainly to gain control over oil reserves. For most Arabs, Israel is essentially an offshoot of the west, a convenient base from which America and Europe can embark on their imperialist adventures.

Caricatures such as those in the Jyllands-Posten are oil on the fires of misunderstanding between the Muslim world and the West. The differences -- which most certainly exist despite all naïve claims otherwise -- can quickly blow up into angry disputes. And so there are violent protests in the Muslims streets as flags are burned and objects are thrown. Arab governments without hesitation jumped on the bandwagon of rage. Riyadh pulled its ambassador from Copenhagen and Libya shut its Danish embassy entirely. The Arab League felt it necessary to contact the Danish government. At first that surprised many observers, since aside from Iran, no Muslim government is especially religious.

That's why the rebuke of Danish diplomats seemed to be less about true outrage and more about providing sops to the Muslim countries' own populations. Arab regimes in particular have had a tough go with their citizens lately. They cling to power with the tools of oppression and often use torture.

Whereas opposition in the 1960s came from the left, now it is almost without exception from religious right-wing Islamists. They are the ones now protesting against the Danish cartoons. The governments in Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh and elsewhere can only hope that the pent-up rage of the man in the street doesn't turn at some point from Denmark onto them.

Kristina Bergmann is the Cairo correspondent for Switzerland's Neue Zürcher Zeitung.