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How to become a real Muslim
A media reliant on scandal has colluded with self-promoting but
marginal Muslim clerics to create a cycle of self-reinforcing myths
around the Mohammed cartoons, writes Kenan Malik. The fear of causing
offence has helped undermine progressive trends in Islam and
strengthened the hand of religious bigots.
In Ireland seven people are arrested over an alleged plot to kill
Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who had depicted the Prophet Mohammad
with the body of a dog in the newspaper Nerikes Allehanda. In Aarhus,
a Somalian axeman tries to hack down Kurt Westergaard, the most
controversial of the Jyllands-Posten
Yamani, a Saudi lawyer, threatens to use Britain's notorious libel
laws to sue ten Danish newspapers that published the cartoons in the
name of all 95,000 "descendants of Mohammed".
Cartoon controversy
Free speech is a fundamental human right and a central tenet of
democracy. Or is it? Reactions to the Danish cartoon controversy
reveal strong divergences about what the right to free speech entails.
[ more ]
Five years after Jyllands-Postenpublished its now-notorious
caricatures, the reverberations are still being felt. And not just by
the cartoonists. The threats and violence that continue to surround
their publication have had a chilling impact upon writers, publishers,
gallery owners and theatre directors. Two years ago, the American
publishing giant Random House dropped The Jewel of Medina, a breezy,
romantic tale about Aisha, the Prophet Mohammad's youngest wife, after
fears that it might prove offensive. When, last year, Yale University
Press published The Cartoons that Shook the World, Jytte Klausen's
scholarly study of the cartoon controversy, it refused, much to her
disgust, to include any of the cartoons. When the free speech magazine
Index on Censorship, published aninterview with Klausen about Yale's
decision, it too refused to show any of the cartoons.
"You would think twice, if you were honest," said Ramin Gray, the
Associate Director at London's Royal Court Theatre when asked he would
put on a play critical of Islam. "You'd have to take the play on its
individual merits, but given the time we're in, it's very hard,
because you'd worry that if you cause offence then the whole
enterprise would become buried in a sea of controversy. It does make
you tread carefully." In June 2007, the theatre cancelled a new
adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, set in Muslim heaven, for fear
of causing offence. Another London theatre, the Barbican, carved
chunks out of its production ofTamburlaine the Great for the same
reason, while Berlin's Deutsche Oper cancelled a production of
Mozart's Idomeneo in 2006 because of its depiction of Mohammed. Three
years ago, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague removed an exhibition of
photos by the Iranian artist Sooreh Hera that depicted gay men wearing
masks of Muhammed. "Certain people in our society might perceive it as
offensive", said Museum director Wim van Krimpen. De Volkskrant, a
leftwing Dutch newspaper, praised the museum for its "great
professionalism" in excising the images. Hera herself received death
threats. Tim Marlow of London's White Cube art gallery suggested that
such self-censorship by artists and museums was now common, though
"very few people have explicitly admitted" it.
For many, all this suggests a fundamental conflict between the values
of Islam and those of the West. The American writer Christopher
Caldwell in his controversial book Reflections on the Revolution in
Europe, published last year, argues that Muslim migration to Europe
has been akin to a form of colonization. "Since its arrival half a
century ago", Caldwell observes, "Islam has broken – or required
adjustments to, or rearguard defences of – a good many of the European
customs, received ideas and state structures with which it has come in
contact." Islam "is not enhancing or validating European culture; it
is supplanting it."
This idea of a "clash of civilizations" was first mooted twenty years
ago in the wake of the Salman Rushdie affair by the historian Bernard
Lewis and popularized a few years later by the American political
scientist Samuel Huntingdon. Today, it has become almost common sense.
"All over again", as the novelist Martin Amis has put it, "the West
confronts an irrationalist, agonistic, theocratic/ideocratic system
which is essentially and unappeasably opposed to its existence."
Yet, even as he goes along with the clash of civilizations thesis,
Caldwell reveals its inadequacies. "What secular Europeans call
'Islam'", he points out, "is a set of values that Dante and Erasmus
would recognize as theirs". On the other hand, the modern, secular
rights that now constitute "core European values" would "leave Dante
and Erasmus bewildered."
In other words, what we now regard as "Western values" – individual
rights, secularism, freedom of speech – are modern values, distinct
from those that animated European societies in the past. And it's not
just medieval Europeans who would reject contemporary European values.
Many contemporary Europeans do too. The British writer Melanie
Phillips is militantly hostile to what she sees as the "Islamic
takeover of the West" and what she calls "the drift towards social
suicide" that comes with accepting Muslim immigration. Yet she is
deeply sympathetic to the Islamist rejection of secular humanism,
which she thinks has created "a debauched and disorderly culture of
instant gratification, with disintegrating families, feral children
and violence, squalor and vulgarity on the streets." Muslims "have
concluded that the society that expects them to identify with it is a
moral cesspit", Phillips argues. "Is it any wonder, therefore, that
they reject it?" Caldwell, too, thinks that while the West's current
encounter with Islam may be "painful and violent", it has also been,
"an infusion of oxygen into the drab, nitpicking, materialist
intellectual life of the West", for which we need to express our
"gratitude".
There is, in other words, no single set of European values that
transcends history in opposition to Islamic values. Nor indeed is
there a single set of western values today. The very values against
which radical Islamists rail – the values of secular humanism – are
the very values that so disgust some of Islam's greatest critics.
If there is no such thing as a set of "European values" that transcend
time, the same is true of "Islamic values". Islam, like all religions,
comprises both a set of beliefs and a complex of social institutions,
traditions and cultures that bind people in a special relationship to
a particular conception of the sacred. Over the centuries, those
institutions and cultures have transformed the reading of the Qur'an
and the practice of Islam. Religions, like all social forms, cannot
stand still. Islam today can no more be like the Islam of the seventh
century than Mecca today can look like the city of Mohammed's time.
Islam has been transformed not just through time but across space too.
The spread of the faith from the Atlantic Coast to the Indonesian
archipelago and beyond incorporated peoples who fitted into Qur'anic
scripture many of their old religious and social practices. What
Pakistani Mirpuris see as traditional Islam is very different from
that of North African Bedouins. And what British Mirpuris see as
traditional is different from the traditions of Mirpuris still in
Mirpur. "The key question", the French sociologist Olivier Roy points
out, "is not what the Koran actually says, but what Muslims say the
Qur'an says." Muslims continually disagree on what the Qur'an says, he
adds dryly, "while all stressing that the Koran is unambiguous and
clear-cut."
Even a tradition as seemingly deeply set and unyielding as the one at
the heart of the controversy over the Danish cartoons – the
prohibition on the pictorial representation of the Prophet Mohammed –
is in truth neither deeply set nor unyielding. Far from Islam having
always forbidden representations of the Prophet, it was common to
portray him until comparatively recently. The prohibition against such
depictions only emerged in the 17th century. Even over the past 400
years, a number of Islamic, especially Shiite, traditions have
accepted the pictorial representation of Muhammed. The Edinburgh
University Library in Scotland, the Bibliotheque National in Paris,
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Topkapi Palace Museum,
Istanbul, all contain dozens of Persian, Ottoman and Afghan
manuscripts depicting the Prophet. His face can be seen in many
mosques too – even in Iran. A seventeenth-century mural on the Iman
Zahdah Chah Zaid Mosque in the Iranian town of Isfahan, for instance,
shows a Mohammed whose facial features are clearly visible.
Even today, few Muslims have a problem in seeing the Prophet's face.
Shortly after Jyllands Posten published the cartoons, the Egyptian
newspaper Al Fagrreprinted them. They were accompanied by a critical
commentary, but Al Fagrdid not think it necessary to blank out
Mohammad's face, and faced no opprobrium for not doing so. Egypt's
religious and political authorities, even as they were demanding an
apology from the Danish Prime Minister, raised no objections to Al
Fagr's full frontal photos.
So, if there is no universal prohibition to the depiction of Mohammad,
why were Muslims universally appalled by the caricatures? They
weren't. And those that were, were driven by political zeal rather
than theological fervour.
The publications of the cartoons in September 2005 caused no immediate
reaction, even in Denmark. Only when journalists, disappointed by the
lack of controversy, contacted a number of imams for their response,
did Islamists begin to recognize the opportunity provided not just by
the caricatures themselves but also by the sensitivity of Danish
society to their publication.
Among the first contacted was the controversial cleric Ahmed Abu
Laban, infamous for his support for Osama bin Laden and the 9/11
attacks. He seized upon the cartoons to transform himself into a
spokesman for Denmark's Muslims. Yet however hard he pushed, he
initially found it difficult to provoke major outrage in Denmark or
abroad. It took more than four months of often hysterical campaigning,
and considerable arm-twisting by Saudi diplomats, to create a major
controversy. At the end of January 2006, Saudi Arabia recalled its
ambassador from Denmark and launched a consumer boycott of Danish
goods. In response a swathe of European newspapers republished the
cartoons in "solidarity" with Jyllands-Posten.
It was only now that the issue became more than a minor diplomatic
kerfuffle. There were demonstrations and riots in India, Pakistan,
Indonesia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, Nigeria, Palestine, Afghanistan
and elsewhere. Danish embassies in Damascus, Beirut and Teheran were
torched. But, as Jytte Klausen has observed, these protests "were not
caused by the cartoons, but were part of conflicts in pre-existing hot
spots" such as northern Nigeria, where there exists an effective civil
war between Muslim salafists and Christians. The violence surrounding
the cartoon conflict, Klausen suggests, has been "misreported" as
expressions of spontaneous violence from Muslims "confronted with bad
pictures". That, she insists, "is absolutely not the case". Rather
"these images have been exploited by political groups in the
pre-existing conflict over Islam."
Why did journalists contact Abu Laban in the first place? The Danish
press described him as a "spiritual leader". He was in fact a
mechanical engineer by trade, and an Islamist by inclination. His
Islamic Society of Denmark was closely linked to the Muslim
Brotherhood but had little support among Danish Muslims. Out of a
population of 180,000 Danish Muslims, fewer than a thousand attended
the Society's Friday prayers.
Abu Laban was, however, infamous for supporting the attack on the Twin
Towers. From a journalistic viewpoint, it made sense to get a quote
from someone so controversial. But politically, too, it made sense.
For western liberals have come to see figures like Abu Laban as the
true, authentic voice of Islam. The Danish MP Naser Khader tells of a
conversation with Tøger Seidenfaden, editor of Politiken, a leftwing
newspaper highly critical of the caricatures. "He said to me that the
cartoons insulted all Muslims", Khader recalls. "I said I was not
insulted. He said, 'But you're not a real Muslim'."
In liberal eyes, in other words, to be a real Muslim is to find the
cartoons offensive. Once Muslim authenticity is so defined, then only
a figure such as Abu Laban can be seen as a true Muslim voice. The
Danish cartoons, as Jytte Klausen observed, "have become not just a
tool for extremism but also created a soap opera in the West about
what Muslims 'do' with respect to pictures'. Or, as Naser Khader has
put it, "What I find really offensive is that journalists and
politicians see the fundamentalists as the real Muslims." The myths
about the Danish cartoons – that all Muslims hated the cartoons and
that it was a theological conflict – helped turn Abu Laban into an
authentic voice of Islam. At the same time, Abu Laban's views seemed
to confirm the myths about the Danish cartoons.
The template for this kind of mythmaking was the Salman Rushdie
affair. More than twenty years on from the fatwa, we have come to
accept almost as self-evident the idea that the worldwide controversy
was sparked by the blasphemies in The Satanic Verses, which all
Muslims found deeply offensive. It is not true.
The Satanic Verses was published in September 1988. For the next five
months, until the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa on Valentine's
Day 1989, most Muslims ignored the book. The campaign against the
novel was largely confined to the Indian subcontinent and to Britain.
Aside from the involvement of Saudi Arabia, there was little
enthusiasm for a campaign in the Arab world or in Turkey, or among
Muslim communities in France or Germany. When the Saudi authorities
tried at the end of 1988 to get the novel banned in Muslim countries
worldwide, few responded except those with large subcontinental
populations, such as South Africa or Malaysia. Even in Iran the book
was openly available and was reviewed in many newspapers.
As in the controversy over the Danish cartoons, it was politics, not
religion, that transformed The Satanic Verses into a worldwide event
of historic proportions. The novel first became an issue in India
because the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist group against which Rushdie
had taken aim in his previous novelShame, tried to use the novel as
political leverage in a general election campaign. From India, the
anti-Rushdie campaign spilled into Britain, where the Jamaat had a
network of organizations, funded by the Saudi government. From the
1970s Saudi Arabia had used oil money to fund Salafi organizations and
mosques worldwide to cement its position as spokesman for the umma.
Then came the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the Shah and
established an Islamic republic. Tehran became the capital of Muslim
radicalism and Ayatollah Khomeini its spiritual leader, posing a
direct challenge to Riyadh. The Satanic Verses became a weapon in that
conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Riyadh had made the initial
running. The fatwa was an attempt by Iran to wrestle back the
initiative.
The Rushdie affair was a watershed in Western political and cultural
life. It was through the Rushdie affair that many of the issues that
now dominate political debate – multiculturalism, free speech, radical
Islam, terrorism – first came to the surface. It was also through the
Rushdie affair that our thinking about these issues began to change.
The controversy over The Satanic Verses was primarily a political, not
religious, conflict. But having accepted the myths that the
controversy over The Satanic Verses was driven by theology and that
all Muslims were offended by the novel, many liberals came to the
conclusion in the post-Rushdie world both that the Islamists were the
true voice of Islam and also that in a plural society social harmony
required greater restraints on free speech.
"Self-censorship", the British Muslim philosopher Shabbir Akhtar
suggested at the height of the Rushdie affair, "is a meaningful demand
in a world of varied and passionately held convictions. What Rushdie
publishes about Islam is not just his business. It is everyone's – not
least every Muslim's – business."
Increasingly, western liberals have come to agree. Whatever may be
right in principle, many now argue, in practice one must appease
religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so
deeply felt. We live in a world, so the argument runs, in which there
are deep-seated conflicts between cultures embodying different values,
many of which are incommensurate but all of which are valid in their
own context. For such diverse societies to function and to be fair, we
need to show respect for other peoples, cultures, and viewpoints.
Social justice requires not just that individuals are treated as
political equals, but also that their cultural beliefs are given equal
recognition and respect. This is the philosophy of multiculturalism.
And in the multicultural world, the avoidance of cultural pain has
come to be regarded as more important than what is often seen as an
abstract right to freedom of expression. As the sociologist Tariq
Modood has put it, "If people are to occupy the same political space
without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they
subject each others' fundamental beliefs to criticism." In the
post-Rushdie world, liberals have effectively internalized the fatwa.
The consequence of all this has been that liberals have come to
support the most reactionary figures within the Muslim community.
Rushdie's critics no more spoke for the Muslim community than Rushdie
himself did. Both represented different strands of opinion within
Muslim communities, just as Naser Khader and Abu Laban do. Rushdie
gave voice to a radical, secular sentiment that in the 1980s was
deeply entrenched. Rushdie's critics spoke for some of the most
conservative strands. Their campaign against The Satanic Verses was
not to protect Muslim communities from unconscionable attack from
anti-Muslim bigots but to protect their own privileged position within
those communities from political attack from radical critics, to
assert their right to be the true voice of Islam by denying legitimacy
to such critics. And they succeeded at least in part because secular
liberals embraced them as the "authentic" voice of the Muslim
community.
The United Kingdom Action Committee on Islamic Affairs (UKACIA), the
principal anti-Rushdie campaign in Britain, was comprised largely of
organizations inspired by radical Islamism. These groups came to form
the core of the Muslim Council of Britain, which was set up in 1977
and quickly became accepted by policy makers and journalists as the
voice of British Islam.
"The overwhelming number of organizations that the [British]
government talks to", says sociologist Chetan Bhatt, an expert on
religious extremism, "are influenced by, dominated by or front
organizations of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood. Their
agenda is strictly based on the politics of the Islamic radical right,
it doesn't represent the politics or aspirations of the majority of
Muslims in this country."
Indeed it doesn't. Polls have consistently found that only around 5
per cent think that the MCB represented them. But the official support
given to such organizations in the post-Rushdie era has distorted
perceptions of Muslims communities in Britain and to a certain degree,
Muslim self-perceptions too. And not just in Britain. There has been,
Naser Khader suggests, a similar process in Denmark. "Just months
before the cartoon controversy, the Prime Minister had invited Abu
Laban to a conference on terrorism. People like me kept saying, 'They
only represent a few people'. But nobody listened. The government
thought if they talked to someone who looked like a Muslim, then they
were talking to real Muslims. I don't look like what they think a
Muslim should look like – I don't have a beard, I wear a suit, I drink
– so I'm not a real Muslim. But the majority of Muslims in Denmark are
more like me than they are like Abu Laban."
When I was growing up in the 1980s, the concept of a "radical" in a
Muslim context meant someone who was a militant secularist, someone
who challenged not just racism but the power of the mosques too.
Someone like me. Today, of course, it means almost the opposite – a
"radical" is a religious fundamentalist. Why the shift? Largely
because of disenchantment with the secular left, on the one hand, and
the institutionalization of multicultural policies, on the other.
Disenchantment with secular politics, the disintegration of the Left,
and the abandonment by the Left of the politics of universalism in
favour of ethnic particularism, has helped push many young, secular
Asians towards Islamism as an alternative worldview. At the same time,
the emergence of multiculturalism, and of identity politics, has
helped create more tribal societies and eroded aspirations to a
universal set of values.
Within Muslim communities these developments have helped undermine
progressive trends and strengthened the hand of religious bigots.
Secular Muslims have come to be regarded as betraying their culture,
while radical Islam has become not just more acceptable but, to many,
more authentic. As the secular tradition has been squeezed out, the
only place offering shelter to disaffected youth has been militant
Islam.
Liberal multicultural policies have not created radical Islam, but
they have helped create a space for it in western societies that
previously had not existed. They have also provided a spurious moral
legitimacy to Islamist arguments. Every time a politician denounces an
"offensive" work, every time a newspaper apologizes for causing
offence, every time a journalist tells someone like Naser Khader that
he's not a "real" Muslim, they strengthen the moral claims of the
Islamists. There will always be extremists who attempt to murder
cartoonists or firebomb newspaper offices. There is little we can do
about them. What we can do is refuse to create a culture that
emboldens such people by accepting their voices as somehow legitimate.
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