Islam and the West (II)

“Though the lion and the antelope live in the same forest, the antelope still has time to grow up” Ghanaian Proverb

The United States Government had taken up to advertising its standard position on the offensive video which has stirred up widespread muslim anger on Pakistani television in the last few days. In spite of this, the Pakistani authorities encouraged its citizens to join the popular protests against the video (read: US government) on Friday. So far the protests have claimed about 20 lives in Pakistan alone; and anger at the US does not appear to be abeting. Nigerian muslims joined the protests in numbers in Zaria and Kano, although these passed off peacefully. It is clear that the anger of muslims will take more time to simmer down, and the US and the West will make more efforts at damage control. Until the next provocation, and the next outpouring of outrage.

These periodic outbursts of anger of muslims at events which the West will see as the price to pay for a number of its non-negotiable values, such as the right to free expression and tolerance, as well as core values which are key elements in its liberal ideology that characterize the secular State and isolate it from matters of faith, will continue to feature in relations between the West and muslims. Characteristic predictable reactions to blasphemous publications against important symbols of Islamic faith are, in a way, symptoms of a deeper structural problem. Pakistan appears to have been more vociferous in its condemnations, but then Pakistan almost perfectly captures the paradox in relations between much of the muslim world and the West. An overwhelmingly muslim nation, it has lived with a love-hate relationship with the West for most of its life. It is the gateway and the strategic foothold of the US in its battle against muslim hostility in Asia. It is also on its own a virtual battlefront. It is the enemy the US tolerates and courts as a friend, because it will do much more damage otherwise. Its leadership receives billions in US aid, and encourages its citizens to hate the US for its drones; for its overbearing presence; for its comtempt for their sovereignty, and for being the US: strong, powerful and non-Islamic.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and a number of muslim countries also play the role of facilitating the search for dominance of the West in the Middle East and Asia. Most of them are unable to assuage deep and widespread pain that their countries are made available for the weakening of the Islamic faith. Intimate relations with the US makes muslim nations reluctant or enable to take on the West on its role in Iraq; on its insistence that Iran should not develop nuclear technology; on the manner the Palestinian problem is being treated; on the impunity of Israel, and on the manner western propaganda portrays Islam as the great evil of modern civilization. Muslims watch with anguish as dictators previously propped up by western nations resist the will of their people for change; and where the will prevails, they find that it has strategic content of western facilitation and influence. The Arab Spring is still unraveling, and how the Maghreb relates to the West is still in the works. Syria’s vicious civil war will most likely end up more as a victory for the West than of the people. In this small globalized world, some muslims will feel everywhere they look they see the US and western interests.

And they will not be wrong. Muslims overwhelmingly live in poor countries, and the US and European nations have a basic utilitarian approach to the poor. Muslims are angry that they are weak vis-à-vis christians and jews. Most feel they have no business being in this position, but few bother to ask how they got into this position, and whether they are condemned as muslims to suffer the often offending dominance of nations which are secular, overtly christian, pointedly anti-islamic or fundamentally jewish.

Leaders in muslim countries have failed to build strong economies and the types of governments that should form organic solidarity with their peoples, and they are unable to shield muslims from the periodic provocations and perennial injuries from the West which they complain over. This is why riots have become the reactions of choice by millions of muslims every once in a while. But this pattern has also become routine, and since the West will not change its laws, or enact new laws which will more specifically limit the damage which blasphemy causes, these spontaneous and popular reactions will continue.

The muslim community needs to ask some very difficult questions. Are muslims doomed to take to the streets and suffer tear gas and bullets from their leaders every time some mischief maker decides to publish an offensive material over what they hold dear? Are there avenues to pressurize the US and western nations to tighten laws and regulations on they types of irritants which muslim countries can utilize? If it is a crime to deny the existence of the holocaust; and it is legal for people of same sex to marry, and there are laws against calling certain races certain names, and even the Patriot Act, which seeks to shield US citizens by curtaiting many of their privileges, why are western nations indifferent to addressing grievances of muslims in a world where the West has so much at stake in peace?

To paraphrase a medieval philosopher, in politics as in everything else, the strong will do as he will; and the weak will suffer as he must. If muslims want the type of respect from the US and western nations which will make them sensitive to its values, they must be strong enough to earn that respect. The biggest liability of muslims across the world is not the US and Europe. It is their leaders who hide under the cover and support of the US and Europe to weaken their own people. The West does not necessarily represent christianity, or even Judaism. Islam can live in peace with christians and jews, but it has to resolve some fundamental contradictions which weaken it. At the heart of that contradiction is a weak and corrupt muslim leadership which is propped up by the West.