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Debate
UNDP: options for global policy-making
Hunger in Africa: neglected farmers
Clashes within civilisations
03/2006 |
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[ Comment ]
Clashes within civilisations
Everywhere, identity politics set people apart, mark others as scapegoats and incite group hostility. Normally, this is done for domestic purposes. This was also the case in the Danish cartoons affair. Protests only escalated months after the drawings were first published, when outrage served agitation in other countries. Yes, there have been instances of violence. But that does not mean that Islam and press freedom are inherently incompatible.
[ By Hans Dembowski ]
It is possible to interpret the controversy surrounding the tasteless cartoons of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper as a clash of civilisations. But those who argue that way in European or North American media are playing with fire. There is something self-fulfilling about the notion of civilisations clashing. This diagnosis exacerbates a crisis it claims to merely describe.
It is easy to state that any given culture is incompatible with this or that. However, history shows that such claims may quickly prove wrong. In the 1970s, it was seriously argued by some that Catholic nations were unfit for democracy. Spain, Portugal, countries in Latin America and the Philippines were cited as examples. A decade later, Pope John Paul II and Cardinals Glemp and Sin were celebrated for promoting democracy.
Not even the peaceful coexistence of Catholics and Protestants was always taken for granted. In Northern Ireland, it unfortunately still is not. Before John F. Kennedy won the elections in 1960, few US citizens could imagine a Catholic ever becoming their president. Today, the denomination of initially unpopular immigrants (from Ireland, Poland, Italy, and later Central America and the Philippines) makes up a majority of the judges on the Supreme Court in Washington. The informed public has barely taken note.
Early on in US history, the founding fathers’ based their secularism on respect for religious beliefs, not disdain. They chose to separate church and state in light of the bloody religious conflicts that had troubled English history. At the end of the 18th century, the idea of a somehow homogenous Judeo-Christian culture would have seemed absurd. Nowadays, it is becoming common.
Those who believe that the clash between Christianity and Islam is our era’s defining drama would do well to remember that more blood is flowing along another identity divide: the one separating Sunnis from Shiites. Violence is not only escalating in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Identity politicians regularly point out cultural distinctions to incite group hostility and target scapegoats. Usually, they do so for domestic purposes. For instance, Egyptian fundamentalists demonstrate their outrage in order to show their strength. The government they detest then joins in the outrage in order to steal the platform away from the opposition.
Three aspects about the Jyllands-Posten affair are salient. First, the cartoons achieved their goal. They were supposed to offend religious sensitivities. Second, expressions of understandable Muslim frustration went way too far in some places. No world religion condones arson or murder as expressions of faith. Third, international protest only escalated months after the cartoons were first published.
As the majority of Muslims in Denmark were only moderately enraged, the drawings first had to serve purposes of identity politics in other countries. In addition to those named above, Syria and Iran deserve special mention. Most likely, the Palestinian elections, which the Islamist Hamas won, also played a role. In order to really get people upset, fundamentalists even referred to some especially malicious pictures that had never appeared in Jyllands-Posten.
Back to Denmark. The cartoons were published in a paper that supports the Danish government’s harsh stand on immigration. Rallying Danes behind the government was at least as strong a motive as defending freedom of the press. At any rate, freedom of the press could also have been expressed in more subtle, funnier ways.
Instead, we were presented with an entire page of cartoons of quite varying quality, some of which abused the religion of Islam as such. The editors would have done well to exercise the democratic virtue of self-restraint. It goes without saying that the state must not censor the press. On the other hand, not everything that, by law, may be said must be said.
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