A minor Danish newspaper published twelve quite good-natured cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. And now crowds of Muslims are rioting in the streets throughout the Middle and Far East – in Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Pakistan, Thailand and Indonesia they are wrecking European embassies and burning their flags. The Palestinians and Afghans outdid everyone else. The former wrecked and burned the Danish embassy, attacked the EU delegation, and promised to begin a total shooting of Danish, French and Norwegian citizens once 48 hours had elapsed. In Afghanistan they went further – there they promised 100 kg of gold for the killed author of the cartoons and 5 kg each for the head of a citizen of Denmark, France or Norway. It must be said that it is hard to tell from a European's appearance which country he is from, so it can be assumed that first everyone "similar-looking" will be killed, and only then will they sort out whether a reward is due.
How could such a thing happen? What will all this lead to? There are different answers to these questions. For the Muslim world – one. For Europe – another.
Ummah in Action
Let us begin with the answer for Muslims. It all started when, after the publication of the cartoons, the Islamic community of Denmark approached the editorial office of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten with a demand to apologize to the offended Muslims. Apparently, the Danish Muslims were left dissatisfied by the reaction to their appeal. Therefore, they turned for help to the ambassadors of several Islamic countries. The latter, in turn, addressed a letter of complaint and a request for a meeting to the Danish prime minister. Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed his understanding to the ambassadors, but reminded them that Denmark is a European country in which the press enjoys freedom of speech and is free to print any cartoons, and refused the meeting.
Then the offended ambassadors and the Muslim community of Denmark decided to seek justice elsewhere. A group of Danish imams made a tour of Middle Eastern and some other Islamic countries, where they met with local politicians and religious figures. The imams showed them the cartoons, embellishing them with stories about how badly Muslims are treated in Europe. True, these emissaries took with them not only the twelve published cartoons, but also several others – of unknown origin and considerably more radical content. It is said that the mildest of these unknown cartoons depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the face of a pig, while the rest were of an almost pornographic nature. It seems that it was these drawings that made a particularly strong impression on the local imams. The result – the offended imams called on faithful Muslims to wipe this godless Europe from the face of the earth.
It is obvious that those who were wrecking European embassies not only had not seen these works themselves, but also have little idea what Denmark is and where it is located. But their faces show that someone had prepared them well. Particular surprise is caused by the Islamic unrest that took place in Turkey, which already has one foot in the European Union. Passions there ran so high that immediately after a service in the city of Trabzon, an Italian Catholic priest was killed.
Islamization of Eastern Power
Analysts agree that the current riots indicate two trends. The first is that anti-Western sentiment is rapidly growing in the Islamic world today. "The appearance of the cartoons is not the cause, but merely a pretext for expressing the anti-Western anger that has accumulated over recent years among the masses of Islamic countries. The Western perception of Islam as a phenomenon identical to terrorism deeply outrages ordinary Muslims. For ordinary people there is no big difference between Europe, which opposed the war in Iraq, and America, which occupied that country. For them it is a single force hostile to the Islamic world, called the West," said Abu Jabbar, former foreign minister of Jordan, to Expert.
A similar point of view is expressed by the director of the Middle East department of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), David Butter: "In the Middle East, the traditional hostility toward the United States is due to its support for Israel. But the attitude toward Europe is also far from as positive as many Europeans would like to believe. In the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa, Europe is viewed through the prism of a historical conflict that began as far back as the era of the Crusades. They recall that as recently as half a century ago, Morocco, Syria, and Kuwait were European colonies. Those who adhere to radical Islam remember this especially well. These people believe that the conflict between Europe and the Muslim world, which began in the 7th century in Spain, continues to this day. They believe that the attack against the world of Islam has never ceased."
The second trend is internal: in Muslim countries there is an ongoing process of the Islamization of power. On the one hand, many politicians use the growth of radical sentiment in society in order to overthrow secular regimes. On the other hand, Islamists who have come to power in some countries seek to strengthen their positions as much as possible by radicalizing and consolidating society around themselves.
The West's efforts to democratize the Islamic world have not been in vain – today in practically all Muslim countries the most active political force is the Islamists. Moderate governments are still managing to hold back their pressure. For example, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak still resists the legalization of the Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that representatives of this movement received 20% of the votes in the parliamentary elections.
"The governments of countries where unrest is taking place are still quite friendly toward Europe. For many of them, a raging crowd on the street is also a big problem. But one way or another, they are forced to listen to the will of their people," says Abu Jabbar.
The cartoon scandal contributes to the internal strengthening of Islamists. It is indicative that in most countries where Danish imams arrived with the cartoons, they turned for help to opposition-minded elites, those who, on the wave of Islamism, are preparing to replace elites relatively friendly to the West. Therefore, anti-European protests in Islamic countries are a phenomenon oriented not so much at foreign policy as at domestic policy.
This can be traced most clearly in the example of countries where Islamists are already in power – in Palestine and Iran. In Palestine, the Hamas group won the recent elections. Iran is even more interesting: there, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an Islamist-style populist, has been in power since the summer of 2005.
At the time Ahmadinejad came to power, his popularity was quite limited. The educated part of Iran's population largely ignored the elections, so the president was chosen by the common people from the lower classes and the provinces, who are distinguished by a most zealous attitude towards Islam. But today Ahmadinejad already enjoys the support of the majority. He managed to achieve this by playing on the patriotic and religious feelings of his citizens. The public resumption of the nuclear program, which Ahmadinejad turned into a whole show, allowed him to consolidate society. The new president restored the attitude towards the West as a single force hostile to Iran. Today, the Iranian president delivers his fiery speeches throughout the country, which intensifies anti-Western sentiments in society.
"The conflict over the cartoons plays into Iran's hands. It gives Tehran a certain justification in the eyes of Muslims, including its Arab neighbors. Now Iran can say: Europe insults the feelings of Muslims because it feels it can act with impunity. If Muslims had nuclear weapons, Europeans would not behave this way towards the Islamic world. In the eyes of many Muslims, this legitimizes Iran's nuclear program," believes David Butter from the EIU.
Dancing to someone else's tune
Now for the answers for Europe. The mass anti-European demonstrations that took place in Muslim countries caused deep surprise in Europe. After all, today it is Europe that is considered the main defender of Muslim interests. The EU has not only always pursued a friendly policy towards Middle Eastern countries, including Palestine, but also gave shelter to numerous Muslim communities. In recent years, many political scientists and cultural scholars have even begun to talk about the creeping Islamization of Europe. That Christians supposedly give way before Islamic passionarity. When Muslims became numerous in Europe, they stopped integrating and assimilating. European-style political correctness led to the fact that Muslims from various countries not only felt at home in the EU, but also tried to dictate their rules to the society into which they had moved.
European respect for freedom of expression and a panicky fear of any manifestations of violence in resolving interethnic and interreligious conflicts have led to the fact that a serious threat of Islamization really looms over Europe. European governments, interested in the continuation of immigration from Middle Eastern countries and fearing unrest in society, step by step surrendered the gains of a secular society without a fight. Numerous Muslim communities existed as states within a state. They began to have their own general education and religious schools, where instruction was conducted in their native language and which were completely unaccountable to European governments, but had close ties with the religious leaders of the countries from which the migrants had come. Imams in mosques were absolutely free in their sermons, and some of them called on parishioners to join the jihad against the West. In essence, all these communities were fairly effective elements through which Islamic Middle Eastern elites influenced the internal political life of Europe.
Had the cartoon affair happened two years earlier, the reaction of Europeans would most likely have been completely different. To begin with, they would hardly have been published at all, and if they had been published, they would have apologized in every possible way to the outraged Muslims. Now everything is different – the process of creeping Islamization of Europe has gone too far.
Waking Up
The European public was brought out of its lethargic sleep by the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London. In the course of investigating these incidents, it turned out that terrorist groups and radical Islamic movements were operating right under the noses of the authorities, developing a plan to destroy the Europe that had taken them in. And many European countries became concerned about who exactly preaches in the local mosques. It turned out that the majority of imams are foreigners, they preach in non-European languages (Arabic, Turkish, Malay, Urdu, Bengali, etc.) and are not controlled in any way by either the state or Muslim organizations. For the most part, European imams preached a very moderate and tolerant Islam, but there were also those who made radical calls and justified terrorism.
Europe got down to business. But then moderate European Muslims also came to their senses. Thus, in Britain, just four months after the London attacks, the National Forum against Extremism and Islamophobia was created. It included moderate imams, most of whom were born and raised in Britain. The initiative of moderate Muslims was supported by the authorities – the British Home Office allocated $8 million to the forum. These funds went to organizing trips of well-known British imams to mosques across the country, where they preached tolerance and the importance of respecting human rights and the laws of the country. The National Forum also plans to develop recommendations for the faithful delivery of sermons in mosques. Finally, imams were urged to deliver sermons only in English. Similar processes of cooperation were under way in other European countries.
But in parallel with this, European countries began to block access for new Muslim migrants to Europe and tightened their immigration legislation. Denmark was among the first, having introduced in 2002 a ban on marriages with foreigners – non-EU citizens – who had not reached the age of 25. Thus, the Danish government decided to stop progressive immigration. The fact is that most young men from Islamic countries living in Denmark are engaged to citizens from their historical homeland (with the young bride, all her numerous family moved to Denmark). Naturally, Denmark's Muslim communities actively protested, but in vain. Denmark is far from the only example of tightened migration legislation in EU countries.
Islamization of Europe Canceled
It seems that one of the main reasons for the uproar over the cartoons is the Islamic world's dissatisfaction with the loss of influence over intra-European life. The Islamic world realized that the authorities in Europe want to shield the Muslim communities that have emerged and operate in Europe from direct influence from the East.
"Arab regimes have always tried to keep immigrants in Europe as diasporas that can be mobilized to defend their national interests. Thus, the Maghreb countries view second-generation representatives born in France as intermediaries in disputes over Islam. These countries persistently try to control elections to the French Council for the Muslim Faith. Cairo's Al-Azhar University claims a monopoly on training imams and issuing fatwas, rejecting, for example, the European Council for Fatwas, based in London, which promotes the idea of developing special legal norms for European Islam. In short, Islamic states and organizations are openly doing everything to keep Europe's Muslims in the orbit of the East," wrote French political scientist Olivier Roy recently.
As for European Muslims themselves, they generally view positively the process of liberation from influence from their homelands. It is indicative that within the EU itself, the overwhelming majority of the Islamic population reacted completely calmly to the cartoon scandal. Demonstrations were held only by supporters of radical movements – precisely those who are ardent opponents of being cut off from Eastern centers of influence. Thus, in early February, a demonstration took place in London near the Danish embassy, organized by the radical organization "Hizb-ut-Tahrir". The protesters came with placards saying "Kill those who insult Islam", "Europe, your September 11 will come soon", "Europe is a cancerous tumor, Islam is the path to salvation" and "Freedom, go to hell".
"A huge number of Muslims living in Europe were outraged by the form that the protests took both in Muslim countries and in Europe. The burning of embassies in Damascus and Beirut is in no way an adequate response to the appearance of the cartoons – it is an example of an excessive and violent reaction that only leads to a deterioration of relations between Muslims and Europe. In the same way, we were outraged by the slogans that were heard at the demonstrations in London. Yes, Muslims may not like satirical images of the prophet – that is completely understandable. But the publication of such cartoons is legal in Denmark, and this law should be respected. Muslims should not take to the streets of cities and demand the killing of the people who drew the cartoons. Because calls for violence are a violation of the law. The police must stop such antics by radicals," said Asghar Bukhari, chairman of the Muslim Public Relations Committee (MPRC) of Great Britain.
In his opinion, the problem is that radical groups are the most visible in such crises. The voice of moderate Islamic groups is no longer heard, which led to the escalation of the cartoon conflict. It must be understood that radicals represent the opinion of only a very small number of Muslims. "Among British and European Muslims, the majority adheres to moderate Islam and shares European values and freedoms. We hope that the authorities will take appropriate measures and launch an investigation against radicals whose slogans drive a wedge into relations between Europeans and Muslims both in Europe itself and in the Middle East," says Asghar Bukhari.
Time to Get Out the Whip
The reaction of Europeans to the "cartoon pogroms" also inspires optimism. For example, a number of European publications ran a campaign to reprint the ill-fated cartoons. It is important to understand that European journalists acted this way not only out of solidarity with colleagues and in defense of freedom of speech. In this way, many of them expressed the irritation that had accumulated over the years of creeping Islamization of Europe. By the way, Le Pen's hidden electorate, which sociologists have been talking about for more than a year, is a phenomenon of the same order. Politically correct Europeans cannot openly vote for ultra-radical nationalist movements that oppose, among other things, the Islamization of society, but the number of secretly sympathetic ones grew every year. The cartoon incident gave vent to feelings that had been hidden until now.
European public opinion is also on the side of journalists, not on the side of the "offended Muslims". According to polls conducted in European countries, the majority are for freedom of speech. For example, in Denmark, 58% of respondents said that the publication of the cartoons was "the right decision". Where the media are afraid to reprint the cartoons, ordinary citizens do so in their online diaries – in the online blogs of EU residents, the ill-fated cartoons were reproduced tens of thousands of times.
Europe chooses de-Islamization. This path does not promise to be easy. “Europe will have to change its policy. It turned out that from the outside Europe is seen as much more homogeneous than it seems to us from within. Our soft foreign policy, in which we preferred to use not a stick but a carrot, no longer works. European countries will have to think about what to do next when the European carrot is no longer needed by anyone,” said Richard Whitman, director of European programs at the British Royal Institute of International Affairs. Europeans, unlike Americans, cope poorly with crises, especially external ones. Europeans are good at thoroughly implementing long-term projects. So there will be no quick answers.