The worst of these was on the Benghazi consulate, which resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. The protests have spread to Sudan, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, and India over the past two days, and these are just the major incidents. There have also been demonstrations reported in Europe and North America. The cause of all the commotion: An online trailer for a poorly made web film titled The Innocence of Muslims, which purports to depict the life of the Prophet Mohammed in a manner deemed blasphemous by Muslims.
For several days, the filmmaker’s identity was
a mystery. At first claimed to be one “Sam
Bacile,” a man for whom no information could be found, it turns out the auteur was Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a
Coptic Egyptian immigrant. Nakoula is
something of a colorful fellow, with convictions for bank fraud and drug dealing. Apparently bitter over the treatment of his
people by Egypt’s Muslim majority, and knowing he could capitalize on America’s
kneejerk Islamophobia, Nakoula produced a crude work of religious slander.
There are two tightly interwoven reasons for
the reaction The Innocence of Muslims
provoked. The first is the West’s century-long economic exploitation
of the Middle East and its support of corrupt and repressive regimes. The second is a Western animus toward Muslims,
regardless of ethnicity, that ranges from casually dismissive contempt to open
hatred.
In the United States, anti-Muslim prejudice
is bound up with the belief that the American people and the American way of
life are indisputably superior to all others, anxiety over America’s perceived decline
as a world power, and our dependence on imported oil. As a child in the 1970s, I remember the
adults around me railing against the goddamn Arabs who were driving up gas
prices. The Iran hostage crisis—a backlash
against Western abuses that should have sent a clear message that a change of attitude
was in order—merely fueled the aggrieved anger.
The patriotic fervor surrounding the 1991 Gulf War reflected
frustrations over decades of Middle Eastern unrest. The popular reaction to 9/11 needs no
explanation.
It’s a cheap shot to chalk this xenophobia up
to the facile observation that Americans are just dumb. Given the breadth and depth of information
available to them, as well as the affluence that would enable travel, this assertion
nonetheless contains a sliver of truth. Less
than a third of U.S. citizens hold a passport.
When we do travel, it’s usually to countries with amenities similar to
home. If we vacation in poorer
countries, it’s to visit lavish resorts that tell little about how the locals
actually live. Even in those instances
where Americans have contact with non-Western cultures that knowledge is clouded
by distinct cognitive filters, the travels of evangelical youth groups and
Mormon missionaries for example. It is
unlikely that many Americans who have travelled in Muslim countries have come
away with a positive impression due to their insular worldview.
The democratization of media ushered in by
the digital age has burdened us with ideological blinders. One result is that in our desire to be told
what we want to hear, we often confuse opinion with fact. The conservative blogosphere is rife with the
libel that the Prophet Mohammed was a pedophile because he took a child bride. It doesn’t matter that child marriage was a common
practice in many cultures, including those of medieval Christendom, and were normally
contracted to cement alliances and not necessarily as sexual unions; nevertheless,
the insinuation of deviance alone is enough to condemn a whole swath of
humanity. (The histories of each of the
Abrahamic religions contain numerous episodes at odds with modern mores. It’s probably just as well not to dwell too
much on the idea of God impregnating an adolescent Virgin Mary, for instance.)
An overlooked dimension to right wing anti-Muslim
hostility is the memory of the Nation of Islam’s militancy during the Civil
Rights Movement. This experience surely
informed subsequent popular anger over Middle Eastern anti-Americanism. The thought of dark skinned people professing
a strange faith that gives them the courage to stand up is enough to strike
fear and loathing into heart of any redneck, whether “those people” (sarcasm
intended) are at home or ten thousand miles away.
This is the heart of the matter. Americans can be frustratingly small minded
and paranoid. And yet it has much in
common with its proclaimed enemy. How is
spending every Sunday morning in a cavernous Wal-Mart-style megachurch
listening to the ravings of some bucktoothed ignoramus any different from the
devout Muslim who faithfully goes to mosque to receive the dicta of the imam? Is the person in Jackson, Mississippi who wishes
death on Islamist militants all that dissimilar from the Afghan villager who wishes
the same on American soldiers? How much
moral space really exists between the Palestinians who publicly celebrated upon
learning of the 9/11 attacks and the red-blooded American patriot who takes
satisfaction from the bombing of innocent civilians? There is ugliness to spare on both sides.
Perhaps it’s somewhat simplistic, but the
ugliness on this side has an easily identifiable cause: The quotidian American’s
lack of worldliness and cultural sensitivity.
The American’s responsibility in this respect is greater than that of
other peoples because we came to the Muslim world, not the other way around. It is incumbent upon us to understand the
problems and popular attitudes of the Muslim peoples because our country has
meddled in, manipulated, and distorted their sociopolitical lives for over six
decades. Our history with the Muslim
world did not begin on September 11th, 2001. It began much, much earlier, and the sooner
we truthfully confront the United States’ role as an imperial power the sooner
we can move toward some semblance of reconciliation.
Ignorance is never bliss, even if you are an American.
© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar
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