PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The Cartoon Riots and the Muslim Leadership

kudugana@yahoo.com

If the objective of the editors of, and the political establishment behind, the Danish newspaper that first published the offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) in the form of cartoons was to speed-up, widen and deepen the so-called clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, it is apparent from the violence that the cartoons provoked that they have succeeded beyond their wildest imagination. That such violence was their objective is beyond doubt. The first time the newspaper published the cartoons in September last year, it failed to provoke the desired response even among Muslims in Denmark. Instead the local Muslim community tried to get the newspaper to admit the offensive nature of the cartoons. When that failed they tried to get the Danish authorities to file a suit against the newspaper under the country’s existing blasphemy law. When that also failed they persuaded the ambassadors of Muslim countries to meet with the Danish prime minister to register their protest. The prime minister refused point blank to see them.

The excuse, to quote The Economist, arguably the most authoritative magazine in the West, was that “Free speech should override religious sensitivities.”

Really? Was the issue indeed one of free speech or was something far less noble afoot? The answer to the first question is pretty obvious; if free speech should override religious sensitivities, no country, least of all those now touting free speech as an excuse to ridicule values different from their own, would have laws against blasphemy. Whether the laws are frequently invoked or not is a different matter altogether. The important thing is that they are there to be used whenever the authorities deem it fit.

As for the question about the motive of the editors of the Danish newspaper that first published the offending cartoons as well as the motives of the Danish political establishment, it is, again, pretty obvious that something sinister was afoot. Otherwise the newspaper would not have reproduced the cartoons three months after they were first published. It is only fair to conclude that the editors reproduced the cartoons and the politicians defended them because they were all disappointed that the initial publication did not provoke the kind of violent reaction they had envisaged; the kind of violent reaction that they could use for the even more sinister motive of whipping up racism and Islamophobia right across the globe.

That the excuse of free speech is exactly that – an excuse – is also pretty obvious from the hypocritical stand of the West whenever the “free-speech” of other peoples is at stake. Three examples will suffice. First, why is it free speech to provoke and demonize Muslims and Islam, but irresponsible to publicize and expose the crimes that the Americans and the British have been committing against Arabs and Muslims in Guatanamo Bay and in Iraq, especially in the Abu Ghraib prison? For more than two years after the American and British atrocities came into the open, the Bush and Blair administrations did everything they could to suppress further publication of the materials because they said such publication would hinder the fight on terrorism!

Even after the latest exposure of the atrocities, the Western media and the politicians have given the story the shortest shrift possible, in sharp contrast to the orchestrated publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

Second, why is it free speech to ridicule Muslim sensitivities but irresponsible to do the same to Jewish and Israel sensitivities? Why did the Western media and Western politicians heavily censor the Iranian prime minister recently for questioning the scope of the Holocaust and the existence of Israel to the extent that they have rejected the right of Iran to possession autonomous nuclear technology even for peaceful use? Why is it alright for Israel to possess nuclear weapons but wrong for Iran or any other country in the Middle East to do the same? Why is it even taboo in Western circles for anyone to merely mention Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons? If the Americans were really concerned about the implications of Iranian possession of nuclear know-how for peace in the Middle-East and the world, why did it veto a recent Egyptian proposal that the Middle-East should be made nuclear-free? And why are the Americans helping India with nuclear know-how, ostensibly for peaceful purposes?

Third, still on this issue of double standards between Arabs and Muslims on the one hand and Jews and Israel on the other, why was the Mayor of London recently suspended from office for four weeks, with the prospects of being banned from public office for life, for comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard?

One can go on and on, but these example, I am sure, suffice to expose the fundamental hypocrisy of the West’s claims that the offensive cartoons of Prophet Muhammad was a case of free speech.

It was not. Rather it was a clear and deliberate act of incitement to violence. Unfortunately many Muslims in Nigeria and elsewhere fell for the provocation when it should have been obvious that Christianity and true Christians had absolutely nothing to do with the cartoons.

This is why the killings of Christians and Igbos in several towns in the North, starting with Maiduguri, the Borno State Capital, on February 18, should have been condemned in the strongest language by every right thinking Nigerian, but especially by the Muslim leadership. Sadly such unequivocal condemnation of the cartoon riots was left to the secular leadership of the equally secular Arewa Consultative Forum. As its chairman, Chief Sunday Awoniyi, said in a statement the ACF issued on February 20, the killings and burning of churches were “most despicable, thoroughly condemnable and totally unacceptable.”

The Catholic priest, Reverend Father Michael Gajere, and many other Christians and Igbos who lost their lives and limbs, their churches and their properties in the riots, had absolutely nothing to do with the cartoons. But even if they did, the proper response was not to kill and maim Christians and torch their churches. To have done so amounted to taking the law into one’s hands and Islam completely abhors doing so.

Many of those who have written about the cartoon riots in the North and the equally condemnable revenge killings and destruction in the South-East, have blamed government’s neglect of public security coupled with its wanton neglect of the economy, which has created too many idle minds and idle hands, for peoples’ apparent easy resort to violence. These pundits no doubt have a point.

An idle mind, they say, is the devil’s workshop. But even with so many idle minds and idle hands around, a more vigilant authority would have anticipated both the initial riots in the North and the more widespread revenge riots in the South-East.

That this is not just idle conjecture is apparent from the way the authorities in the hitherto riot-prone Kaduna, where, I suspect, Father Gajere comes from, were able to avert any religious riots. If the authorities in Kaduna could do it, there was no earthly reason why those in other states could not have done it.

However, while the authorities must accept some responsibilities for peoples’ easy resort to violence, a resort which is a reflection of their increasing lack of faith in our policing system, I believe no lesser blame must lie in the failure of religious leadership, especially, the Muslim leadership to teach their followers tolerance.

There is no doubt that Muslims everywhere, including in Nigeria, are under siege and are out-gunned in almost every aspect of life – arms, the media, other professions, etc. Of all these areas, their underdog status in the media is arguably the most important because this is what allows the West which is the most militarized civilization in history – America alone spends more on arms than the top ten countries with the highest arms spending combined and is the only country to have gratuitously dropped the atom bomb – to portray Islam as a violent religion and Muslims as a violent people.

However, the answer to Western provocations and propaganda is not easy resort to violence. The answer is to live according to the traditions of Prophet Muhammad. It would seem to me as if the Muslim leadership in Nigeria has failed in its duty to spread the knowledge of the Prophet’s traditions to their Muslim flock. This leadership is, of course, not the only one guilty of not propagating tolerance to its followers, but it cannot claim the moral high ground if it chooses not to be different.

Among the many virtues Prophet Muhammad taught and lived was tolerance. According to one tradition, he once stopped his companions from harming an infidel who urinated inside a mosque. Another tradition has it that he once hosted a Christian delegation in the holy mosque in Medina and allowed them to even conduct their Sunday worship in the mosque.

When the Danish newspaper first published its offending cartoons and the local Muslim community could get neither the editors nor the authorities to assuage their feelings for over three months, the ambassadors of the Muslim countries to Denmark persuaded their countries to boycott Danish products and services. This peaceful method appeared to have worked wonders. Suddenly the editors found the voice to apologize, even if it was mealy-mouthed. Again the Danish prime minister who had no time for the ambassadors suddenly found he had all the time in the world to see them.

By then riots had broken out all over the globe. These riots then overshadowed the effectiveness of the economic boycott of the Danes by Muslims providing, as they did, the Western Media with the excuse they needed to reproduce the offending cartoons and provoke even more riots.

The lesson in all this for the Muslims leadership in Nigeria is obvious: it must wake up to its responsibility of teaching its followers tolerance at the same time that it educates them on the necessity of defending Islamic values. The secret lies in hikima (wisdom) and not in violence.