I say tomato, you say fatwa

Those Muslim mobs who assailed embassies from Central Asia to the Levant this past weekend in response to the publishing of derogatory cartoons of Mohammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Postal were probably not whistling ‘Wonderful Copenhagen’ while making campfires of automobiles. This is not news. Also not news is the predictably supine attitude of local authorities in protecting the embassies from mob violence. Meanwhile, Europe is split. One side is mealy-mouthed and unequivocally conciliatory (“We’re Sorry.”); the other is a study in passive aggression, such as the editors of France Soir, who thought it would be—what? an outrage? ingratiating?—to publish cartoons disparaging Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism as a follow up. In response, Muslim mobs added le drapeau tricolore to their weekend bonfires. Again, not news.

To say that Islam has a problem getting along with other religions is an understatement and perhaps too easy. There is an arc of intolerance spanning from North Africa to the South Pacific, including genocide in the Sudan against Christian and animist populations; widespread repression of Egyptian Copts; conflict with Hindus in South Asia; the destruction of the 1,500-year old Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan; the Muslim insurrection against the Thai; the Malay-Chinese ethnics feuds; the tit-for-tat butchery in Indonesia against Christians and Chinese; the low-grade Muslim rebellion against the government of the Philippines. And this list has not touched on the marquee conflicts of Palestine, Iraq, and the Caucasus, or the 2005 French riots, the murder of Theo van Gogh, the London and Madrid bombings, or the mass murder at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. To be sure, some of the violence is visited upon coreligionists, such as the sectarian violence in Iraq, but the one thing they all have in common is the presence of Islam. When is the last time you heard reported an instance of Hindu-Christian violence, or faith-based genocides carried out by Buddhist extremists? There are instances of religiously inspired non-Muslim violence—or instances where Muslims are victims—but these episodes are rather like the reported sightings of right whales. Is it any wonder, then, that the non-Muslim world is not excited to extend a warm welcome to the relatively new Muslim populations in their midst?

But it is also true that stakeholders—in a polity, an order, whether on the local or global level—do not behave the way we witnessed Muslims behaving this weekend. The riots (for what else are they?) were what one would expect in communities where unemployment among 20-something males is 30-50%; where patronage and corruption is business as usual; where the only available means of expression is via the mob; where all incentive for advancement is taken away and the only scale of self-worth is provided by the mosque. In other words, folks who have a stake in order tend to maintain it; those who don’t could care less. This is as true for Watts as it is for Beirut.












When Korean storeowners were the victim of looting and destruction of property in the 1992 ‘Rodney King’ riots, no one believed them to be the primary focus of black rage; after all, it wasn’t the Korean community that beat the hell out of Rodney King, nor was it the Korean community that was responsible for the jury verdict. To be sure, there’s no love lost between the two groups, but the Koreans disproportionately bore the brunt of the riots for the simple reason that they were there. While the embassy attacks were perhaps more premeditated and directed, the link is still plain to see—dispossession breeds criminality, and among those groups, it doesn’t take a whole lot to set off the powder keg. As to why, in particular, Muslims found the musings of an obscure European newspaper worthy of retort, who knows? Why do stories of Korans being flushed down toilets create stampedes? It is like trying to predict the direction of a wildfire in swirling winds.

As provocations go, a newspaper cartoon is pretty tepid, no matter what the content is, and only a nation or culture afflicted with Borderline Personality Disorder would find in a cartoon a proper pretext for communal violence. And the imams who stoke such fires should remember, a wood so easily consumed can be burned by anyone.

THE DIVAGATOR warmly thanks James Van Hise at http://fragmentsweb.org for permission to repost the above picture (1992 Los Angeles riots).