Turn on the
television today, and you will not go too many channels before finding some
footage about riots breaking out somewhere in the Muslim world. Looking back,
it has become a common occurrence to see Muslims out in the streets, chanting
away at whatever the "outrage-du-jour" may be, so much so that it has
awakened the old stereotype of the short-fused Arab. To be fair, not every
Muslim from every Arab country is so
inclined to take part in these protests, but these more recent affairs in many
countries all at once does leave one at least interested in trying to find a
pattern.
In an article out in
The Economist (Sept. 15-21st), the point is made that the riling up of Muslims
is not at all a cultural phenomenon, nor is it to be treated as an exaggerated
stereotype that a cultural phenomenon would manifest itself into given the addition
of ignorance and xenophobia. Instead, stronger, more centralized political
options are at play. I tend to agree with this sentiment, beyond the mere
association that the article implies.
Although it may not
seem like it given the level of general disorder and chaos portrayed by news
networks looking to entertain the stranded at Terminal 5, most Arab countries
being labeled as part of this anti-American wave have functioning democracies that
host a wide array of political parties. These parties, which rely on the same
tricks and schemes that all other democracies, are also interested in the same
thing as all other political parties on the face of the planet; winning
elections.
From time immemorial
we know for a fact that a scared crowd is an attentive one, ready to be molded
into the sort of voter a political party needs to have go out to the polls. Of
course, different populations will be afraid of different things; Americans for
instance fear fiscal irresponsibility, whereas the French fear the elimination
of social benefits, and the British fear an encroaching Europe. These fears
however are useless without a turn; that is political parties need to be able
to have fear manifest itself into calls for action which the parties will be
glad to lead. Muslim parties are no different, and there are no better masters
at this turn than the far right Salafist parties in the Arab world.
The fear that they
conjure up is perhaps the greatest one known to man, the fear of God. Nothing
quite does the trick like invoking the displeasure of the greatest being in the
universe to really get a crowd's attention. The film that sparked all these protests
was also the cause of that great fear amongst Muslims this week. The turn came
in the form of protests against the country who allegedly "hosted"
the movie and therefore "endorsed" its message. The use of quotation
marks here is not meant to oversimplify the concepts at play. It is a well
known fact that leaders of Salafist parties do use the lack of information that
many of their followers have given 1) their general disposition of discontent
with the west 2) their trust in like-minded political parties/leaders 3) their
lack of fact-checking capacities or willingness in order to make their points
(something the Economist article makes quite clear).
In making these
points, the Salafist parties make their turn, creating protests with neatly
ordered signs and an almost infinite supply of flags to burn that result in
embassy attacks and general mayhem towards the Western World. With these
protests, Salafist parties achieve two big goals. For one, they either establish
their party or re-affirm its potency. Political parties are essentially
opportunity hoarders; that is to say they are a group bent on maintaining
its position of power at any cost over other groups. These protests are
essentially mini conventions which are not only very public but also very
intimidating. Secondly, this intimidation helps establish a clear message which
again helps in creating an attractive battle cry to the young Muslim man who is without a job, education, any sort of a future. The battle cry gives them something to live for, which is ironically as good a campaign promise as any.
All in all, the
accentuation of rage is a more than effective scheme to campaign on which has
been successfully tapped into by these Salafist parties in order to remain in
power. Essentially, the angrier people get in these situations, the more legitimate these extremist parties become, so any fuel being added to the fire not only continues to chip away at American interests of cooperation and conversation in the Muslim world, but it also continues to worsen the lives of Muslims who have to deal with political extremism so radical that it keeps violence in the social norm.
What is there to do about this sort of thing? The only thing that can be done from the outside is to thoroughly, socially condemn articles of expression that could be used by these parties to bring out this fury. The rest unfortunately is up to the populations who to their credit have been, through generational turnover like in any society, to become more accepting of criticism and more critical of extremism in general. This is not to say that Muslims need to abandon the idea of protecting the image (figurative and literal) of their prophet or any other facet of their religion, but they should instead abandon the idea of truly violent protests as an answer to such grievances.
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