Take Two: Islam blasphemy riots now self-fulfilling prophecy

It would be very easy to cast, as many commentators have so far, the latest riots in response to the Islamophobic film The Innocence of Muslims, as another example of intolerant Muslims lacking a funny bone. The Rushdie affair, the Danish cartoons, the murder of Van Gogh — surely the latest saga fits neatly into a pattern of evidence suggesting Muslims are over sensitive and violent. After all, critics will argue, Christians are regularly derided through the arts and media and they don’t go around burning embassies and killing people.  Only the situation is hardly analogous. Muslims perceive this as a dominant majority insulting and humiliating a disgruntled and feeble minority. Ignoring the violent minority, the truth is, the protests and anger across the Arab world are about much more than the usual “free speech” versus “Islam” narrative.

In fact, at the heart of the unrest is a powerful current of anti-Americanism rooted in imperialist policies and bolstered dictatorships.

Firstly, although the film may have been the catalyst for riots, it would be wrong to assume that all the protests have exactly the same cause. The murder of American embassy staff in Libya appears to have been the work of an Al Qaeda fringe which had been plotting the revenge of one its senior leaders and used the protest against the film as a smokescreen for its attack. However there and elsewhere, the anger of the masses has appeared to morph into something much broader – a reflection of anti-American sentiment grounded in America’s historically fraught relationship to the region.

This is hardly the first demonstration of anger against western targets in any of these countries.

For those with a short memory, it was only last month that a pipe bomb exploded outside the US consulate and both the Red cross and other Western aid organisations have come under fire in recent months. It is misguided to think that NATO intervention in support of the rebels against Gaddafi somehow erased deep-seated grievances against the US, not least the sense of humiliation in the Arab world stemming from decades of Western domination. Sure, the west may have helped get rid of Gaddhafi when it was expedient, but for a long time, we traded quite happily with the man whilst he brutally repressed his people. In some cases, we even helped him do it.  A recent Human Rights Watch report, Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya details the stories of Libyan opposition figures tortured in US-run prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and then delivered back to Libya, with full awareness that they were going to be tortured or possibly killed. Even in the “new Libya”, not all sections of the revolution feel the outcome of the recent elections was truly representative of popular feeling. Not to mention Egypt, where Mubarak, whom Hillary Clinton once described as a “close family friend”, tortured and killed innumerable dissidents in a US-backed dictatorship. To think that the Arab Spring would transform popular opinion concerning the US’s role in the region is ludicrous. And that’s before we even get to Iraq.

Broken by poverty, threatened by drones, caught in the war between al Qaeda and the US, to many Arab Muslims, the film represents an attack on the last shelter of dignity — sacred beliefs —  when all else has been desecrated.

It is no surprise that some of the worst scenes of violence come from Yemen, where US policy has resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians, fuelling anger against a regime whose brutality and corruption has left the country ranking amongst the poorest in the Arab world. Given that it is also one of the countries where people have the least access to computers and the internet, it is also entirely likely that many protestors never even saw the film. It also seems unlikely anyone believed the film was actually produced by the American government. Though many might have believed the US government could act to restrict the film’s diffusion, censorship being altogether common in many of these countries, the focus on American symbols — embassies, American schools, even KFC — suggests the roots of popular anger are not merely tarnished religious pride.

These symbols of America were not the unwitting target of frustration over a film – rather the film has provided an unwitting focal point for massive and widespread anger at US foreign policy in the region. If the Arab revolutions let the dictators know exactly how people felt about their repression, these demonstrations should be read as equally indicative of popular anguish with the US’s role in the region.

The film is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back — to stand in consternation at the fact a single straw could cripple such a sturdy beast is to be naïve or wilfully blind to the accumulated bales which made the straw so hard to carry.

This is not an attempt to minimise the offence caused by the film — Muhammad is a man whose status in the eyes of many Muslims, cannot be overstated. When your country has been bombed, you’ve lost friends and family, possibly your livelihood and home, dignity is pretty much all you have left.

The producers of the film may have known very little about film-making, but they knew lots about how to cause a stir. Despite its obscure origins, references to an “Israeli” director living in the US, to a “100 Jewish donors” who allegedly provided “5 million dollars”, to a hazy “Coptic network” – all played into a well-known register. When two out of five Arabs live in poverty, a five million dollar insult has more than a slight sting to it.

Those who sought to bring winter to an Arab spring and possibly destabilise a US election, were keenly aware of the impact those words would have, situating the film within on-going tensions between Israel and the Arab world and stirring up the hornet’s nest of minority relations in a region where they remain unsettled.

In a tweet, the Atheist academic Richard Dawkins decried the events by lambasting “these ridiculous hysterical Muslims”. In so doing, he, like others, not only failed to read these events for what they are — political protests against US meddling, but he also failed to recognise the basic humanity of the protestors. To dismiss deep anger as mere hysteria is to diminish to decades of oppression experienced by many Muslims, particularly in the Arab world, often with US complicity.

If you deny any relationship between the systematic discrimination of Muslims and stigmatisation of Islam and the overreaction of the Muslim community to offensive jokes, or films, or cartoons, then you are only left with essentialist explanations of Muslim hysteria and violence. These protests aren’t about a film — they’re about the totality of ways in which Muslims have felt humiliated over decades. The actions of a virulent fringe shouldn’t overshadow the peaceful majority, nor should it impede our ability to recognise the message of frustration and humiliation coming from the Arab and Muslim world.

Reporting on these “clashes of culture” as somehow indicative of Islam’s essential incompatibility with the West conveniently omits the realities of Muslim oppression global. Before we start searching for the nebulous network behind the film, or the reasons why “Muslims are so prone to getting offended”, we would do better to actually consider the conditions that have contributed to rendering the mass dehumanisation of particular group of people socially unobjectionable and do well to remember that the right to protest is just as central to the concept of free speech, as the right to make offensive movies.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a writer, journalist and Postgraduate researcher at Oxford University. A version of this piece appeared on Myriam’s blog. 

Also read:

Kenan Malik on The Satanic Verses and free speech and Why free expression is now seen as an enemy of liberty

Sara Yasin on France, Charlie Hebdo and the meaning of Mohammed

When we succumb to notions of religious offence, we stifle debate, writes Salil Tripathi

Sherry Jones on why UK distributors refused to handle her book The Jewel of Medina

The post Film protests about much more than religion appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The case of journalist Hamza Kashgari has entered a new and deeply worrying phase as Malaysian authorities have deported the 23-year-old journalist back to Saudi Arabia, where he could be executed for “blasphemy”. There has been widespread and rightful opprobrium of the Saudi government’s response but few seem to question the official Saudi line that their indignation at alleged blasphemy is behind the call for the death penalty. Specifically, the government claims Hamza’s tweets, in which he appeared to express irreverence for the Prophet, is the source of its vendetta against him.

The tweets represented an imaginary conversations with Prophet Mohammed, in which Hamza expressed both admiration, reproach and confusion: “On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you”, he stated. Few have questioned whether the charges are actually a front to stifle discussion over broader political issues, which Hamza raised in other tweets and writings. According to Hamza himself, he is part of the young generation of Saudis who are increasingly resentful of the state’s intransigence and are seemingly willing to risk official wrath in expressing their views. “It’s not logical that, if someone disagrees with the Saudi government, that he should be forced to leave the country. Many of those who have been arrested are fighting for simple rights that everyone should have — freedom of thought, expression, speech and religion.”

The masquerade of religious offence is a poorly constructed artifice to continue to limit the basic human rights of Saudi nationals, including freedom of speech and gender equality. Fostering a climate of fear and oppression is the best guarantee of compliance and Islam is a traditional rallying cry for the masses, ensuring public support at a time of broader upheaval. The monarchy is particularly concerned about dissent at a time when the region has been rocked by protests which have seen longstanding despots ousted and others relinquishing political concessions to avoid instability.

One of Hamza’s tweets was a criticism of the status of women in the kingdom, which the monarchy is keen not to see stirred up, particularly in the wake of the on-going campaign by Saudi women to challenge a long-standing driving ban. It is entirely likely that Hamza’s tweet that “No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice” along with his broader critiques of the regime, are at the real root of the government’s fury.

Saudi Arabia presents itself as the defender of Islam and justifies much of its unacceptable legal and political repression through the prism of religious exceptionalism. The reality is that fewer and fewer Muslims look to Saudi Arabia as reflection of Islamic values and many more support the young generation of Saudis’ struggle for basic human rights.

The current controversy is an opportunistic attempt to rouse Islamic sentiment for a profoundly illegitimate dictatorship, whose shameful abuses of power cannot and should not be masked by the ill-fitting “defence of Islam”.  If Saudi Arabia executes Hamza, it will be in the name of perpetuating its fundamentally un-islamic political oppression and nothing to do with the compassionate model of the Prophet, whose name they claim to be acting upon.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a writer, journalist andbudding academic

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In addition to accessing user-data, the report points to a rise in censorship. Google announced it had received six requests from the British government and police to remove 135 videos for “national security” reasons, compared with zero requests during the previous six months. The Home Office has sought to justify the intrusion by stating that “the government takes the threat of online extremist or hate content very seriously”, but the requests point to an ongoing tension between citizens’ right to privacy and national security. It also puts into sharp focus current limits on free speech, based on the claim that online materials play a significant role in radicalization and are therefore legitimate targets for censorship. Following revelations Roshonara Choudhry took inspiration from YouTube talks by the late radical preacher Anwar al Awlaki in the attempted murder of Labour MP Stephen Timms, the total number of items that British authorities sought to censor more than doubled from 156 to 333.

But tensions over censorship have become equally salient in other countries. In India, the government placed a request for censorship of protests against social leaders and the use of offensive language in reference to religious leaders. Although Google declined the majority of these requests, it locally restricted videos that appeared to violate local laws prohibiting speech that could incite enmity between communities, inline with its official modus operandi. The report provides insight into how Google complies with local laws, even if they appear designed to stifle free speech, such as in Turkey, where Google restricted users from seeing material about the private lives of political officials. It also restricted Thai users from accessing 90 per cent of YouTube videos deemed insulting to Thailand’s monarchy, an illegal act under local laws.

Google has itself played a significant part in raising questions over the legitimacy of government intrusion into private data and the curtailing of freedom of informationand it is part of the company’s strategy to spotlight the issue of government access to citizens’ online information. Google is part of the “Due Process Coalition,” along with AOL, AT&T, Microsoft, and Facebook, a group which pushes for reform to the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that allows government investigators to review users’ online information (including email and other stored data) without a warrant.The internet giant has also said it hopes its report will contribute to the ongoing public discussion on the ways the internet needs to be regulated. Dorothy Chou, senior policy analyst at Google stated, referring to the report: “We believe that providing this level of detail highlights the need to modernise laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which regulates government access to user information and was written 25 years ago — long before the average person had ever heard of email.” Others have also added that the expansion of online activity is out of sync with out-dated legislation.  This has left companies with access to sensitive private data open to government intrusion, such as concerning web-user data in the US, where in many instances laws donot require a search warrant.

Derrick Harris of Gigaom claims that companies like Google are in the sensitive position of having to interpret laws that are too old to properly address these requests: “Content-removal requests come in before there has been any real legal proceeding, and platform providers such as Google are forced to play judge and jury. They must balance legal risks against free speech in deciding whether content should stay up or be removed.”

This raises concerns over the possible erosion of freedom of speech and personal privacy, through a failure to outline updated legislation which can adequately protect internet users.

The US, long regarded as a bastion of free speech through its constitutional grounding, currently leads the world in government requests for information on citizens’ online activity, sending 5,950 requests for data about Google users and services between 1 January and 30 June 2011, a 29 per cent increase over the previous six months. Given that Google says it complied wholly or partially with 93 percent of those requests, an almost 40 percent compared to a year earlier, both Google’s responses and the legislation underlying them, raise fundamental questions over digital safety and privacy.

Google’s report also indicates that compared to the previous six months, the number of content removal requests it received from the United States increased by 70 percent. Worryingly, this included requests for it to remove videos of police brutality and the defamation of police officers, to which the group declined to comply. In the US, Google says, it received 92 requests for data removal, covering 757 pieces of content, including YouTube videos and content posted in Google Groups. The company says it complied (at least partially) with 63 percent of these requests, but left information alone in cases where it didn’t appear to violate Google’s Terms of Service or local laws. Company spokesman Stephen Rosenthal stated “we don’t simply censor on request, we ensure there is a case for removal.” But Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, has argued that given that YouTube is a public platform, any steps to censor it should be backed with a court order and some form of judicial process: “Police seem to be advising Google on what material might be breaking the law, and then Google decides to censor this material without a court order.”

Killock raised concerns over freedom of the media and its potential misuse as a police tool to gather evidence, referring to British prime minister David Cameron’s urging of news outlets to hand over to police all material collected during the UK riots.

The report’s findings suggest the need to rethink the idea of cyber-space as a place of unadulterated freedom, through its lack of regulation. Rather, the rise in government requests for accessing personal data and attempts to censor materials without any recourse to legal due process, suggests internet uses may be better protected through increased regulation which can adequately define the boundaries of state intrusion and ensure companies, like Google, are not left unchecked to make critical decisions about freedom of expression.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a writer, journalist, budding academic

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In neighbouring France, the lower house of parliament looks set to approve a ban. President Sarkozy has already stated his belief that the garment reduces women to servitude and undermines their dignity, saying the burqa is “not the idea that the French republic has of women’s dignity”. This, despite (or perhaps because?) not having consulted a single woman who wears the face veil in the committee set up to “discuss” the issue. In a move which presumably is not an affront to human dignity, Sarkozy announced that women wearing full-face veils would be turned away from hospitals, public transport and government buildings and his UMP colleague Frederic Lefebvre demanded that any woman breaking the proposed law, be “deprived of her rights”.

Absent are the voices which might question whether the French traditions of equality and secularism are truly threatened by 200 women wearing face veils. Or who might ask if, in fact, those ideals are not themselves threatened by a judicial precedent which singles out a minority of women for persecution, despite one of the key battles of France’s revolution having been inalienable rights for all citizens, regardless of class or creed.

The truth is modern France is in the midst of an identity crisis, just like, if not worse than, that being faced by the rest of Europe.

The homogenous nature of Europe’s intellectual elites has, like broader society, begun to shift. This change has led to a questioning not so much of society’s guiding principles, but of some of their real world applications. This challenge to the hegemony of the older European elites in matters of culture and power continues to be filtered through the, as yet unburied spectre, of (post-?) colonial superiority. Historically, the colonised Arabs needed emancipation from their debased state of being through the imposition of “French” culture, the so-called “civilizing mission”. Today, many French can’t tolerate the thought these former barbarians turned citizens might have a say in defining modern French identity. Meanwhile, the ripple effect of this discriminatory legislation is vindicating already widespread islamophobia and racism. French Muslims of Maghreb ancestry are already the victims of nearly 68 per cent of racist violence and in May, a Muslim woman’s veil was ripped off in what police describe as France’s first case of “burqa rage”.

It is no surprise that here in the UK, it was Philip Hollobone, Tory MP for a small semi-rural Northamptonshire county, who raised the ban, after stating that were a burqa-wearing constituent to come to his surgery, he’d refuse to talk to her. In other words, despite being her elected representative, Mr Holloborne would actively discriminate against one of his constituents and this, with uncritical support from portions of the media and political class.

This debate was never about the smoke-screen of security or women’s rights. It is about who gets to define Britishness and its limits in a post 9/11 climate where Muslims are suspect citizens. The reason this debate is rousing sleepy villages from Tarres to Kettering, is because in a Europe whose homogenous identity is gradually fading away, these rural cantons are the last bastions of a former concept of national self. The burqa ban is symbolic means of repealing dreaded immigration and its attendant cultural changes. In other words, it is a focus for Europe’s xenophobic angst.

The government’s attempts to present the motivations of the al-Qaida operatives as ideological, rather than more accurately, as political, has compounded the problem, blurring the distinction between Muslims and terrorists. Former head of counter-terrorism, Dr Robert Lambert recently stated, “we went to war not against terrorism, but against ideas, the belief that al-Qaida was a violent end of a subversive movement.” The remainder of the proverbial iceberg is a Muslim community whose allegiance to an ill-defined conception of Britishness continues to be called into question, marginalising them from the debate and leaving symbols, such as the burqa, open to suspect status.

In a climate of fear, compounded by a gloomy economic outlook, which historically has seen Europe retract into its darkest postures of xenophobia, such symbols can mobilise a disgruntled population, whose substantive concerns are less easily alleviated. The burqa has become a rallying point in an attempt at reclaiming a righteous posture of cultural superiority, which informed the glory of the former Empire. At a time of insecurity and ambiguity, it appears to offer an obvious point of certainty, by embodying Europe’s most sensitive issues, notably immigration, Islam and terrorism.

What it really offers is a glimpse of how our society treats minorities and manages diversity, the real measure of a civilised nation. There are those who will decry the burqa as the marker of a backward mentality at odds with liberal values and women’s rights. The truth is, only women who wear the burqa can truly tell us what its significance means to them. As a society, we must offer women the space to make informed decisions about all aspects of their being, not least their dress code, and ensure that the actions of our leaders are guided by a desire to empower women, not by cheap populism or misguided concerns. Once women are given the necessary parameters of education, safety and freedom from which to make informed decisions about themselves, we must not infantilise or marginalise them, out of a false sense of superiority. More broadly, we should never let the exigencies of a particular politico-historical juncture betray the fundamental ideals of this society.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a freelance journalist and a PhD candidate at Oxford University

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French ministers denied Tunisia was a dictatorship and offered Ben Ali’s regime police support to deal with the recent protests. Myriam Francois-Cerrah explains how France found itself on the backfoot

The current protests were sparked by the self-immolation of a desperate unemployed graduate on 17 December in one of the poorest regions of the country. He was one of thousands of young Tunisians frustrated by unemployment, the rising price of food and stifling laws on free expression. As the protests spread, anger was increasingly directed at President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The protests continued despite measures taken to quell public dissatisfaction, including the sacking of the government, the creation of a special committee to investigate corruption and a promise of fresh legislative elections within six months. The protests also triggered a brutal crackdown. The authorities used tear gas and live bullets against unarmed protesters, resulting in around 40 protesters being shot dead, while dozens of journalists, lawyers, bloggers and human rights activists have been arrested and subjected to mistreatment. But the violent response only exacerbated popular anger and unrest reached the capital on 13 January. Yesterday, faced with mutiny and mounting protests, Ben Ali fled the country. His departure has left France — Tunisia’s traditional ally and trading partner — red-faced.

Just three days earlier, France’s minister for foreign affairs, Michèle Alliot-Marie, faced with what she dubbed the “complex situation” in Tunisia, put the violence down to the inordinate expectations of the Tunisian people. Deploring events on the streets of Tunisia, she offered the regime the exceptional savoir-faire of the French in matters of security, stating “the globally recognised experience of our armed forces allows us to resolve security situations of this kind ”.

Leaving aside the deep irony of the French Republic offering a brutal dictatorship tips on how to maintain order, it would appear now that France is lost for words as President Ben Ali has fled to Saudi Arabia. Some suggest he was escorted by French and/or American allies (despite headlines that French President Nicolas Sarkozy denied the exiled president permission to land).

On Friday, as the streets filled with protesters, one thing was very different: the army refused to shoot at protesters as they had been ordered to on previous days. Tunisia’s ruling regime relied on a tight alliance between the military, the Trabelsi clan (Ben Ali’s in-laws), and a small and very wealthy elite. Now television footage showed young protesters hugging and shaking hands with soldiers, causing outrage and panic amongst the ruling elite. The end was nigh, with reports that the crew of a Tunis Air plane refused to take off for a scheduled flight to Lyon and forced members of the Trabelsi family to disembark. News of Ben-Ali’s departure soon followed.

In a brief statement, President Sarkozy cautiously said that France was “assessing the constitutional transition” and hoping for an end to the violence which could only be resolved through “dialogue”. But the Tunisian protesters didn’t seem open to dialogue with a dictator buttressed by western allies.

Bearing placards which read “power to the people” and chanting “freedom” and “Ben Ali out!”, Tunisians from all walks of life rejoiced at news the president had fled, tempered only by the anger that he is unlikely to be held accountable for his excesses.

Tunisia now has its third leader in 24 hours after constitutional rules forced Ben Ali’s choice of temporary leader, Mohamed Ghannouchi, to hand the position over to the speaker of parliament, Fouad Mebazaa. Although some are suggesting the upheaval may be the first Arab revolution of the 21st century, it remains unclear who will take the lead in uniting Tunisian calls for democratic change. For now, a state of emergency has been declared. Gatherings of more than three people are forbidden and Tunisian airspace has been closed.

France has close ties to the ruling regime. The French Left, led by Martine Aubry, has called for solidarity with the protesters and support for the democratic transition. Some commentators have suggested that the cabinet’s apparent cool in the face of the Tunisian heat reflects a deep-seated fear that the revolts could hand power to Islamist parties. Addressing Sarkozy’s sudden lack of eloquence, the Elysée explained that in such a “very complex” situation, fewer words were preferable.

The sentiment was not shared by other portions of the political class, notably socialist MP Gaëtan Gorce, who denounced France’s prolonged silence and “extreme prudence” in the face of recent events as shocking and disappointing. Expressing widespread sentiment, he stated that France should condemn the repression, adding, “Are you going to remain a prisoner of the false dichotomy that there is no middle ground between the Islamists and the authoritarian and sometimes corrupt regimes? ”

While Sarkozy may fear a repeat of the Iranian revolution of 1979, in which popular protests were channelled into support for Ayatollah Khomeini, others have suggested that France’s blind support for dictatorships, such as Ben Ali’s, feeds support for extremist groups.

In focusing on the violence on the Tunisian streets, rather than denouncing the role Ben Ali’s dictatorship played in fomenting discontent and repressing its own people, France has shown that it values its privileged relationship with Tunisia’s ruling elite more than it values the rights of Tunisian citizens. Commenting on France’s silence, the president of the France-Tunisia friendship group said: “It is disappointing that we have limited ourselves to some general considerations, stating that we are preoccupied. We cannot accept that young and less young people are shot at with live ammunition. France and Europe must speak up. ” As the unrest spreads to the streets of Algeria and Mauritania, France’s ambivalence will not go unnoticed for long.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a freelance journalist and a PhD candidate at Oxford University

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