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ResetDoC - Dialogues on Civilizations
In January I travelled to Denmark to research on a
debate that had finally got the attention of the German
press agencies. A local paper had published 12 cartoons
about the prophet Mohammad. There had been a minor diplomatic
crisis after Muslim organisations in the country had
complained about the blasphemous pictures and had not
been heard by the Danish authorities.
They had then turned to ambassadors from the Muslim
world to support them in their fight against what in
their eyes was an assault on their religion. The Danish
Muslim leaders travelled to several Middle Eastern countries
to complain about the treatment they and their religion
were exposed to in Denmark. The Prime minister of Denmark
had refused to receive the ambassadors and referred
their complaints to the courts: The government, he said,
could not interfere with the media because of freedom
of speech.
After a while of diplomatic fighting behind the scene,
the Danish authorities seemed to be softening their
position. The Prime Minister, in his New Year’s
speech, called for an “appropriate tone”
in the debate about religion and immigration. The Danish
Queen in her speech did the same.
So when I arrived in Copenhagen, the affair seemed to
be almost settled. It’s over, almost everybody
told me. So I was going to write a piece about how a
debate about religion, freedom of speech, recognition
of minority rights and sensitivities had a l m o s t
ended in a political crisis. I was going to present
the story as a cautionary tale for other European governments
and for my colleagues in the media about a crisis that
had been averted at the last moment. I was very lucky
that the report I wrote had to be postponed for a week.
Because it was then that the picture changed –
and the real crisis only began! I would have looked
completely stupid with my conclusion that “the
diplomatic crisis seems to be over”. But it was
not only my personal failure to see the dimensions of
this conflict. Nobody actually did!
Because – believe me – all my counterparts
in Denmark told me, it was over. I spoke with Ahmed
Abu Laban, the imam who was leading the charge against
the Danish government’s stubborn position. He
told me: It was a very unpleasant affair, but we won!
Look what a small congregation like mine can achieve.
We won against the Prime Minister of Denmark! We must
be thankful for his arrogance, he said with sarcasm.
Now we can be no longer ignored!
I went to the editor of Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose.
He told me: We won! We have shown the importance of
a principled stance for freedom of speech! Now the people
of Denmark can see who in the muslim community accepts
these values and who doesn’t. We have brought
out the moderate Muslims against the fundamentalists.
It was a good campaign, I would do it again.
I went to the Egyptian ambassador in Copenhagen, her
Excellency Mona Attia Omar. She told me: We are still
outraged by the cartoons, but in the end it was a healthy
process for Denmark. The Danes have come to recognize
that they cannot trample on the religious feelings of
a minority of their own citizens. I must thank the Prime
Minister for his stubbornness – he made it easier
for us to make our case to the world. Is there anything
you want from the Danish government? I asked the ambassador.
No, she replied. The foreign minister of Denmark called
our foreign minister and asked for understanding –
so for us the issue is settled. We won! The debate is
over.
Whoever I spoke to during my week in Copenhagen –
from right wing politicians to imams of all the different
tempers and backgrounds - everybody claimed to be the
winner of the cartoon debate. Everybody seemed to be
content with the outcome. It was a very unpleasant debate,
people told me, but it was necessary and important to
go through this.
In the light of what followed, this seems unbelievable.
But I solemnly swear – this is what everybody
told me.
And this leads me to my first conclusion: They –
or should I say: we - were all wrong. Instead of winning
they all lost, or rather we all lost. All the players
in the Danish cartoon debate were up for a humbling
experience, when the local debate was taken out of their
hands and became a global crisis. They were wrong in
thinking they could contain the issue and use it for
their own respective agendas. Scores of people died
in the following weeks - in Pakistan, in Libya, even
in Nigeria in the riots that ensued. Embassies were
burned, editors were fired, some journalists were even
jailed, the Danish economy suffered a severe backlash
from the boycott. The debate – that is the obvious
experience we all went through - could not be controlled
by anybody – no editor in chief, no foreign minister,
no religious leader had the power to put the devil back
in the box.
There are no local debates anymore. You can no longer
play little games in your own small backyard without
the world noticing. We are truly experiencing what it
means to live in a globalized public sphere. Ideas have
consequences – we all knew that before. The fact
that we are finally having global debates – from
Copenhagen to Kabul, to Beirut and Lagos - should have
been good news under different circumstances. Haven’t
we been calling for this to happen as long as the talk
about globalization goes on? But it’s obviously
not that simple. It was not the dialogue of civilizations
but rather multiple misunderstanding, willingfull provocation
and counter-provocation that woke us up to the reality
of a gobal public sphere.
Let me give you another example for this new situation.
When I was conducting interviews in Copenhagen, I talked
to a young Danish imam of Turkish background. After
we had debated the Danish situation, I wanted to give
him an example of the recent German debates about immigration
and integration. So I started explaining (we were talking
English all the time) about a new piece of legislation
in the southern german state of Baden-Württemberg.
The minister of interior had given the directive that
immigrants from muslim countries should be subjected
to a procedure that was soon to be named “muslim-test”.
Officers were suggested to question the applicants for
german citizenship about their opinions and attitudes
towards the constitution, gender relations, ethnic pluralism,
religious pluralism, domestic violence, terrorism and
so on. This questionnaire had provoked an outcry among
muslim organisations, but also from politicians of all
major parties and the wider public. The questions were
perceived to be biased, interfering with personal freedoms
(suppose your son told you he was a homosexual) or just
plain stupid (suppose your neighbour is involved in
terrorist activities – would you call the authorities).
Anyhow – while I was explaining the controversial
German debate, Fatih Alev (the imam) stopped me and
said: “I know! My friends from the network of
young European muslims have sent it to me via email.”
The test obviously had been translated into English
and spread on the internet. Young Muslims everywhere
in Europe were debating it as yet another proof of the
rising tide of European islamophobia. The narrow-minded
populist initiative of a local government in southern
Germany – designed to portray the Minister as
a man who is tough on matters of integration - had already
become the subject of numerous discussions.
This story underlines the same point I am trying to
make with the Cartoon story: There is no local debate
anymore. The distinction between interior and foreign
policy has become obsolete to a certain extent. A European
or even a global public sphere is already there –
or at least it’s evolving – but the awareness
of decision makers in politics and in the media is lagging
dangerously behind.
A third example: A Turkish hit movie has become a big
issue in the German media. “Valley of the wolves
– Iraq” has become a box office hit in Germany
after it opened here 3 weeks ago. Before that, the movie
had hit the screens in Turkey. The movie is an action
film of the Rambo- type. Only this time the bad guys
are the Americans in Iraq, while the hero who takes
revenge for the downtrodden and the humiliated is a
Turkish secret service agent. When he finally kills
the American bad guy with a dagger, the audiences cheer.
The film has been attacked by German commentators for
his fierce anti-christian, anti-western, anti-semitic
plot. Some Turkish media in Turkey have made the same
point, but that did not prevent the film from becoming
a huge success, actually the biggest success in the
history of Turkish cinema. If such a film is successful,
I think we have reason to worry. We cannot just shrug
our shoulders and turn away. We cannot just react by
pointing to racist clichés in western movies
– as if that was an excuse. It is alarming that
young men who spend their whole life in Germany, many
of them carrying a German passport, should greet such
a film with cheers and applause. Something is going
terribly wrong if young Germans from Turkish background
find relief from their alienation in a movie that boasts
of clichés and stereotypes of a western (crusader-zionist)
conspiracy against muslims.
I am not calling for a ban, here! Some German politicians
did, which was the most stupid way to react, in my opinion.
They finally gave the movie the aura of an unwelcome
truth that was going to be suppressed. We cannot defend
freedom of speech in the case of the cartoons and suspend
it as soon as nasty things about “the west”
are being said. On the other hand, a critique of the
movie’s hateful message against Christians and
Jews is absolutely necessary. We – and that includes
all parts of the German society – cannot excuse
this kind of phenomenon with reference to discrimination,
injustice and humiliation. That in turn cannot mean
ignoring the fact that the real power of this movie
– as distorted as its message is – stems
from the real images of humiliation and injustice that
it makes use of. The most awful scenes of the “Valley
of the Wolves” have not been invented. They play
in Abu Ghraib prison. The movie instrumentalizes the
real horrors of the war in Iraq for his message of hate
and revenge. So criticizing the way the filmmakers play
their hateful game, we must bear in mind what prepared
the ground for this game – the failures of western
policy in the Middle East.
To sum it up, what follows from these three examples:
In a globalized public sphere, double Standards don’t
work anymore – that is painful, but good for both
sides in the end. When I expose the bigotry and the
anti-muslim bias of the Danish cartoons, I must apply
the same standard to the ugly Anti-Westernism that is
commonplace in the press of the Islamic world.
Self censorship is bad not only for the west, but even
more so for the muslim world. The newly elected president
of the german muslim council made a very wise statement
when asked about the cartoon crisis. He said, the german
muslims were furious about the attack on their prophet
and they condemned what the paper had done. But nevertheless:
“We muslims”, he said, “appreciate
freedom of speech maybe even more than the majority
in the western societies - because we know what it means
to be repressed.”
Beyond
Orientalism and Occidentalism
March 4th/6th 2006 - Cairo, Egypt
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