COMMENT An insult best left in
obscurity By Sami Moubayed
On June 23, the controversial American
satirical film, Innocence of Muslims
premiered to a private audience at the Vine
Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Two clips were
posted on YouTube on July 1.
By September,
the amateur low-budget film had been dubbed into
Arabic and brought to the attention of Muslims by
Egyptian blogger Morris Sadek. Egyptian President
Mohammad Morsi called on the US government to sue
the film producers whom he referred to as
"madmen". Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said
the filmmakers had committed "a devilish act". The
film's trailer resulted in protests throughout the
Arab world, namely at
the US embassy in Cairo and
the US consulate in Benghazi, which resulted in
the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and
three others.
For those who have not seen
the film, it is indeed highly offensive to the
Prophet Mohammad and his companions, who are held
in high esteem by around 1.6 billion Muslims,
accounting for over 20% of the earth's population.
One scene, for example, shows him authorizing the
looting of cities, the raping of women, the taking
of slaves, and the sexual assault of children.
Another shows his wife, Hafsa Bint Omar (daughter
of the second Muslim Caliph), beating him with a
shoe because she found him in bed with another
woman. He runs around the room in circles, and
says that if she stops hitting him, "I will make
your father Caliph."
The film, in short,
has nothing to do with freedom of expression. It
is in poor taste, of poor quality, and a
deliberate insult to Islam and Muslims. No doubt
about that. It is utterly unacceptable, however,
that so much violence should erupt because of an
obscure movie which would have remained obscure
had Muslims not created such a fuss about it.
The 2006 Pope controversy This
is not the first time that such a storm has been
raised in the Muslim World. In 2005, we had the
famous Danish cartoons, which resulted in the
torching of Danish embassies around the world. One
year later, in September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI
gave a speech at the University of Regensburg in
Germany in which he quoted the Byzantine Emperor
Manuel II telling a Persian intellectual in 1391:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new
and there you will find things only evil and
inhuman, such as his command to spread by the
sword the faith he has preached."
The pope
did not say that he agreed with these words.
Nevertheless the damage was done and, regardless
of intentions, violence and anti-Christian feeling
immediately soared throughout the Muslim world.
One phrase from Benedict's lecture that was
completely ignored by the Arab and Muslim mass
media was: "The emperor must have known that Sura
2:256 [of the Koran] reads: 'There is no
compulsion in religion.'"
But regardless
of intentions and in light of the Pope's
subsequent apology, let us stop for a moment to
think objectively of all that is happening and
being said in the Muslim world. The pope was
quoting a Byzantine emperor speaking to an unnamed
Persian intellectual, taken from an obscure
document, 615 years ago.
It is
unbelievable that we still have the energy to dig
up these ancient arguments, use them to arouse
emotions, riot like madmen, and foster hatred.
Equally guilty are the Muslim leaders who
responded to the Pope's remarks, the Danish
cartoons, or the current film, with embassy
attacks, church attacks, and violent rallies
around the world. God created the human mind to
debate, study, analyze and explain. Isn't it the
duty of Muslims, after all, to educate non-Muslims
on the true nature of the religion of Mohammed?
If the pope, the cartoonist, or the
filmmakers were misinformed, either deliberately
or not, then Muslims are responsible for not
explaining the true nature of their faith to the
world, or marketing its true values. They are to
blame for letting terrorists like Osama bin Laden
hijack Islam and ruin its name. The response to
the film only proved the image of Islam depicted
in the film itself, which is a very far cry from
what Mohammad was all about, being compassion,
justice, good citizenship, sound family values,
and strong faith. When terrorists using the name
of Islam strike the heart of New York, or detonate
bombs in the London Underground, this makes it
more difficult to defend the Muslims against what
was said in the movie.
A lesson from
Syria Seventy-four years ago, in April
1928, a 20-year-old girl named Nazira Zayn al-Din
wrote a controversial book titled, Unveiling
and Veiling. The Muslim veil, she boldly
stated, was un-Islamic. If a woman was forced to
wear the veil by her father, husband or brother,
Zayn al-Din argued, then she should take him to
court. She added that men and woman should mix
socially because this develops moral progress, and
that both sexes should be educated in the same
classrooms. Zayn al-Din compared the "veiled"
Muslim world to the "unveiled" European one,
saying the unveiled one was better because reason
reigned, rather than religion.
Her book
caused a thunderstorm in Syria and Lebanon. It was
an outrageous assault on traditional Islam, coming
from Zayn al-Din, who was a Druze. Rather than get
banned by government censors, the book went into a
second edition within two months, and was
translated into several languages. Great men from
Islam, including the muftis of Beirut and
Damascus, criticized her, but nobody accused her
of treason or blasphemy. They accused her of bad
vision resulting from bad education.
Despite the uproar, which lasted for two
years, Muslim establishments did not let the issue
snowball, as is happening today. The young author
was still free to roam the streets of Syria and
Lebanon, without being harassed or killed. The
leaders of Islam in 1927-30 were by far too busy
to occupy themselves, and the Muslim community at
large, with the ideas of a 20-year-old girl. They
had to attend to their mosques, manage their
charity, cater to Muslim education, and fight the
French out of Syria and Lebanon.
Why,
then, have the leaders of today's world abandoned
every problem in the Muslim world to concentrate
on the 2012 film? Muslims ought to show solidarity
on more pressing issues, such as Israel's digging
beneath the al-Aqsa Mosque, for example, or
building the Separation Wall. More recently they
should have united on the destruction of Lebanon
in 2006, Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2012. The
life of 28,000 Syrians ought to be more of a
"red-line" for Muslims, than the screen depiction
of Mohammad. These Syrian Muslims were killed
before the very eyes of the entire Muslim world
and nobody has lifted a finger to protect them.
The Prophet is one of the greatest names and
most influential figures in human history. What a
nobody says about him will definitely never affect
him or his reputation. To quote Lawrence of
Arabia, it is time for us to stop acting like a
"small people, a silly people," and start living
up to our duties before history and mankind. After
all, we have not contributed anything to human
progress in the past 500 years.
We should
properly write and analyze our history, with all
its pros and cons, and then concentrate on
science, art, literature, and freedom of the mind.
A good movie about Mohammad, similar to the 1976
classic production Messenger of God (made
by the Syrian-based Hollywood director Mustapha
al-Akkad) would have done the Prophet more justice
than the riots we witnessed in Cairo, Benghazi,
and Amman.
To make things easier for
everybody - especially the over-sensitive millions
in all faiths - it is safe to say that critical
issues such as the Prophet, Jesus, or the
Holocaust, for example, become red lines that
should not be crossed. A good word of advice to
the Muslim community is to think big and avoid the
trappings of critical articles, cartoons, or sick
movies. Islam and the Prophet Mohammad are much
greater than these small, really small, tiny,
issues.
Sami Moubayed is a
Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Middle East
Center in Beirut and the author of Syria and
the USA: Washington's Relations with Damascus from
Wilson to Eisenhower" (IB Tauris, 2012)
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