Sanamagan: Even our Cotabato Muslims are getting into the act!

Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t worldwide television that’s stoking Muslim anger and provoking violent riots and acts of arson on the part of "indignant" Muslims who never saw the cartoons?

If CNN, BBC, al Jazeera, and other cable and TV networks didn’t keep on telecasting lurid images of Muslim militants roaring, cursing and burning both Danish flags and Danish Embassies in Damascus, Beirut, and even raging through London’s streets, would the "anger" have spread to Islamic communities which never saw a Danish newspaper (let alone a Dane), or other European newspapers which had reprinted the offensive cartoon like Germany’s Die Welt or France Soir?

In sum, the fist waving, spit-in-your-eye demonstrations – faithfully covered by television both local and international – are occurring many months after the so-called "insulting" cartoon appeared in Copenhagen last September! By golly, that was almost five months ago!

Deplorably the rage is spreading, fueled by those screen images of angry mobs and embassy burnings – I’m inclined to call the recent riots "copy-cat" anti-Danish demonstrations. The idea being propagated by those television images is that if you don’t rage against the Danes, and boycott Lurpak Danish butter, you’re not a good and devout Muslim. TV is telling every member of the Ulama, the worldwide Islamic community, that they have to hate the Danes – indeed, hate Christians, as the trend is going – because one obscure Danish cartoonist in an obscure daily penned a cartoon "insulting" the Prophet Muhammed not only by drawing him, but by drawing the Prophet with a bomb on his head as if underscoring the destructive, not "peaceful," message of Islam.

Down in Cotabato, the protesters who burned the Danish flag (which was supplied to them, obviously, since it’s not available at the local sari-sari store or supermarket) were mostly religious students. As usual, the demonstrators demanded that the Danish government crack down on the offending newspaper and the cartoonist who had committed "this act of blasphemy, a sacrilege . . . a transgression against Islam, etc."

Seems we’ve heard that before in equally condemnatory decibels. They’re all chanting from the same script, and I don’t mean holy script.

Even Eid Kabalu, the spokesman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, was sucked into the controversy. After growling that "it’s an insult to our religion!" Kabalu added sheepishly: "As much as possible, we don’t involve our group in religious matters."

Frankly, I think the Prophet Mohammed is great enough not to be stung himself by petty insults – religious slurs and insults are thrown at Jesus Christ, Christianity, or the Jews almost every day, even in Christian countries.

As for the sacrilege of depicting a "picture" of Prophet Muhammed, a no-no in the Islamic world, that Danish cartoonist for Godsake was a caricaturist and didn’t seem to be making a religious statement, even though he implied that most suicide-bombers and indeed "bombers" in general happen, surprise-surprise, to be Muslim. Why, Muslims – as in Iraq – even bomb each other, and attack Mosques (the Sunnis bombing Shia Mosques, for instance).

As for the Prophet, wasn’t he once upon a time chased out of Mecca (Makkah) by his enemies in that city, only to return years later with an army of 10,000 men to . . . uh, peacefully take control of Mecca – winning hearts and minds, of course, in the well, process? That’s history, not hysteria, we’re recalling.

The angry mobs dunning the Danes, trashing the Danish flag, burning Danish Embassies (and in Lebanon, even attacking Maronite Christian Churches – which have nothing to do with the Danes who are Lutheran Christians) keep on chanting Allahu Akbar! (God is Great!). Certainly, Allah is Great. But don’t the angry militants remember: God is also described by their own ejaculation as "The All-Compassionate and the All-Merciful"?

Lighten up, fellows. The world has got enough troubles, angst, resentments, and hurts, without thousands of amoks going off on a rampage just because of a cartoon.

* * *

The wave of outrage belatedly sweeping Muslim countries is, unfortunately, fostering a clash of "civilizations." Many Europeans are reacting, first with astonishment, next with growing resentment on their part.

In the central Afghan city of Mihtarlam, a demonstrator was shot dead and seven others, including two police officers were wounded, when police were forced to fire on hundreds of demonstrators.

In New Delhi, India – a country of 1 billion mostly Hindus, but which includes 140 million Muslims – riot police had to fire tear gas and utilize water cannon to disperse a mob of Muslim student protesters who were torching Danish flags and chanting furious slogans. In Muslim-majority Kashmir, shops and offices were closed down by a general protest strike. Gadzooks and Godzilla: all because of a darned cartoon in a small Danish daily named Jyllands-Posten!

In sympathy with the embattled Danish press, the worst part is that newspapers across Europe have reprinted the "offensive" cartoons – including one tiny daily in Norway, which has provoked attack by Muslim demonstrators even against Norwegians!

In counter-indignation, the French newspaper, France Soir reprinted the cartoon. When Muslims turned their rage on France Soir the owners sacked the Managing Editor who had published the cartoon. (But the newspaper’s circulation had doubled to 100,000). Angry himself, Serge Faubert, the editor-in-chief of Soir retorted: "Enough lessons from these reactionary bigots! Just because the Koran bans images of Mohammed doesn’t mean non-Muslims have to submit to this!"

Angry words are flying all over.

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, harassed himself by the militant Moslem Brotherhood (the parent organization of Hamas which has just been voted into power in Palestine), complained that the reprinting of the cartoons by newspapers across Europe would have serious repercussions, "inflaming" sentiments in the Muslim world. You bet. In Saudi Arabia, Prince Nayef, the Interior Minister, a conservative Wahabi, declared the cartoons were an insult to Muslims.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey described the cartoons as an "attack on our spiritual values" and called for a limit on press freedom.

One thing is worrisome for the Turks: the controversy and the riots may have doomed for keeps all hope of Turkey being "admitted" into the European Union – a move which would have made Muslim Turkey the country with the biggest population among member states of the EU. The prospect of a wave of Turkish Muslims (where there are already millions of Turks enjoying German citizenship or permanent residence in Germany) engulfing the European Union states is the all-pervading fear among ethnic Europeans, even though they’re timid about expressing it.

The center of the storm, ironically, is a country – Denmark – with only 5.8 million citizens, in whose midst, by the way, 200,000 Muslim immigrants live. Alas, a growing sentiment, provoked by the violent outrage and other factors, seems to be for the rejection of further Muslim immigration and the expulsion of Muslims still in European countries illegally.

This is already being glimpsed in France, according to Tom Braithwaite of the London Financial Times in a dispatch from Paris. Nicholas Sarkozy, France’s outspoken Interior Minister and Presidential hopeful (elections will be held in 2007), last Sunday set out plans to introduce a points system for would-be immigrants, as well as compel long-term foreign residents to learn French.

"We no longer want immigration imposed on us," Sarkozy asserted. "We want selected immigration."

The tough-talking Sarkozy stated that immigrants must also respect women’s rights: "In the case of a woman kept hostage at home without learning French, the whole family will be obliged to leave."

Sarkozy, who’s poised to run against Prime Minister Dominique Villepin, his own rival within President Jacques Chirac’s party, has found that his "hardline response to the riots last November where most of the rioters were descendants of African immigrants living in poor neighborhoods, helped boost his popularity," the FT article said. While stressing the need to integrate "deprived ethnic minorities," Sarkozy "insisted that foreign citizens found guilty of violent acts be expelled from the country."

Surveys taken after he called the rioters "scum" and cracked down hard on them, ordering the police to make scores of arrests, were surprisingly much in favor of Sarkozy’s tactics.

Sarkozy is quick to distance himself, however, from the "zero immigration" policy of the far rightist National Front of Le Pen, but declares he will remove the "clandestine prize" that allowed illegal immigrants to stay in France if they had been in the country for more than 10 years. (Almost ten percent of the citizenry as well as immigrants, legal or illegal, are today Muslim). Expulsions, Sarkozy underlined, would be "on a case by case basis," but he set as his target to eject 25,000 illegal immigrants, up from 20,000 in 2005.

The two other Nordic countries, Sweden and Norway, also appear to be closing ranks after they found themselves, too, under attack. Angry mobs had burned or badly damaged the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish embassies in Damascus (Syria), as well as the Danish Consulate in Beirut. Denmark and Norway are now urging their citizens to leave Syria and Lebanon, while Sweden and Finland have issued advisories telling their nationals to avoid trips to "volatile areas" in the Middle East. Denmark issued a list of 14 Muslim countries to be avoided.

The Norwegian government has indignantly protested to the Syrian foreign ministry and inquired: How come the crowd of demonstrators, after attacking the Danish Embassy, were "able to cross the distance of five kilometers from the Danish to the Norwegian Embassy last Saturday." Unhindered? It seems so.

It’s a pity.

Relations between the Nordic states and the Arab world are now severely strained. A Muslim boycott of Danish products has, of course, badly hurt multinationals like Arla, the Danish-Swedish dairy company, which is being compelled to shelve all expansion plans and may shortly have to shut down plants and lay off personnel, especially in the Middle East.

The Nordic states have, sadly, been among the substantial aid givers to the same region which now rejects them. Norway and Sweden, it has been noted, are in fact the world’s "biggest aid donors relative to the size of their economies."

This year, Paivi Munter of FT, reports that the two countries are expected to give one percent of their Gross National Income – "about five times in proportion to the US pledges and above the European Union average." Denmark, the report stresses, is not far behind in aid-sponsorship.

Now, everything is being flushed down the toilet – all because of outsized outrage in the Muslim world against a cartoon.

Oh well. I never argue about religion, if I can help it. This is an argument in which everybody loses. But remember: Allah is all-compassionate and all-merciful. The believers in the One God ought to subscribe to that.

It’s no use claiming, as some apologists do, that Islam has "been hijacked by extremists." In the current controversy, extremism seems to be the widespread sentiment, not the property of a few terrorist hijackers. Islamic leaders are direly warning that the cartoon "insult" will provoke more terrorism. In this awful world, terrorism has been on a rampage without any need for provocation.

Enough of this stupidity. Let’s pray we all come to our senses before we blow this planet up. It’s the only one we have.

As for the poor Danes, they’re now, as Shakespeare said of them in Hamlet, "Melancholy Danes." But they, as well as their fellow Nordics, the Swedes and the Norwegians, had better not be provoked either.

Despite their business suits and their apparently mild and civilized ways, they’re descendants of the Vikings, who were once the Terror of the known World. That Viking spirit, under assault, may summon the old gods into violent response – from Odin to the hammer of Thor – and you’d better believe it.