While
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen
Hughes flies off on her second tour of the Middle East
Friday, she must feel at least some relief that Europe –
rather than the United States – has been the main target
of the two-week outpouring of anger in the Islamic world
that has come to be called the "cartoon crisis."
Hughes, a long-time friend and adviser to Pres. George
W. Bush, has played a leading role in shaping the U.S.
response to the crisis, which has sparked large
protests, including some violence, particularly in the
Arab Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan..
She will no doubt be called on to clarify US views at
the third annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, as
well as in scheduled meetings with non-governmental
groups and students there and in the United Arab
Emirates (UAE).
Under her guidance, the administration has tried to walk
a fine line between showing sympathy for Muslims
offended by the Danish caricatures of the Prophet
Mohammed and their republication by major newspapers
elsewhere in Europe and upholding free speech
principles.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic
images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious
belief," declared State Department spokesman Scott
McCormick at the outset of the crisis.
"While we share the offense that Muslims have taken at
these images," he added, "we at the same time vigorously
defend the right of individuals to express points of
view."
Such a carefully balanced statement, however, outraged
some of the administration's strongest supporters,
particularly neoconservatives and other hawks who
charged that it smacked of "appeasement" to Islamist
radicals and constituted an abandonment of western
ideals of freedom in defense of which Bush had
purportedly launched his "war on terror."
As a result, subsequent administration statements
focused more on criticizing the violence, particularly
after attacks on Danish embassies in Damascus and
Beirut, than on the offensive nature of the cartoons.
"We reject violence as a way to express discontent over
what is printed in the free press," declared Bush, who
had just called Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen to express his support. And while he also
insisted that "with freedom comes the responsibility to
be thoughtful about others," Bush's main message was to
"stop the violence."
Several hours later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
told reporters that "nothing justifies the violence that
has broken out," and charged Iran and Syria with having
"gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use
this (for) their own purposes."
While the administration's greater focus on assailing
the violence and the alleged responsibility for it of
Washington's two remaining Middle East nemeses and
radical Islamists appears to have pacified its hawkish
supporters, the crisis has also given rise to a new
public discussion reminiscent of the "Why Do They Hate
Us" and "Clash of Civilizations" debates that followed
the Sep. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the
Pentagon.
As in those debates, one side argues that radical Islam,
if not Islam itself, represents an existential threat to
western ideals – in this case, freedom of speech and the
press – and that any suggestion that European newspaper
publishers should show greater sensitivity to Muslim
sentiments constitutes weakness and signals the decline
of western civilization.
"Like the appeasement of the 1930s," wrote Victor Davis
Hanson, a favorite columnist of Vice President Dick
Cheney, this week, "we are in the great age now of
ethical retrenchment... If we give in to these
8th-century clerics, shortly we will be living in an 8th
century ourselves, where we may say, hear, and do
nothing that might offend a fundamentalist Muslim."
"This is a moment of truth in the in the global struggle
against Islamic extremism," wrote William Kristol,
editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard,
one of the handful of US publications to reprint the
cartoons.
He asserted that the anti-Danish demonstrations showed
that "those who are threatened by our effort to help
liberalize and civilize the Middle East are fighting
back with whatever weapons are at hand."
"Will Hamas succeed in creating a terror state on the
West Bank?" asked Kristol. "Will a terror-sponsoring
Iranian regime succeed in its quest for nuclear weapons?
Will Danish imams succeed in intimidating Europe – or
the free world as a whole?"
On the other side of the debate – and one heard more
loudly than in 2001, perhaps because Europe, rather than
US, has been the main target – are commentators who
insist that the outrage voiced by Muslims in the crisis
is based on real grievances that the West should
understand and address.
"What we are witnessing today has little to do with
Western democratic values and everything to do with a
European media that reflects and plays to an
increasingly xenophobic and Islamophobic society," wrote
John Esposito, who teaches Middle East studies at
Georgetown University.
Citing a recent Gallup World Poll of opinions in
predominantly Islamic countries, he noted that, when
asked to describe what the West could do to improve
relations with the Arab-Muslim world, "by far the most
frequent reply was that they should demonstrate more
understanding and respect for Islam, show less
prejudice, and not denigrate what Islam stands for. At
the same time, overwhelming majorities said they favored
freedom of speech in their own countries.
In Esposito's view, depicting the crisis as a defense of
free-speech principles – if not of western civilization
– was precisely the wrong tack to take.
"Cartoons defaming the prophet and Islam reinforce
Muslim grievances, humiliation, social marginalization
and drive a wedge between the West and moderate Muslims,
unwittingly playing directly into the hands of
extremists," he warned.
In a New York Times column Friday, New America
Foundation senior fellow Robert Wright also mocked the
hawks' depiction of the crisis as a replay of the 1930s,
noting that self-censorship by the media, particularly
regarding minorities, is "an American tradition that has
helped make America one of the most harmonious
multiethnic and multireligious societies in the history
of the world."
Recalling changes made in the media's treatment, as well
as in anti-discrimination laws, of US blacks after the
urban riots of the mid-1960s, Wright also noted that
"appeasement" in that case neither spawned more violence
nor "weakened Western values."
Behind the cartoon crisis, he went on, "so many of the
grievances coalesce in a sense that Muslims aren't
respected by the affluent, powerful West (just as
rioting American blacks felt they weren't respected by
affluent, powerful whites)."
(Inter Press Service) |