APRIL 28 — This past week has seen the spotlight turned on Islam on the world stage again.
In the United States, a “South Park” episode featuring a parody of the Prophet Muhammad saw death threats to the show’s co-creators courtesy of the site Radicalmuslim.com.
However, unlike the Jyllands-Posten cartoon episode of 2007, the general public’s reaction has been one of support for the show’s brand of equal opportunity comedy.
Seattle satirical cartoonist Molly Norris has even proposed May 20th as “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” and that initiative appears to be gaining ground with even schools set to join in.
In France and Belgium, laws were passed to ban the burqa in public, including for tourists. Earlier this month, a woman driver wearing hijab was for the first time fined by French police for driving while “not having a clear field of vision.”
In England in late March, Muslim leaders were publicly criticised by Oxford University academic Nick Chatrath who claims that in the face of growing radicalisation in Britain, “Muslim leaders are ignoring extremists’ points of view and glossing over some of the more unsavoury parts of Islam’s texts.”
Look a bit further back to November, you’ll find Switzerland lawmakers banning the construction of new mosque minarets. At around the same time, more than 100 Western-based organisations signed a petition against the Organisation of the Islamic Conferences’ (OIC) proposed United Nations resolution on blasphemy or “defamation of religions” — the clearest mass opposition to a non-conflict related UN proposal in recent memory.
Observers say these developments hint at a larger shift in the West’s general attitude towards Islam and Islamic culture — one that was previously characterised by cultural relativism and tolerance, but now progressively less so.
The target of some of these retaliations have also shifted — directed less and less at the perceived radical fringe elements of Islam but more towards its mainstream, which is increasingly being accused of not doing enough to curb its more extreme co-religionists.
In Western European societies, this eroding tolerance of multiculturalism is also pushing back against what is perceived as the developing “Arabification” and Islamisation of Europe — most notably due to the superior birth rates (ratios as high as 8:1) of naturalised citizens that migrated in droves from North Africa and the Middle East in the past 30 to 40 years.
With increasing population comes increasing demands for the preservation of a traditional way of life — ones that are typically in direct contrast to modern European values.
It is beyond the scope of this article to detail the complicated sentiments that have developed over decades of open-door migration policies and an earlier lax attitude towards cultural assimilation among the Western European nations.
My own insights have been assisted by reading the late Orianna Falacci’s diatribe against the Islamisation of Europe — her fist, the fiery The Rage and The Pride followed the more measured The Force of Reason. Other popular ones include Bat Ye’Or’s Eurabia, Mark Steyn’s America Alone and Walter Laquer’s The Last Days of Europe.
As a matter of comparison these are not dissimilar to the righteous anger-tinged literature of colonised peoples who rile against what they view as the parasitic behaviour of their cultural imperialists.
Some would say it’s karma and nothing short of a comeuppance for the West given its hundreds of years of transgressions on the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, these episodes collectively paint the picture of a more mainstream and public face of retaliation against Islam and its symbols in Europe and in the US.
To a great extent, they are aimed at testing both Islam and Islamic culture’s insistence on exemption from criticism; something that has never gone down well with societies steeped in Freedom of Speech.
The difference is that this time more of their people’s representatives are being vocal, backed by a growing majority of the public, almost as if a sieve has been breached.
To be fair, it is not just Islam that is being rounded on, for today in the West criticism of *all* religions is at its height.
New Atheists
In recent years, religion’s chief critics have been the so-called New Atheists: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Dan Dennett. Arguments aside, they have proven very successful at gaining mind share and public influence given their bestselling books, full-house debates, popular lecture tours and general availability via YouTube.
In the Islamic sphere specifically, I would add Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel and The Caged Virgin, as one who stands apart as Islam’s most vocal critic. In her reaction to the “South Park” episode on CNN, she has called on more people to lend support, saying: “if the entire entertainment business were to take this on, and just show how ridiculous this is, that there’ll eventually be too many people to threaten.”
To put things into perspective, what these New Atheists charge is that all religions, and specifically Islam, have been granted an undeserved special exemption from criticism for too long.
Christianity and Judaism are cited as successfully reformed religions because they have had to contend with a high level of criticism for a lot longer (including comedy and satire at the sharper end of the spectrum), hence this “immunity” must no longer be granted to Islam.
Another oft-repeated argument is that Judaism and Christianity have gone through many schisms and theological revisions that have shaved off their hard edges and made them conform better with modern times while retaining the tenets of beliefs that continue to provide comfort and reassurance to adherents.
The New Atheists argue this is not yet the case with Islam. Islam’s loudest voices continue to belong to the radical mullahs, while the moderate ulamas are often having to legitimise the literalist interpretation without outwardly or directly condemning.
The only recent high profile exemption was in March when Pakistani Islamic scholar Tahir ul-Qadri issued a 600-page anti-terrorism and suicide bombing fatwa “without any excuses, any pretexts, or exceptions” — the first of its kind in the world (e.g. we had never had any from the influential Saudi ulamas or Al-Azhar Universty).
Yet what must be the New Atheists’ most counter-intuitive argument, and a favourite one wheeled out by supporters, is the accusation that it is in fact the moderate elements of Islam that give cover to the radical elements, particularly when they do not condemn their co-religionists harshly and often enough.
And it just so happens that Islam’s moderates are where the slew of new retaliations are being squarely aimed at. In not so many words, it is meant to force them to “take over” the representation of Islam from the radicals and jihadists: either conform or reform, or risk more censure.
In this confluence of events the drawn lines are clearest for Islamic fundamentalists. These actions may all be considered provocations by the kuffar which should be met by opposition and if capable, by force. On these matters, the fundamentalist factions are quite unanimously united.
The sentiment among Islamic moderates are less aligned. There exists varying degrees of reactions ranging from disagreement to resignation, even compromise and acceptance.
So while all this is happening in earnest halfway around the world, where does that leave us here in Malaysia, where we have made it our business professing to be a shining example of a moderate, modern Islamic nation?
Do our moderates eventually stand up and claim ground or do the literalist ulamas continue to lay claim to represent Islamic authenticity while using “arguments from authority” to suppress other points-of-view?
Indeed, the world is getting much smaller now, and it won’t be long before these same issues, in their local flavours and colours, lie on our doorstep — if they aren’t already seeping into our collective consciousness now.
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