Jew World Order

But the attacks on US and other Western embassies this week have surely
demonstrated that the absence of understanding cuts both ways. The “Orientalists”
lambasted by Edward Said have their mirror image in the Middle East,
particularly among those who fail to grasp the basic characteristics of a
free society.

Mr Morsi, the first genuinely elected president of Egypt, appears to fall into
this category. When he told Mr Obama how angry he was over the YouTube film,
did he not realise that he was rebuking the wrong target? Mr Obama had
already made clear his revulsion over the video. No one has seriously
suggested that the US government had anything to do with this absurd
production. The President of the United States cannot be held responsible
for the thoughts, opinions and actions of 300 million Americans. Nor, in a
free society, can he ban his citizens from expressing themselves, even if
they sometimes do so in crass and offensive ways.

Mr Morsi, of all people, should have understood this. Egypt’s English-speaking
leader spent a large part of his life in the US: he holds a doctorate from
the University of Southern California and once lectured at an American
college. Two of his children were born in the US and are entitled to hold
American passports.

Yet Egypt’s government still chose to ask Mr Obama – and every other Western
leader – for something they could not possibly deliver. Hisham Qandil, the
country’s prime minister, told the BBC that Western nations should revise
their domestic laws to “ensure that insulting 1.5 billion people, their
belief in their Prophet, should not happen and if it happens, then people
should pay for what they do”.

In other words, Egypt not only wants to ban its own citizens from expressing
views that Muslims deem insulting, but its government thinks this
prohibition should go global. The suggestion appears to be that an
obligation to refrain from causing offence to Muslims should be extended to
everyone in the world, including the citizens of countries where freedom of
expression has always included the “freedom to offend”.

The author of that phrase, incidentally, was Sir Salman Rushdie, whose memoir
of his time in hiding is published this week. Back in September 1988, his
novel The Satanic Verses came out in Britain and soon encountered a
storm of protest.

Sir Salman often claims that the passages of his book that supposedly defamed
the Prophet were twisted, exaggerated and sometimes invented in order to
drum up Muslim outrage. Whatever the truth, the dying Supreme Leader of
Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a “fatwa”, urging good
Muslims to prove their faith by murdering the author.

Sir Salman duly spent most of the next decade in hiding, adopting the
pseudonym “Joseph Anton”, from the Christian names of Conrad and
Chekhov.

The appearance of his novel caused book-burning demonstrations to take place
on British streets for the first time in generations. Looking back, British
Muslims see the Rushdie controversy as the moment when their community came
together, discovered its collective identity, and began exerting political
influence.

Meanwhile, the anti-Rushdie demonstrations spread across the Muslim world; as
in today’s disturbances, US diplomatic premises were often targeted,
although America had nothing whatever to do with the book. In February 1989,
the US Information Centre in Pakistan’s capital was attacked by an
anti-Rushdie mob.

One possible conclusion is that nothing has changed since the appearance of The
Satanic Verses: the visceral reaction to the YouTube video shows that
Muslim nerves are as raw as ever and the opposition to genuine freedom of
expression just as deeply felt. But this would be too sweeping. Despite
everything, there are some reasons to believe that the gulf of understanding
might eventually close.

First, prominent British Muslims who once burnt The Satanic Verses have
subsequently changed their minds. Inayat Bunglawala, a 19-year-old
book-burner when the novel appeared, later wrote: “Our detractors had
been right. The freedom to offend is a necessary freedom.” Sir Salman
no longer lives in hiding; his knighthood, awarded in 2007, did not cause
the streets of this country to fill with protests.

Second, today’s protests might be taking place outside US embassies, but many
have little to do with America, still less the principle of freedom of
expression. All Muslim leaders quickly learn how to direct the anger of
their people away from themselves and towards Washington.

In Sudan, for example, President Omar al-Bashir is so unpopular that massive
protests against his regime have taken place in Khartoum. The situation is
reaching a point where he risks becoming the next victim of the Arab Spring.
So no surprise that Sudanese mobs have attacked the German, British and US
missions. Mr Bashir is conveniently allowing the crowds to vent their fury
on these targets, instead of on him.

Even in Egypt, Mr Morsi might be a pillar of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he
must avoid being outflanked by the more radical Salafist movement. Hence he
might have felt compelled to protest about the video directly to Mr Obama.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood has tied itself in knots over the embassy
demonstrations, alternately endorsing them and urging calm.

Ordinary Muslims understand these manoeuvres very well. Last week, a friend in
Tunisia told me that his country’s rabble-rousers had started an “auction”
where “everyone wants to show that they are a better Muslim than anyone
else”. He then added words that should be carved in marble: “My
Prophet would not worry about a video. He wouldn’t care about that. My
Prophet would care about the state of our societies. He would want us to be
developed, he would want us to be successful.”

Is the true face of Islam represented by the Cairo mob, or by the quiet wisdom
of my friend in Tunis? If his words prevail, the Muslim world will grow to
understand that Western countries can never abandon freedom of expression,
and that coexistence cannot be based on intimidation.

So the battles being fought outside Western embassies are also signals of a
wider struggle within Islam itself. The outcome hangs in the balance.