A Clash of Culture and Religions

The Innocence of Muslims is a low-budget film made in North America. The only thing seen about the film is a short trailer found online, but it’s enough to stir up the Islamic world. It portrays a family of Egyptian Copts attacked by radical Islamists as the police stand by and do nothing; Muhammad is seen having relations with his wife and other women; and it describes Islam as a religion of hate.

Dissemination of these images has caused an outbreak of violence in the Islamic world with deadly consequences. The U.S. embassy was stormed in Benghazi a week and a half ago, leading to the death of a U.S. ambassador and three other officials. The deceased in the protests that followed in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia are already in the dozens. Western embassies are under close surveillance.

In the same breath, the publication in the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo of vignettes in which Muhammad is described graphically — something that Islam allegedly prohibits — has added fuel to the fire. As a result, the French government saw fit to close embassies, schools and cultural centers in 20 Arab countries to avoid being subjected to indiscriminate attacks. History repeats itself. In 1989, the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the Iranian leader Khomeini, after his novel The Satanic Verses was deemed blasphemous. In 2005, the publication of drawings of Mohammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten sparked another wave of protests in several Muslim countries…

In the underlining of these protests beats a misunderstanding and, above all, a clash of cultures and religions. Many Islamic extremists are unable to distinguish between an initiative of an individual and the country in which this initiative was produced. They load themselves with reasons to seek revenge by attacking national interests. That would be the misunderstanding, fueled by widespread anti-American sentiment in countries with a colonial past. This is the same place where the speech given three years ago by President Obama in Cairo heralded a new era of relations between the U.S. and Islam; it has since been disregarded. But the key clue to this is in the cultural clash between Western countries where freedom of expression is an inalienable right and states with a strong theocratic component.

A priori, the conflict is of bad result: secular states — such as France — which ended their former regime centuries ago to start building pluralistic and democratic societies can hardly be expected to relate with other states that are mixed with political and religious interests. And yet, both the increase of migration flows and the progress of electronic communications that support the globalized world with shrinking borders invite looking for ways of understanding for coexistence. Therefore, it is appropriate to applaud the conciliatory words of French President François Hollande, who on Friday rejected the discourse for the exclusion of extremist Le Pen. It is true that the history of the relationship between East and West is plagued — from the Crusades and even before — with disagreements. It’s also true that extremism progresses as well. But the fact remains that in the 21st century and without waiving any rights achieved, it is urgent to find solutions to this conflict.