{"id":21566,"date":"2012-09-17T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=21566"},"modified":"2012-09-15T11:50:49","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T10:50:49","slug":"the-provocateurs-know-politics-and-religion-dont-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/09\/the-provocateurs-know-politics-and-religion-dont-mix\/","title":{"rendered":"The Provocateurs Know Politics and Religion Don’t Mix"},"content":{"rendered":"

It only takes a couple of loonies a few seconds to kick off a miniature war in the Muslim world.<\/em><\/p>\n

So another internet clever-clogs sets the Middle East on fire: Prophet cartoons, then Koranic book-burning, now a video of robed “terrorists” and a fake desert. The Western-Christian perpetrators then go into hiding (an essential requisite for publicity) while the innocent are asphyxiated, beheaded and otherwise done to death \u2013 outrageous Muslim revenge thus “proving” the racist claims of the trash peddlers that Islam is a violent religion.<\/p>\n

The provocateurs, of course, know that politics and religion don\u2019t mix in the Middle East. They are the same. Christopher Stevens, his diplomat colleagues in Benghazi, priests in Turkey and Africa, UN personnel in Afghanistan; they have all paid the price for those \u2018Christian priests\u2019, \u2018cartoonists\u2019, \u2018film-makers\u2019 and \u2018authors\u2019 \u2013 the inverted commas are necessary to mark a thin line between illusionists and the real thing \u2013 who knowingly choose to provoke 1.6 billion Muslims.<\/p>\n

When a Danish cartoon in a hitherto unknown newspaper drew a picture of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb in his turban, the Danish embassy in Beirut went up in flames. When a Texas pastor decided to \u2018sentence the Koran to death\u2019, the knives came out in Afghanistan \u2013 we are leaving aside the little matter of the \u2018accidental\u2019 burning of Koranic pages by US personnel in Bagram. And now a deliberately abusive film provokes the murder of one of the State Department\u2019s fairest diplomats.<\/p>\n

In many ways, it\u2019s familiar territory. In fifteenth century Spain, Christian cartoonists drew illustrations of the Prophet committing unspeakable acts. And \u2013 just so we don\u2019t think we have clean claws today \u2013 when a Paris cinema showed a film in which Christ made love to a woman, the picture-house was burned-down, one cinema-goer was killed, and the killer turned out to be a Christian.<\/p>\n

With the help of our wonderful new technology, however, it only needs a couple of loonies to kick off a miniature war in the Muslim world within seconds. I doubt if poor Christopher Stevens \u2013 a man who really understood the Arabs as many of his colleagues do not \u2013 had ever heard of the \u2018film\u2019 that unleashed the storming of the US consulate in Benghazi and his own death. It\u2019s one thing to witlessly claim that the US would go on a \u201ccrusade\u201d against al-Qaeda \u2013 thank you, George W. Bush \u2013 but another to insult, quite deliberately, an entire people. Racism of this kind stirs many a crazed heart.<\/p>\n

And has Al-Qaeda \u2013 defeated by the Arab revolutionaries who demanded dignity rather than a Bin Laden Caliphate across the Middle East \u2013 now decided to cash in on populist grievances to advance their Islamist cause? Libya\u2019s largely impotent government blames the Americans themselves for Stevens\u2019 killing \u2013 since the consulate should have been evacuated \u2013 and suggests that a Gaddafi clique was behind the attack. This is ridiculous. If the armed militia in Benghazi, calling itself the \u2018Islamic Law Supporters\u2019, are more than telephone-gunmen, then al-Qaida involvement has to be suspected.<\/p>\n

Ironically, there is room for a serious discussion among Muslims about, for example, a re-interpretation of the Koran; but Western provocation \u2013 and western, alas, it is \u2013 closes down such a narrative. Meanwhile, we beat our chests in favour of a \u2018free press\u2019. A New Zealand editor once proudly told me how his own newspaper had re-published the cartoon of the Prophet with a bomb-filled turban. But when I asked him if he planned to publish a cartoon of a Rabbi with a bomb on his head next time Israel invaded Lebanon, he hastily agreed with me that this would be anti-Semitic.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the rub, of course. Some things are off limits, and rightly so. Others have no limits at all. Several radio presenters asked me yesterday if the unrest in Cairo and Benghazi may have been timed to \u201ccoincide with 9\/11\u201d.\u00a0 It simply never occurred to them to ask if the video-clip provocateurs had chosen their<\/em> date-for-release to coincide with 9\/11.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East, based in Beirut.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So another internet clever-clogs sets the Middle East on fire: Prophet cartoons, then Koranic book-burning, now a video of robed “terrorists” and a fake desert. The Western-Christian perpetrators then go into hiding (an essential requisite for publicity) while the innocent are asphyxiated, beheaded and otherwise done to death \u2013 outrageous Muslim revenge thus “proving” the racist claims of the trash peddlers that Islam is a violent religion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}