Asia Times Online


	February 28, 2002	atimes.com

Front

Alienation cuts both ways
By Emad Mekay

CAIRO - "Why do they hate us?" Last September, this question reverberated through US society and media as they pondered the horrific terrorist attacks attributed to Islamist extremists. In this ancient city, Arabs and Muslims ask the same question - only here, "they" refers to the West.

There is no lack of evidence, they say, that it is the West that hates Muslims, Arabs and Middle Easterners rather than the other way around.

"One way of finding out who hates who is simply by finding out who initiates those acts of hatred and for how long," says Anas Fodah, a journalist with bab.com, a popular Arab-language news and analysis site. "Take Samuel Huntington's book on the clash of civilizations," says Fodah. "Huntington started the provocative thought in the West and not here. Muslims did not fabricate the sheer thought nor did they subscribe to it."

Fodah also draws similar conclusions from the example of several Muslim and non-Muslim writers who composed anti-Muslim books and received a hero's welcome in Western capitals despite the anger of the Muslim world. Salman Rushdie, whose book Satanic Verses was deemed offensive to Muslim feelings in different parts of the world, was hailed for his literary conquest. Likewise, Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh and Egyptian writer Nasr Hamid Abuzeid questioned the divinity of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

Commentators here also recall that Nobel laureate V S Naipaul's Among the Believers, with its description - considered contentious here - of travels through Muslim societies, was praised by the right-wing US publication The New Republic, notorious here for its anti-Arab stances, as "the most notable work on contemporary Islam to have appeared in a very long time".

Dozens of publications and statements issued since September 11 have led many writers here to conclude that Western hostility to Muslims is now bare-faced and on the increase. "The vicious campaign against Islam in the Western media is becoming increasingly ferocious," writes prominent Egyptian poet Farouq Gewida in the widely circulated Egyptian daily al-Ahram. "It's even becoming ruder and ruder, starting with falsifying verses of the Koran on websites to poisonous pictures against Islam in the Western press."

Internet sites that originate in the West routinely make fun of the Koran, much to the dismay of even non-religious Muslims. In one recent example, a site swapped words from the Muslim holy book with swear words and presented itself as the true version of the 14-century-old book. Among incidents that are driving the message home that the West "harbors animosity to Muslims" is the recent decision by Malaysia and Bangladesh, among others, to ban an edition of Newsweek that displayed a picture of the Prophet Mohammed. Even at their most well-meant, depictions of prophets are considered idolatry and therefore unacceptable.

Adding insult to injury, many media commentators here have said, US media, in particular, are showing insensitivity to Islam and Arabs even as they shirk their duty to participate in a debate at home over the future of the US administration's self-proclaimed "war against terrorism". Commentators and the public alike have been flabbergasted at how, in their view, Western media trumpet fairness and accuracy even as they try to pass off white Westerners as experts on Islam and Muslim societies while ignoring scholars in the Muslim world who could give a more representative interpretation of Islam in general and the militant groups in particular.

Gewida says that on a more personal level, while many Muslims have had no problem giving their daughters Western names such as Cindy or Nancy, Muslim names such as Zainab, the name of the Prophet Mohammed's daughter, or Khadija never seem to be considered in Western families. "The Muslim man who lives by the riverside has called his daughter Mary and his son Mosa [Moses]," Gewida said. "This simple Muslim man, who never reads the Western press or listens to its poisonous calls against Islam, still respects other people's faiths."

Numerous individuals say daily - in interviews, overheard conversations, and letters to the media or websites - that they now perceive the hatred as emanating not only from Western media but also from ordinary people in the West. Usama Soltan, a doctoral student, says that when he enters chat rooms on the Internet, "I hear all sorts of vulgar language about us now. One day there was this guy and he wrote all sorts of f-- language about us in a chat room, things I can't describe."

It does not help that intellectuals and media commentators seen here as eminent in the United States issue statements and characterizations that come across as confrontational. They include Chris Matthews, of MSNBC television, Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis, and evangelist Franklin Graham. Lewis appears undaunted in holding aloft verses of the Koran and claiming these endorse violence against non-Muslims and maintains that terrorism is part of a long struggle between Islam and the West. Meanwhile, Graham blames Islam itself for violence and condemns it as "an evil and wicked religion".

"Anti-Western statements came in an isolated manner and from pariahs like [Osama] bin Laden and militant groups," says Fodah. "And even in these cases, the militants only condemned some American foreign policy actions, not their society. They wanted to enjoy the freedom in America and the West." The difference, according to Fodah, is that "in the West, the antagonism is more mainstream: the media, intellectuals, books and politicians. The real question is not who hates who. It is in fact why the West hates us so much."

(Inter Press Service)

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