I shall
be writing tomorrow specifically on the blasphemy business: the
very different way in which some cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad,
which first appeared in an obscure Danish newspaper, have been
received, East and West. As the result of a bold but isolated
publishing decision by the editors of Jyllands-Posten,
no Danish national, and perhaps no European, is now safe in a
Muslim country; and Danish and other products have ceased to be
sold.
As I write,
the temperature is still rising. I notice Muslim demonstrations
are still mostly in the planning stage, across Europe. In light
of the recent French rioting, and the timid French response, I
fear this may get out of hand. In the Arab world, protests are
still confined to “the usual suspects” -- the several
thousand who will always come out to provide a fresh “Muslim
anger” segment for the international media. The violence
in Gaza is also within the usual range, though the explicit targeting
of the European Union offices portends something new. But we have
yet to see how all this builds. My gut feeling -- albeit at a
distance -- is that the “fire this time” is greater
than previous apoplectic responses to e.g. the Satanic Verses,
the Abu Ghraib prison photos, or the Newsweek reports
from Guantanamo.
Not that the provocation
is greater. What we have instead is a wave that is building from
lesser waves. Each new provocation, each new breakthrough event,
such as the 9/11 hit, or the Hamas victory in the Palestinian
elections, adds to the height of what is actually becoming a single
wave.
What should be apparent
to every Western observer by now, is the ability of this wave,
served by modern technology, including world television and Internet,
to wash over national and regional boundaries in the Muslim world.
Those boundaries were drawn by European Imperialists in the last
two centuries, and have served as bulkheads or firewalls against
just this sort of catastrophe. They were partly meant for that
purpose, by a Europe that was once more vividly aware of the power
an aroused Islam could exert -- on a once-Christian continent
entirely surrounded by Islamic empires or sea, that several times
came close to being completely overrun.
It has become a cliché,
or if it has not it should have, that Europe forgets, but Islam
remembers. The popularity, and resonance, in the Arab world, of
declarations from various “Islamists”, about recovering
Andalusia and fighting the Crusaders, is not something we can
dismiss as quaint. And those who have lost their religious convictions,
are poorly placed to judge the power of religion over the power
of nation or place. The European invention of nationalism was,
to a large extent, a project to create bulwarks or firewalls within
Europe itself, against the spread of what we had seen in the Thirty
Years’ War. One might almost say it succeeded too well in
taming religious fervour -- so that now Europe is defenceless
against any fervour from outside.
So much more to say
on this, but let me cut to the chase. While I think President
Bush’s doctrine of spreading democracy in the Middle East
was worthy and intelligent, and while I think we must not give
up on it, the doctrine remains inchoate. We have not yet answered
the, “And then what?”
Our enemy -- fanatical
Islam -- has shown itself adaptable to Western military tactics.
For instance, the development of a new species of booby-traps,
or “IED”s in Iraq, as a low-cost way of randomly killing
Iraqis and Americans alike, and thus sabotaging Iraq’s recovery,
is a clever development from the too-costly methods of car bombs
and “suicide-martyrs”. As the Pentagon keeps explaining,
it is a mistake to think the other side is incapable of adjusting
its tactics, as we adjust ours.
That enemy is now
adapting to the tactic of democracy. Even in Iraq, he takes up
the challenge, to win elections instead of merely sabotaging them.
And he sees a huge possibility in this: to link together disparate
national Islamist movements into a pan-Islamic popular front --
that may itself eventually overwhelm the bulwarks and firewalls
of European Imperialism. Like multiple hijacked airliners, a modern
Western device can be put at the service of an ancient Islamic
cause.
The wave of which
I spoke above may prove indistinguishable from this wave. What
I fear may hit us in due course might be awkwardly called, “the
new democratic pan-Islamism".
Copyright
2006 Ottawa Citizen
