Kenan Malik says the biggest myth that arose from the Rushdie affair was the idea that the only way to prevent violent confrontations with extreme Islamic fundamentalism is to restrict what people can and cannot say about each other. "It became accepted in the post-Rushdie world that it is morally wrong to give offence to other cultures," he writes, "and that in a plural society speech must necessarily be less free." Malik also thinks the role of the film in the violence is overplayed by the media:
It is true that Innocence of Muslims is a risibly crude, bigoted diatribe against Islam. But the idea that this obscure film that barely anyone had seen till this month is the source of worldwide violence is equally risible. As in the Rushdie affair, what we are seeing is a political power struggle cloaked in religious garb. In Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, the crisis is being fostered by hardline Islamists in an attempt to gain the political initiative. In recent elections hardline Islamists lost out to more mainstream factions. Just as the Ayatollah Khomeini tried to use the fatwa to turn the tables on his opponents, so the hardliners are today trying to do the same by orchestrating the violence over Innocence of Muslims, tapping into the deep well of anti-Western sentiment that exists in many of these countries. The film is almost incidental to this.Elsewhere, Husain Haqqani advances the view that 'Muslim Rage' is about politics, not religion:
The phenomenon of outrage over insults to Islam and its final prophet is a function of modern-era politics. It started during Western colonial rule, with Muslim politicians seeking issues to mobilize their constituents. Secular leaders focused on opposing foreign domination, and Islamists emerged to claim that Islam is not merely a religion but also a political ideology. Threats to the faith became a rallying cry for the Islamists, who sought wedge issues to define their political agenda. To this day, Islamists are often the ones who draw attention to otherwise obscure attacks on Islam and then use those attacks to muster popular support. The effort is often aided by Islamophobes hoping to create their own wedges by portraying Islam as a threat to Western civilization. Conservative and practicing Muslims who are not Islamists are caught in the middle, along with scholarly commentators on Islamic history and tradition who are not Islamophobes.In fact, of course, it's both asinine and parochial to say that it's either a political or religious issue, because the hear of the problem lies at the intersection of religion and politics. To be honest, I think the matter of trying to characterise the issue as a religious or political one is beside the point — something that we have a tendency to miss in these matters. And the ultimate point in this case is the one Malik puts forth: that we mustn't curtail free speech in an effort to appease fundamentalists. And that applies to every religion, by the way.
(Image: "Innocence of Muslims protesters in Cairo," via Newsweek.)