Protesters in Peshawar, Pakistan condemned the United States and the anti-Muslim film Innocence of Muslims on Friday, September 14, 2012. (Photo: Reuters/ Fayaz Aziz)
Protests over the vile racist film Innocence of Muslims that began outside U.S. diplomatic institutions in Egypt and Libya have spread across the world, from Bangladesh and India to Iran, Iraq and Morocco.
The mainstream media in the U.S., from Fox News to National Public Radio, have framed these protests through the simplistic lens of “anti-American violence in the Muslim world.” This framing communicates an entire world view that is taken for granted.
First, it discredits protest against the U.S. by painting the demonstrators as violent. This focus on the violence and on the sensational allows the media to conveniently skip over the complex reasons why people in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa might be angry with the U.S.
This particular racist film–which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, a pedophile, a bumbling idiot, and a bloodthirsty fanatic and anti-Semite–is the tip of the iceberg. It has become a symbol of the disrespect with which the U.S. holds people in Muslim-majority countries, and it has brought to the fore deep-seated grievances over how the U.S. conducts itself in the Middle East and elsewhere. Yet this complexity is left out in favor of simplistic explanations and caricatures.
Second, by using the term “Muslim world,” the media invite us to look at people in Muslim-majority societies primarily through the lens of religion. While sections of the demonstrators are there to express outrage at the film, the focus on Islamist involvement in the protests to the exclusion of other voices casts this as a religious rather than a political confrontation. Thus, the protesters are presented not as political actors, but religious zealots.
Third, what follows from this is that the U.S. is an innocent victim–a misunderstood champion of democratic rights, secularism and free speech under attack from the irrational fanaticism that we have come to expect from “those Muslims.”
In short, what is a political clash is turned instead into a cultural conflict and the “clash of civilizations” between the secular West and the religious and backward “Muslim world.”
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Speaking about the Libya attacks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented: “I ask myself, how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?”
Fully 11 years after the events of 9/11, the same question is being asked about why people in the Middle East might be angry with the U.S., and the same ridiculous explanations are on offer–it is a clash of values, a clash of civilizations.
In 2001, George Bush explained:
“They hate…a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”
A few days ago, Clinton said: “All over the world, every day, America’s diplomats and development experts risk their lives in the service of our country and our values, because they believe that the United States must be a force for peace and progress in the world, that these aspirations are worth striving and sacrificing for. Alongside our men and women in uniform, they represent the best traditions of a bold and generous nation.”
The difference between the two statements, it seems, is that the “clash of civilization” rhetoric has developed in these 11 years from a supposed hatred of our freedoms right here to a hatred of our soldiers and diplomats over there.
What has also changed is that the “self-appointed leaders” Bush refers to have faced challenges from the uprisings that began in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. U.S.-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt were swept from power by people’s movements and a reluctant U.S. went along with the changes, backing counter-revolutionary forces in an attempt to control the outcome.
You wouldn’t know that to hear the new “buyer’s remorse” for alleged U.S. support of the “Arab Spring.” The protests today are being presented as the inevitable outcome of an unruly people when the iron hand of the dictator has been removed. The logic of course is that “some people are just not ready for democracy.”
At first, Clinton, in an effort to win Arab public opinion, said that the Libya attacks were the work of “a small and savage” group, and that Libyans in general are good. The familiar lines were redrawn between “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims,” and a slew of “good Muslims” were trotted out on television to sing praises to the U.S. effort to “bring democracy” to the “Muslim world,” and to apologize for the acts of the fundamentalists.
The formula is so predictable it might as well be a soap opera.
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The second episode of the soap opera focused on distancing the film Innocence of Muslims from overall U.S. values. Hillary Clinton declared: “The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message.”
The White House then asked Google, the owner of YouTube, to “review” its posting of the film. The assumption here is that when Muslims watch such caricatures of their religion, they leap up like crazed fanatics and go out and kill people and destroy property. After all, they are not civilized enough to appreciate our values of free speech.
So what begins with a focus on “bad Muslim” and “savages” then becomes generalized to the whole childlike population that must be protected from themselves. As the poet Rudyard Kipling put it over a century ago, the colonized is “half devil, half child.” The “half child” must be taught to appreciate our civilized values.
As the liberal commentator E J. Dionne put it on NPR:
“I think this situation is particularly complicated for our country because we believe both in free speech, even for vile speech, but we also believe in religious toleration and respect for the faiths and non-faith of others. And I think we have a problem because a lot of people in Muslim countries aren’t used to a government that doesn’t have to approve all speech.”
What gets omitted from this picture is that Innocence of Muslims is a product of the far right in the U.S. It is not an anomaly in an otherwise secular and tolerant nation. Rather, it joins a slew of similar films and other propaganda–such as the Third Jihad, which was shown to NYPD recruits as part of their training–produced by a well-funded Islamophobic network.
The main producer of the film, Steve Klein, is an anti-Muslim bigot who, as Max Blumental writes, emerged from the same axis of Islamophobia that produced Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist responsible for a mass murder that cost 77 lives. There is a well-funded international network of anti-Muslim groups that are just as reactionary as the most hardline Islamic fundamentalists.
In the U.S., the Islamophobic network attacked mosques and incited fear and hatred. Just last month, a mosque in Joplin, Mo., was burned to the ground, and six Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wis., were killed by a neo-Nazi. Since 2010, there has been a 50 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes.
The far right everywhere has a proclivity to burn things down and kill people, it seems–but don’t expect to see this portrayed in the mainstream media. While there will be continued reporting on the shady dealings of the people involved in the production of this anti-Muslim film, we are unlikely to see systematic coverage of the far right in the U.S., much less a reference to these vile people as “savages.”
That would upset the soap-opera formula, because then the land of liberty, free speech, democracy and apple pie would be just as complex a society as Muslim-majority countries where a range of political attitudes occupy the spectrum.
It would mean admitting that there are extremists right here who stand for more or less the same things that the Islamic fundamentalists stand for. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that there are over 1,000 far-right hate groups in the U.S.
But the protests in the Middle East and North Africa since the Libya incident should not be reduced to a “clash of fundamentalisms” either. It is not simply the U.S. far right provoking the Islamist far right to respond. Rather, thousands who have come out to demonstrate against U.S. embassies and diplomatic missions in the region are expressing their frustration against the part the U.S. government has played in propping up counter-revolutionary forces in the region.
When the Arab uprisings began in late 2010 and early 2011, the U.S. believed that its dictator ally in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, would hold on to power. The Obama administration didn’t take a position against Mubarak–in fact, it even stood by him. After the first rounds of protests, Clinton emphasized the need for an “orderly” and “peaceful” transition”–in other words, time for the U.S. to find a suitable pro-U.S. replacement for Mubarak.
While the Obama administration rhetorically welcomed the “Arab Spring,” the strategy was to control the outcome of the uprisings so that the example of Tunisia and Egypt, and the model of mass uprising for social change, would be limited to the spring of 2011.
The U.S. has consequently supported the forces of counter-revolution. In 2011, the U.S. sent three shipments of weapons to the Egyptian military that were used to lethally attack protestors. It has also stood by the counter-revolutionary efforts of its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet is headquartered, Saudi troops were brought in to drench the uprising in blood–and the U.S. turned a blind eye.
This is not the first time the U.S. has played such a role. In the 1950s, workers’ struggles in Saudi Arabia were defeated by the Saudi monarchy with the help of the American oil company ARAMCO. A “free princes” movement to bring about very rudimentary democratic reforms in that country was similarly squelched with U.S. assistance.
Democracy and oil don’t go together as far as the U.S. elite is concerned–as the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup to depose the democratically elected Iranian head of state Mohammed Mossadegh shows.
Could this history of U.S. involvement be behind the anger and protests that have swept the region? Such explanations are hard to find in the mainstream media. While the New York Times admitted that the “broadening of the protests appeared to reflect a pent-up resentment of Western powers in general” in a front-page story on September 15, the images that cover more than half the page are of angry bearded Muslim men, fire and ashes, and burning U.S. flags.
Reminiscent of the coverage of the 1979 Iranian revolution, political actors with legitimate grievances are reduced to angry Islamic mobs.
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Episode three of the unfolding soap involved an attempt to control the spread of protests. The U.S. sent troops to Yemen and Sudan, with Clinton stating, “The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob,” distancing the protesters from the rest of the population who are to be “rescued” by the U.S.
She also called on the “good Muslims” to act. As she put it, “Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts.” What it means to be “reasonable” is to shut up and fall in line behind the U.S.
Perhaps she misses Mubarak, whom she has referred to in the past as a “family friend,” and who would have known how to use ruthless violence and torture to subdue political dissent.
Also absent from the mainstream media discussion is the part played by the U.S. in funding, arming and training Islamists during the Cold War. The Holy Warriors who fought the U.S. proxy war against the USSR in the 1980s were assembled and trained by the CIA and Pakistani ISI. The key recruiter to the Afghan war was none other than Osama bin Laden, a valued CIA asset, who would go on to form al-Qaeda.
Yet there is nary a peep about the part played by the U.S. in strengthening these forces.
Eleven years after 9/11, the media are still asking the same question: Why do they hate us? And the same tired answer is being provided, but this time by the liberal imperialists wielding the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric with perhaps greater skill than their neocon predecessors.
The hysterical fear monger has not really changed. The message no less primitive.
Here on 9/13 we have Netanyahu on national US TV with bizarre rhetoric on taking out Arafat and his kindergarten terrorist camps and the Islamic Nuclear threat to Americans.
link to youtube.com
It is nice to get an Anti-American far Left perspective on the situation. One that projects it’s own grievances upon the Third World “Other,” and creates a mythological Third World in order to ally with it against the West. A self hating Westerner, keen to see the destruction of his own, and usher in the Utopian Vision based upon his/her own delusions of reality.
The secularists and communists didnt fair well in Iran nor the Arab Spring. These folks reject everything you stand for, except your hatred of Western Civilization, but that is enough, because the Soviet Union fell and along with it many a communist client state. So all you are left with is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The Red-Green Alliance is born…as Islam is the Anti-Western movement de jour. Driven by hate to ally with other haters against those you mutually hate. Pretty much sums up domestic Leftwing politics as well.
Bollocks. I’m an atheist and I reject everyone’s invisible buddy, but when you always point out the outrages of one side but ignore your own, you rightfully lose credibility.
People have a right to be angry when their oppressors are supported and kept in place by the supposed lovers of freedom. We are still locked into the my god can kick your god’s assdynamic which underlies the our country is the greatest as evidenced by how rich we are mindset. It’s like a secular prosperity gospel. When we quit basing our moral standards on a sliding scale, we can truly speak from a moral high ground about the backwards practices of others.
It can’t come a moment too soon, as far as I’m concerned.
Sorry Lance, one does not have to be pure as the driven snow to criticize “Others.” The perfect is the enemy of the good.
You need to support the good but imperfect to prevail….as that will advance goodness….if not perfection. (Perfection of Man is fraught with evil which is why Utopias are always Dystopias and mostly of the egregious human rights violating kind).
Just as an example, supporting the USA and the British Empire over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in WW2.
You need to do some soul searching.
Your signal to noise ratio is such that it’s a little difficult to distill meaningful content.
Does the Zionist Utopia qualify as a Dystopia of the egregious human rights violating kind?
Must we turn a blind eye to Palestinian children and other Gazan civilians being incinerated with white phosphorus because their society is not perfect?
Others have pretty much identified you as a troll before I caught on. Seems you even have a bit of a troll chorus.
I am willing to be “hated” for rejecting the extremist factions of anyone’s sectarian fanatics. However, when their other complaints about hypocrisy are legitimate, that is worth examining. If we (our nation) does so in good faith, it may someday help lay the groundwork for greater understanding, coexistence, and eventual cooperation. To make a blanket assertion that their ways (Muslims/Arabs) are less than civilized, again ignores the less than civilized ways that the West behaves and gets away with.
Catch-22 means people have the right to do anything to you which you cannot prevent them from doing to you.
We’ve been living by that standard for some time.
Commies went to south in same time when Soviet Union did so. Maybe some other explanation Escape ? Try common human rights. Yes, no ?
Yes, the communist countries largely collapsed, so the scattered remnants of far Leftists, sticking to their Maoist Third World as proletariat framework, latched onto the uppity Islamics as Anti-Imperialists against the evil Judeo-European Christendom crusader imperialist oppressors.
Fairly obvious.
Ill leave you with some Daniel Patrick Moynihan…
“The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.”
― Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The Judeo-Christian democracies are the places where the most complaints about human rights are made, because of their open democratic societies and institutions. That isnt to say that they are perfect, far from it, or that many of those complaints arent valid. What it means is that if you are really concerned about gross abuses of human rights, the best place to start isnt in Judeo-Christian countries…but rather societies that are less free and open, where to complain of human rights violatioins makes ones human rights highly likely to be violated by the powers that be. ie Islamdom.
Here is some DPM for LanceThruster….
“Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don’t. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.”
― Daniel Patrick Moynihan
A self hating Westerner, keen to see the destruction of his own…..your hatred of Western Civilization…Driven by hate to ally with other haters against those you mutually hate…. Pretty much sums up domestic Leftwing politics
the accusation of hatred crutch is so typical and boring. is that all you got?
ad hominem bla bla bla yawn.
Speaking for myself, you’re pretty wide of the mark.
“A self hating Westerner, keen to see the destruction of his own, and usher in the Utopian Vision based upon his/her own delusions of reality. “….Escape
You should be nicer to the far left……when your time comes they are the ones likely to be more merciful to you the rest of America will be.
People like me who are neither far left nor far right are “your” real problem.
No, the far Left is my real problem, being a Classically Liberal Christian of European Dissent. They seek me and mine’s destruction.
I wont be looking for mercy in the gulags and the re=education camps that invariably follow far Left governance. And Jews should have learned their lesson in that regard as well, Russia and Nazi Germany.
Ooops! That should be descent not dissent. Ha! Ha!
“… A self hating Westerner, keen to see the destruction of his own, and usher in the Utopian Vision based upon his/her own delusions of reality…”
Garshk. Is that Annie, or Phil? They sound pretty dangerous. Is it safe to be here?
Escape,
I always wondered why some Western liberals seem to only support (or find true authenticity in) non-western conservatives. I am also thinking of the MPAC list of non-degreed bigots claiming expertise in Islam that Alex Kane presented yesterday included on which (in addition to real bigots) is Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Jasser’s position on the mosque is the same as progressives on the role of the church — out of government and bedrooms. That is to say liberal. His group is far to the left of MPAC.
Its also amazing to me that the same people with a hair trigger sensitivity to Israel firsters live and thrive apparently in a borderless cosmopolis with global citizenship and you dare not be a bigot to ask why they have chosen to work and live in the US or UK, and what their loyalties are to that country.
And then there is Max Blumenthal on Iran’s Press TV talking about how awful American conservatives are (which they indeed may be).
Ever hear a Western far Leftist moan and whine about racist Japanese immigration policy?
Me neither.
Ive heard Western Leftists absolutely giddy in describing Stone Age tribes in the Amazon, lauding the wisdom of the elders, and how wonderful their culture is….and in the next breath berating a backwoods fconservative hick from Alaska as an uncultured neanderthal.
It is a self loathing of Western Civilization, European Christendom, driven by a deep sense of guilt and a desire for absolution from that collective guilt. By rejecting one’s own culture and embracing all “Others” one seeks absolution and atonement. Instead of promoting one’s own culture, they seek to subvert and suppress it and promote all “Other” cultures via Multiculturalism and Diversity Promotion, mass indiscriminate immigration of all “Others,” the more Third World, backwards, failed and alien(even hostile) the better to prove their rejection of self….like a form of self flagellation.
Im reminded of the woman who went to Haiti and was raped…probably the perfect example of this phenomenon…
We are not your weapons – we are women
April 19, 2010
By Amanda Kijera, civic journalist and activist in Haiti
link to race-talk.org
Two weeks ago, on a Monday morning, I started to write what I thought was a very clever editorial about violence against women in Haiti. The case, I believed, was being overstated by women’s organizations in need of additional resources. Ever committed to preserving the dignity of Black men in a world which constantly stereotypes them as violent savages, I viewed this writing as yet one more opportunity to fight “the man” on behalf of my brothers. That night, before I could finish the piece, I was held on a rooftop in Haiti and raped repeatedly by one of the very men who I had spent the bulk of my life advocating for.
It hurt. The experience was almost more than I could bear. I begged him to stop. Afraid he would kill me, I pleaded with him to honor my commitment to Haiti, to him as a brother in the mutual struggle for an end to our common oppression, but to no avail. He didn’t care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. He told me to shut up, and then slapped me in the face. Overpowered, I gave up fighting halfway through the night.
snip…
Truly, I have witnessed as a journalist and human rights advocate the many injustices inflicted upon Black men in this world. The pain, trauma and rage born of exploitation are terrors that I have grappled with every day of my life. They make one want to strike back, to fight rabidly for what is left of their personal dignity in the wake of such things. Black men have every right to the anger they feel in response to their position in the global hierarchy, but their anger is misdirected.
Women are not the source of their oppression; oppressive policies and the as-yet unaddressed white patriarchy which still dominates the global stage are. Because women–and particularly women of color–are forced to bear the brunt of the Black male response to the Black male plight, the international community and those nations who have benefitted from the oppression of colonized peoples have a responsibility to provide women with the protection that they need.
snip…
I went to Haiti after the earthquake to empower Haitians to self-sufficiency. I went to remind them of the many great contributions that Afro-descendants have made to this world, and of their amazing resilience and strength as a people. Not once did I envision myself becoming a receptacle for a Black man’s rage at the white world, but that is what I became. While I take issue with my brother’s behavior, I’m grateful for the experience. It woke me up, made me understand on a deeper level the terror that my sisters deal with daily. This in hand, I feel comfortable in speaking for Haitian women, and for myself, in saying that we will not be your pawns, racially, politically, economically or otherwise.
————-
Don’t give up your day job EV, you’re a crap armchair psychologist.
Being opposed to colonialism doesn’t mean you don’t understand and appreciate the achievements of western civilisation, but it does means you stop rejecting other cultures as inferior and without possible wisdom. And you can also see the limits and hypocrisy of much western civilisation.
A little critical thinking. Maybe that’s too much for you?
“Im reminded of the woman who went to Haiti and was raped…probably the perfect example of this phenomenon…”
EV has a point. We need to spend more time promoting our rape-free culture. Who knows, we might convince those savage, backward cultures to give up rape.
“It is a self loathing of Western Civilization, European Christendom, driven by a deep sense of guilt and a desire for absolution from that collective guilt.”
I’m Jewish and I’d like nothing more than to see the Pope flipping burgers at Steak ‘n Shake (He can still wear the hat if he wants). Question: Does that make me a self-hating westerner.
No, but possibly and Anti-Catholic bigot.
andrew r says: “…I’m Jewish and I’d like nothing more than to see the Pope flipping burgers at Steak ‘n Shake (He can still wear the hat if he wants)…”
Does this bear any resemblance to having a desire to see Jews shoveling snow?
I have as much respect for any denomination as any other, but when the clergy starts getting hierarchical it’s time for the clerics to get a real job . Plus his predecessor started the Crusades.
What do you object to with regards to heirarchies?
Not surprised you would be down on the Crusades, seems anybody defending themselves from Muslim invaders arent held in high regard by yourself.
Well, my problem with the Crusades isn’t that so much as the Crusaders relentlessly massacred civilians. I’m guessing if Himmler gassed and burned Muslims as well as Jews you’d view the Holocaust as a defense against Muslim invaders.
“Im reminded of the woman who went to Haiti and was raped…probably the perfect example of this phenomenon…”
Anyway, are you suggesting here that Amanda Kijera, now that she’s been raped by a Haitian, needs to see black men for the neanderthal rapists they are?
No, Im saying that she needs to quit blaming others (white Europeans) for the cultural failures of Haitians. Absolving black Haitians of moral agency and individual responsiblity and transferring blame for those failures to others, is self defeating and poisonous, because it absolves Haitians of the responsibility to change their culture and behavior….because it isnt their culture and behavior that is the problem…according to Amanda Kijera the Malcolm X scholar, but whitey’s oppression.
We can see the foolishness of that by looking at other peoples that were under imperial dominion of European Christians, and how they have prospered since liberation. Blaming white European Christians for your woes, 150 years after your liberation isnt cutting it.
Only the Haitians can change their ways and embrace cultural norms that lead to success, instead of abject poverty and failure.
So I see that critical thinking (and even basic reading comprehension) really is beyond you.
Amanda Kijera does not blame other people for the actions of her rapists and she does not absolve them of moral agency. Having read the whole article I can see why you only quoted parts of it.
Here is Amanda’s commentary on the prescriptions for producing a successful Haitian culture…
“The United Nations, western women’s organizations and the Haitian government must immediately provide women in Haiti with the funding that they need to build domestic violence and rape crisis centers. Stop dividing Black families by distributing solely to women, which only exaggerates male resentment and frustration in Haiti. Provide both women and men with job training programs that would allow for self-sufficiency as opposed to continued dependency on whites. Lastly, admit that the issue of racial integration might still need addressing on an international level, and then find a way to address it!”
……
This woman apparently spent years as a Malcom X scholar and missed his core message.
Who, pray tell, are the other voices that are being excluded? Yes we know they are the left wing zealots who moan about American imperialism, while they sit smugly in their American homes. The lefties support the Islamists because they have a common enemy.
David Horowitz has written a book about this marriage of convenience. Read ‘Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And The American Left’ to understand better.
As the author says, most people find a way to present a false image of reality to suit their own ends. Only, to most normal people, she is the perpetrator here.
These demonstrations are about religion and they are violent. The Cartoon Crisis, The Teddy Bear Mohammed and now the Movie Madness prove it.
Secondly, she immediately shows herself to be absurd by calling the movie racist when it is about religion not race and appears to have been made by someone from the middle east, himself. This is a tired misuse of the word racist that no one in his right mind falls for anymore.
Something fantastic has happened though which hopefully contradicts our previous image of these riot-ridden communities.
The AP reports that non-crazy Libyans have stormed an Islamist militia building and burned it to the ground to protest the US ambassador’s murder.
Here’s a link: link to bit.ly
ya ‘all see sarah silverman
Voter ID Laws Take Aim At College-Student Voters
not a fan …but very good for sarah
link to huffingtonpost.com