What
have we learned from “The Innocence of Muslims”? As so often, too much and too little. We’ve learned that Muslims get enraged
when Muhammad is ridiculed, but they don’t get too enraged even though their
rage is justified. Just not so
much by the ridicule of the Prophet of Islam as by the terrible economic and
political conditions in which they live or possibly by American policies of
bombing, one-sidedly supporting Israel, or using drones to kill suspected
terrorists. Or possibly Western
Islamophobia. It's a little hard to follow everything we've learned.
We’ve
also learned that the movie is highly offensive, semi-pornographic, and has
very poor production values.
Also that, until two weeks ago, the total number of people who had ever
seen it numbered less than 100.
Oh, and that it wasn’t made by Israeli or American Jews but by five
American and Egyptian Christians.
One
thing we haven’t heard very much about, at least in the US and Europe, is the
context within which the attack on the US Embassy occurred. Or its possible implications for the
future of political life. And with
good reason: if we heard more about
the context and the implications we’d also have to dispense with “the Muslims”,
“the Arabs”, and “the West” and focus a bit more sharply on particular people,
groups, and interests. And
surprisingly enough despite decades of intense discussion about Orientalism,
essentialism, and the need for specificity as soon as there’s violence, the
default mode is airy generalities and broad simplifications. I’m going to write about Egypt, not
Libya. Some day I’ll explain why
this limitation is an important theoretical position, but this isn’t the day.
So,
how exactly did it come to pass that a movie of whose very existence the world
was innocent until three weeks ago became the cause of an attack on the US
Embassy in Egypt (as well as more tragic events in Libya which—as I said—I’m not
in a position to discuss)? Unlike
Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses”, this wasn’t the arrival of a
widely anticipated piece of artistic expression and unlike the Danish cartoons
it didn’t appear in broad daylight, unbidden perhaps, on the doorstep or at the
local tobacconist’s shop. No, you
really had to go out of your way to search for this. Far out of your way.
Google is of course very helpful and if you do search for “Muhammad” and
“child molester” it will return something like 85,000 items but it probably
wouldn’t have returned this film before two weeks ago.
So
who appears to have gone out of their way? An Egyptian Islamist preacher, Khalid Abdallah who brought
it up on his television channel “al-Nas” is one. Abdallah hails from the far
reaches of the Salafi world which expresses more than the common prejudice
against Christians that many Egyptian Muslims share without thinking about it
very much. In Abdallah’s world
Christians, a minority of about 10 percent in Egypt, are a threat to the Muslim
majority: if not kept in their
place they will uproot Islam itself.
Abdallah was not alone in exploiting the existence of the previously
unknown trailer. Within days other
television shaykhs had joined in.
Wagdi Ghoneim devoted an hour to the film which is available on You-Tube
after its connection to a handful of Egyptian and American Christians had
become clear. Beginning with an
invocation to “the pigs of the Coptic diaspora” his intervention rapidly
descended further downhill.
Another religious personality,
For
Ghoneim, as for most Egyptians, the revolution has been at once liberating and
threatening. It’s liberating
because it gave them the possibility of voicing their thoughts without anywhere
near as much censorship as in the past.
But it’s also threatening because other people also now have the same possibilities. And one of the areas that Egyptians
have been thinking about a lot and will be thinking about more in the days to
come is very broadly described as the role of Islam and politics. Very specifically how will the new
constitution define the role of Islam in relation to law, what institutions (if
any) will it endow with the right of defining Islam for the state, and what
kinds of policies will governments adopt as they must implement what will also
be a constitutional provision mandating the equality of Egyptians regardless of
religion (among other enumerated categories)?
And
this brings us back to Ghoneim’s fears.
Since January 2011 Egypt’s Christians have been remarkably
assertive. Many individuals either
ignored or broke with their own church hierarchy to demonstrate in the early
days. In May there were some
large, sustained and public demonstrations by Christians in Maspero, a
neighborhood just to the north of Tahrir Square demanding equality. In October, an armored personnel
carrier deployed to break up a protest in that same locale crushed a young
activist and a Christian, Mina Daniel, to death. Many younger Muslim activists who had known Daniel from the
demonstrations in Tahrir were not only appalled but were adamant that he, as
much as Khaled Said, was a martyr of the revolution. Significant media coverage, moreover, attended a meeting
between the mother of Khaled Said and of Mina Daniel that was arranged after
his death. Innocent (that word
again!) as such a claim might seem, it is extremely contentious. For people like Ghoneim, it threatens
their control over the meaning of a very basic and highly charged concept. If Daniel, Said, and other victims of
repression were all martyrs—without regard to their faith—then the word assumes
a markedly secular and political meaning rather than a religious one.
There have also been some
terrifying and spectacular acts of violence against Christian communities since
January 2011. The most recent one
occurred at the beginning of August in the village of Dahshur when a fight
between a Christian tailor and one of his Muslim clients escalated into
communal violence and the entire Christian community fled. It is not clear exactly what the impact of these acts of mass
violence is on the larger Egyptian political landscape. For many (including President
Morsi whose comments on the events echoed what former President Hosny Mubarak
said about earlier outbreaks of violence in the past) they are simply
individual conflicts that spiral out of control. For others they reflect the powerful emotions of the poor,
the illiterate, and the rural or semi-rural population. But for some people (Muslims as well as
Christians) they are disturbing on their own account and for what they show about
the inability of the Egyptian government to promote or even understand what
real equality of citizenship will mean.
They have also drawn the attention of the outside world in a powerful
and unpleasant way to one aspect of contemporary Egyptian reality that its
leaders would prefer to avoid.
Also
in the background of the conflict over “The Innocence of Muslims” is an ongoing
debate in Egypt about movies, movie stars, and the arts more generally. As in the US, politicians associated with religious and
conservative causes view the film industry and the arts generally as a socially
and politically liberal elite. Just as the demonstrations over the trailer were
beginning, Shaykh Amgad Ghanim published an article in which he denounced
artists as people who think of themselves as above the law and who face no
restraint or censorship whatsoever.
This will, of course, come
as a shock to authors, directors, and others whose works have been prevented
from appearing. This would include the late Nobel-prize
winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz whose “Children of Gebelawi” was serialized in
1959 but then banned from publication in book form (although an imported
Lebanese printing was sold).
Artists, including authors and
film-makers, are themselves concerned that a government dominated by the Muslim
Brothers will be more inclined to censor or otherwise restrict creative
activity than the late-stage Mubarak regime. A recent unsatisfactory meeting between President Morsi and
a group of artists did not assuage feelings on either side and their have been
some pointed attacks on movie-makers recently. These include an earlier campaign against Basma, a popular
actress associated with the left whose maternal grandfather, Youssef Darwish,
was a well-known communist leader and a Jewish convert to Islam and who
recently married the professor and liberal politician, Amr Hamzawi. The popular comedic actor, Adel Imam,
was charged with insulting religion although ultimately vindicated on appeal
and there is currently a series of attacks on Ilham Shahine, a popular
actress. Because both Shahine and
Imam supported Mubarak against the protests in early 2011 they face significant
political criticism but the legal proceedings against Imam and the assaults on
Shahine’s reputation are of a very different character.
Even if we were to accept, as I
shall shortly argue we should not, that all Muslim Egyptians were enraged to
the point of violence not by the film but by mere knowledge that it existed,
why should Abdellah and Ghoneim have spent so much time bringing the matter to
their attention now?
The answer, I think, lies in
another extremely contentious issue that is about to be brought up for public
debate and decision: the language
of the new constitution. A
committee of 100, of whom a majority politically are from the MB and various
Salafi political but which includes judges, legal scholars and a handful of
well-known political figures, is about to present the draft of a new
constitution. The new constitution
will define the powers of the various branches of government, the rights of
citizens, and the principles of governance of the second republic. The Salafi and MB delegates are
committed to writing their particular (and not completely identical) visions of
Islam into the constitution.
While drafts of various portions of
the new constitution have been leaked on occasion, the committee has refrained
either from publicizing its working document or the discussions that its
members are having with each other or with members of the public they invite to
various sub-committee meetings.
Thus, no one now knows what the language of the new document will be nor
does the committee have any idea what a broad range of Egyptians might think
about it. What the committee
intends obviously is to present the Egyptian people with a document that can be
briefly discussed (perhaps for 6 weeks) but which will then be voted up or down
in a referendum. As a consequence
the constitution itself will not emerge from a national public dialogue but in
all likelihood will simply be accepted as given.
Although it is common to think that
the major concern of the Islamists is the language of the second article of the
old constitution, making the principles of Islamic sharia the source of
legislation, their understanding of Islam, the nature of governance, and the
relationship between society and the state affects many articles of the new
constitution. One such issue is
the legitimacy of religious pluralism in Egypt beyond Sunni Islam, Christianity
and a nod in the direction of Judaism.
It is quite possible that the new constitution will eliminate the
possibility of public sites for worship for Bahai’s, Shi’i Muslims, and any who
are not monotheists. A related
issue is whether the new constitution will more clearly define the personal
status of Egyptians (marriage, divorce, inheritance) as a matter of religious
law. Another issue is whether the
new constitution will assert the primacy of family obligations for women.
Another important issue will be
freedom of speech. Insulting the
president is, for example, a crime.
President Morsi recently and to widespread acclaim eliminated preventive
detention in this area but he did not de-criminalize it. Anyone convicted of insulting the
president can still be imprisoned.
Egyptian law also criminalizes a variety of other forms of expression,
including several vaguely defined acts such as “maligning religion” and
“inciting religious disorder” (which need not include violence). These laws are not equally applied so
that Khaled Abdellah’s destruction of a Bible in front of the US Embassy did
not provoke the same legal (or political or social) response as would the
destruction of a Quran. That
Abdellah has recently been charged with the crime of religious defamation may
at least have the virtue of proposing equality of treatment but it still leaves
open how restrictive the constitutional and statutory language about speech
will be.
It is hard to avoid noticing that
the protests have had a significant impact on Egypt itself. The draft language of the constitution
leaked in mid-August had considerably stronger limitations on censorship and
restriction of publication than the drafts that appeared in mid-September after
the protests.
But these laws themselves, which
are enabled by self-limiting language of the relevant constitutional
provisions, are also political tools.
One could argue endlessly their relationship to the Islamic sharia of
the past, but their connection to political censorship in the present and the
use of the legal system to threaten opponents of the Islamist current are more
clear.
The Islamist movements have often
claimed that Islam is under threat in Egypt. One way they have sought to reinforce their vision of Islam
in society is empowering the Azhar.
Islamist movements, including the MB and the Salafis, have proposed
freeing the Azhar from state control, and allowing its senior religious
professors to elect the head of the vast religious and educational
establishment that is also “the Azhar.”
This has gone hand in hand with proposals floating around since 2007 to
make the religious leaders of the Azhar equivalent, at least symbolically if
not practically, to the Supreme Constitutional Court. The MB, for many reasons, has begun to back away from this
proposal but the Salafi movements (who also impact a significant section of the
MB leaders and members) have not. Basically
they believe they could either win or at least powerfully affect such
elections.
Lastly, of course, because the
language of the new constitution is so clearly associated with the political
influence of the MB and the Salafi parties, they will be as anxious to win an
endorsement as overwhelming as the 77% they achieved in the March 2011
constitutional referendum or the large majority of seats they won in the
parliamentary elections. One thing
they will want to avoid is the slim (51%) margin of victory that brought Morsi
himself to the presidency.
Electoral politics clearly requires
compromise and coalition but it also requires rallying the base. And one lesson of the last two years in
Egypt is that among the hottest of buttons is the claim that Islam is under
threat. A significant portion of
the “yes” vote in the March 2011 referendum was based on the claim that a “no”
vote would allow the secularists, atheists and Christians to eliminate Article
2 and, along with it, the role of Islam in public life. Similar claims were certainly made in
the parliamentary elections. During
the presidential election it was harder to deploy this argument because it
risked alienating other voters who Morsi needed to court. But the “The Innocence of Muslims”
provided the possibility of deploying the discourse of anger and fear.
For all these reasons and more it
is a mistake to see the protests around the US Embassy as the untrammeled and
spontaneous emanation of mass anger.
This becomes more clear when, most
surprising of all the MB and their political party, the FJP, backed off two
weeks ago at the possibility of broadening and deepening the demonstrations. At one point it looked as if they were
going to call for a massive Friday march (a “millioniyya”) but in the end they
didn’t. And indeed with their
unwillingness to underwrite institutionally the protests they—unlike the
massive marches of February 2011—subsided. Some observers believe this was evidence of the moderation
of the MB; others perhaps that President Barack Obama’s stern warning to
President Morsi as well as his comment that Egypt was no longer an ally, at
least made for a responsible decision.
Morsi is subject to many pressures and both of these explanations may
get at a part of the truth.
I want to propose a slightly
different possibility, however.
There are a set of politically influential preachers such as Abdallah
and Ghoneim who cannot influence Egyptian politics through their role in
parties. They have discovered, as
have ideological leaders elsewhere in the world, that their influence is
manifest by mobilizing even small numbers of activists for direct
confrontation. This may involve
physical violence but it may also be primarily symbolic violence (blockades of
abortion clinics in the US come immediately to mind).
Some political leaders welcome this
kind of support but others realize that it limits their own freedom of action
in the formal political realm.
What I want to suggest is that the MB/FJP and President Morsi realized a
massive demonstration against the film and the American embassy would probably
escape their control. It would
have allowed a vocal and undisciplined group of activists on the institutional fringes
of politics to dominate the public discourse. And that, in turn, would make it difficult both to deal with
the US but also to bring home whatever compromises over the constitution the
committee writing it has made. The
constitution will include an article mandating the equality of all Egyptians
with regard to religion and it appears that it will allow Christians greater
freedom to build houses of worship.
Passing the political initiative to Ghoneim, Abdellah, and others like
them is not going to make that easier.
Sober reflection may also have
suggested to the MB that allowing riots to shape the direction of politics will
not be in their long-term interest.
Students of Indian politics, such as my former colleague Paul Brass,
have noted that riots there are not spontaneous affairs. They can be murderously destructive and
politically divisive but when they happen it is because an entire apparatus to
deploy them has been activated by government officials or political
leaders. Egyptian social and
political life is likely to be difficult enough without encouraging the growth
of regularly constituted mechanisms for rioting. The events in the wake of film were suggestive that there
are those who would be pleased to establish such mechanisms. That a group of distinctively
Salafi-bearded police officers showed up in uniform to demonstrate at the
embassy against the film was indicative of how these kinds of protests can further
undermine the already-eroded institutions of public order.
If I have insisted on the
relatively small number of demonstrators at the US Embassy, it is not to
diminish the degree to which most Egyptians and especially Egyptian Muslims
were angered by the film trailer, whether they saw it or not. The film was designed to be offensive
by people who have a fairly clear idea of what Muslims would find
offensive. And so it was.
Yet, if most Egyptians found the
film offensive, it is worth noting how many other protests occurred at the same
time that had nothing to do with the film and whose leaders appeared to have
very little inclination to join it.
Students at Nile University, on the outskirts of Greater Cairo, were also
protesting during that week. Baton-wielding police broke up their protest,
unlike the one at the US Embassy.
Transport workers in Cairo were on strike and in Asyut demonstrators cut
the train line to Cairo for five hours.
There were, in short, a multitude of other strikes, protests and
demonstrations at the same time as the fracas at the US Embassy.
The point about other protests is
not that the events at the Embassy didn’t matter or that it was a side-show
while the real politics of economic interest or local conflict were
overshadowed. Quite the
contrary. In Egypt today, and for
a very long time to come, there is intense conflict over the national political
agenda, over the nature of public discourse, and to define the basic
institutions of the state.
These are all challenges that
President Morsi, his party, and his movement must face. The generals of the armed forces who he
shouldered aside must be pleased that they no longer do.
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