The perception of thewestern and Muslim worlds locked in a war of values has been heightenedfollowing a series of attacks on US missions in Egypt and Libya. A low-budgetfilm depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad as a manipulative, war-mongeringplayboy ” and reportedly promoted by fringe US pastor Terry Jones ” was onlyrecently dubbed into Arabic and posted on YouTube, sparking outrage amongMuslims in Egypt and Libya.
In Cairo, thousands of protesters marched outside the USembassy, where they breached the citadel-like consulate walls. In Benghazi,Libya, gunmen stormed the consulate, setting the building alight and killingfour staff, including US ambassador Chris Stevens, who was a staunch supporterof Libya’s revolution against dictator Muammar Gaddafi last year. US officialsnow suspect the attack on the ambassador might have been planned in advance.
The fanaticism was both born of, and fed into, thepolarizing narratives of each side. Americans hate Islam, otherwise such a filmwould never have been made, some here say. In the US, the violent actions of ahandful of Libyans and Egyptians vindicate those on the right who say Muslimsare a destructive group, bent on destroying America and its institutions. Thereality is much more complex.
Terry Jones, made infamous last year when he burned a Quran,prompting deadly protests in Afghanistan, is a fringe pastor who heads a churchof roughly 50 core followers in the state of Florida, in a country of more than300 million people. In Libya, locals fought ” and were killed ” defending theUS consulate there, and Libyans on Twitter expressed an outpouring of apologiesand grief for the deadly attack. Many Egyptians similarly were upset over thestorming of the US embassy in Cairo.
While the so-called Arab Spring, a series of Middle Eastuprisings that began in Tunisia in 2010, was born of the want for political,civil and even religious freedoms, it also midwifed in some countries anIslamic-nationalist identity. The result will be the marginalization of the mainstreammoderates ” the millions who did not protest and do not want to see furtherviolence in the name of the prophet ” and the empowerment of a groundswell ofIslamist and, in some cases, anti-American sentiment.
