Why the West cannot understand Muslims’ anger at the cartoons
In 2001, the media started publishing reports about revelations of sexual assault of children by Catholic priests.
It was a major story that was extensively covered by the Western media. The Catholic Church protested against the media coverage, calling it highly exaggerated.
Demonstrations took place in many Western and Latin American capitals, with people demanding that those guilty of such acts and those who covered it all up be exposed.
The Catholic Church formed committees to investigate the transgressions by priests and published several reports based on the investigations.
The investigations revealed that for decades Catholic priests had sexually assaulted children aged 11 to 14 years.
Some of these acts dated back to 1930. According to the investigations, 10,000 people had been sexually assaulted by priests.
The US was one of the countries where this issue was investigated. Videos of men in their forties and fifties were aired, showing them crying in front of journalists when they recalled how they were sexually assaulted by religious figures, who they trusted were representatives of God on Earth.
About 3,000 priests were accused of sexual assault. The website bishop-accountability.org has published a list of priests based on the state they work in. Many of those priests were relocated in a bid to cover up the scandal.
However, Arab media didn’t participate in the coverage of this issue, simply quoting what the Western media and news agencies were reporting as they respected the adherents of the Catholic faith in their countries and communities.
On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). As a result, protests erupted in Muslim countries and about 200 people were killed.
The Western media surprisingly and incomprehensibly covered this violence and fury. One day a reporter from an international news agency asked me about the reason for this rage and why people were so angry at the cartoons.
Although cultural differences are perhaps a barrier to Western understanding of Muslims’ anger at the offensive caricatures, they reflect a historic and civilisational clash rather than differences.
I remember asking the same reporter if the news agency she worked for would publish something similar about Jews. She replied: “definitely not”.
We have to admit that there are Western extremists as there are Islamic fundamentalists. Therefore, radicalism is not unique to Islam since there are Christian, Buddhist, Shia, leftist, liberal and national fanaticism.
If we didn’t recognise the existence of extremism in all its forms and nationalities, we will be facing intentional radicalisation that considers every Sunni Muslim a potential terrorist who must be investigated, monitored and imprisoned.
A Western journalist asked me in a sympathetic tone when the Danish newspaper published the offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH): “Do those people know they are being abusive to you when they publish such caricatures? What will happen if an Arab newspaper published a caricature of the Pope sexually assaulting a child? Will they consider that freedom of expression?”
I didn’t comment and remained silent.
