An unmistakable aspect of the controversy over the Danish cartoons caricaturing Prophet Mohammad is that the Christian West has been quick to give it a strong political and economic dimension, while the worldwide Islamic community perceives the matter as a religious insult motivated by political deceit. This, I believe, is the crux of the matter.
The freedom of expression invoked by the all-pervasive Western media is bogus. The cartoons were a deliberate attempt to inflame the volatile and defensive Muslim community across the globe, to justify a crackdown against it on the European continent, which the Western Christian community regards as its heartland, because the early communities of the Gulf-born faith grew in Rome and had their earliest victories there.
Today, the Islamic and Western civilizations are locked in a deadly embrace; hating and fearing each other, they are seeking political power over the same landmasses, viz., the Gulf, Europe, and by extension, the Christian continents of America and Australia. Regardless of the strength and status of Muslim and Christian communities outside this terrain, this is the critical battlefield, which is why I maintain that Hindu India and Indian Muslims should stay aloof from this seething cauldron. Allow me to explain.
Islam is the dominant religion and culture in the Gulf, which is also its natal basin, but most regimes are politically subordinate to America. Those opposing Western domination are fighting for survival. Yet in Europe, Islam is a seamless demographic and cultural invasion. This is partly true of Australia, though in America the faith currently keeps a low social profile. Islam is united, coherent, and numerically significant; Europe’s fond belief that poor Muslim immigrants would perennially serve as cheap labour has shattered; Islam is a political challenge and Europe is culturally and economically vulnerable. Islamic ascendancy in Europe would instantly negate Washington’s geo-strategic plans and world hegemony.
Worse, Europe is on the defensive; its duplicitous manoeuvres have played themselves out. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it set up the Vatican as an independent Christian nation and admitted it into the United Nations; it is an open secret that the Vatican served as a major funnelling agency for Western-American interventions in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. But this awesome political face of Christianity was camouflaged behind a new god called Secularism, which deemed religion illegitimate in public life. Accordingly, the West devoted five decades to brainwash the world regarding the irrationality of faith, a claim rejected by Islam, while the Marshall Plan-induced prosperity pushed its own people into a hedonist spiral in which collective good was subordinated to individual whim.
Throughout Western civilization’s cultural crisis, its core institutions and economic and political elites in Europe and America remained Christian. The common commitment to Christianity, capitalism and the (carefully controlled) free market is why Europe accepted American supremacy over the Western world, and likewise made charity and evangelization instruments of foreign policy. But the West was unable to convey this duplicity to its own people, who are de-motivated in the inevitable conflict with Islam for cultural and religious supremacy in Europe. What is at stake, therefore, is territory, the geo-political landscape of the white Christian people. And the threat is not confined to Europe; it is a matter of time before it surfaces in the US, because neither Islam nor Christianity believes in peaceful coexistence.
Islam and Christianity realize that land and people are held together, not so much by ethnicity, as by affiliation to a common religion and way of life. Christianity spread because the early apostles turned their gaze away from the ethnicity-bound Jews, and Islam quickly outgrew its Arab origins. Both religions retain an abiding commitment to conquest by conversion, and do not hesitate to operate on each other’s turf. While most of Christianity’s modern successes have been in Buddhist and other non-Muslim lands, Islam has made major inroads in white societies by conversion, immigration, and steeper birth rates.Europe’s Muslim population is no longer quiescent, and the host societies are feeling the strain. Europe wants to stop the influx of more Muslims, and somehow expel those already inside. In short, it needs an excuse to light a ready torch.
Islam understands the importance of political power for controlling and guiding the community of believers. The Prophet exercised political dominion over the faithful, and three of the four Pious Caliphs who succeeded him were assassinated due to disputes relating to power and succession. Since then, there has always been a strain between the sovereign and the imam in both Shia and Sunni Islam, but today, I believe, there is a broad understanding between Sunni Islam under the Saudi king, Shia Islam led by Iran, and the orthodox clergy of both sects. This is because they are struggling both for genuine political autonomy of the Islamic nations in the Gulf region where Islam was born, and to retain a foothold in Europe to counter the pressure from Western civilization.
The West needs political and economic domination of the oil-rich Gulf to maintain its world hegemony and standards of living. But decades of easy living have softened its people and placed the entire burden of defending Western Christianity on the shoulders of the United States, which also fears physical engagements. That Europe has no stomach for battle can be seen from Denmark’s hysterical reaction to the boycott of Danish goods in the Arab world, in protest against the cartoons. The European Union and the United States also condemned the boycott, which has cost the Danes millions of dollars. Surely it is ridiculous to expect Islam to pay for the Christian world’s desire to blaspheme the Prophet? Yet the West denounces the violent protests against Danish embassies in some countries and equally reviles the boycott of foreign goods!
Interestingly, in India, some secular (read anti-Hindu) Muslim intellectuals have also criticized the entirely peaceful and democratic method of protest through boycott, and this raises suspicions that a section of the community may be willing to play into Western hands in a conflict that is certain to be bloody and prolonged. I am concerned because, until last Friday, all protests by Indian Muslims in cities like Srinagar and Bhopal were non-violent. In Delhi, the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid used the occasion to condemn M.F. Hussain’s vulgar painting of Bharat Mata and thereby showed sensitivity to Hindu sentiments.
Now, other forces seem to have got into the act. In Congress-ruled Andhra Pradesh, the Friday prayers suddenly turned violent in Hyderabad city, with protestors hell-bent upon damaging shops in a manner that could create communal ill-will. Simultaneously, an Uttar Pradesh minister placed a Rs. 51 crore bounty on the heads of the foreign cartoonists, which Muslim clergy in the city were quick to condemn. This set Hindu secularists against orthodox Islam for the first time in recent memory, which lends credence to my suspicion that Secularism is intrinsically pro-Christian. Ms. Sonia Gandhi has refused to speak her mind on the cartoons, but is pushing a divisive minority-pampering policy through the UPA. She has said Indian Muslims are Congress’ “natural allies;” are Hindus enemies? It will be interesting to see if Indian Muslims agree, at the behest of a European Christian, to tease Hindus and force India to join the battle for Europe against Islam.
The Pioneer, 21 February 2006