Moslems don't hate freedom, Westerners don't hate the prophet

Yes as long as those two misunderstandings prevail, there will be conflict.

In 2006, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed a series of caricatures, just like newspapers have been doing in Europe for hundreds of years. This time, however, the subject was Mohammed, and one of them was seens as particularly insulting. Pretty soon, the Middle East was aflame with protests, burning Danish embassies, boycotting Danish goods and threatening Danes in general and the responsible people in specific with violence and murder. Newspapers across the Western world reprinted the drawings as a show of support for the right to free speech, and the phrase "They hate our freedoms" was bandied about.

I don't think that's the case at all. If the Moslems really hated our freedoms so much, why did they not protest previously? We have done many things under cover of our freedom that would be unheard of in Moslem countries, yet this one time it all erupted into violence like never before. No Moslem that I am aware of said that they hated our freedoms, but many and repeatedly said that they hated being insulted.

In the West, we have very few things we hold sacred anymore. We're used to everything from ministers to kings to holy men being taunted and caricatured, and it doesn't bother us. But when somebody attacks our right to freedom of speech, we get up in arms -- our human rights are the one thing we hold sacred. In the Moslem view, the Prophet is sacred, and rights as we know them are rarely had, much less held sacred. This difference is crucial to understanding the misunderstandings in this conflict and others like it.

When we see protests and attacks against an expression of free speech, we see it as an attack on free speech, and assume that the attackers hate the freedoms that we love. But these protests and attacks are not against free speech as such, but against a particular expression -- one that insults the Prophet. In Moslem eyes, the sanctity of the Prophet outweighs the right to free speech, and insults must be punished. Thus when the West repeatedly prints insulting drawings, Moslems naturally believe that we do it because we hate the Prophet.

Both sides are wrong in these assumptions. Westerners in general don't hate the Prophet, in fact most have little opinion on the Prophet, positive or negative, except as it affects them directly -- positively in showing respect for other cultures or trying to maintain good relations, negatively in getting an impression that the followers of the Prophet are violent. Likewise, I doubt most Moslems have strong views about the freedoms we take as basic rights. Sure, it would be nice to be able to criticize the government, but it weighs much lower than the sacredness of the Prophet. It's only when we in using our freedoms clash with their worship that conflicts erupt.

Understanding the orthogonality of what is sacred in the two sides of this conflict is central to resolving it. As long as people place freedoms as opposite to Islam, both sides will think the other hates them, and end up hating back.

I am a born and bred Westerner, and I value highly my freedoms and rights, and consider them fundamental to the achievements we have made and the hope we have for the future. I hope that Moslems will retake the path of learning that they were on a thousand years ago and accept the benefits to the individual and society that strong human rights can bring. I also hope that Westerners will stop looking at Islam as a "religion of hate", and accept Islam with the same allowances they accept Christianity, Buddism and other religions.

Both sides need to take steps to make this happen. Moslems would need to take the hard step of accepting human rights as important principles that must be upheld for society to improve. The West must let go of its holier-than-thou attitude and attempts to impose its own forms of government on other countries, and also stop trying to wring every dollar out of the rest of the world that we can at the same time. Nothing foments hate as disparity of wealth. It's unclear which side this would be harder for, but I hope against a currently pretty bleak background that we can figure it out. It starts with understanding, and hopefully it ends with mutual respect.

-- LarsClausen - 28 Feb 2008
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