Mark LeVine is professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine, and distinguished visiting professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh.
Blowback of
the ugliest kind:
The lessons
no one will learn
from Benghazi
Last Modified: 13 Sep 2012
Egypt's Copts are one of the "more systematically abused and discriminated against minorities anywhere" [EPA]
"Does Mideast Democracy Complicate Diplomacy?"
This was the headline of the NY Times' "Room for Debate" section in the wake of the attack that killed the US Ambassador to Libya in Benghazi. Not "Is Arming an Insurgency that Includes Anti-American Jihadis Who Will Unquestionably Wind Up Attacking You a Good Idea?" Not "Does Continuing to Support Undemocratic Monarchs and Dictators in a Region Where People Already Are Angry at US for Decades of Doing So Complicate Diplomacy?"
And certainly not "Did Tens of Billions of Dollars in US Aid to Mubarak While His Government Engaged in and Supported Systematic Violence Against Egyptian Copts Just Come Back to Haunt US in Libya?" Readers wondering "Why Do Religions that Preach Love, Peace, Justice and Forgiveness Seem to Propagate So Much Hatred, War, Injustice and Revenge?" were left to search newspapers of lesser renown to find the beginnings of an answer to this most pertinent question.
Of course, there is absolutely no justification for the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and several of his entourage as well as Libyan security personnel. And yes, the attacks, and the larger anti-American protests in which they took place, remind us about the powerful strain of unchecked and often unthinking - certainly uncritical - anger and revenge that defines Islam for millions of its adherents.
The unrestrained anger against a YouTube clip has even led to outrage among some Syrian activists, with one tweeting that "the only thing that seems to mobilise the Arab street is a movie, a cartoon or an insult, but not the pool of blood in Syria".
But if the world's paper of record is going to ask questions in the wake of an attack like this week's in Libya, surely it could have done better than this.
A history of violence
Among the many lessons to be learned from the strange, sordid tale of Sam Bacile - aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula; and who knows what other names - and the "film" (if one can call it that) he apparently made, teaches us, is one that the religious oppression, hatred and violence is a toxic brew that, as Martin Luther King, Jr., so eloquently reminded us, inevitably begets more of the same.
Inside Story: Egypt's clash of religions In this particular case, decades of oppression and abuse of Egypt's Coptic minority has led some members of the community living in exile to join forces with some of the most chauvinist, hate-filled and Islamophobic groups in the American evangelical community and (posing as an Israeli Jew, no less), to produce a work that according to his associates was expected, and likely designed, to provoke precisely the kind of anger and even bloodshed it succeeded in producing.
Unless you know Egyptian Copts personally have listened to their stories of abuse and violence at the hands of their Muslim Egyptian neighbours, it's hard to understand why an expatriate community member would waste time and money in producing such a cheap polemic guaranteed to lead to even more violence against his community back home, not to mention the global blowback that was equally inevitable.
The reality is that Egypt's Copts are one of the more systematically abused and discriminated against minorities anywhere. And aside from half-hearted paeans to inter-religious fraternity and peaceful resolutions of communal disputes, Muslim leaders in Egypt and across the Muslim majority world - in Pakistan, Palestine, Indonesia in particular - have done far too little not merely forcefully to condemn such violence, but to educate and demand their adherents to treat Christians as equal citizens.
But the violence against Christians is part of a much larger story that only gets more complicated the deeper you dig. In Egypt, it turns out that the Mubarak government, which pretended to be a last line of defence for Copts, in fact incited and even directed violence against Copts by Salafis in order to strengthen its argument that without a secular authoritarian state the situation would be far worse.
More broadly, it's very hard to expect Copts to be treated with respect and dignity when under the Mubarak dictatorship (and long before) men, women, Muslims, Christians, the poor, labour activists - pretty much everyone was treated without respect for their basic human, political, civil and other basic rights.
As in any family or community defined by abuse, the violence just circulates downwards and spreads outwards, with each person abused by someone with power over them passing on the anger and abuse to those below. As many women's rights activists have pointed out over the years across the region, it's hard to press for greater freedom for women as women when at the most basic level, no one is free.
Sadly, a similar question could be asked about Copts; the problem is that such an attitude only means that women, religious and other minorities merely face added layers of discrimination and violence on top of the more generalised political oppression.
Unrealised possibilities
One of the highlights of the 18-day uprising that launched the still unfinished Egyptian revolution was, we might remember, how Copts and Muslims protected each other during each other's prayers. Coupled with the relatively harassment-free environment for women inside Tahrir, the freedom, fraternity and equality between ordinary Egyptians inside that utopic space offered a model for a truly free Egypt.
Egypt protests continue against anti_Muhammad film But of course, the model was shattered almost the moment Mubarak was pushed from office, as Salafis attempted to hijack the celebrations the very next day and the toxic energy of decades of dictatorship led to sexual assaults of foreigners and Egyptians as well, in Tahrir and across Cairo and other cities in the ensuing months.
Copts fared no better, as the Maspero massacre of October 2011 put into stark relief. But Maspero was not the work of religious fanatics; it was the work of a secular military dictatorship that receives billions of dollars in aid from the United States, Europe and international financial organisations such as the WTO and World Bank, none of which was jeopardised despite that massacre of the arrests, torture and killings of thousands more Egyptians since Mubarak's ouster.
If you want to understand what's behind the embassy attack in Cairo, and the (as I write) just reported embassy attack in Sana'a, Yemen, decades of US support for the former (and in many ways still existing) regimes in these two countries most certainly equals - and most likely outweighs - religious anger at the "film".
Acknowledging legitimate anger does not excuse government responses, particularly in Egypt. Unfortunately, the new, democratically elected Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, hails from an organisation that has little experience fighting for the rights of all Egyptians, regardless of their creed, political beliefs, sexual orientations or other markers of identity.
The Brotherhood may have learned the democratic game, but it's a very circumscribed and corporatist view of democracy that has traditionally shown little tolerance for diverse views and life choices that might challenge normative views (although the most recent Satanic metal episode might signal the beginnings of a shift, as I pointed out in my last column). Such a view is of course not much different to that of the Republican Party today, not to mention the religious right in Israel, India and numerous other countries.
But that only means that politics and religion continue to generate chauvinism, hatred, violence and discrimination wherever they combine, even as the chances of keeping them separate seems to diminish with each passing year.
Blowback of the ugliest kind
Americans and Europeans are no doubt looking at the protests over the "film", recalling the even more violent protests during the Danish cartoon affair, and shaking their heads one more at the seeming irrationality and backwardness of Muslims, who would let a work of "art", particularly one as trivial as this, drive them to mass protests and violence.
Yet Muslims in Egypt, Libya and around the world equally look at American actions, from sanctions against and then an invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sent the country back to the Stone Age, to unflinching support for Israel and all the Arab authoritarian regimes (secular and royal alike) and drone strikes that always seem to kill unintended civilians "by mistake", and wonder with equal bewilderment how "we" can be so barbaric and uncivilised.
Russia receives little better grades on this card, whether for its brutality in Afghanistan during the Soviet era, in Chechnya today, or its open support of Assad's murderous regime.
Meanwhile, the most jingoistic and hate-filled representatives of each society grow stronger with each attack, with little end in sight.
Let us assume that the attack was in fact not directly related to the protests in Benghazi but rather was the work of an al-Qaeda affiliated cell that either planned it in advance or took advantage of the opportunity to attack. If correct, we are forced to confront the very hard questions raised by the support for the violent insurgency against Gaddafi instead of following the much more difficult route of pressing for continued non-violent resistance against his murderous regime.
Coptics flee Egyptian village amid clashes Such a choice was extremely hard to make while Gaddafi was massacring Libyans by the thousands. But it's one the needs to be examined in great detail if the most recent deaths are to have any lasting meaning. As long as the jihadis were rampaging Mali or destroying Sufi shrines, Americans didn't have to think about the costs of supporting the violent removal of Gaddafi.
Now that the violence has been turned against their representatives, will Americans respond as expected, with prejudice and ignorance? Or, during this crucial election season, will they ask hard questions of their leaders about the wisdom of violent interventions in the context of a larger regional system which the United States administers that remains largely driven by violence?
As I flew home yesterday from Europe, unaware of what had transpired in Libya, I read through the 2008 report by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, titled "From Exporting Terrorism to Exporting Oppression: Human Rights in the Arab Region".
The report described the often unbearable levels of abuse suffered by citizens across the region is one of the most depressing reads imaginable. Every single government, from Morocco to Iraq, was defined by the systematic abuse of its citizens, denial of their most basic rights, and rampant corruption and violence. And in every case, such abuses and violence have been enabled by Western, Russian and other foreign interests.
Simply put, each and all the policies and actions described in the report - and 2008 was no better or worse than the years that proceeded or followed it - are as much forms of terror as the destruction of the World Trade Centre, invasion of Iraq, or attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi.
In fact, the Middle East and North Africa have for over half a century constituted one of the largest and most pernicious terror systems of the modern era. And the US, Europe, Russia, and now increasingly China have been accessories, co-conspirators, and often initiators of this terror throughout the period, working hand-in-hand with local governments to repress their peoples and ensure that wealth and power remain arrogated by a trusted few.
Who can lead?
If the combination of the report and the news of the Benghazi attack weren't enough, within 20 minutes of arriving home, and while I was getting up to speed on the Benghazi attacks to respond to the inevitable media queries that were coming my way (Why do Muslims react like this just to a stupid movie? was what everyone wanted to know), I received the following alert from some Moroccan activists:
"A young Moroccan, in his twenties, who was employed and active in Communications, PR and Event Planning, has just been sentenced to 10 months in prison following a peaceful protest in Casablanca to free political detainees in Morocco last month. Samir Bradley was tortured by the Moroccan security apparatus during his initial interrogation. Sexual abuse, plucking of the eyelashes and attempts to pull of his nails were part of the techniques used by Moroccan authorities to humiliate him into submission.
After a ridiculously unfair trial and ruling, Proud and Strong, Samir has now started a hunger strike and is refusing water. Samir is an innocent active patriotic young man. A peaceful activist who only used peaceful means to push for positive change in Morocco. He will die in three days. The next time anyone reads the Articles 20 to 29 of the new Moroccan Constitution, please refer to reality to understand Morocco is not an 'exception'. The regime is repressing peaceful protests and Morocco is far... FAR from reaching out for Rule of Law."
This abuse was perpetrated by a "moderate", "modern" regime whom Secretary of State Clinton recently praised as not merely a leader for peace in the region, but a "very good model for others who are also seeking to have their own democratic reforms".
"The most jingoistic and hate-filled representatives of each society grow stronger with each attack, with little end in sight."
What do Americans really expect to be the result of such bald-faced lies and support for brutality by our leaders?
The Arab uprisings of the last two years have at least given the world hope that a rising generation, in the region and - with their inspiration - globally, is finally trying to challenge the international terror system that ensures that hundreds of millions (indeed, billions) of people live mired in poverty and hopelessness, with almost no chance to create a better future, all so that a global elite can enjoy unimaginable wealth and power.
As global warming increases with its attendant environmental crises, food and fuel become more scarce and expensive, and global inequality rends social fabrics everywhere, we all have a choice.
We can succumb to the hatred and anger and each do our own part to speed the trip to our collective Hell, or we can follow the lead of the heroes of Bourguiba Boulevard, Midan Tahrir, Madrid's Puerta del Sol, Wall Street and numerous other places where during the last two years, at least for a moment, ordinary people have come together to knock down the system that has oppressed them for as long as they can remember.
Choice number one is far easier, as it will happen merely by continuing to think and act, as we always have and letting inertia carry us over the cliff. Choice number two demands that people everywhere engage in serious soul searching, make profound changes in their most basic attitudes, beliefs, actions and policies, and then force our leaders to do the same.
Whichever choice we collectively make, events like the Benghazi attacks and all they signify remind us that at least we've been warned.
Mark LeVine is professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine and distinguished visiting professor at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh. His book, Heavy Metal Islam, which focused on 'rock and resistance and the struggle for soul' in the evolving music scene of the Middle East and North Africa, was published in 2008.
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The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source:Al Jazeera
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In Pictures: Protests against anti-Islam film |
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Demonstrations erupt in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Gaza, over film made in US which insults Prophet Muhammed.
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>via: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/09/2012913121841452598.html
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| Benghazi: What happened? | |||
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The tragic incident in Benghazi highlights 'the government's inability to assert its control over the state'.
Last Modified: 13 Sep 2012
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 Some demonstrations in Benghazi condemned the attack on the US consulate [Reuters]
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On the face of it, the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday evening seems a simple, if horrific, affair, but its implications for Libya itself are far wider. Why did it happen when it did? Who was really responsible? How could four Americans have been killed, given the United States’ role in ending the Gaddafi regime? And what are the implications for the Libyan government about to come into office? Why now? First, the timing; those involved claimed that they were protesting a film on Facebook insulting Prophet Mohammed. The film certainly did exist and it is profoundly insulting. It was made by "Sam Bacile", who claimed to be an Israeli-American property developer in California who has now gone into hiding, protesting that he never anticipated such a reaction. Well, that is difficult to believe: Bacile said he had it dubbed in Arabic by a Coptic friend of his as part of an ongoing anti-Islam campaign in the United States which is now so intense that the Muslim Public Affairs Council in the US has just published a brief exposing the top 25 anti-Muslim rabble-rousers, in an attempt to stop the polarisation of public opinion.
Nor is Bacile alone in his attempt to inflame Muslim opinion; Pastor Jones of Florida, already notorious for threatening to burn the Quran last year, is behind another anti-Muslim film which is doing the rounds. And he had planned an event timed for last Tuesday to highlight the "threat" that Islam, he believes, poses to Western values. And, of course, it is no accident that all these initiatives should have emerged at the time when they did; at a time when public opinion, both in the United States and in the Muslim world, is especially sensitive about the claims they embody. But, of course, that may not be the only or even the real reason for the incident and the parallel violent demonstration outside the US embassy in Cairo. Just a few days ago, the current leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, admitted that a US drone attack had killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, his close and trusted collaborator. He called on Libyans to avenge al-Libi's death which, in fact, had actually occurred in June but which al-Qaeda had not confirmed. Indeed, back in June, shortly after claims of al-Libi’s death emerged, there was an attack on the US embassy in Benghazi in an apparent revenge, although nobody at the time was hurt. Interestingly enough, Zawahiri's incitement is the explanation preferred by Noman Benotman, of the Quilliam Foundation, a former member of the Islamist opposition to the Gaddafi regime in the 1990s. Who did it? And that, of course, raises the question of who did it? The initial reports of the violence in Benghazi suggested that those responsible were members of "Ansar al-Sharia", one of the many extremist Salafi groups that have emerged in Eastern Libya since the revolution, as part of an older tradition of extremism dating back to the 1990s. It has been accused, most recently by Mahmoud Jibril, the leader of Libya’s major political coalition, of being responsible for several recent assassinations in Benghazi. Yet, the deputy Libyan interior minister also claimed that the attack had been carried out by pro-Gaddafi elements. The claim is not as surprising as it may sound, for there have been a series of attacks and assassinations by such groups in Tripoli in recent weeks, often masquerading as Islamist incidents. And, in any case, only a few days ago, Abdullah Senussi, Colonel Gaddafi’s former security head, was extradited, surprisingly, to Libya, a betrayal they might well want to avenge.
What is clear is that, whoever did attack the consulate came well-prepared, with rocket-propelled grenades and sufficient small arms to outfight and outgun the consulate's guards, both Libyans and Americans. Indeed two American marines were amongst the dead, together with the ambassador and a consulate information officer. Nor were the numbers involved in the actual attack so large; estimates range between 20 and 50 men who were quite separate from other, peaceful protesters who were certainly there because of their anger about the offending film. Nor, indeed, is this the first time that such an incident has provoked such demonstrations. On February 17, 2006, 14 people were killed by Libyan security forces outside the Italian consulate after an Italian member-of-parliament had provocatively worn, on a TV channel watched in Libya, a tee-shirt bearing one of the 2005 Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, which had caused a storm of protest throughout the Middle East. How could it have happened? Given US obsession with the security of its posts overseas ever since the original US embassy hostage crisis and subsequent bombings elsewhere in the early 1980s, it seems surprising that the American ambassador to Libya should have been so lightly protected and that the consulate building had such limited protection too. It was apparently a rocket-propelled grenade that started the fire in the building, in which the ambassador died whilst hasty arrangements were being made to move the staff to a safe house. Yet, the building also had Libyan guards who, by all accounts, were outgunned and effectively stood aside. Even after the attack, there was no attempt to cordon off the burning building, and locals were able to loot it at will. Yet, even though the attackers were well-armed, their numbers were small and surely the local authorities would have gone out of their way to protect the representatives of a state that had contributed so heavily to Libya’s own victory last year. In fact, the tragic incident in Benghazi highlights what is becoming the major systemic crisis in Libya; the inability of the government to assert its control over the state. Libya is still in thrall to a myriad of militias which do not necessarily listen to the central authorities in Tripoli. Some have been co-opted into the government’s emerging security organisation - through the ministry of defence's Libyan Shield, which brings the Zintan and the Misurata militias together, ostensibly under government control; others have been conscripted into the ministry of the interior’s Supreme Security Committee, whilst the remnants of the Libyan army are being labouriously reassembled. But there is still no central authority capable of imposing its will on Libya overall and, until this is achieved, it is difficult to be optimistic about the successful conclusion of Libya's painful transition from the dictatorship of thejamahiriya to a democratic state. In short, what the tragic violence in Benghazi tells us is that the United States has seen its diplomats there fall victim to the security failure that has emerged from the civil war. George Joffe is a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. |
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Al Jazeera
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>via: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/2012913121437459208.html
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Egypt:
A Mysterious Film
Angers Thousands
Photo Blog by Mosa'ab Elshamy
Protests against an anti-Islam film at the American embassy in Cairo have taken a violent turn as police attempt to disperse thousands. Initially, Salafis called for a protest on Friday angered by a mysterious film supposedly made in the US, which insults the Prophet Mohammad. Though very few people have actually watched the trailer for the film, which was uploaded to YouTube, anger spread by word of mouth in Cairo, as youth scaled the walls of the American Embassy, tearing down the flag and replacing it with one that depicts Islamic emblems. Violence has been ongoing in Cairo for over 24 hours, with hundreds injured and dozens arrested. The ruling Muslim Brotherhood party initially called for protests this Friday across Egypt, but called off the demonstration.
Meanwhile on Twitter, the US embassy staff in Cairo responded to a tweet by the Muslim Brotherhood, which expressed relief that “none of the US embassy staff were harmed and hope US-Eg[yptian] relations will sustain turbulence of Tuesday’s events” by pointing out the MB’s doublespeak: “"Thanks. By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those too."
.@khairatAlshater:We r relieved none of @USEmbassyCairo staff were harmed & hope US-Eg relations will sustain turbulence of Tuesday's events
.@Ikhwanweb Thanks. By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I hope you know we read those too.
