America does not censor but it does censure hate. Yet such societal opprobrium is missing against anti-Islamism.

The absence of such civilian remedy is part of the problem.

Published on Saturday September 15, 2012
By Haroon Siddiqui TORONTO STAR Editorial Page

It is reprehensible that the American ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed by a handful of anti-American Muslim extremists, in the name of defending Islam. It is also reprehensible that a handful of anti-Islamic hate-mongers in the West insult the most sacred symbols of Muslims, in the name of free speech. There is no equivalency between the two. One group is violent, the other not one a lynch mob, the other racist provocateurs. The murderers of Christopher Stevens and his three colleagues should be brought to justice. But that cannot be the end of the debate, if we want to minimize the frequent clashes between the West and the world of Muslims as seen in

the violent protests over the 2005 Danish cartoons, the 2011 burning of the Quran by a Florida pastor, this years burning of the holy book by soldiers in Afghanistan, and this months anti-Islamic American movie. We cannot be silent spectators to Western hate-mongers firing up militant Muslims in the East. Theres too much at stake. Being provocative is an artistic right won over centuries. Yet this freedom is not a license to trigger a clash of civilizations. You cannot falsely shout fire in a crowded theatre, in the famous 1919 formulation of the U.S. Supreme Court. Such limits are best attained not by governments banning offensive material but rather through self-restraint. Yet such restraint is often missing in Western discourse on Muslims and Islam. What would our reaction have been had the Danish cartoons been antiSemitic, rather than anti-Islamic? Would we have defended with the cartoonists right to be as offensive as they had been? The American film that has caused the latest round of mayhem, from the Middle East to the Far East, is equally odious. It calls Islam a cancer and the Prophet Muhammad a fraud, a child molester and a philanderer. America does not censor but it does censure hate. Yet such societal opprobrium is missing against anti-Islamism. The absence of such civilian remedy is part of the problem. Maintaining such double standards erodes our credibility in taking on those Muslims who overreact to anti-Islamic insults. Hillary Clinton had the right formulation: The United States deplores any

intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But theres never any justification for violent acts of this kind. But America is hardly in a position to lecture Muslims on violence. At least 100,000 civilians were killed in Iraq under American watch, and tens of thousands in Afghanistan and Pakistan. An undetermined number of Muslims have been tortured, some even killed in the process. All those mass deaths have gone unmourned in the U.S. and the torturers have gone unpunished. Contrast this with the current outrage over the murder of four Americans in Libya. You cannot explain away the disparity by parochialism alone. This is a moral issue that Americans must confront. Muslims have reasons to be angry at America and its allies. Their grievances are exploited by militants and radicals at the first sign of the denigration of Islam. Yet the Libyan killers of the four Americans do not represent the worlds 1.3 billion Muslims any more than the fanatic American Coptic Christian who made the anti-Islamic movie represents all Americans or the gunman who killed six Sikhs at a Wisconsin temple last month does. Ordinary Libyans have held up placards, saying, We are sorry. An overwhelming majority of Muslims found the murders as abhorrent as any other people. Yet calls have gone forth calling on Muslims to take responsibility for the Libyan murderers and the protesters. Since Sept. 11, every conceivable mainstream Muslim group has forcefully and repeatedly condemned violence by fellow-Muslims, which is why Al

Qaeda and other militant groups failed to win the race for Muslim hearts and minds. Yet that effort has been deemed insufficient, either because the West is deaf to Muslim voices or is ignorant of such declarations because our media do not report them. In fact, Muslims have condemned their extremists more forcefully and more often than have Americans and Europeans denigrated their fellow extremists. Not surprising, then, that Islamophobia has entered the mainstream across Europe and North America, aided and abetted by right-wing media and funded by anti-Islamic philanthropists. Four leading Republican presidential candidates were openly anti-Islamic. Not only did they go unchallenged but were showered with votes and financial contributions by those eager to demonize Muslims. Nearly half of Americas 50 states have undertaken anti-sharia measures, so gripped they have been in a McCarthy-esque anti-Muslim witch hunt. The bigots who poke Muslims in the eye have an agenda beyond peddling hate. As Clinton said, they have a deeply cynical purpose to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage. The greater the rage, the better served is their purpose: Demonizing Muslims and Islam to rationalize occupying and dominating parts of the Muslim world militarily, politically and economically and to sabotage any Western effort at rapprochement with the Muslim world, a policy goal of Barack Obama. It is a fallacy to think that only militant Muslims are upset by the attacks on the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. Both practicing and nonpracticing Muslims are deeply offended by the insults heaped on their faith. Why would they not be?

The political, intellectual, religious and media establishments on both sides of this cultural clash need to amplify existing moderate voices, rather than letting extremists dictate public discourse and public policy. Haroon Siddiqui is the Stars editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca