As mass rallies and violent protests continue to sweep the
Muslim world over an anti-Islam film made by US-based racists, the widespread
reaction raises the question about whether the background to the protests is
purely religious.
More than a dozen people have died since last Tuesday in
protests sparked by the appearance on YouTube of a trailer for the crude,
poorly made film, which is entitled "Innocence of Muslims".
Yesterday, the leader
of Lebanon 's
Shia movement Hezbollah appeared in public for the first time since December
2011 to denounce the film which has sparked worldwide protests. In other
developments
- About
3,000 protesters from the Philippines Muslim minority burned US and
Israeli flags in the southern city of
- In
- In
- Hundreds
of Palestinians staged a peaceful sit-in protest in the West
Bank city of
- Angry
demonstrators in the Afghan capital,
- Police
arrested at least 15 people at a small protest outside the
The scale of unrest is drawing comparisons with the Arab
spring of 2011. Heading the list of mass protests, are Tunisia and Egypt , the very countries in which
two entrenched and hated dictators were toppled last year.
The furore is prompting the question – is this primarily a
religious protest? While some may be enthused - or shocked - by the crude
religious sentiments and apparent intolerance of the demonstrators, the truth
is more complex – but also, in some respects, more simple.
A global
mapping of the protests reveals clearly that the notion that the background
causes are purely religious – or indeed anti-Western – must be tempered. The
countries with the largest Muslim populations, India ,
Indonesia and Pakistan , have
seen relatively fewer violent protests and some large areas of the Muslim world
have not been involved at all.
The fact is that Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt , the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia , and president Abdel Rabbo Mansour Hadi
of Yemen
have been unable to satisfy the demands of the vast majority of their people.
Indeed, the Egyptian president was in Brussels
at the headquarters of the European Commission at the weekend seeking a €1bn
loan.
The new rulers of Egypt
and Libya ,
who are moderate Islamists, are under siege from the more fundamentalist
Salafist parties and pro-Qaeda groups.
Meanwhile, in Tunisia opponents of the new regime
are being locked up and tortured after protests in the very same town where the
self-immolation of a fruit seller sparked the original revolution of 2011 which
toppled dictator president Ben Ali. Radhia Nasraoui, president of Tunisia 's
Organisation Against Torture, says that dozens of people are being tortured
in the country’s jails.
But there is another force, much greater, at work. As one US blogger
has noted: “Islamism is only the weaker expression of a broader anger against
power in its domestic and foreign forms.”
The religious form masks what is a struggle for power by
contending classes in the wake of incomplete revolutions. Those in power are
deploying anti-imperialist and religious demagogy to trap those who believe,
correctly, that their religion has been insulted.
The aspirations of the poor and dispossessed, as well as the
lower middle classes, remain unfulfilled. The Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan
notes: “What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual
revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and
the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they
can do it, and it’s still there.”
A different kind of secular, revolutionary leadership which
can express and take forward the interests of the oppressed of all faiths,
those of no faith, and minorities, is needed to ensure this awakening continues
to flourish.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
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