[Mb-civic] Tempest behind the turban - H.D.S. Greenway - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Tempest behind the turban

By H.D.S. Greenway  |  February 14, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

PARIS

''THE BOMB in the turban," as many Frenchmen are calling this explosion 
after the most controversial of the Danish cartoons, has blown up in 
everybody's face here in the country with the largest Muslim population 
in Europe.

French Muslims themselves are divided over the issue. While one group, 
the Union of Muslim Associations, organized a protest march in the Place 
de la Republique last weekend, the larger umbrella organization, the 
French Council of the Muslim Faith, was strongly opposed. With tensions 
so high, many French Muslims thought anything that might further inflame 
the situation should be avoided.

Most of the Muslims I talked to thought it was important that French 
President Jacques Chirac had made a statement that Muslims took to be 
sympathetic. Some, although they may have been upset at the caricatures 
of the Prophet Mohammed, were nonetheless mindful of the long tradition 
in France of satirical publications.

The Council went to court last week trying to prevent the satirical 
weekly Charlie Hebdo from reprinting the Danish cartoons plus printing 
new ones of its own. One showed Mohammed looking at the cartoons and 
saying, ''This is the first time the Danes have made me laugh."

The lawsuit to stop publication failed on a technicality, but the 
Council intends to sue papers that reprinted the cartoons on the basis 
of a French law that forbids insulting a religion. Chems-eddine Hafiz, a 
lawyer for the Council, told me that a precedent could be found in a 
case last March against a French fashion company for posing half-naked 
girls in the positions of the 12 apostles as portrayed in Leonardo da 
Vinci's ''The Last Supper." The Catholic Church brought suit and won.

The Kuwaiti ambassador to France, in his role as the dean of ambassadors 
from Muslim countries, had told the Council that all expenses for any 
legal action would be taken care of, according to Hafiz, who wasn't sure 
whether the Council would accept the offer.

I spoke to Tewfik Allal, an Algerian Frenchman born in Morocco who 
started an Association for the Manifestos of Liberty, and he told me 
that the cartoon issue was more divisive than when Ayatollah Khomeini 
issued a fatwa ordering Salman Rushdie's death for writing ''The Satanic 
Verses" in 1989. He said it was more divisive even than banning head 
scarves for Muslim school girls, '' because of the context, social and 
political." The perceived blasphemy comes when so many tensions between 
East and West are being played out at the same time. ''This makes for 
terrible tension," he said, both in France and abroad.

Allal made a name for himself in France by stressing that you can be a 
good Muslim and accept European values as well. He wrote an article in 
last week's Charlie Hebdo that was eclipsed by the cartoons, but quoted 
Hezbollah as saying that if only Khomeini had found someone to execute 
his fatwa against Rushdie, ''this rabble in Denmark, in Norway, and in 
France who insult our Prophet Mohammed would never have dared to do 
this." Allal's response was that this is nothing less than a demand that 
no Muslim be entitled to be a European, or think like a European -- a 
demand he rejects.

I asked Olivier Roy, the French writer and expert on Islam, why he 
thought the bomb in the turban had caused so much anger in the Muslim 
world beyond Europe four months after the cartoon was originally 
published. He said to look closely at some of the areas where the worst 
demonstrations were taking place: Gaza, Iran, Beirut, Damascus, 
Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Each, Roy said, had a reason to punish Europe.

Europe had always seemed to be a friend of the Palestinians while the 
United States favored Israel, he said. Yet, after Hamas's victory in 
elections last month, Europe seemed to be hardening its attitude, while 
the Bush administration was uncharacteristically quiet on the matter.

On Iran, after years of playing the good cop to America's tough cop, 
Europe supported Iran's recent referral to the UN Security Council. 
Damascus was still hurting from the French role in driving Syria out of 
Lebanon, and in Afghanistan, European troops were moving into new areas 
under the authority of NATO, which helped take the pressure off the 
thinly-stretched American military. This was not coincidental, according 
to Roy. Yet manipulated or not, the affair of the cartoons shows that 
the alienation between East and West has never been more intense.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/14/tempest_behind_the_turban/
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