The Height of Hypocrisy

By Pablo Kleinman *

The images of the disturbances taking place in all corners of the Muslim world, and the demonstrations –fortunately mostly peaceful- carried out by Muslims in our world, prompted me to try to sort out the data to see if I could somehow make any sense of what’s going on. To figure out if that which at first sight appears as a senseless uprising of masses of religious and out of control fanatics actually does make any sense from any reasonable standpoint.

Firstly, I was surprised that all this unraveled right now when the cartoons had actually been published way back in September. And I use the term unraveled in a sarcastic way, since little if anything that happens in those countries is spontaneous and without the consent of the authorities. The most interesting explanation I found was on a blog written by a Saudi living in the UK. It says that “in order to divert public attention from the regrettable demise of a small number of pilgrims in Mecca during the last Hajj, Saudi newspapers were instructed to revive the four-month-old story of cartoons about the Prophet [Mohammed] in a Danish newspaper, and turn it into an attack on Denmark, together with a ‘spontaneous demand by the people’ for a boycott of Danish goods.” This would simply follow an old practice in both Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world, of inciting hatred against the West to divert the people’s attention from more real and tangible problems, most of which stem from the endemic corruption and ineptitude of the local ruling élites.

But regardless of whether that’s the real origin of all this, the irony of the claim by these governments –and the crowds that they’ve incited- doesn’t cease to amaze me. Because these are, after all, the same governments -and the media that they control directly or indirectly- that over and over again have published anti-Semitic cartoons -1400 in the past five years, according to Dutch theological scholar Hans Jansen who wrote a book about the subject- with content much more violent than whatever was printed in Denmark’s Jyllands Posten. And these government and their media outlets are the ones that produce television series where Jews are depicted as pigs and monkeys, as bloody assassins, where they attempt to legitimize old conspiracy theories and give birth to new ones. These countries today so outraged and vexed at the West’s insensitivity are the same ones where Christian churches cannot be repaired without a special permit and where children are taught in school to hate Christians and Jews. They are the places where we Westerners are often called crusaders, infidels and “Godless people,” a term that reflects their complete lack of respect for other religions and for those of us that practice them.

The demand for an apology that these governments have issued to the Danish government and to the president of the European Commission could be a plain sign of their little understanding about the West and about the most basic principles surrounding the concept of “freedom of the press.” But these Arab and Muslim politicians are not stupid and it’s more likely that this is just another edition of the blame-the-West-to-distract-the-angry-masses game that they are so fond of. And even though some Western governments have shown sympathy (excessive in my opinion) for their demands, to play their game would represent a serious mistake with terrible consequences for the cause of freedom not in their countries but right here at home.

*Pablo Kleinman (Buenos Aires, 1971) is an American entrepreneur and journalist. A graduate of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California, Pablo later attended the London Business School and obtained an MBA from the HEC School of Management, the top business school in France. He writes frequently about international affairs and is Editor-in-Chief of El Iberoamericano, a Spanish-language political journal.

Source: El Iberoamericano