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By
Andrew Exum
Over the past several
months, no event—not even the continuing war in Iraq or
the election of Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories—has
strained Western-Islamic relations to the degree that they have
been by the publication of cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad
in a Danish daily newspaper.
Following the cartoons’ publication, riots and demonstrations
spread from London to Islamabad as Muslims worldwide expressed
their outrage at the printed representation of the holy prophet.
In Damascus, the Danish and Norwegian embassies were sacked
and burned in front of television cameras with the Syrian police
unable—or unwilling—to stop the rioting. Elsewhere,
hundreds of protesters were killed across the Islamic world
in the midst of demonstrations that were often characterized
by rage and violence.
Having briefly returned
home to America after almost two years living in Lebanon, I
watched on television as a large mob attempted to burn the Danish
embassy in Beirut and strained already tense Muslim-Christian
relations in that city by throwing rocks through the windows
of a nearby church. Both sides of the divide, it seemed, were
united only by mutual incomprehension of the other. Westerners
couldn’t understand Muslim anger; Muslims couldn’t
understand why the West would allow such insults to their faith.
Driving me to the
airport on my way back to the Middle East, my uncle—normally
a tolerant man—remarked that scenes like those shown on
television had him almost convinced that Islam really must be
a violent, irrational religion. And as soon as I touched ground
in Cairo, taxi drivers there were asking me how on earth the
West could be so stupid and insensitive as to publish—and
then re-publish—such vile affronts to the Islamic World.
Given a little time
to reflect on what are now, thankfully, events that seem to
have petered out in all but memory, we can begin to think critically
about not only the publication of the cartoons and what that
says about the West but also about the protests and what they
say about the Islamic World. Specifically, we can ask what role,
if any, did the Arabic-language media play in the protests?
One narrative maintains
that the Arabic-language media—especially the Pan-Arab
networks like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya—provoked further
unrest by their seemingly endless images of protesters and demonstrations.
Others argue that the Pan-Arab networks and Arabic-language
newspapers were only broadcasting and publishing the news their
viewers and readers cared about—and there can surely be
no doubt that the cartoon controversy was something about which
the majority of the readers and viewers in the Arab world indeed
cared.
The reality is that
the Arabic-language media did in fact play a role in
the cartoon controversy and the resulting violence and demonstrations.
And in some cases this role went beyond simply reporting the
facts. But to what degree the Arabic-language media acquitted
itself during the crisis and whether or not the Arabic-language
media should be held accountable for any violence or unrest,
however, are trickier questions to answer.
***
Given the events
of the past year, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen has one of the most
difficult jobs in the Middle East as director of the Danish-Egyptian
Dialogue Institute in Cairo. A reserved Arabic-speaking Dane
who chooses his words carefully, he sat in his office recently
and told TBS that the cartoons initially “didn’t
cause much of a stir” when they were first published in
late September 2005.
But over the next
few months, Skovgaard-Petersen watched as the outrage in the
Muslim world grew until it reached what he identifies as a turning
point on the weekend of January 19th and 20th when calls for
a boycott of Danish goods gathered steam in the Gulf states
and in Saudi Arabia in particular. “I think the Arab media
had a lot to do with this,” Skovgaard-Petersen recalled.
Some of the media simply reported the boycott as it took place,
others “actually promoted it,” he said. For the
most part, the Pan-Arab newspapers, in Skovgaard-Petersen’s
view, stuck to reporting while some local papers—such
as Egypt’s Al Gumhuriya—were notable for
promoting the paper itself through the paper’s
promotion of the boycott.
This is an interesting
phenomenon, and Skovgaard-Petersen is perceptive in noting the
way in which the cartoon controversy raised commercial opportunities
for Arabic-language media who suddenly found themselves reaching
what was, for them, a much wider audience than normal. Some
Arabic-language media, while reporting an obviously legitimate
news story, put an undoubtedly populist spin on the issue, motivated
perhaps by ratings as much as by journalistic principles. Skovgaard-Petersen
singled out the Pan-Arab network Al Jazeera, in particular,
which he says took a “very combative stance” on
the issue. Other networks (Skovgaard-Petersen mentioned Al Arabiya)
at least allowed space for Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen’s voice to be heard alongside those of his critics.
But is it really
notable that a news organization would package its coverage
of an event based on the possibility it might gain in ratings?
Or that a news organization would promote itself while
covering a news story? Don’t all news organizations do
that regardless of what story they happen to be covering?
Long-time Al Jazeera
observer Hugh Miles notes that Al Jazeera’s coverage of
the cartoon controversy was consistent with the network’s
long-standing modus operandi. “My impression was that
Al Jazeera presented the news with the same commercial bias
with which they always present their stories—that is,
toward a predominantly Arab male audience.” Miles, the
author of Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World,
says that given Al Jazeera’s audience of mostly Muslim
Arab males, what he saw of their coverage of the controversy
seemed “pretty reasonable.”
Neither Skovgaard-Petersen
nor Miles saw anything that could be described as actual provocation.
“I didn’t see any incitement to violence,”
Skovgaard-Petersen told me. Indeed, looking back at news reports
from January and February, many of the riots and demonstrations
predictably took place following Friday prayers, not during
the nightly newscasts. And it is difficult to imagine the sacking
of the Danish embassy in Damascus as having taken place without
both the permission and also the encouragement of the Syrian
regime, a minority regime under pressure from the West at the
time and eager to score points with its Sunni majority and their
influential clerics.
***
Overall, while the
Pan-Arab media might have approached the cartoon story enthusiastically
for personal, journalistic, and commercial reasons, it’s
unreasonable to hold them responsible for any of the violence
that struck the Arab world from Gaza to Baghdad.
Speaking from Dubai,
Al Arabiya spokesman Jihad Ballout said that he felt his network
did a commendable job during the controversy. “We tried
to be as calm about it and as thorough as possible,” he
said. “We walked a pretty fine line between reporting
the news and trying not to incite or provoke further violence
… As you might imagine, it was difficult—emotions
were pretty high.” Responding to allegations that news
organizations used the cartoon controversy to broaden their
audience, Ballout admitted that “it’s a fact of
life that there’s an audience out there you appeal to
and try to broaden.” But he quickly added that the relationship
with the audience is a two-way street, and that the audience
also expects the stations to uphold their journalistic ethics
and integrity.
In the end, all questions about how the Arabic-language media
handled the cartoon controversy boil down to a matter of perspective.
As Hugh Miles argued, “All news is biased, and all media
pitch themselves toward an audience. The question is whether
or not that bias grows so strong that it becomes cheerleading
at some point. Did that happen with Al Jazeera? No, not if you
look at it from within an Islamic context. But it’s a
subjective question, isn’t it? It’s a question of
differing points of view. So if you’re a secular Westerner
and you flip on Al Jazeera, you might be horrified by what you
see as bias.”
Perhaps, then, a
better approach than blaming the media might be to start asking
the considerably tougher questions about the perception gap
dividing the West and the Islamic world, and how, if possible,
that gap can be bridged.
Andrew Exum was born in East Tennessee
and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. After
university, he accepted a commission in the US Army and was
decorated for valor while leading a platoon of infantrymen in
Afghanistan in early 2002. Exum subsequently led a platoon of
Army Rangers into Iraq in 2003 and developed his academic interest
in the Middle East while serving there. After leaving the Army,
Exum earned a master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the
American University of Beirut in early 2006 and has accepted
a fellowship in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's
Military and Security Studies Program for the 2006-2007 academic
year. Exum is the author of one book, This Man's Army,
which won a 2005 Distinguished Writing Award from the Army Historical
Foundation. Exum lives in Cairo. He is a TBS contributing editor.
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