The spark that ignited those demonstrations was the publication last September in a newspaper in Copenhagen of 12 cartoons, many of them depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims in Denmark found the cartoons insulting, even blasphemous, and complained to Muslim leaders in the Middle East.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr is professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington. Professor Nasr, welcome. How could 12 cartoons published in Denmark cause all this protest and all this violence?
Dr. SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR (Professor of Islamic Studies, George Washington University): We can only understand the relation between the cause and effect of this remarkable phenomenon, which seems illogical outwardly, by delving a bit more deeply into the conditions that are there. If you take a match right now, light it, and throw it into the woods in New Hampshire, nothing happens. But if you do the same in western Texas, you're going to have a major firestorm on your hands. For the last few decades, especially the last 20 years, the Islamic community in Europe more than America -- to some extent in America, but more in Europe -- has been feeling the pressure of what is sometimes called Islamophobia, that is, feeling as if they are under siege and under attack. Furthermore, not only is that true, but in the Islamic world itself -- the larger Islamic world, with 1.2 or 3 billion followers -- most people feel as if their core values, what gives them identity, their spiritual and cultural orientation and moorings, are being threatened by a civilization which is more powerful than it militarily, economically, and politically. And, of course, attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, what went on in Chechnya, what has gone on in Palestine have helped this.ABERNETHY: But it was also encouraged, wasn't it, by some leaders, some Muslim leaders?
Dr. NASR: By some governments. The religious leaders -- very few. The leading religious leaders of Al-Azhar or other places did not encourage it. But by some governments, definitely, and that is, I think, a global phenomenon. Every government tries to make use of the sentiment of its people for its own political ends. ABERNETHY: What about the alleged desecration of the Prophet Muhammad? Now that, people would understandably get upset about. But there are depictions of the Prophet. It's not banned in the Qur'an or anything like that, is it?
But there must also be vice versa. And on the political level, I think it's very important for some of the major countries in both the West and the Islamic world to get together and try to quiet this down. Otherwise there will be very unforeseen and possibly tragic consequences for both [the] Islamic world and the West.
