Clashing cultures and the rise of political Islam

Date: 09/02/06

The last two weeks have been appalling for relations between Europe and the Islamic world.

Al-Jazeera's news programme of Monday (30 January) was indicative of what the Arabic-speaking world was seeing; it catalogued the EU's threat to withdraw aid from a Hamas-led Palestinian government, the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and the ongoing confrontation between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Three conflicts which stoked public anger seemed to pit the West against the Muslim world.

For Abdel Wahab Badrakhan, a journalist writing in the Saudi-owned Dar Al Hayat, it was enough to point to a clash of civilisations. "In the light of the miserable 'Danish series', the outbreak of the Iranian nuclear file and the repercussions from Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections, it becomes clearer that the dispute between the West and East can go a long way," he wrote.

Many European politicians sought to highlight the difficulty the secular and Muslim worlds face as they increasingly rub up against each other.

European Commission Vice-President Franco Frattini suggested a conference to create a voluntary code of conduct for media organisations, in the hope that this would stop stirring up sensitivities.

While Frattini and other EU leaders have understandably shied away from talking about a 'clash of civilisations' and focused on individual events, the logic is the same as Badrakhan's: there is an underlying conflict between secular values and the values of Islam. The difference is perhaps only the perception of the degree of severity and urgency.

"The West cannot tolerate Muslims' dignity and authority so it is determined to humiliate them," said Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, Iranian Majlis (parliament) speaker, linking the caricatures to the nuclear question.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and other groups, as well as the Syrian government, have deftly exploited the view that the cartoons display nothing more than Europe's racism and xenophobic sentiment towards the Muslim world.

In a visit to Brussels this week Kurt Volker, a senior US State Department official, highlighted the responsibility of Middle East states for the attacks on European embassies: " That doesn't just happen by accident. There would have to be some kind of acceptance or support on the part of the state to allow such a demonstration to go forward and to attack embassies of European countries."

Volker may have been trying to further sully the government of Bashir al-Assad. But his comments highlighted the role that governments and organisations around the Middle East have played in the backlash against the cartoons.

European leaders who present this as a symptom of an inevitable cultural clash caused by globalisation miss the underlying thread that links these stories: the resurgence of political Islam in its most populist and volatile form.

Not since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution has the rise of political Islam been so evident. This has not gone unnoticed by Iran's ruling clerics who seized on the cartoons and the double standards of the West in demanding democracy and then rejecting its outcome in Palestine.

Hamas's election could present an opportunity for the EU to help promote long-term stability in the Middle East as long as it refrains from picking favourites and indulging in the hypocrisy which so infuriates the Muslim world.

Hamas plays on the fears and hatred in Palestinian society - not least through suicide attacks on Israelis. But the organisation has another side. It has engaged itself in health care and education with the same vigour that secular governments in the region have suppressed pluralism and lined their own pockets.

For Hamas this is a return to its roots in 1920s Egypt, where their parent organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, began as a charity engaged in education and mutual support, until it was pushed underground.

For Muslims this model of governance may present a more convincing one than that of Turkey's ruling AKP, which has won admirers in Europe largely for being a Muslim democratic party that has seldom strayed from the path of secularism.

The challenge now for Europe is to nudge Hamas and similar democratically elected groups away from violence without appearing to issue ultimatums. Otherwise there will be many more weeks of appalling tensions between the West and the Muslim world.

Anlayisis feature in which the author suggests that the rise of political Islam is an important factor in recent tensions between the West and the Muslim world.