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Dangerous
Denial on Darfur Page 66 A
recent cartoon in the leading Arab newspaper Al Ahram Weekly, about the
West’s handling of the crises in Lebanon and Darfur, won’t be causing
any violent protests, but according to Muhammed
Abdelmoteleb it’s almost as offensive as the tripe published
earlier this year in a Danish newspaper. By belittling the humanitarian
catastrophe in Darfur, the Arab World is simply revealing its warped
moral compass. The cartoon (above) dealing with Darfur was published in the 31 August - 6 September 2006 edition of Al Ahram Weekly, the English language edition of the popular Cairo daily. Ironically a week earlier, a reader had written to the paper to complain about the zero coverage given by the editors to the Darfur crisis - a sentiment I whole-heartedly agreed with. Therefore only astonishment and anger can describe my reaction to Al Ahram’s cartoon response. The point of the cartoon, obviously, is to highlight the hypocrisy of Bush and Blair putting pressure on the President of Sudan over the Darfur crisis, while doing nothing about the Israel-Lebanon situation. This is obviously true .We could have a whole plethora of cartoons criticizing Bush and Blair for their droning on about “our values” and “way of life” to the oppressed people of the world, while in another breath whole-heartedly supporting (and in some cases initiating) the slaughter of hundreds and thousands in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. The cartoon, however, goes beyond this. In its otherwise welcome attempt to hold up a moral mirror to Bush and Blair, the cartoonist succeeded in only fogging up the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur. It’s one of the most offensive cover-up cartoons I have ever seen. Behind the president of Sudan there is a picture of what appears to be two men involved in a scuffle. Behind Bush and Blair there is a Palestinian being stabbed in the back by an Israeli hand. It would have been more accurate to show, behind the president of Sudan, women and girls being gang-raped or a pile of corpses of the more than 100,000 people that have been killed in the Darfur crisis. This is not to downplay the murder and suffering of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, but to downplay the huge humanitarian crisis in Darfur is not only disingenuous but also dangerous. Is this what passes for political satire and commentary in the Arab world? Are we unable to be self-critical? Are we able to be as angry over war crimes committed by Arabs as we are over those committed by Israelis and Americans? I should probably stop buying Al Ahram Weekly. Let’s face it, despite the occasional thoughtful article, the bulk of its commentary is made up of histrionic rants against Israel and America, rather than reflective but powerful criticism in the tradition of, for example, Edward Said or Joseph Massad. To me, the aforementioned cartoon sums up the condition of the Arab world. After having lived in Cairo as a Briton for over three years, I have become increasingly frustrated by this approach: the ‘West’ is automatically bad, ‘Muslims’ are automatically good. I deliberately use these simple adjectives because they reflect the simplicity of thought manifest in this line of thinking. It is very easy for Al Ahram or the Jummah khatib to lambaste America or Jews but what is more difficult is to criticize Muslims for their actions. I have to wonder about the motives behind the angry outpourings by Al Ahram Weekly columnists or anyone else for that matter. Are they angry because, for example, innocent Muslims (and Christians) were killed in Lebanon by Israel’s vicious onslaught? Or are they angry because Israelis killed innocent Muslims and Christians in Lebanon? Or because Americans have killed Iraqi civilians (despite the high number killed by suicide bombers) in Iraq? If the anger is because of innocent civilians being killed, there should be equal anger over the thousands of Muslims killed in Darfur, by Muslims. We are not, as Shaykh Hamza Yusuf has rightly pointed out, a tribe, wherein if Muslims do something wrong, we remain silent, whereas if the ‘kuffar’ do something wrong we jump up and down and scream about it. What kind of moral compass is that? When I even tried to raise the issue of Darfur in July 2006 on a forum on the Deenport website, I was called “shameful”, accused of “Zionist tricks”, and was even told that I don’t follow the “Muhammadan way". We cannot, therefore, solely lay the blame on Arab Muslims - there is a silence about Darfur amongst Western Muslims too. It was disappointing to see that Issue #16 of the otherwise excellent English language magazine, Islamica, contained nothing about Darfur in its feature dossier on Africa. The biggest disappointment, however, has surely come from The Arab League. As an Arab country, Sudan comes under the auspices of the Arab League - yet to date nothing has really been said let alone done by the League. The UN has called for an international force to be sent to Darfur, yet Qatar - a current Security Council member - abstained on the issue. The paper opines that this indicates the “type of support Sudan can rely on. Qatar, the only Arab nation currently sitting on the UN Security Council, did not wish to be seen supporting an international force entering another Arab country. The Arab League asked the UN to postpone the vote and refused to send their observers to the Security Council session.” This is simply outright hypocrisy and we should not be afraid to say so. It is fitting to learn, therefore, that Canada has pledged more aid to Darfur than all the Arab countries put together. We should be deeply ashamed. Expressing our disquiet to the editor of Ahram Weekly over the cartoon is a start to rectifying our warped moral compass. |