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[ 03-03-2006 ]
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[http://minstrelboy.blogspot.com/2006/02/agent-provocateur-new-york-times.html
Op-Ed Contributor
Agent Provocateur
OF course this isn't about freedom of speech."
By KAMILA SHAMSIE
Karachi, Pakistan
February 15, 2006
I've heard that line countless times in Karachi lately about the Danish cartoon controversy, including from journalists who fiercely guard their own right to work without censorship. There is nothing but condemnation here for European newspapers' publication of the cartoons.
But there are two separate threads to this condemnation. The first relates to the extreme religious offense caused by the cartoons, which has prompted an increasing number of protests, with a worrying trend towards violence. The small rallies a week ago were heartening in their peacefulness, but yesterday the protests claimed two deaths in Lahore and significant destruction. Though the numbers taking to the streets are still not vast by Pakistani standards they are growing.
The second thread to the condemnation concentrates not on the offense itself, but on the motive behind it. The idea that the cartoons were a deliberate provocation to get us to behave badly is being encouraged by officialdom: various political groups have condemned "the planned conspiracy by the West to instigate the Muslims"; the Foreign Office has said the cartoons are part of "sinister agendas"; the chief minister of the country's most religiously conservative province, himself a leading member of the religious alliance that gains much of its popularity from its anti-Western stance, has said the cartoons are aimed at bringing about "the clash of civilizations."
"Do you think people buy this line?" I asked a businessman whose political opinion I've always respected.
"Yes," he said. "But there are two ways in which that can be played out. One is that your 'fringe element,' who often turn to violence, mute their responses in order to defeat this alleged agenda of provocation. And the other is that they say, 'You want a fight, O.K., we'll give you a fight.' It all depends on how the religious leaders direct them for their own political ends."
But to what extent do people away from the fringe buy into this notion of a conspiracy? At a coffee bar in Karachi with four of my female friends - two schoolteachers, a lawyer and an interior designer - I asked, "Were the cartoons meant to be provocative?"
"Yes!" The response was unanimous.
"So is there a conspiracy to provoke Muslims into reacting violently?" Here, everyone's certainty diminished. "No, not a conspiracy," one of the schoolteachers said, and the others signaled agreement.
I couldn't quite work out if the distancing from the word "conspiracy" had to do with the whiff of paranoia that has attached to it since the term "conspiracy theorist" came into vogue. "What is the point of the provocation?" I pressed on.
"Who ever knows what's going on?" one of the schoolteachers said. "It's something internal going on in those places. Or something to do with their own politics about, who knows, Iran, Israel. It could be anything."
"It's not the publication in Denmark I find most objectionable," said the other schoolteacher. "It's the re-publication in France after all the riots that happened there. This is their way of telling the Muslims: 'You are second-class citizens. We don't care about your sensitivities.' "
Later, over dinner, a member of my family said: "It's just racism. You act in ways that you know will provoke the extremists to start ranting and then you get bearded men frothing at the mouth, and - because those are the only images that get significant news coverage - you can then turn around and say, 'You see, all Muslims are fanatics.' "
"And that plays straight into the hand of the right wing in Europe whose greatest strength comes from racist polemic?" I finished. That really didn't seem a million miles away from suggestions of a conspiracy.
"Listen," said my father. "The most important thing here is not to confuse a group within an entity for the entity itself. Europeans, Muslims, European Muslims - most people just want to live in peace. For us to start believing Europe is represented by its right-wing fanatics would be as wrong as for them to believe Islam is represented by our right-wing fanatics."
But until someone finds a way to turn "Muslims don't riot" and "Europeans don't conspire" into news stories, there doesn't seem any easy way to avoid precisely such confusion.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of "Broken Verses," a novel.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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