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07/02/2006 | Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon Torched as Row Over Prophet Caricatures Turns Violent

WMRC Staff

Regional anger over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad turned violent over the weekend (4/5 February) with protesters setting fire to Danish and Norwegian embassies in the Syrian and Lebanese capitals, while the Danish government has urged its citizens to leave Syria and Lebanon immediately.

 

Global Insight Perspective

Significance

The controversy over a series of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, originally published in a Danish newspaper, has evolved into a wider confrontation. The tense situation has providing an outlet for anti-Western anger that has been escalating over the past year in Syria, and among Syria's allies in neighbouring Lebanon. 

Implications

Syrian President Bashar al-Asad seems to be deriving political capital from images that reinforce Islamic perceptions of Western arrogance and insensitivity towards Muslim religious and political values.

Outlook

Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh today submitted his resignation as the controversy in Lebanon assumed an increasingly sectarian character, with AFP reporting disturbances in the mainly Christian district of Ashrafiyeh. This latest crisis has once again exposed the fragility of the Lebanese state system and its vulnerability to external forces.

Angry Scenes

Thousands of Syrian demonstrators stormed the Danish and Norwegian embassies in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Saturday (4 February), setting fire to both buildings as the ongoing row over the published images of the Prophet Muhammad turned violent (see Global: 3 February 2006: Islamic Anger Mounts Against European Newspaper's Depictions of Muslim Prophet). Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg described the damage done to these diplomatic missions as 'unacceptable' and questioned the inability of Syria's notoriously heavy-handed security forces to rein in the crowds. 'We are going to ask Syria for compensation and we will take the matter up at the UN', he added.

The violent scenes were repeated the following day in Lebanon, when a small group among an estimated 20,000 demonstrators overpowered riot police and stormed the Danish consulate in Beirut, turning what had been billed as a peaceful show of Muslim protest into a violent rampage that pitted protesters against security forces. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) accounts, more than 28 people were injured during the disturbances.

Muhammad Rashid Qabbani, Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim cleric, and Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora urged restraint. Qabbani told Reuters: 'We don't want the expression of our condemnation of the cartoons to be used by some to portray a distorted image of Islam...Let our expression of condemnation be according to the values of Islam.' His words have not quelled public anger, especially among supporters of the Shi'a Muslim group Hizbollah, who were out in force during yesterday's protests under the instructions of Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah added further fuel to the already burning controversy by telling his supporters last week that had the fatwa passed against British novelist Salman Rushdie by the late Iranian leader Ayatalloh Khomeini been executed, then 'no one would have dared discredit the prophet, not in Denmark, Norway or France'. Meanwhile, Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Sabah has submitted his resignation, saying that he was not prepared to order troops to shoot Lebanese citizens. 

The scenes have once again brought the inherent weaknesses of the fractured Lebanese state system and its vulnerability to external forces to the fore, with the controversy providing renewed cause and vigour to Syria's allies in neighbouring Lebanon. The Syrian leadership, pushed into a corner following its hasty departure from Lebanon in the aftermath of the February 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, seems to be relishing the West's discomfort, hoping that this latest furore will dent the moral credibility and legitimacy of the international case against Syria (see Syria: 4 November 2005: Syria's Future in the Middle East - From Lebanon to Iraq). According to the BBC, more than 70 Syrians were among around 200 people arrested after yesterday's riots, with these arrests sparking further unrest in the predominantly Christian district of Ashrafiyeh in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Saad Hariri, who heads the Rafiq Hariri Martyr List, the dominant parliamentary group, was direct in his condemnation of the unrest. He describing the fighting to the Guardian newspaper as 'the work of infiltrators', adding that 'these acts have nothing to do with the prophet'.

Editor Arrested

Meanwhile, Jihad Momani, the Jordanian editor of the al-Shihan weekly, which published the cartoons last week, was arrested under Jordan's press and publications law, accused of insulting the state religion. Jordan was the only Muslim country to have published the controversial images. Traditional Western allies such as Jordan's King Abdullah also seem more than willing to jump on an anti-Western bandwagon that has been sweeping the region, in an effort to shore up their popular support and religious legitimacy. This strategy could backfire in the longer-term, drawing renewed attentions to Jordan's close strategic and political alliance with the West (see Jordan: 21 December 2005: In Focus 2006- Containing Jordan's Domestic Challenges).

Outlook and Implications

Already-strained relations between the Arab world and the West have been dealt an additional blow by this latest controversy, which is being depicted as a clash between secular Western freedoms of expression and Islamic religious, cultural and political values. Arab leaders and groups, chiefly among whom is Syrian President Bashar al-Asad - who has his own political axes to grind against the West - is channelling popular grievances in the direction of a 'culturally arrogant and politically oppressive' other, conjuring up images of Europe's imperial past.

Although Arab and Islamic countries, principally Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, have staged mass protests and rallies against these controversial cartoons, none seems to have been as badly affected as Lebanon. This suggests that there are other factors at work in the country; to politicise the crisis will further stoke the firestorm of opinion.

Contact: Raul Dary

24 Hartwell Ave.
Lexington, MA 02421, USA
Tel: 781.301.9314
Cel: 857.222.0556
Fax: 781.301.9416
raul.dary@globalinsight.com

www.globalinsight.com and www.wmrc.com

WMRC (Reino Unido)

 


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