Racism and the Middle East
A friend and I were talking yesterday about the Muhammad cartoon fracas in Europe that’s spilling over to America through South Park. He said, “You can make fun of every other religion except Islam. If you make fun of Islam, there’s rioting in the streets.”

Which made me think a little. On the surface that seems like it’s true. You don’t see Christians rioting because their Messiah is the butt of a joke.

Now I’ve done a little study of Islam – not much, but a little more than most Americans – and I don’t see anything in its text, the Koran, that paints a picture of an inherently violent religion. It actually seems to be a little less violent than most of the Christian Old Testament. So what is it that makes a 21st-century Muslim riot in the streets when he perceives a blasphemy where a Christian would only grumble about it and eventually ignore it?

Then I realized that we haven’t seen anywhere near the same size outcry against the Danish comics in this country as in Europe.

Then it hit me. The violence isn’t inherent in the religion – it’s endemic to the Middle East.

But why? The answer seems obvious to me, but maybe it’s a misreading or over-generalization. But the countries in the Middle East have a history that stretches back into ancient times – of small groups vying for power against other smaller groups. Of course, in the pre-Renaissance era, that was true even in Europe. And what did we have there then? We had wars that lasted for 100 years off and on. We had rival families duking it out over titles and territory for generation after generation (War of the Roses, anyone?). It is only in recent times, after the revolutions of 1848 and after the worldwide bloodbaths of World Wars 1 and 2 that this has changed. We have had relative peace between nations for the past 50 years. That is reflected in the Cold War. We had the power to annihilate each other but we didn’t do it. Our cultures had changed.

But the countries in the Middle East have only been countries for a short time, and their nationhood was a matter of imposition rather than a natural occurrence. Groups were thrown together in the same countries that would never have naturally come together so soon (see post below).

If the tables were turned, and Islam was the dominant Western religion and Christianity was the dominant Middle Eastern religion, what would happen?

Is this a racist statement? No. Racism comes when you believe that a characteristic -- good or bad -- is inherent in the people themselves. The anger that is coming out of the Muhammad cartoons is a political, rather than a genetic, phenomenon.