There's a good reason why Muslims around the world are angry and offended by the trailer of the film that is an inflammatory piece of anti-Islam propaganda which triggered an ongoing wave of aggression against US embassies in the Muslim world last week. As a Muslim, indeed as a human being who shares this earth with Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and the hundreds of thousands of adherents to a multitude of hyphenated faiths that have come to punctuate our post-modern world, my outrage at such an unjustified provocation is boundless. I will not apologize for that, nor will I judge the indignation of others, even if it led to unwarranted violence and naïve demands. I will, however, apologize for the killing of innocents. While such violence can be explained, analyzed and dissected, it can never be justified. It is unclear till now whether the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of four embassy personnel including Ambassador Chris Stevens, was related to the film riots. What is clear, however, is that perpetrators of this heinous crime were waiting in the shadows for the right moment to strike while the iron was hot, seizing the opportunity to further destabilize a country still reeling from the aftermath of a savage civil war that left tens of thousands dead or wounded. The US's leading role in the NATO-led attack against Qaddafi's army of mercenaries and its support for the popular rebellion could never go unpunished in a country where weapons still remain within ample reach of those who will pay the right price for them. In Egypt, the film was used to sow the seeds of discord and sectarianism between Muslims and Christians. Reports in the US media citing police sources have indicated that the man allegedly behind the production of the film is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian Coptic Christian resident of South California and ex-convict for financial crimes, notorious for identity fraud. Even if the allegations against him are confirmed, this man represents the Coptic Diaspora just as much as Terry Jones represents Americans or Osama Bin Laden represented Muslims; he simply doesn't. The question is: What has been the ultimate effect of this piece of cartoonish, amateurish cultural waste? To me, that trailer was so absurd it didn't even deserve the dignity of a response. And while I'm convinced that my sentiment is shared by the vast majority of Muslims who had neither joined the protests nor condoned the ensuing violence when they did, the film and its makers were not addressing us. They were sending a clear message to the disenfranchised and marginalized, to the politically frustrated and the ideologically challenged. While it's easy to dismiss the angry bearded Sheikh or the hot-headed youth armed with a Molotov cocktail, as the natural expression of an uneducated nation, unused to the processes of “civilized” dissent, the roots of this pattern of visceral responses to what is considered blasphemous or religiously insulting, run much deeper. They have also been complicated by the democratic transitions currently underway in some Arab countries. In Egypt, for example, we came face to face with one of those root issues following the ouster of Mubarak in February 2011. Within the confines of our unique framework of socio-cultural homogeneity, Egypt's political class, as an indication of the tendencies of the broader society, failed miserably to accept difference or reach consensus. Brutal media campaigns targeting the ideological, social and economic “other” polarized the nation, leading, for instance, to the formation of a constituent assembly shackled from the outset by the tension between “us” and “them”; one that is likely to produce a charter that is ill-equipped to catapult this country into a new era built on the rule of law, separation of powers and a harmonious coexistence between respect for tradition and adoption of modernity. For Egyptians the notion of state censorship is so endemic, that the average Mo on the street simply cannot distinguish between the actions of an individual and a government sanctioned media machine. Egyptians have yet to learn the art of agreeing to disagree and to get comfortable with a much higher threshold of freedom of expression within their own national boundaries, let alone between them and other nations with completely different parameters for what is and is not acceptable. The role of external players in exacerbating the negative effect of this fluid transitional phase must also be scrutinized. Egypt, like Libya, Tunis, Syria and other Middle Eastern states, does not exist in a vacuum. Yet what happens in Egypt, as the most populous and historically the most powerful country in the region, and by token of the strategic borders it shares with two entities at war (Gaza and its de facto occupier Israel) is key to the future of the region as a whole. The success of a popular uprising yielding the first civilian president who happens to be an Islamist, is surely not a scenario supported by some of our neighbors. That said, I refuse to subscribe to elaborate conspiracy theories about “third parties” and “invisible hands” intent on “disturbing the peace”; theories which were systematically exploited by the old regime to reinforce its stranglehold on power. The reality on the ground, however, has changed irreversibly, hence creating the ideal climate for attempts to undermine Egypt's fledgling democracy. Such subversive moves must not be underestimated. Back to the film, it would be illogical to simply condemn both sides before undertaking a serious inquiry to find out who those sides really are. Was this ugly ordeal instigated by a lone, crazed Islamophobe like Norwegian Anders Breivik whose murderous rampage last year added an entirely new dimension to that social disease; or was there a more elaborate machine orchestrating a meticulously planned domino effect for a goal that has yet to be revealed? This question and the current crisis, however, cannot be addressed unless there is agreement on all sides that such inflammatory, provocative material has little to do with freedom of expression, but everything to do with incitement of hatred and violence through the denigration and vilification of Muslims and the most sacred symbol of their faith. But that's a matter for the courts to settle.
– Rania Al-Malky is the publisher and co-founder of The Egypt Monocle.
