http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/01/13/188053.html
“We do not sell Danish products” did at one time become the title of a free of charge marketing campaign almost every major grocery store in Cairo launched following the cartoons that infuriated the entire Muslim world. Whoever ran those places needed not be geniuses to realize that a tombstone-like sign modeled after “those are pearls that were his eyes” that points to that deserted place in the display fridge where Lurpak butter used to shamelessly lie and a little bit of PR about championing the noblest of causes despite forecasts of horrendous losses offered the perfect guarantee of a spectacular sales hike. Very few were bothered to think that nobody would have thought of buying the butter and its fellow blasphemous products at the time anyway, hence transferring them to another fridge until the storm passes was not by any means going to bring the least of financial mishap and that manipulating public emotions to get commercial gains is Marketing 101 in any capital-oriented society.
I totally believe in boycotting as a peaceful means of protest and I would personally refrain from using the products of a country whose domestic or foreign policies clash in one way or another with my personal principles or political stand, but would certainly not boycott an entire country because I am mad at what one of its citizens did.
Boycotting, like other forms of resistance, is expected to exert pressure on some party believed to be capable of redressing the wrong they have done you or your people or anything you believe in. But how were the people who embarked on a frantic investigation of the origins of all cheese and biscuit brands that have Scandinavian-looking names expecting that they or their faith would be avenged? Did they actually believe that the cartoonist would be arrested and beaten up in the police station until he tells on the intelligence agency that hired him to destroy Islam? Or that perhaps he would turn out to be the mastermind of a global plot to exterminate Muslims on the planet? I hate it when high hopes go down the drain, but I am sorry to say that I do not sympathize with those who lack the slightest ability to distinguish between one culture and another or one system of government and its exact opposite and who could not arrive at the conclusion that neither consumer boycotts nor flag burnings, embassy attacks, and death threats would send the man to the gallows.
We can have an endless debate about whether the cartoons were provocative or racist and whether it was insensitive of the cartoonist to be totally indifferent to the feelings of a billion people and whether real art is not that which nourishes on demonizing the “other.” What I see as indisputable is the man’s absolute freedom to do what he pleases as long as he did not violate any law in the country of which he is citizen and especially if the culture to which he belongs views this act as a normal practice of the freedom of expression this same country and a whole bunch of international charters granted him. But relativity is not a legitimate theory in our part of the world and for some strange reason we believe that whatever is sacred for us has to be so for the rest of the world and that every human being on the face of earth should make sure he or she is not hurting us before thinking of laying down a single brush stroke. That explains why we cannot come to terms with the fact that “deriding Islam” is not the most heinous of crimes across the world and that the culprit was able to get away with it.
Shortly after, the cartoon crisis was over. The butter returned, but the grudge remained. The mortified vulture licked its wounds and waited for the coming prey while bearing in mind that it better be edible this time. Well, looks like it is … perfectly so!
There is a cartoon involved, but the crime looks a lot different for many reasons. This time, the identity of the cartoonist is unknown, and will most probably remain so under the circumstances, and the culprit is basically guilty of posting it on the internet. This time, the figures depicted in the cartoon do not, as far I know, hold any special status in Islam but are, as far as people say, endowed with Islamic traits and that is how a bearded Mickey and a face-veiled Minnie derided Islam. It didn’t stop at this! The offense was rendered all the more criminal by the offender’s objections to mixing politics with religion and his view of the veil as a social phenomenon rather than a religious duty.
By the way, what the man did is quite insignificant, for it is apparently nothing compared to insulting none other than the prophet himself. It is rather who he is that makes all the difference, for this is what makes of him the most perfect of all preys. He is Christian and this in itself is proof enough that deriding Islam is what he does for a living. He is one of the richest and most known businessmen in Egypt and this makes tarnishing his image quite destructive on both the personal and the financial levels. He is the founder of a quite influential liberal party in post-revolution Egypt and this renders questioning his values detrimental to all political powers that subscribe to the same line of thought. There remains the most important ingredient in this recipe of the most delicious catch: the man is within reach, easy to get back at, and definitely prosecutable! Filing a lawsuit was as much of a piece of cake as the mobilization of the majority against a member of the minority is. In no time, the man was turned from a victim of a rising tide of religious fanaticism and a society that views freedom of speech as a deadly sin into a menace to national identity and an enemy of the state.
And because he is not Kurt Westergaard’s compatriot, he does not have the luxury of sitting back and resting assured that he is part of a system that will fight with all its might against any infringement on his basic rights. He, therefore, ended up in the exact position in which his fundamentalist detractors wanted to corner him and where he is to forced account for all the “crimes” committed by others who were lucky enough to be born in Denmark or any spot in the world that is capable of rescuing its citizens from those lethal claws that have by now mastered the art of prey selection.
Vultures do not necessarily derive their predatory powers from the speed with which they seize their prey or from this prey’s inability to detect imminent danger or escape sudden attacks, but more from the environment in which they thrive and which either nourishes their thirst for blood or teaches them that not all that moves is food. No laws govern the open wilderness and only God knows how many members of the species needs to perish in order for the rest to be listed as endangered.
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