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Demonising Islam

By Scott Richardson - posted Wednesday, 2 February 2005


Whether it be the Germans in World War II classics or the shady Russians from the James Bond films of the 1970's, Western culture seems to have an ingrained desire to have a villain worth hating - the “other”. The “other” is the person or group which is defined as different. The difference infers inferiority, that they are sub-human, thereby consolidating another group's identity. This “other” is effectively marginalised by the “mainstream” of a particular society.

Even in the great canonical texts, there are outsiders who are marginalised because they do not fit into the social mainstream of the time. Shakespeare's Othello is described as the “black ram” and The Merchant of Venice has been seen as an anti-Semitic text.

One of the recurrent ideas in critical theory is the notion that there is “no objective standpoint” and that “language predetermines what we see” and thus “reality” is a mere construction of language. French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, theorised this in his notion of the “self” and the “other” in terms of identification. He stated that we know ourselves as distinct from others through language and other systems of representation. Language, as he puts it, precedes and determines subjectivity.

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Authors use language to construct a “reality” of Islam that will often be accepted by those that know no alternatives. Journalist Peter Manning's recent paper, The New Others, examined bias in Sydney journalism in its representation of the Arab world. Manning attributes the use of language, whether it is emotive language, persuasive word choice or euphemism as a first indicator of meaning.

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations are two such books that create an Islamic “other” and arguably make up the two most controversial books ever written on Islam.

Despite winning awards and accolades in Western countries the reception of The Satanic Verses was not mirrored elsewhere in the world. In India, the book was banned before it was even published. Rushdie had a fatwa, a religious order of death placed on him and in the riots and mass book burnings that followed 12 Muslims died.

It is Rushdie's (mis) appropriation of the official history of Islam that has caused so much controversy. Rushdie's alternative view has the Prophet and Gibreel creating their own version of the Koran, rather than it coming directly from Allah. Contentiously, the novel also recounts an event where the prophet mistakes the word of Satan for the word of Allah. Rushdie's stylistically post-modern manipulation of historical “truths” in Islam is the primary tool for the author's demonisation of Islam and its followers.

The powerful signifiers in The Satanic Verses are undoubtedly blasphemous and provocative. Rushdie seems to flirt with the unsayable. Firstly, the name of the prophet Muhammad in the text is “Mahound” (literally meaning “false prophet”), which was the Crusader term used to vilify the prophet. He is described as a shady businessman and “a tyrant, a lecher and a man without scruple”. The holy city of Mecca where Gabriel (Gibreel) gave him the word of Allah is named “Jahilia”, which signifies the name Muslims give to the pre-Islamic times, literally meaning “ignorance”. Muhammad's 12 wives are described as the 12 whores in a brothel known as “the curtain”, referring to the veil (Muslim headscarf) worn by Muhammad's wives. During Mahound's return to Jahilia, the satirist and poet Baal (a biblical fertility deity that demanded human sacrifice) makes love one by one to each of his wives.

Rushdie's imagery of Ayesha leading the blind followers into the Red Sea to their watery deaths and of the Imam (Muslim leader) “grown monstrous” and “devouring the faithful” strongly exemplify Rushdie's belief that the Muslim faith is a blind one and one that leads its followers down the wrong path.

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Samuel Huntington's non-fiction Clash of Civilizations documents in Huntington's mind the new world order of two battling totalities: Western democratic pluralism and Islamic theocracy.

Clash of Civilizations maintains the structuralist notions of relational identity. Affirmation of identity for Huntington is realised through understanding, not only who we are but also what we are not. He states that “unless we hate what we are not we cannot love what we are”. The “other” in Clash of Civilizations is not a group identified simply as “not self” but further as a devalued and feared “other”: for Huntington in the Western perspective, the new enemy.

Huntington supports the statement of Professor Barry Buzan that the fault for this perceived rivalry is the Muslim world’s apparent “jealously of Western power” and its “resentments over Western domination”. It is also partly to do with the “bitterness and humiliation of the invidious comparison between the accomplishments of Islamic and Western civilizations”. In a broad brush stroke Huntington has labelled the Muslim world as bitter, humiliated, jealous and resentful. Through this, blame is ascribed to the Islamic civilization, now divorced from our own civilization's self, and it becomes simply the “other”. The “invidious comparison” sets up the hierarchical comparison between the “self” and “other”, where because of a lack of “accomplishments” Islam is the devalued and inferior one.

Huntington, from a background of classical American pragmatism, maintains this dialectical doctrine. The gaps in the texts also, such as distinctions between literalists and moderates and the violence caused by the Christian crusades impact as much as what is said and contribute to an imbalanced, subjective account of history and society today.

Despite the controversy and slanderous comments made about the portrayals in The Satanic Verses and Clash of Civilizations, they merely reflect the contemporary “other” in Western culture, something that is only exacerbated by events such as the Gulf wars and terrorism. Other best sellers like Betty Mahmoody's Not without my Daughter and Norma Khouri's Forbidden Love, along with cinematic blockbusters True Lies and The Siege and the television series Threat Matrix are mainstream popular texts that demonstrate this increasing demonisation in Western countries. Ignorance has been widely attributed to being the cause of such “fear of the other” and fear of the unknown, ignorance that is most often filled by the media, through populist literature and film.

The power of language to construct this “reality” has been exploited for the purpose of identity consolidation and is evident in literature and throughout the history of propaganda. Significantly, language is often used as a precursor or justification of action against the “other”. Awareness of the power of literary portrayals and language in altering our perceptions of the Islamic “other” allows for a certain amount of scepticism, so that one may make sound judgements rather than blindly accepting linguistic portrayals.

The concept of the “other” is embedded not only in literature but also in Western philosophical traditions dating back to Plato's Theory of Forms. Its exploitation for political gains and for purposes of identity consolidation has been evident throughout history.

Language is exploited through the negative connotations that often act as a precursor to the actions of the “self” against the “other”; the pen is not mightier than the sword but the former must precede the latter. The European imperialist advance of the early 19th century was the heroic advance of civilization against barbarism, bringing the cross and the sword to inferior races, an act that justified murder, rape and enslavement. The scathing Nazi depiction of Jews in films such as The Eternal Jew went beyond the realms of mere anti-Semitism. It was propaganda that constructed an entire race as rodents and scum, an unvalued “other” in comparison to the Aryan “self”. At one point the language was dismissed as political rhetoric; however the gift of hindsight reveals to us a key catalyst of the Holocaust.

The self-other dichotomy is simplistic and counter-productive, ineffective in understanding complex issues of race, religion and people. Refusal to succumb to cultural polarisation and awareness of the power of language to construct and determine our view of reality allows us to make more logical choices about the issues presented to us and to accept the possibility that we as human beings cannot necessarily be identified through easy categories and broad labels.

If the demonisation of the “other” is purely for the consolidation of the “self,” then “the new others” (or as President Bush termed it, the new “axis of evil”) are merely an enemy of necessity. Our submission to such unintelligent and ultimately destructive dialectical thinking allows language to be a weapon of marginalisation, and more severely a catalyst of suffering. Language exploitations and subjective constructions of reality are inevitable; the dominant culture will continue to rely on simplistic divisions for the purpose of creating a superior self. The question that we must ask ourselves therefore, if we are to engage and understand the complex issues presented to us by Rushdie, Huntington, world leaders and the media is this: Do we succumb to the pictures they construct?

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About the Author

Scott Richardson is a first year Journalism and Law student at the University of Technology, Sydney. His special interests are in social justice issues and and he also writes for and works with www.vibewire.net.

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