BBC News Middle East
15 September 2012 Last updated at 13:07 GMT
Film protests: What explains the anger?
By Shashank Joshi Research fellow, Royal United Services Institute
More than three years ago, President Barack Obama famously told a Cairo
audience that "we meet at a time of great tension between the United States and
Muslims around the world".
His speech, titled A New Beginning, sought to transcend the acrimony of the
Bush era.
This week, as violent protests rage across the Middle East and beyond, the
president might ask himself: What went wrong?
The truth is that there is no single explanation.
One answer is that last year's wave of political uprisings, the so-called Arab
Spring, is responsible.
After all, protests began in Egypt, which last year became the most populous
Arab democracy, and spread to Libya, which became the largest by area.
The Arab Spring did indeed invigorate a range of Islamist movements and
weakened the law enforcement capabilities of the affected states.
In that febrile political environment, protests might have been easier to
start, simpler for violent extremists to exploit, and harder for confused
security forces to manage.
Film 'trigger'
However, this cannot explain why some of this week's most serious violence took
place in Sudan, and other protests in places normally calm, as Qatar.
Additionally, such violence long pre-dates the Arab Spring and frequently took
place under dictators, the most prominent examples occurring in the Middle East
in 2006 after a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons of the Prophet
Muhammad.
The second argument is that we are witnessing profound anti-Americanism,
dormant for much of last year, fused with religious extremism - with the
controversial Innocence of Muslims film merely a trigger.
According to a June 2012 Pew survey, just 15% of those in Muslim countries held
a favourable opinion of the United States, compared to 25% in 2009.
Polls indicate that anti-Americanism stems from a variety of grievances,
including US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, American wars in
the Middle East, and US backing for friendly dictators.
The irony is that, whereas Barack Obama is sometimes pilloried by critics in
the West for naively supporting the revolutions, most Arabs see his actions as
too late and too little. In Tunisia, for instance, only a third believe that
the US response to their revolution had a positive impact.
We should, however, distinguish anti-Americanism from religious extremism.
Although Arab ideas about freedom of expression are fundamentally divergent
from Western ones - 84% of Egyptians want the death penalty for those who leave
the Muslim religion - there are big generational gaps.
Those under 35 - the generation widely held up as the engine of the Arab Spring
- are far less likely to pray several times a day, attend the mosque regularly,
or read the Koran daily. They are being catalysed less by religion, and more by
politics.
Pro-US current
Furthermore, anti-Americanism is not universal.
Despite the widespread xenophobia evident in Egypt, 35% of Egyptians actually
want Egypt-US relations to remain as strong as they were before the revolution,
and a surprisingly high 20% want them to get even better. Sixty percent of
Tunisians say that they like American ideas about democracy.
A Gallup poll this year showed that 54% of Libyans approve of American
leadership, near the highest approval ever seen in the region.
Indeed, Libya has seen a series of protests supportive of the US, and against
the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
Perhaps the most important fact is that the crowds ransacking embassies this
week are negligibly small when compared to the popular mobilisations that swept
away dictators. They are a shrill minority.
Even where it is widespread, anti-Americanism is simply not a sufficient
explanation for outbreaks of violence.
In many cases, protests might have had little energy had local religious and
political entrepreneurs, eager to bolster their following and create disorder,
not exploited them.
In Khartoum, for instance, local buses were laid on to transport prayer-goers
to protest sites.
In Libya, to speak of a protest is misleading. The assault in which US
Ambassador Chris Stevens died was probably a co-ordinated, complex undertaking
by an organised militant group, perhaps in concert with al-Qaeda's North
African affiliate. It represents broader Libyan opinion no more than Anders
Breivik did that of Norway.
This wave of violence will have longer-term repercussions.
The US has no legal mechanism to censor the provocative film and, with eight
weeks to go before a national election, President Obama will be careful not to
appear unduly willing to appease mob violence.
US hampered
American freedom of expression cannot be a subject of compromise for any
administration. This means that such triggers for protest will recur, as there
is no shortage of provocateurs.
There is very little that the United States can realistically do. Broader US
foreign policy is not going to radically change in a way that addresses
regional grievances.
Mr Obama's own experience with intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
ended in humiliation years ago, after he was rebuffed by the Israeli
government, and Iran's nuclear programme has now crowded out the peace process.
Above all, however, many Americans will rightly or wrongly see this week's
protests as indicative of the failure of engagement, not a sign that more is
needed.
In Egypt, American faith in President Mohammed Mursi has been badly shaken.
Despite Egypt's continued military and financial dependence on Washington, Mr
Mursi hesitated in condemning the protests.
President Obama's admission that "I don't think that we would consider [Egypt]
an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy" highlights how the political
sands are shifting.
There will be new pressures for the US to disengage from the Middle East,
revert to fortress-style embassies, and accelerate the refocusing of American
attention to Asia.
Some will argue that Mr Obama's efforts to temper anti-Americanism were
exercises in naivety; others that he went nowhere near far enough.
Either way, the irony is that just as fragile post-revolutionary governments
are most in need of assistance to build institutions, small sections of their
populations are making that task much harder.
Shashank Joshi is a Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute
(RUSI), a defence think-tank, and a doctoral student of international relations
at Harvard University.
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More protests against an anti-Islam film made in the US erupt around the
Muslim world, after Hezbollah's leader urged followers not to stay silent.
UN adds to Syria war crimes list
Four jailed in Gaza over Italian's murder
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