Are Europeans So Out Of Touch?

ROME

Are the Europeans out of touch with today’s world? Two events last week -- seemingly unrelated -- were emblematic of how clueless the one-time colonisers are in the flashing reality of the new world order. One was the European outrage and scorn at the "temerity" of Lakshmi Mittal, the world’s biggest steel magnate, to attempt a takeover of Arcelor, Europe’s premium steel company, and the other was the reprinting of offensive cartoons about Prophet Mohammad in various newspapers in the name of solidarity. If Mittal was spurned for not being "European" enough even though he lives in London, maintains an office in Rotterdam and rents a French chateau for his daughter’s wedding, the right to print the cartoons, which offended millions of Muslims the world over, was defended as a purely European value. 

Is there something wrong with this picture? You bet. European editors absorbed the chauvinistic garbage coming out of Arcelor’s boss, Guy Dolle, who said that Mittal wasn’t "one of us" (some say he is better for having resurrected dying steel mills from Mexico to Indonesia, from Kazakhstan to Algeria) and must be spurned. Continuing his outburst, Dolle made the brilliant observation that Mittal’s company was "full of Indians." And then he delivered his racist punch line, saying Mittal wants to buy Arcelor with "monnaie de singe" or "monkey change." In other words, Mittal is a monkey to Dolle’s white visage. A French minister called Mittal an Indian predator.

The government of tiny Luxembourg said it would use "all necessary means" to stop the hostile takeover. The French, the Spanish, the unions were all spewing rhetoric which, if it came from someone in India or another brown/black country, would have been unacceptable. But this was the European upper crust talking. Mittal was born in India and grew up there but he built his global empire from the fast lanes of London where he continues to live. He spends his money largely in Europe, whether buying the most expensive private house or renting French villas by the dozen to accommodate wedding guests.

Now switch to the cartoon crisis currently enveloping the Muslim world. Again the origins of the crisis lie in Europe. It all began in the state of Denmark when a conservative newspaper Jyllands-Posten thought it would be funny to depict the likeness of Prophet Mohammad with a ticking time bomb in his turban. Although the cartoons first appeared in September 2005, they were reprinted recently in Norway, New Zealand, France and last week in Italy. This European media solidarity has led to protests spewing lava-like across the Muslim world. Danish Embassies are burning and road rage is growing by the hour. It is Satanic Verses to the power of ten.

The Mittal controversy and the cartoon crisis both show today’s Europeans unable to understand the world around them, amidst them and beyond them. All major European countries have large Muslim populations -- but mostly unintegrated and largely ghettoised. The cartoons have given obvious fodder to the clash of civilisations school, raised the heat several notches up and provided leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to issue new threats. He has reportedly ordered his commerce minister to review economic contracts and commercial exchanges with "these countries." There is even talk of an emergency session of the Organisation of Islamic Conference to discuss retaliation.

Arguably, the cartoon crisis is a tough one for journalists the world over. Where is the line between respect for religion and self-censorship? At what point must you let one set of cultural values override another? Can you always judge others by your yardstick or must you use their yardstick under special circumstances? Freedom of expression is a religious value for the west but in many parts of the world it comes tempered and packaged with concerns for the larger good. Voltaire, whom a French newspaper invoked following the sacking of a French editor for publishing the cartoons, wouldn’t have succeeded in proving religious bigotry in today’s Iran.

Pushing one edge of the envelope by ridiculing another’s religion, while not absorbing him in your society as a worthy individual, will hardly further the cause of religious tolerance. In the post-9/11 climate where most Muslims feel victimised and under the microscope and where terrorist leaders are busy exploiting those fears, it hardly helps to light a new fire. The age of internet is a burdensome age. No longer can an offence remain sequestered in Denmark. It may have taken a few months for the cartoons to walk, linked through one website to the next, but walk they did. The crisis could have been contained after the Danish apology if other newspapers had not joined the battle.

The bigger question is -- why choose the most provocative point to make your own? Western press routinely self-censors photos of violence and natural disasters if they are too graphic. It routinely white-washes crimes of corruption and buys euphemisms from Wall Street to describe outright theft of small investors’ money by predators like Enron. It routinely skirts around racist talk from Guy Dolle about Lakshmi Mittal. So why in the case of the Islam, must it rub the believers' noses into it?