How Attacks in Egypt, Libya Relate to Arab Spring

By ⋅ September 12, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
Rami Khouri (Photo: Marco Werman)

Rami Khouri (Photo: Marco Werman)

Some say the attacks on US diplomats in Egypt and Libya cast a cloud over the image of the entire Arab Spring.

Anchor Marco Werman explores Arab opinion with Rami Khouri.

Khouri is editor at large for Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper, and director of the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. The White House today is condemning the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Libya and three of his colleagues. We’re trying to understand the factors that led to this tragic event. What happened exactly is still under investigation, but We do know this: Ambassador Christopher Stevens died after the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by a well-armed mob.

Rami Khouri: This is a criminal act that cannot be accepted at all, but I think it’s important to understand why criminal acts happen.

Werman: That’s Rami Khouri, whom we spoke to earlier about what happened in Benghazi. Khouri is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He says it’s important to remember what preceded the attack in Benghazi, a protest over a film produced in the U.S. which many Muslims say insults Islam’s prophet Mohammed.

Khouri: It’s not animosity towards the U.S. It’s animosity towards a bunch of radical, freak, criminal, offensive extremists who put out videos that denigrate the prophet of one of the world’s great religions. It’s not about America. It’s about these idiots who are putting out these terrible videos and people are reacting against that. It happens that the embassy is the symbol that people gravitate to. And the American government knows that. That’s why it protects the embassy. Generally there are systems to deal with this. Once in a while these systems fail and this is what happened.

Werman: Have you seen this mini-movie or this trailer? I’m not even sure what to describe it. I saw 14 minutes or so of it yesterday. What do you find offensive about it?

Khouri: I haven’t actually seen it yet. I just heard about this last night and I’m going to go and look at it today, but I heard what it included, and it’s very offensive to people of faith. Now the vast majority of Muslims who hear this or see it would not react by storming the American embassy. They would react in a much more rational way. But a small number of radicals will do that, and you see this in every society. You see the radical fundamentalist Christians in the United States, you see radical Jewish militants burning olive trees in occupied Palestinian land, you see radical Hindus attacking Muslims in India. Every religion has a small fringe group of extremists who will react like this, and it’s really important not to take that and then say, well, all Muslims, or all Hindus, or all Jews, or all Americans are like this. This is the mistake that people make when they resort to cartoon-like, black and white, you’re with us or against us attitudes.

Werman: Rami, tell us more about the more measured reaction in the Arab world today to the film and to the attacks on the consulate and embassy yesterday.

Khouri: Well, I think the more measured reaction is people will ask about where is the limit to freedom of speech around the world. We had this a few years ago with the Danish cartoons.

Werman: The caricatures of Mohammed.

Khouri: Right. They were very offensive cartoons about the prophet Mohammed and Islam as a whole. There are very tricky philosophical questions about freedom as the absolute value. This is one of the issues that this controversy should raise for discussion. Is freedom, and is absolute personal freedom, the highest moral value that any society should aspire to? This seems to be the answer in the U.S. and in Europe, that personal freedom is absolutely the highest value. You can insult people, you can offend them, but as long as you don’t kill them or shoot them, that’s acceptable by freedom of speech.

Werman: Are Arab media today questioning that?

Khouri: Yeah, yeah, of course. And I think not only Arab media, I think people all over the world are questioning it. The other side to that is well, and I would subscribe to that, I would say absolute freedom is not the highest value. I think that human mutual respect and dignity is the highest value, with a high dose of freedom, but the freedom should be relative to the factors of respect and dignity. We see it here in the United States with people who get angry at Arabs or Muslims and they go and they attack mosques and they burn mosques. They did it in the South, and they used to attack black churches. These things happen in every society. This is nothing peculiar or exclusive to Muslims and Arabs or Libyans. This is a universal fault of human nature.

Werman: But then I hear the critics cry, then you’ve got have respect for people’s faith but you also have to have respect for embassies.

Khouri: Absolutely. Absolutely. And the vast majority of people in Libya, I’d think would defend the American embassy. Many of them did. They fought back against the people who attacked it. The overwhelming majority of people in Egypt and Libya and across the Arab world would never do anything like this. But a small minority did. And now we have to not allow our anger at that criminal act by a small group of people to change our view of the rest of society.

Werman: Rami Khouri, thank you very much for coming to the studio.

Khouri: Thanks for having me.

Werman: Rami Khouri is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. You can see Khouri answer my question about the impact of all of this on Syria. The video is at The World.org.

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Discussion

10 comments for “How Attacks in Egypt, Libya Relate to Arab Spring”

  • http://twitter.com/rodneyreuben rodney reuben

    This guy says we should curb individual liberty to respect peoples human respect and dignity. Even though Muslim country’s are some of the worst human rights offenders in the world. I find this very hypocritical. People of faith need to respect unbelievers personal liberty.

  • yrag01

    I agree with Rami Khouri point that though a minority of the population, extremist of all religions and nationalities are a threat to mutual respect, understanding and trust, and also that our personal expressions can go too far in the West, but I think he is doing a bit of whitewashing of the discrimination and persecution of minorities and women and the tacit consent by the populous of institutionalized repression and bigotry in the Arab societies.

    • http://twitter.com/rodneyreuben rodney reuben

      I think it is ridiculous to say the west can go too far. We make offensive jokes and cartoons where as the Islamic world cuts off peoples heads, hijacks airplanes and blows up buildings. I think that is going to far. Not to mentions the rampant oppression of women. sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.

  • Gamal

    This interview turned into an apologetic rant by Khouri who essentially came to the defense of a violent mob. Did he really refer to the filmmakers as “criminals” at one point? Good job shifting the blame away from the violent mob and vilifying the filmmakers. We should not cower to the delicate feelings of extremists. Is the air up in your ivory tower perhaps a little too thin, Rami?

  • Thomas Richter

    Frankly, I was appalled to hear Mr Khouri’s willingness to curb individual freedom to accommodate religious believers. All religions deserve – nay – must be ridiculed and questioned constantly, particularly when they have such impact on the lives of those who do not adhere to them. Where is the tolerance and respect from religious supporters towards those of us who do not believe in superstition and supernatural beings? We are supposed to be sensitive to their feelings? In a society where women are oppressed, acid thrown on their faces? Where infidels are persecuted? Where cartoonists are threatened because they dare draw?
    Mr Khouri seems to forget that it is the very individual freedom he condemns that protects the irrational beliefs of religious believers.
    Sorry Marco, but it was a weak interview, you should have pressed Khouri on these ludicrous statements.

  • http://twitter.com/fadster85 Fady

    I am appalled that
    this man was allowed to make such distasteful claims.

    # If you wanna
    scavenge you tube for stuff that is offensive to every religion, you will find
    plenty. So how can he justify such a violent, untamed, barbaric response

    # Which leads me to the second point, like the majority of all
    those who protested, the author has NOT watched the movie as he mentioned, yet
    he gives himself the right to comment on it. I would have imagined that before
    he gives himself the liberty to defend the mobs, he would take the time to know
    what the issue at hand is. But that is a long standing tradition in fanatical
    circles where people act based on second hand knowledge spouted by some so
    called “cleric”. An Egyptian Nobel prize winner survived an assassination attempt
    carried out by a 20 some year old Egyptian. The Nobel Prize was in literature,
    the assassinator was illiterate.

    # The idiocy claims that he is throwing around regarding the move
    makers do go both ways.

    When will they be secure enough about their faith that such
    distasteful movies are not perceived as existential threats to the existence of
    their faith.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jim.jolley.37 Jim Jolley

    Part of having rights is to exercise them responsibly. Insulting someone’s religion, whether that religion is Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc, is not necessarily showing wisdom. I am not excusing the actions of violent mobs, for their actions denigrate the very religion they are defending, just as making a film defiling another’s religion does nothing to forward one’s own. And the ones who get hurt and killed are the innocent.

    • http://twitter.com/Zaklog Shawn Smith

      And would you say the same thing to everyone who’s insulted and slandered Christianity in America? To every single Hollywood celebrity who has treated Christianity as a vile, disgusting thing?

      Or is it only when people respond with violence that we need to be concerned with their feelings? That’s called cowardice.

  • http://twitter.com/Zaklog Shawn Smith

    First point, the system this man proposes hands all power to the most easily offended. The person first willing to cry “offensive” or “blasphemy” or “racist” gets to shut down all discussion. This is completely incompatible with the mere possibility of free speech.

    Second, I suggest that the U.S. might possibly *consider* restricting our free speech to respect Islam the day that converting away from Islam is no longer a crime punishable by death in any majority-Islamic nation. Until then, I will call Mohammed and their five pillars every vicious, hateful name I can think up without a hint of shame.

    The cowardice of Khouri, masquerading as civility, is disgusting.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002378555648 Abeerah Sadia

    I am a Muslim born in America and I find these types of films, cartoons, and depictions of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam to be very offensive. However, I condemn all acts of violent protest. I feel incredible sadness for the family of Ambassador Stevens who was wrongfully murdered. I agree with what Rami Khouri is saying in the sense that person liberties and freedom of speech should not go as far as to transgress the basic laws of human respect and dignity. Having said that, I would say the same to my fellow Muslims – show dignity and respect to even your offenders.