Middle Eastern Governments and Cartoons

Of course they fanned the flames for their own political purposes.

As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk in the hallways was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.

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"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference when the O.I.C. took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam.

He said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction — of course they were offended — and then you had regimes taking advantage saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about.' "

The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.

Basically you've got illegitimate secular autocrats or corrupt and very un-Islamic religious authorities ruling over the all countries in the Middle East who always have to meet challenges from the Islamists who oppose their inept governing style and/or claim their regimes are not "Islamic" enough. The people generally dislike the ruling elite and for a variety of reasons, but oftentimes oppose the elite on their lack of religious credentials, which then generally leads to the governments attempting to placate and co-opt the religious elite in their countries in order to maintain some semblance of support for their rule. Obviously their are exceptions to this system including the Algerian governments war with the Islamists in the mid 90s, or Syria's problems with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 80s, or Egypt's supression of the Muslim Brotherhood, but basic fact remains that Middle Eastern governments more often than not (even the secular ones) want to be viewed as pious Muslims.

So for the cartoon. Well it's a twofold benefit for the governments because not only can they "defend Islam", but they can stick a finger in the collective eye of the West, and both actions are beneficial because it deflects criticism.

As for the violence, deaths, and rioting I can only assume that this entire situation has spun outside of the government's ability to control in Beirut and Damascus.

As always read someone else, Abu Aardvark or Juan Cole