Can political strife lead to cultural dialog?

One interesting thing about the uproar over the recent publication of cartoons insulting to Muslims is that it hasn't cut across the usual political lines. Especially in Europe, conservatives have come out as champions of a free press while liberals have counseled restraint, a real turnaround for many on both sides. So it is that Jonathan Steele, senior foreign correspondent for The Guardian, a center-left British dailly that has been sharply critical of the Iraq war, in a column Saturday praised U.S. President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for their role in the controversy.

After noting that Bush "continues to inflame many Muslims with his sabre-rattling over Iran," Steele said in in this instance Bush and the Americans have a lot to teach Europe:

The fact is that on the cartoon issue the great neocon [Bush] and his ideological advisers were pragmatic and smart enough to see that the drawings were in poor taste, deliberately provocative and grotesquely inaccurate in suggesting that every Muslim is a murderous would-be martyr and, worse still, that the Qur'an advocates suicide bombing.

Bush's reaction shows that Americans have a better understanding of multiculturalism than most Europeans. Racial, religious and ethnic discrimination are obviously still present in the United States, but its long history of mass immigration, as well as the American constitution's emphasis on individual rights regardless of origin, led Americans long ago to come to terms with the cultural differences within their rainbow nation and celebrate diversity. E pluribus unum - "unity from many" - as their motto puts it.

Steele said the reaction in Muslim countries, rioting from Africa to Southeast Asia that left at least 13 people dead, does not diminish the need for cool-headedness and tolerance of cultural differences.

Much of the rioting, he said, was politically motivated. He drew on his long experience reporting from the world's capitals and battlefields, to sketch in the outlines:

Here too it is important to keep cool. The cartoon row is being seized on by people with a gamut of special agendas. In Gaza, the first protesters who attacked EU offices were not from Hamas but were hotheads linked to the defeated Fatah movement as well as Islamic Jihad and others who never contested last month's elections. The protesters may have wanted to embarrass Hamas or snatch the limelight for their own movements.

In Iran, the deliberately confrontational new president is exploiting what he sees as yet another way of keeping grassroots support. He came in on a platform of promises to help the economic underclass but has failed to deliver, even as Iranian capital flees the country, the stock market falters and investors hold back on new projects in fear of war with the United States. What easier diversion than despicable denials of the Holocaust and synthetic tirades about the cartoons being a western conspiracy?

In Lebanon, anti-Syrian politicians use the crisis to denounce Damascus for allegedly getting marchers to burn the Danish embassy in Beirut - a charge which feeds into the frantic internal power struggles that are paralysing Lebanon's current government. And let us not forget that the protests against Denmark began in conservative Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, which has a broadly pro-western foreign policy. Even the Saudis only reacted after Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, refused to receive a protest delegation of Danish Islamic leaders and ambassadors from Muslim countries. The Danish government's insensitivity and rudeness were almost as offensive as the cartoons.

Much of last week's crisis, in other words, was about politics. And politicians trying to make hay of it.

But resolution of the discord, Steele said, won't come from the politicians:

A huge responsibility now rests on the mainstream European media. The extremist slogans carried during the anti-cartoon protests do not represent the views of all Muslims and should not be portrayed as such. Moderate Muslim leaders in European countries have been speaking out all week to urge restraint and condemn the protesters' violence, just as in Britain they condemned Abu Hamza's incitement to murder long before the courts did. The trouble is that these long-standing tensions and arguments in Muslim communities where voices of moderation have consistently sought to counter the radicals were rarely reported. Extremism is a better story.

Muslims are not only an important part of Europe's new diversity. They are diverse among themselves. To suggest that, because almost all of Europe's Muslims felt offended by the cartoons, they all support slogans calling for revenge and beheadings is as inaccurate as it is for people in Muslim countries to claim that every European approved the cartoons' publication. There are liberals, conservatives, modernisers and traditionalists in all communities, just as there are those who know the bounds of good taste and bigots who do not.

Now the provocation looks like it may be about over, it's important the resulting dialog continues. It's just as important in the U.S. as it is in Europe.