We Didn't Start the Fire

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Syrians have had little opportunities to outwardly express their frustrations with rising unemployment and with their own government. Expressing anger toward the West is easier and safer for many Syrians than expressing anger about internal concerns.

"We have to admit to the fact that we are under so much pressure," one young man told me after the riots. "The political situation, the pressure we have from the state. So, this was a kind of release. I don’t like [the fact that] the protest resulted in a fire—that is not a part of our religion and our prophet."

A professor of political science here at Damascus University put it this way: "They tried to express their anger against something else–Western double standards in dealing with democracy, the economic situation--and they took it out on the embassies in Damascus," he said.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this furor is what it reveals about the depth of the communications rift between the West and the Arab and Muslim world. For Europe and the West, the caricatures are a matter of free expression. For the Muslim world, such caricatures are a direct insult, a show of Western disrespect for their religion and their culture.

In the next decade, Arab and Muslim countries will most likely be struggling with questions of freedom and democracy, and how to reconcile their own culture and religion with those freedoms. The citizens of the Muslim world remain deeply distrustful both of their own political systems and of the West. They must learn how to engage their own systems and how to engage the West. Burning flags and riots are merely a sign of their own impotence—of their inability to engage either their own governments or the international community.

The Muslim world has a formidable to-do list: It must learn how to build democratic institutions, embrace the true meaning of freedom, and constructively engage those institutions, their own populations, and the West.

But, those in the West who published the incendiary cartoons also need to be asking themselves some hard questions. One person's freedom often infringes on another’s sense of security, and sometimes even threatens another’s identity. Democracy requires maintaining sensitivity and openness to the delicate balance between these competing values. Bridging that communication divide may be our greatest challenge for a more peaceful world.

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