Islamic furor exposes a rift across Europe

BERLIN -- The outpouring of wrath toward Europe from Muslim immigrants and from people in Islamic countries suggests, analysts say, that Europe has become the ''new" United States for many Muslims: a rich and powerful entity seeking to impose its will and values on the poorer regions of the world.

In the controversy over the pen-and-ink drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, Europe is perceived to have imposed its conception of ''free expression," according to the analysts, just as it has sought to dictate the nuclear policies of Islamic Iran.

The result is that Muslims in Europe, many of whom already see themselves as second-class citizens in their new homes, and elsewhere regard Europe as antagonistic to their aspirations and interests.

''Muslims have long seen Europe as more sympathetic, more inclined to dialogue with Muslims," than the United States, said Udo Steinbach, director of the German Institute for Middle East Studies in Hamburg. ''But now, to many Muslims, Europe is little differentiated from the United States -- just another enemy of Islam."

Thus what started as a quirky debate over freedom of expression versus respect for religious taboos has become something deeper and far more dangerous for Europe, according to analysts on both sides of the divide.

The furor over the dozen cartoons depicting Mohammed, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper and have since been reprinted in scores of newspapers in Europe and beyond, has flared from the gritty Muslim districts of London to the steaming streets of Jakarta, with Islamic radicals calling for a ''European 9/11," Muslim crowds torching European diplomatic offices in the Middle East and Asia, and protesters staging assaults on Western military bases in Afghanistan.

The frenzy over the satiric images, analysts say, has given a powerful boost to radical regimes and militant movements that care little about cartoons, but which are eager to exploit grievances against the West. Iran's radical Shi'ite government, Afghanistan's Taliban fundamentalists, Syria's dictatorial regime, armed factions in the Palestinian territories, and obscure Southeast Asian ''jihadi" groups have been fastest in pouncing on the issue.

Still, say analysts, if various renegade regimes and militant outfits have been able to fan outrage over the Prophet Mohammed cartoons so successfully, that's only because white-hot embers of resentment toward Europe were already smoldering among Muslims near and far.

''For Muslims living in Europe, the cartoons are a symbol of the racism and disgrace they feel they face every day," said Olivier Roy, one of France's foremost experts on Islamic issues, in a phone interview from Paris. ''There is a new trend to see Europe as interventionist -- like the US -- not as neutralist and even-handed. This view is taking both the Islamic world and Europe in a very dangerous direction."

Specific sore points, according to Roy and other analysts, include Europe's aggressive lead in opposing Iran's nuclear ambitions; the blistering criticism that European leaders have directed at the election of the Hamas militant faction to a majority in the Palestinian legislature; the growing European role in military operations in Afghanistan, seen by some as suppressing Islamic aspirations; and the hard-line stand taken by France in opposing Syrian attempts to maintain Lebanon as a vassal state. Also raising Muslim ire at Europe: Last year's election of pro-American conservative Angela Merkel to the chancellorship of Germany; France's assertion that it has a right to employ nuclear weapons against rogue regimes (presumably in the Middle East); and thunderous condemnation by European leaders and editorialists of vitriolic anti-Israel comments by Iran's president.

''The cartoons are merely the final drop that caused the cup to overflow," said Ahmed Abu-Laban, imam of Copenhagen's Scandinavian Waqfs Mosque. ''Again and again we have watched the West show disrespect for our faith. Again and again we've listened to European politicians linking our faith to terrorism. Until finally it became too much.

''So now you see what happens," the Muslim cleric said in a telephone interview from Copenhagen.

It was Abu-Laban who helped turn a local brouhaha into an international crisis by bringing satiric cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to the attention of activists in the Middle East. The calls for action against the 12 drawings -- originally published in September in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which has since apologized for offending Muslims -- spawned a boycott of Danish goods that started in December. The economic protest cost the Danish economy tens of millions of dollars in lost sales of dairy goods and pharmaceuticals in the Middle East, and triggered the violent outbursts across the Muslim world.

One of the cartoons shows Mohammed wearing a sputtering bomb instead of a turban; another shows him turning suicide bombers away from heaven, declaring, ''Stop! We have run out of virgins" -- an allusion to the tradition that Muslims who die defending their faith are accorded 72 virgins when they reach paradise.

Islamic tradition prohibits physical representations of Prophet Mohammed, who founded the faith in the seventh century, for fear that faith in God will deteriorate into veneration of human images.

The original cartoons have been reprinted in scores of newspapers, mainly in Europe, usually accompanied by editorials defending freedom of expression as a higher value in secular democracies than respect for the rules of a single religion.

Emigration of Muslims from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia has made Islam the second-largest religion in Europe, after Christianity.

Experts estimate that there may be as many as 20 million Muslims in the 25 nations of the European Union, whose total population is 455 million. France, Germany, and Britain have the largest Muslim communities.

Not since the invasion of Iraq has a single circumstance brought Muslims together as much as has anger over the cartoons.

''It's a confluence of forces," Rami G. Khouri, editor-at-large of Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper, said in an interview from Beirut. ''Just at a time when Europeans are becoming more alarmed at the Muslim presence in their midst, ordinary people in the Arab-Asia world are angered that Europe seems to be adopting the same pushy, patronizing, pro-Israel positions usually associated with the US.

''The cartoons are just a fuse that ignited a combustible mixture of pressure and tensions," he said. ''Sure, Islamist troublemakers are stirring things up. Surprise, surprise. But Europeans are sending out the offensive message that their attitudes and their values count more than the attitudes and values of Muslims. More is at stake here than a few insulting, blasphemous cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper."

Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim by heritage, said that Europeans should be proud of creating democracies that permit criticism and even ridicule of religious dogma, and that freedom of expression is perhaps the single most precious of liberties.

''There is no freedom of speech in those countries where demonstrations and public outrage are being staged," she told reporters in Berlin. ''There is a right to offend within the bounds of law. It is a necessary and urgent right."

Petra Krischok of the Globe's Berlin bureau contributed to this report.