Agreeing to Disagree with Europe

 I've always been fascinated by Europe: the beautiful countries that make up the continent , the culture, the landscapes, the food and especially the people. From the warm waters in Southern Italy , the lakes and amazing cliffs in Ireland, and the enigmatic and eclectic beauty of Sweden, more than a handful of Europeans have made their way into my heart. Out of the 10 or so of my classmates whom I consider my best friends, about three quarters are Europeans. That's saying a lot, since half of my classmates are Americans.

There was a surreal touch to my rather blind love for Europe, marked by deep admiration of the surface, without actually knowing what exactly lies underneath. Perhaps the explanation behind my love for Europe can be simply put as the following : Europe is not America. It is culture and civilization at its best, the bastion of cultural and political system prototypes. EU has developed into this ultimately ideal form of economic integration which I admired so much, that I became a stakeholder in its development. Yes, I was saddened with the French and Dutch No Votes on Treaty Establishing a constitution for Europe.

Perhaps at the same time that this blind passion for Europe developed, I became rather fed up with America post Afghan and Iraq. I was building up a lot of resentment , yet I was frustrated to see how my country depended so much on it and in quite good company too.

Coming up closer and more personal with Europe after my 9-month stay in Bologna, I came to realize it’s not quite the dream team I gave it credit for. Like all democracies, they are still dealing with lots of problems, particularly reconciling the adjustments that come with their experiments in political integration. And the one thing that I particularly felt after a closer encounter last year, was that prejudice and near racism was still prevalent among their ultra conservatives, although these are solely found in the very older generation. It doesn’t stop there, some of the big guns such as Germany, Austria, Netherlands and France are having enormous troubles integrating their immigrants, inflicting on them a handful of social and political instabilities.

But I guess the watershed in my perfect painting of a harmonious Asia-Europe relations was a heated debate that ensued between my best friend and I regarding the recent Danish cartoons/caricatures.

I’ve seen the caricatures and it’s hard to say whether or not I'm not offended. I may actually be able to see that it was not at all meant to be taken seriously. But do my ‘fellow’ muslim friends get that? Do the conservative branch, the FPI, the MUi and all those other people get it? It has been a European tradition to criticize their political leaders through caricatures and they even go to the extreme with their sacred figure of Jesus Christ.

I do not refute the current state of European norms and value that have become the underlying source of their hailed and prescious freedom of expression, and the separation of the state from the press (i.e. in no way can the Danish government in my view be held accountable for what its press publishes, if there’s anyone who should be doing an apology, it should rightly be the newspaper), but I'm sorry, i expected better of the Europeans, I expected more maturity.

When I talk about maturity, I am questioning the decision of the publication of the cartoons: it's simply provocative. I mean, come on....at a time like this? Considering the contentious climate between Western democracies and Islamic societies in the Middle East and Asia, when there are millions of idiots who still live in the middle ages, idiots that are stupid enough to continue using religious repression as a means of justifying terrorist acts? These idiots would just keep on having an excuse to 'blame it on the Western civilization.' It's like rubbing ice on a broken wound.....will there never be a way to understand each other's culture/customs/views on religion?

I’ve no excuse to the hot-headed irrational reaction of the so-called muslim world to the publication, I’m not happy at at all with the level of maturity that the Muslim world is exhibiting by burning flags and other forms of those violent protests. The fact that bugs me the most is that and my best friend and I can’t even agree to disagree. The epitome of a French citizen who strongly supports the EU and European identity, quite naturally he would insist that political freedom of expression is a universal right that should not be subject to any boundaries whatsoever, be it cultural, religious or whatnot. If Europeans are mature enough to just laugh at caricatures depicting Jesus Christ as gay, why can’t Muslims do the same?

Easy for him to say, since most of his generation have grown to become atheists and secularists, despite the fact that they continue to celebrate religious traditions such as Christmas and Easter.

Michael Walzer once said “ Justice is relative to social meanings”…..I would add “….. the same is true for rights.” Some values are not entirely universal. Please, don’t force us to assess what we view as proper or not based on your norms and values. There is still great room for mutual respect, even if we agree to disagree.