The battle for Muslim hearts and minds?

Is this the way to win the battle for Muslim hearts and minds? 

Pundits and leader writers in the West appear genuinely perplexed by the stunning Muslim response to Quran desecration reports. They don't say it in so many words but it's clear that the intensity of expressions of outrage across the Muslim world from Morocco to Malaysia has really left the West bewildered and wondering: What's wrong with this community? How can a passing reference to a small incident involving the Book make it so angry? Trouble is the secular West can never truly understand or empathize with the Muslim approach to faith. The majority of Muslims continues to believe that their all-encompassing faith should and must guide in all aspects of their life as it's sent by Allah Almighty for the benefit of all mankind and to serve as the eternal source of guidance for all times to come. 

On the other hand, the West or Christendom has developed a robust skepticism, or contempt if you please, for all things religious. Nothing viewed as sacred by the rest of the world is sacred anymore in Western eyes. 

If the majority of the Christian West has over the centuries developed a disconcerting disillusionment with their faith and today sees faith in general as the private affair of an individual which at best should remain restricted to the four walls of local church, the Church itself is to blame. 

The Church's excessive control over its flock during the oppressive centuries leading up to the European Renaissance (remember the Spanish Inquisition? Or how the Church persecuted Galielo Galilei for his scientific beliefs?) and its unreasonable opposition to all scientific inquiry and quest for knowledge generated a popular backlash. As a result, the Western society banished the Church forever from their lives and day-to-day existence. More importantly, this hopeless conflict with the Church left a deep distrust and contempt for all religions in Western mind that remains far from shaken. 

This is why the Western society is not appalled when its religion and all that symbolizes it is openly ridiculed, and lampooned. No eyebrows are raised in the West when Jesus or his mother Mary are derided by new prophets of pop culture. No one feels offended if a semi-clad Madonna flaunting a Cross writhes on the floor suggestively begging to be taken. There were no protests in the Western street when movies like The Exorcist showed the devil worshippers defiling the Cross and mocking Jesus. These things are ignored in the West as part of the so-called artistic freedom or freedom of expression. 

In the Muslim society though even suggestion of such rude references to faith or those who preach it would amount to sacrilege. 

The West can never truly comprehend how much pain and anguish an irreverent reference to the Prophet, and the Book he brought can inflict on the faithful. Reverence for faith and all that's associated with it is an essential and fundamental part of Muslim belief and psyche. And this respect is not limited to the Holy Quran and Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, but extends to all Messengers of God and all scriptures sent by Him. 

Unless the West seeks to understand this aspect of Muslim psyche, it can never appreciate why Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses brought Muslims out on the streets around the world. Or why the Afghans braved the police firing this week in Kabul to protest the Guantanamo Bay outrage against the Quran. 

But even assuming the brave American soldiers at the Guantanamo Bay were not aware of the Muslim sensitivities, it is hard to interpret the Quran desecration as a careless act of ignorant GIs. I mean how callous and how indifferent can you get? And how many times the US authorities will blame such outrageous acts on a 'few rotten apples'? From Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay - there is an endless trail of rotten apples. The whole basket, it seems, is affected by the rot. 

Whatever Washington's explanation for these indefensible acts, this is certainly no way to win the battle for Muslim hearts and minds. If this is what the US President George W Bush had in mind when he promised "human liberty and democracy" to the people in Muslim lands, the Islamic world would be better off without America's gifts. Thanks but no thanks. 

Aijaz Zaka Syed is Op Ed Editor of Khaleej Times