Syed Hamad Ali: Riots depend on who's burning the Koran and where

At least, that is the picture being painted if allegations levied by members of Afghanistan's Hazara minority are true - that Taleban tribesmen burned copies of the Koran when they attacked a mosque in Behsud district, in the eastern Wardak province.

Not only did the Koran-burning bit of the story go largely ignored by the media, it also failed to bring on to the streets the usual angry mobs that fill up TV screens with images of burning flags and chants of "death to so and so!".

Now enter one obscure Christian pastor living in the US, threatening very publicly to burn Islam's holiest book and...voila! The news channels were hooked on to what soon became the Terry Jones horror show, with the angry mobs starting to emerge from their hiding places, pumping fists and threatening Armageddon.

What is alarming is the behaviour of such reactionaries is increasingly being used as justification by some on the far-right to argue Islam is intrinsically a violent religion. The situation is compounded by a minority of Muslims getting all hot-headed over real and perceived insults, while conveniently ignoring other equally reprehensible and at times worse incidents.

The key point to note here is many, including Muslims who think they speak for Islam, are mixing anger over foreign policy with religion. The fact that some of the most violent protests over the Koran were witnessed in Kabul and Srinagar is more to do with politics and the role the media played in igniting passions than anything to do with Islam.

In both places there is a strong feeling among the population of living under foreign "occupation". In Kashmir, for example, there had been ongoing separatist protests before reports of a Koran-burning story by Iran's state-run Press TV brought people out on the streets - and even then chants of "we want freedom" could be heard.

Another example is the ban on the niqab in France where again we see a very high media interest in the debate. Certainly the real worry is not a piece of cloth worn by an estimated 2,000 women in the country - it's a much larger question mark hanging over the country's five million-strong Muslim minority. If this radical dictation on what women can't wear is quietly accepted, what guarantee is there more freedoms would not be curbed in the future?

Having said that, what is being under-reported, with the exception of the situation in Turkey, is that in a number of Muslim countries the headscarf has been banned in places of education. Now while the face veil is a contentious issue even among Muslims, the hijab (in which the hair is covered) is in relative terms a more mainstream garment.

In Tajikistan, a country bordering Afghanistan to the north, a ban on students wearing headscarves is in place.Three Tajik students have threatened to kill themselves if the hijab ban is not reversed.

And that's not all. "Be grateful to this freedom," the president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, jokingly said a few weeks back. "If you like the clothing style of another country, I will send you there." He was referring to the "foreign" style of women who wear headscarves. Now imagine the reaction if President Sarkozy had lectured Muslim women in France to feel "grateful" for their freedom and how he "will send" them to another country.

It is troubling how some Muslims appear to have set a much higher bar of expectation from others to respect their religion than they would expect from fellow Muslims.

The rising Islamophobia in the US and several European countries is in part a spill-over from Western foreign policy in certain Muslim majority countries. For example the war in Afghanistan and reports of how the Taleban treat people has made many suspicious of Islam.

Of course there is much more to the Taleban than just their misguided religious ideology, including an under-developed educational system and the political reality of life in the country. Further, a lot of the actions of the Taleban and Northern Alliance warlords, especially treatment of women and coercion in matters of faith, are downright anti-Islamic.

I can bet that if instead of Terry Jones of the US the person threatening to burn the Koran had been a monk living in say, Vietnam, there would not have been violent protests. Who knows, it might even have gone unnoticed.