Of shoe-throwing act and Arabs' dignity

Clearly, US President George W. Bush did not have any inkling of how his eventful farewell and unannounced final visit to Iraq would unfold. His visit was cloaked in secrecy to a country he takes pride in liberating from the clutches of tyranny and which will be his landmark achievement in a very troubled legacy. The purpose of the visit was to showcase in a final victory lap a more secured country - which he had to do by secretly visiting it.

With the signing of the Status of Forces Agreement (Sofa) and the withdrawal of US occupation by the end of 2011, Iraq is charting a new course. The agreement confirms the diminished role of the US which has now hit its lowest point because of the colossal humiliation of Bush during a press briefing in Baghdad and which is now widely known as the "shoes throwing incident".

In an act of defiance, Muntadar Al Zaidi, a television reporter released the bitter anger that many Iraqis feel about the US occupation of their country on Bush. Al Zaidi's brother, Dhirgham, claimed that the journalist "hates the American material occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation". Adding, "as for Iran, he considers the regime as the other side of the American coin".

As he threw the first shoe, Al Zaidi yelled: "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog!"

"This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" he exclaimed as he hurled his other shoe at the visiting head of state. Throwing a shoe at someone is considered the worst possible insult in Arab culture. But there was no getting around the fact that the caught-on-camera moment would be replayed many times all over the world.

The incident transformed the obscure reporter from Al Baghdadiya station into a national hero in Iraq and an Arab hero in the Arab World.

Al Zaidi's whereabouts are not known as he is still held by the Iraqi authorities. His crime being 'attacking a foreign leader'. There is, however, no doubt that Iraqis are traumatised by the effects of the nearly six years of war in their country. Irrespective of this fact, the shoe incident has evoked mixed reactions.

With majority of Iraqi and Arab public opinions empathising with the attack against the US commander-in-chief who authorised the Iraq war, some Arab voices look at the incident as a despicable act, unbecoming of Arabs who welcome their guests with hospitality and honour.

The clash of cultures is alive and clear here. It manifests itself in the divergent reaction from Arabs and Iraqis on one hand and the American-Western reaction on the other hand. Arabs, all over the world who watched the incident on television, were jubilant. For many, who were, and still are, hungry to avenge their injured dignity, the action of Al Zaidi was seen as someone who could stand up to the bullies; be it Saddam Hussain or Osama Bin Laden. This was also clear by the outpouring of support for those who won the hearts and minds in the region by simply defying the biggest bully of all. Add to that the Arabs' feeling of humiliation, emasculation and occupation at the hands of the Americans and the Israelis, especially under the Bush administration, and one can understand the frenzy that is gripping the Arab World.

Numerous encounters

On the other hand, the West has witnessed numerous encounters of shoes and politics as the Los Angeles Times nicely put it. From 1952, Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee, showed his human side with the torn sole of a shoe, for which photographer William M. Gallagher of the Flint Journal won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for that photograph.

In 1960, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, slammed his shoe on his desk during a United Nations General Assembly session in New York City. He was protesting a speech by the Philippine's delegate, who accused the Soviet Union of "swallowing up" Eastern Europe.

A few years ago, Khrushchev's grand-daughter, remarked that the shoe incident became a real symbol of the Cold War -"probably the only war in which fear and humour peacefully coexisted". Then there was the infamous Imelda Marcos, wife of the Philippines's dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who owned more than 1,200 pairs of shoes in a country where majority of its people are poor. Finally, remember the 2001 terrorist Richard Reid who failed to detonate a shoe bomb aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in 2001?

Western culture which does not know the significance of an insult and contempt associated with the throwing of a shoe, at first did not understand the logic behind Al Zaidi's act. It was clear when Bush made light of the incident when he quipped jokingly: "It is size 10" and belittled the whole event to the shock of the Arabs, by saying: "So what if a guy throws a shoe at me?!", and "he is doing it to get publicity".

I won't be surprised if Bush's view is shared by most Americans and Westerners for whom the shoe throwing act is alien. They prefer to throw rotten eggs at their politicians. Even the official explanation by the US State Department was peculiar.

The US State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, went out of his way to explain: "We would hope that the fact of a US president standing next to a freely elected prime minister of Iraq, who just happens to be Shiite governing a multi-confessional, multiethnic democracy in the heart of the Middle East, is not overshadowed by one incident like this."

McCormack added that in the coming years, "the fact of the president making that visit under those circumstances will probably overshadow any memory of this particular gentleman and what he did".

Meanwhile, Arabs and Iraqis will continue to cling to their shoe-throwing culture and other means of defiance to avenge their emasculation and humiliation.

We will continue our search of ordinary guys who can stand up to bullies and will turn them into heroes, as long as there is injustice, humiliation and occupation because they fuel such reactions.

Dr Abdullah Al Shayji is a Professor of International Relations and the Head of the American Studies Unit- Kuwait University.