BAGHDAD — Zied Mhrisi went to Beirut to get a master's in public health. But now the 28-year-old Tunisian has found himself drafted as a diplomat in the culture war that has erupted over the publication of cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad.
Instead of discussing HIV policy during classes at American University of Beirut, the young doctor, who was raised Muslim but is secular, is busy explaining the Western concept of freedom of speech to his Arab classmates.
And rather than treating his Danish and German roommates to drinks at Beirut's Prague nightclub, he is giving them serious lectures about Muslim sensibilities. "The cartoons for them were just something OK," he said in a telephone interview. "I tell them the prophet is a highly sanctified person in the Muslim world."
The cartoon controversy has been dominating discourse across the Middle East -- in strident speeches by political and religious leaders, classroom discussions and chats in cafes.
Liberal and nonpracticing Muslims have been searching for a silver lining in the dispute over the caricatures of Muhammad that were published last fall by a Danish newspaper and reprinted this month in other European papers. They are angry at images they consider revolting, but they are also attached to freedoms they value.
They engage in impromptu debates. They vent their dismay at both sanctimonious Muslims and insensitive Westerners in online forums such as blogs. But they've been mostly frustrated as they struggle to explain the complicated religious and political sensibilities of East and West amid rising tensions and occasional violence over the cartoons.
"The problem is there is no respect of differences," said Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi Palestinian architect who recently immigrated to Richmond, Calif., and runs a blog called Raed in the Middle.
"There are many unresolved issues between the West and the Islamic world. When the space is opened for expression, the expression is exaggerated," he said.
In Jordan, everywhere Isam Bayazidi, 27, turns, there is discussion about the cartoons. He has found himself in an uncomfortable minority -- unable to support the strident reaction of his more self-righteous friends and family.
"I think as much as the cartoons have been insulting, the reaction has been wrong," said Bayazidi, who works in the computer trade. "It started with the boycott calls and ended up with attacking embassies."
