82 NEW STATESMAN 9-22 APRIL 2012The CriticsI am a .docx

82 | NEW STATESMAN | 9-22 APRIL 2012
The Critics
I am a Scot. The statement may not have
become more meaningful in the past few
months, but it’s certainly grown more topical,
as the Kingdom debates whether it will stay
United. Any identity – national or personal – is
a work in progress, moulded by experience, cir-
cumstance, emotion and belief. Of those, belief
may currently be the most important for Scot-
land, because the debate on Scottish independ-
ence is a contest between beliefs.
Against independence are those who believe
Scottishness is a variation on an English theme,
an alternative to the default. There are many
quite convincing arguments against independ-
ence – economic, military, constitutional – but
they seem always to be based on an assumption
that, to many Scots, is patronising at best. For
independence are those who believe Scottish-
ness is something authentic and valuable. Scots
may not trust their politicians, may worry about
the future, may not care that much about in -
dependence – nevertheless, they find it hard to
believe they and their country don’t exist and
will not warm to arguments (however well sup-
ported) that accept these absences as facts.
I dislike the media’s tendency to pick a voice

from a minority and assume it speaks for
all, but I will say that I have found part of the
non-default experience to be one of absences
and non-existence. Although I am one of a rela-
tively cosseted and familiar minority, during
my lifetime I have still radically changed my
understanding of what I am a Scot can mean,
and what understanding and owning that part
of my identity allows me to say.
I grew up in the country of the Bay City
Rollers, Jimmy Krankie and Benny Lynch. I live
in that of Annie Lennox, Peter Mullan and
Andy Murray. In only a few decades the self-
doubt, self-immolating success and degraded
tartanry have receded and Scotland has given
itself permission to be somewhere more con -
fident and complex. Scotland is still a small,
relatively poor country with a troubled history,
but it seems to believe it can be more. Not for
the first time in our history, we have the gift of
desperation. We can comfort ourselves with
sectarian myths, new racisms, lazy political
clichés and cronyism. Or we can embrace what
is less known but also ours: a tradition of fierce
education and enlightenment, invention and
co-operation. The acknowledgement and re-
jection of sectarianism, the saga of SuBo, the
electorate’s canny use of proportional repre-
sentation, may all be little signs that Scotland is
trying to make the best of itself. Absences are
becoming presences.
I began in a place of absences – Dundee, a city
still haunted by a railway disaster and the space

no longer occupied by a collapsed Victorian
bridge. The city had long been blighted by local
government corruption, vandalism disguised
as planning and a feudal division of wealth. My
parents lived in the middle-class west end en-
clave where soup should be spooned away
from you and peas balanced on the back of your
fork. It was important to read the Booker Prize
shortlist, attend the Art Society exhibitions
and have tea at the Queens Hotel, looking out
over the Tay Estuary and the stumps of the
missing bridge. And it was important to sound
English – sounding Scottish would define you,
syllable by syllable, as a failure.
My parents actually were English, but not the
right sort. Like most of the adults I knew, my
parents had educated themselves out of the
working classes. For their generation, social mo -
bility wasn’t just an X Factor pipe dream, but it
did demand adjustments, sacrifices. My mother
was brought up by her Welsh grandparents and
had to jettison her North Walian accent during
teacher training – people will laugh at you if you
sound like that. My father, a lecturer, never quite
shook his Brummy whine. But at least they
weren’t cursed by Scottish vocabulary – dreich,
scunner, bam – or still worse, regional Scottish
vocabulary – plettie, cribby, pullashie. They had
succeeded by being partly not themselves.
Beyond the west end and before Broughty
Ferry, was another Dundee. It was a city of
adults as short as children and children with old
faces, of drunks in men-only bars, poverty and

powerlessness. I was taught – by my school, my
parents, my radio, my television – that nobody
wise should sound as if they came from there.
Get a vowel wrong and somewhere harsh might
come to claim you. I learned what so many chil-
dren in non-dominant cultures learn – that the
inside of your head was wrong. There was one
way of speaking indoors, another in school and
another for the street, while well-meaning at-
tempts to save children from the prejudices of
others left me feeling inwardly deformed in a
muddle of competing languages.
So often, what could allow individuals to
be polyglot, adaptable, as linguistically experi-
men tal and joyful as Shakespeare’s many-
voiced London, simply leads to silence and in-
security. Even with all the advantages I had –
good schooling, a book-filled house, comfort,
PERSONAL STORY
“People will laugh at you
if you sound like that”
When A L Kennedy was growing up in Dundee, she was taught
to sound English. It was only in exile that she discovered
the richness of Scottish culture, and her own voice
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Scots pining: Kennedy has grown to love her homeland
2012+15al kennedy 82-83:NS 02/04/2012 19:08 Page 80
9-22 APRIL 2012 | NEW STATESMAN | 83
The Critics
received pronunciation piped in anxiously
from birth – I still felt my own voice wasn’t
mine. When I read Stevenson, should he sound
like the BBC, because he was successful, or like
the people I knew from Edinburgh, because he
was from Edinburgh ? When I read Oor Wullie,
should I be ashamed of revelling in the car-
toon’s confident presentation of landscapes
I recognised, words that were from my home
and only my little, ugly home ?

And the history of my little ugly home was
closed to me. Beyond a gruelling course of study
in the early saints who saved Scots from them-
selves, I was taught no Scottish history at school
and was kept from most Scottish literature and
art. I didn’t really live in Dundee, because I
didn’t understand what it was. Just before I left
for university in England I spent a summer in
my local library, reading and reading and feeling
increasingly as if I had been robbed. Here was so
much that had been kept from me: Dundee’s
monolithic industries – whaling, flax process-
ing, jute processing – the city fathers’ hatred of
the poor, the revolutionary fervour in 1789,
Dundee’s writers, painters and folk songs, and
its gloriously bad reputation and sense of hu-
mour. Here were its sharp working women and
fey housekeeping men – that in itself explained
so much of me. Here was a real life.
I was heading south partly because Warwick
University offered the course I wanted and
partly because leaving home would be softened
by staying relatively near my grandparents.
I thought I understood England, because I un-
derstood them. In fact, I was entering a country
of other customs, habits, foods, landscapes, ha-
treds, loves and arts. Despite what my teachers
and broadcasters had led me to believe, I was en-
tering a foreign country – pleasant but not mine.
For the next three years – in its absence – I
studied Scotland. I became obsessed with what
else I’d missed. I read John Prebble’s remarkable,

groundbreaking histories. I read The Cheviot, the
Stag and the Black, Black Oil, an explosive play
by the Liverpudlian John McGrath which rede-
fined how I looked at Scotland’s distribution of
wealth, land and the complexity of its injustices.
This was nothing like the weird, dead Scottish-
ness I’d been peddled, which involved men
being manly, women being invisible, losing at
football, singing kitsch songs, asexual dancing
and everything being England’s fault.
I adored Ray Carver’s America, I worshipped
Chekhov’s Russia and Calvino’s Italy, Ribeiro’s
Brazil, Orwell’s England, but I could also enjoy
a new flowering of Scottish literature. Unlike
Buchan, Conan Doyle, Barrie and the rest,
there were now Scots authors who could be
Scots. Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and Tom
Leonard all transcended nationality, as good
writers should, but were also clearly from
somewhere that I knew, loved and missed.
They were male, working class, older and yet
were so committed to writing as a free, strong
and inviolable expression of individual life that
they allowed me to write as myself.
In the 1980s, I found my voice. It became my
profession to make up for all that early silence,
absence and confusion. Meanwhile, Thatcher -
ism redefined what it was to be British: no to sex,
regions, disabilities, women, industries, (non-
public school) homosexuals, public services, mi -
norities. The UK became a few hundred blokes
in Westminster and Maggie, the Iron Maiden in
an M&S frock. She gave Scotland despair but

we took it. Like being proudly from Toxteth, or
Handsworth, simply being Scottish suddenly
became a transgressive joy and, yes, we did
literally dance in the street when she went.
The UK faces new pressures to conform,
shut up, hate ourselves if we don’t earn enough
or sound as if we’re the right sort. I would be
only delighted if the Union debate allowed citi-
zens on both sides of the border to loudly, vari-
ously and happily discover how very much
they can be themselves. I hope it can allow us to
enjoy each other and to believe we all have
a right, fully and usefully, to exist. l
A L Kennedy is a novelist and comedian
newstatesman.com/culture
A city haunted by its past: a 1950s view of Dundee
from a hillside, with the Firth of Tay in the distance
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MEMOIR
My First Coup d'Etat
by John Dramani Mahama
THE WORLD MAPS OF MY YOUTH WERE ALWAYSflat.
They depicted an Earth that was
stretched and distorted, with no topography,
no shaded relief. The only markings were the
names of continents and oceans, the names of
countries and their capital cities, the names of
rivers and mountain ranges.
According to those maps, the places I knew
best did not exist. They were swaths of light-
colored space with no definition, nothing to
show the vast forests or plains, the huge scarp
that my brother Alfred and I used to scale as
children so we could hunt. I would look at the
other unlabeled areas of the map and wonder
what and who existed in that space.
There has always been something about
the Earth that has beguiled me. I used to study

the maps that were posted on the walls of my
classrooms and printed in the pages of the atlas
my father kept in his study. Affer our nation's
independence, my father, Emmanuel Adama
Mahama, was the first Member of the Ghana-
ian Parliament from the Northern region.
Still, I could barely start memorizing the
names and shapes of the countries before the
map I was using became obsolete. That's how
quickly the entire world was changing during
my childhood. Borders were being redrawn;
countries were being formed and re-formed,
and some of them were assuming new names,
especially in postcolonial Affica.
What remained the same throughout were
the contours of each continent, like the curve
of western Africa and the pointed tip of South
America. I noticed that the landmasses, though
separated by enormous bodies of water, fit per-
fectly together, as though they could be one,
or perhaps had even been. This was before I
learned about Pangaea, the supercontinent that
is believed to have existed before the continen-
tal driff that ultimately led to the configuration
we currently know.
In sixth form, which for Americans would
equal an educational period between high
school and college, I chose geography as one
of my subjects of study. The information I
learned expanded my knowledge of the Earth
and made me feel a sense of connection to
other countries and continents that I hadn't

before. I formed a broad feeling of kinship to
the other people of the world, people I realized
I might never meet or know.
WHEN I ARRIVED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA IN
1979 to begin my ffeshman year, I was steeped
in disappointment. I hadn't been granted the
courses of study that I'd indicated were my first
and second choices. I'd hoped to study business
administration: that had been my first choice.
I'd chosen it because it was the most popular
major at the university, one to which prospec-
tive employers were said to respond. Other
than that, I knew very little about business ad-
ministration and had very little interest in it.
My second choice was law. It wasn't some-
thing for which I held a burning passion, but it
was practical. University was a time for serious
study, a time to prepare for life. I had no idea
what I wanted to do with my life, but from all
that I'd been told, a degree in law provided a
strong platform for nearly every profession.
History, which was my third choice, the one
to which I'd been assigned, was not discussed
169
with the same gravity. I had always enjoyed
studying history. In primary school I'd been
given an award in history, and along with geo-
graphy and economics, it had been my other

course of sixth form. Yet history as a university
major was said to limit a graduate's career op-
tions. It was too specific and offered no knowl-
edge or skills that could be immediately applied
outside of the classroom, in the workforce.
I eventually grew to consider my assignment
to history as a blessing in disguise and recog-
nized that the knowledge I would gain from
its study would carry me far beyond the class-
room and workaday existence. However, in
those first weeks of university, I felt as though
I'd been cheated out of the things I wanted.
My disappointment and that general feeling
of having been cheated also stemmed from the
fact that in addition to not being granted my
top course choices, I was not granted my top
choices in halls of residence.
At the time, there were five halls of residence
at the University of Ghana—Commonwealth
Hall, Akuafo Hall, Legon Hall, Mensah Sarbah
Hall, and Volta Hall. Volta was the all-female
hall. Mensah Sarbah was a mixed hall; women
occupied one wing of the building, and the rest
was all-male.
Legon Hall was my first choice because I was
told it was peaceful and quiet, a hall of gentle-
men. My next choice was Mensa Sarbah, which
I'd been told was beautiful. The residents of
that hall were called the Vikings and were
said to be extremely good at sports. Third was
Akuafo, which was dedicated to the farmers of
Ghana. My fourth and final choice was Com-

monwealth, and that was where I was assigned.
Commonwealth Hall had a controver-
sial reputation. Its residents were called the
"VANDALs." The acronym VANDAL stands
for "Vivacious, Affable, Neighbourly, Devoted/
Dedicated, Altruistic, and Loyal." The boys at
Commonwealth Hall were said to actually be
unruly, rowdy, insulting, and provocative. They
paraded on campus virtually half-naked, and
they kept a shrine in the hall to Bacchus, the
Greek god of wine. Suffice it to say, I did not
want to live there.
Unbeknownst to me. Commonwealth was
historically one of the most radical of all the
halls of residence. A lot of the political fo-
ment, activism, and rebellion that took place
on campus was usually hatched by the residents
of Commonwealth. Because of this, the uni-
versity officials had devised an unwritten rule
to balance out the types of personalities and
temperaments of the students in the hall.
Students whose first choice was Common-
wealth were assumed to be of the same ilk, so
they were automatically assigned to a more
subdued hall. Meanwhile, students like me,
who were resistant to being in Commonwealth
and placed it last in their list of choices, were
the ones assigned there.
THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA WAS BUILT ON A HILL.
There is a long, rectangular pond at the ftont
of the entrance. Standing there, facing forward,

you can see straight to the top of the hill. When
you pass through the main gates, there is a wide
boulevard that travels up the steep incline. The
boulevard ends at the steps of Commonwealth,
forking into two roads that wrap around the
enormous building and then continue upward
toward the administration's offices.
Freshman students arrived a week earlier
than the rest of the student population to go
through an orientation. A lot of the final-year
students were also on campus, working on
their dissertations and theses.
On my first day, I stood at the base of the
sweeping concrete stairs. There were a number
of final-year students hanging around, singing.
They were dressed in strange attire. Some of
them had leaves around their necks. One per-
son was wearing a bra and panties. A few were
wearing their trousers with one leg down and
the other rolled up or cut off into shorts. They
were there as our freshman welcoming com-
mittee, to help us carry our bags up the stairs
to the porter's lodge, where we were to sign in.
After we'd climbed the stairs and were
standing at the entrance of Commonwealth
Hall, I noticed that a coat of arms was affixed
to the top of the arched doorway. Embossed on
170 VQR I S U M M E R 2 0 1 2
I eventually grew to consider my assignment to history as a

blessing in disguise and recognized that the knowledge
I would gain from its study would carry me far beyond the
classroom and workaday existence.
the coat of arms were the words Truth Stands,
which is the hall's motto.
It was a cardinal moment. I stood there, hav-
ing just arrived at this preeminent Ghanaian
university, looking at the coat of arms and the
hall's motto. I felt humbled; I felt filled with
purpose. It occurred to me that the hundreds
of people who had walked through the doors of
that hall had uncovered the truth of their lives.
I was determined to do the same.
I later learned that the motto was taken
from the poem "Satire 3" by the English poet
John Donne. This, to me, made the motto all
the more profound.
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
To sleep, or run wrong, is. On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep. Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go.
And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.
DURING A CONTROVERSIAL REFERENDUM THAT WAS
held at the close of my sixth-form year, my
other socialist-leaning friends and I nearly
got clobbered while trying to protect the bal-
lot boxes on our campus ftom voting irregu-

larities. Later, it had been announced that the
referendum for Union Government yielded an
overwhelming "yes" vote, but the public could
not be fooled. Even the announcement of the
results was mired in controversy. There was too
much unrest for things to continue as they had
been. In 1978, General Acheampong, who had
led the first coup d'etat, was forced to resign by
his own Supreme Military Council—a military
coup of a military coup-maker.
In July 1978, Lieutenant General Fred
Akuffo, who had been the number-two per-
son in the SMC under General Acheampong,
took over as head of state. With the exception
of the names of the rulers, nothing much had
changed. People were still not able to afford
essential commodities. The practice of manipu-
lative bribes and con-artistry—called kalabule
—persisted, so the nation was operating on an
artificial economy that was driven by a thriving
black market.
In 1979, there was another coup, led by a
young flight lieutenant named Jerry John Rawl-
ings, who set up an interim government, the
Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).
Flight Lieutenant Rawlings told the people of
Ghana that their goal was to conduct a "house-
cleaning" exercise and then promptly return
the country back to civilian rule. Party politics
was now allowed.
After the 1966 coup, my father, a former
member of the ousted Ghanaian Parliament,

had been banned ftom participating in politics
or holding any political appointment for ten
years. That period of time had already elapsed,
but when my father wrote what was supposed
to have been a letter of praise to the then head
of state, advising him to "leave when the ap-
plause is loudest," his intentions were mis-
understood, and he found himself facing the
possibility of detention again. It soured him on
politics.
But these were new times, with new pos-
sibilities.
The Convention People's Party had been
refashioned into the People's National Party
(PNP). My father, as a senior member of the
original party, was persuaded to help them se-
lect a suitable flag bearer, one who was capable
of winning the election. Unable to resist a call
for assistance, particularly if it concerned the
JOHN DRAMANI MAHAMA 171
advancement of the nation, my father reen-
tered political life, but only as a key adviser.
At the same time that my father was reenter-
ing politics, I was being initiated into a political
life, albeit at the student level. In those days,
the student body was one of the most active
unofficial political organizations. We were very
conscious of what was going on in Ghana and
in the rest of the world, and we participated in

all kinds of demonstrations.
There were protests against nuclear weap-
ons in Africa; there were pro-Cuba protests
and antiapartheid protests. We students in
Ghana stood in solidarity with our brothers
and sisters in South Korea who had staged an
uprising against their dictatorship, as well as
our brothers and sisters in Iran who had re-
volted against the Shah. We held placards and
raised our voices in support of Palestine. And,
of course, we picketed, demonstrated, and did
whatever else we could to bring attention to
our own causes in Ghana, be it an issue within
the university system or our discontentment
with governmental policy.
Living in Commonwealth, which I came to
regard as the best hall on campus, coaxed the
natural activist in me to come out. There was
an ivory tower priggishness and orderliness
that went along with university life. It perpetu-
ated the status quo. Life inside of Common-
wealth was the exact opposite. It encouraged
the formation of opinions and the expression
of individuality.
When it came time to stand up for their
rights or the rights of others, the Common-
wealth Hall Boys rose to the occasion. They
took their motto to heart and stood for what-
ever they firmly believed was truth. I'd never
really been expressive. I had strong opinions,
but mostly I kept my inner thoughts to myself.
Living in Commonwealth Hall helped me to
start speaking out because I felt relaxed enough

to be myself.
My burgeoning political views and activism
at times clashed with my father's views, espe-
cially when it came to government affairs. As a
senior member of the party. Dad felt that given
the mess they'd inherited, the government was
heading in the right direction, making solid
long-term decisions.
Acheampong's Yentua! policy of refusing to
pay any of Ghana's previous debt had shattered
Ghana's economic standing in the world and
its relationships with international aid orga-
nizations. The new government was having
ongoing conversations with the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank about en-
tering into a program that would improve the
financing of the budget and inject fresh capi-
tal into the system to restore the deteriorating
infrastructure.
From our student-activist purview, change
wasn't happening fast enough, so we took the
government to task by marching and demon-
strating every chance we could. My participation
in these activities caused arguments between
Dad and me. When I'd return home during a
break from university, he'd ask, "What the hell
did you kids think you'd accomplish with that
protest?" I would launch into an impassioned
rant about the wrongs of the government.
My father would just shake his head.
"Things don't happen overnight," he would

explain. "Some of these policies are already in
place, but it might take a while before you can
see the results."
"Long-term changes are fine," I would argue,
"but we need immediate changes, too. Some-
thing that will put money in people's pockets
so they can eat and live." We'd argue back and
forth, until he grew tired of trying to explain
what he realized my youthful fervor and politi-
cal naïveté prevented me from comprehending.
However far apart we grew in our politics
and ideologies, my father and I remained
close in our relationship. There was nothing
I couldn't ask him for; nothing he wouldn't do
to help or support me. His love and presence
were unshakable.
I'd been in a leadership role before as a
prefect, but that was an appointed role, not
an elected one. Every hall of residence at the
university had a junior common room, a JCR.
Every JCR had executives, who served as the
leadership for that hall of residence. All the
other halls held JCR elections once a year. Com-
172 VQR I S U M M E R 2 0 1 2
At the same time that my father was reentering politics,
I was being initiated into a political life, albeit at the

student level. In those days, the student body was one
of the most active unofficial political organizations.
monwealth Hall being Gommonwealth Hall,
its residents held JGR election three times a
year, once during each term. It was their brand
of democracy. They believed that to elect an
executive who would serve an entire year was
oppressive. This way, if an executive wasn't per-
forming well, the hall residents would not have
to suffer with the poor leadership for too long.
I decided to run for JGR vice president. I
stood against a tough opponent. He was a VAN-
DAL through and through. He was involved in
the choir and just about every other Gommon-
wealth Hall activity one can imagine. People
knew him well. They felt he was one of them
and could understand their concerns. Though
I was a general part of the Gommonwealth Hall
community, I didn't taike part in many of the ac-
tivities, particularly not the choir, because the
members were a bit wild and their repertoire
was full of profane songs.
The mode of campaigning was basic grass-
roots, going from room to room meeting peo-
ple, telling them who you were and what you
intended to do if elected, then asking them
to please vote for you. Many people told me
flat-out that they would not vote for me, and
they even explained why— because I was not
involved enough in Gommonwealth Hall life.
I lost the election, but it was a great learning
experience. I had been focused squarely on my

own goals and visions as a candidate.
Affer the loss, I came away with an under-
standing that in these types of contests what is
most important is a candidate's knowledge of
the electorate and its expectations in the selec-
tion of a leader. I carried that knowledge with
me the next time I decided to run for an office.
During my second year at university, I
ran for the office of secretary of the Students
Representative Council. And that time, I won.
If my exploits outside the classroom pulled
me headlong into what I considered a whole
new world, my instruction inside the classroom
enlightened me to the fact that it was a world
predicated on prior mistakes and achievements.
The history I learned filled in the blank spaces
of the maps I'd studied in my youth; it gave defi-
nition and meaning to the countries that previ-
ously were nothing more than geometric shapes
with names. It also gave me a context within
which to place my own country, a context much
larger than I'd ever imagined.
We studied Socrates, Archimedes, and Gali-
leo. We learned about the Nubians, the Moors,
the Incas, the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Greeks,
and the Romans. We leairned about the Chinese
dynasties and Japan during the Jomon period.
We learned about Mesopotamia, between the
Tigris and the Euphrates, the rise and fall of
the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyr-
ians, and Hittites, probably the first builders

of chariots.
To know what and where Carthage, Thrace,
Constantinople, Cuzco, Thebes, and Timbuktu
were is to know who and where you are. With-
out first understanding the empires of the Song-
hai, Mali, Ghana, Kushite, Luba, and Mwene
Mutapa or researching the imperialist Scramble
for Africa and the divisiveness and devastation
it caused, I would never have been able to arrive
at an understanding of Ghana and the struggles
my country was facing. History sparked within
me an awareness of the continuum within
which we all exist.
The maps of my youth became quite sym-
bolic of my view of the world, which back then
was also flat and stretched, ignorantly distorted
and without definition.
I was no longer as concerned about how my
time and studies in university would translate
into solid employment prospects. I was more
excited about the theories I was formulating
and debating with my socialist comrades, the
relationships and leadership abilities I was
developing at Gommonwealth Hall, and the
truths I was learning in my history courses.
And I knew, without anybody having to tell me,
that eventually all of those things would stand
for something worthwhile.

W E SEEMED TO HAVE CROSSED THE LINE. GHANA
had descended to a place from which there
appeared to be no return. It was like a game
of political musical chairs. Acheampong was
gone; Akuffo was gone. During Flight Lieuten-
ant Rawlings and the AFRG's "house-cleaning"
exercise, the former military heads of state
along with five other top military leaders
were executed. Other members of the military
thought to have been engaged in corruption
were placed in detention.
Givilians engaged in acts of hoarding were
arrested.
Overall, Ghanaians were supportive of the
coup and the subsequent actions taken by the
AFRG to rid the country of all the corruption
and negative practices that had been pulling
it down.
The feelings of bitterness and rage that the
society had been suppressing were let loose,
creating an atmosphere of vengeance and
feeding the desire for retaliation. The general
sentiment was that blood should flow and that
people should be made to pay for the suffering
Ghanaians had endured. It was a dangerous
climate of mean-spiritedness.
When the AFRG handed over power to Dr.
Hilla Limann, presidential candidate for the
People's National Party, it had been with a ca-
veat, that if his administration did not perform
in such a way that would restore stability and

promote economic growth, they would return
and remove him from office.
Though my father was at first hesitant to
reenter politics, as time wore on he engaged
wholeheartedly. He felt that Dr. Limann's gov-
ernment was a chance for Ghana to start anew.
Not everyone agreed with him. There were
mixed feelings about Dr. Limann's leadership,
even within the party. Though opinions dif-
fered greatly about whether or not the adminis-
tration was on the right course to make the sort
of rebound the country needed to make, citi-
zens took comfort in the fact that Ghana was
now back under constitutional rule. If it turned
out that Dr. Limann and his government did
not meet their expectations, there was always
the option of voting them out of power.
Affer a little over two years of watching the
government flounder. Flight Lieutenant Rawl-
ings staged a coup on December 31,1981, and
seized power ffom the Limann administration.
This time, the public's reaction was mixed.
The revolving door of leadership was making
Ghanaians restive.
In late 1981, around the time of the coup, I
was in the midst of my national service duty.
Upon graduation from university, as a means
of giving back to society, students who had
benefitted from the free education provided
by the government are obligated to work for a

certain period of time as an act of national ser-
vice. Back then, the requirement was two years.
National service personnel could be dis-
patched to whatever region or industry in
which their talents and services were needed.
A small stipend was given to cover living ex-
penses; other than that, national service per-
sonnel did not receive a salary.
Having graduated from the University of
Ghana as a history major, I was sent to teach
the subject to students at Ghanasco, the sec-
ondary school in Tamale I'd attended. My
friend William, whom I'd met in university, was
also sent to Ghanasco to fulfill his national ser-
vice duty. William, who'd majored in political
science, had also been a resident of Gommon-
wealth Hall. He was raucous, good-natured,
and fun-loving.
William and I were provided with accom-
modation in one of the masters' bungalows.
They were some of the low-cost houses that had
been built by the Acheampong administration.
174 VQR I S U M M E R 2 0 1 2
Ours had three bedrooms, a large living room,
and a kitchen. It even had a little porch, where
William and I used to sit and watch the sunset
while drinking pito, an alcoholic beverage made
with millet and sorghum. The bungalows were
located at the edge of the campus, a distance

from the dormitories and main lecture halls.
Most of the administrators and teachers
with whom I'd been acquainted during my
years at Ghanasco were no longer there.
My brother Eben was a student at Ghanasco
at the time I arrived to begin my national ser-
vice. Eben, who was part of the younger crop
of Mahama children, was jovial and cherubic.
Living on the Ghanasco campus together gave
Eben and me a chance to interact more and get
to know each other better.
WILLIAM AND I MADE THE MOST OF OUR NATIONAL
service years. We were university graduates,
young men without commitments. We had
come of age, come into our own, and were
testing the limits and privileges of that new-
found agency. At the end of each month when
we received our stipends, we'd immediately set
aside the amount that we had to give the school
matron in order to receive meals for the com-
ing month. The rest of the money was ours to
spend whichever way we wanted, so of course
we spent it aimlessly, having a good time.
Every weekend, William and I would go to
a disco. The country had been placed on an
eight o'clock curfew, which was being strictly
enforced by the military. This meant that discos
opened and closed earlier. We'd finish teaching
our courses and rush over to one of the discos
in town. Most of them opened well before four
o'clock. By six o'clock, when people were done

with their day's work and ready to relax, the
discos would be packed. At half-past seven,
everyone would scurry to pay their check, col-
lect their belongings, and set off to reach their
destination before curfew.
There was a shortage of beer in the country,
and discos were the only places where people
could be guaranteed an ice-cold glass. The gate
fee that patrons paid to enter a disco included
the price of one bottle of beer. If you wanted
a second bottle, you couldn't simply buy one;
you'd have to go outside and pay another gate
fee, which would entitle you to another beer.
William and I spent most of our stipends
going to discos and restaurants. Rarely were we
able to make the money stretch for more than
a week or two. The second half of each month
usually found us broke, sitting in our bungalow
chatting or reading.
It would be an understatement to say that
people in Ghana were struggling to make ends
meet. The average Ghanaian was fighting to
survive. It was a time of scarcity. There was a
shortage of most everything, and it forced peo-
ple to be inventive, to turn survival into an art.
Food was difficult to come by, particularly in
the urban areas where it was not grown. Even
if you had money, which a lot of Ghanaians
did not, you might not be able to find any food
to buy. People rationed their portions, eating
only enough to skim the surface of their hun-

ger. Women started improvising: cooking with
new leaves that had not been used before.
Meat and fish that had previously been un-
desirable was suddenly in demand because of
accessibility. Stockfish, a type of sun-dried fish
popularly called kpanla, imported mostly from
South America and considered a delicacy in
Nigeria but not well-liked in Ghana, was one
of those.
As a result of the famine and the general
lack of access to food, a large number of people
became so emaciated that their collarbones
protruded through their skin.
Ghanaians, with their inimitable sense of
humor, even through the grimmest of circum-
stances, began referring to the condition as
"Rawlings chain" or a "Rawlings necklace."
THERE WAS ALSO A PROBLEM WITH EVERY MODE
of transportation—including walking. There
were no shoes available on the market, so
people were reduced to making them out of
used car tires. Vehicles were also not available
on the market, either new or secondhand. If
you owned a vehicle and it developed a fault.
The average Ghanaian was ßghting to survive. It was a time of
scarcity.

There was a shortage of most everything, and it forced people to
be
inventive, to turn survival into an art.
it would be next to impossible to find the parts
for it to be repaired.
Because the government also could not af-
ford to maintain their vehicles, people either
walked to work or stood in long queues for
hours waiting for the public transport buses,
which had often broken down. Roads were not
being maintained. They were dusty and riddled
with potholes.
International events were also contribut-
ing to the severity of Ghana's woes. A major
oil crisis had thrown residents of even the
most developed nations into a state of panic
and spurred hoarding. Even in America, the
queues at filling stations stretched for blocks.
In Ghana, the fuel was rationed. Taxi drivers
would coast down hills to conserve whatever
little bit they had in their tanks. When their
fuel levels were too low to propel the vehicle
uphill, they would not hesitate to ask their pas-
senger to get out and push.
Everything was in short supply. Every con-
tainer that could store water was filled and
set aside for the times when the taps were
not flowing. Once we'd gone through every
drop that was in those containers, we would
scrounge for water anywhere we could find it.

Sometimes a day or two would go by when we
couldn't find any with which to have our baths
or wash our clothes.
My father's house was in an area of Tamale
called Agrie Ridge, which was in proximity to
the water supply company. The taps flowed vnth
more regularity there. At Ghanasco, Dad had al-
lowed me to use one of his cars that was still
operational. During the times when water was
not flowing on campus and we had run out of
what had been stored, if there was fuel in the car,
William and I would drive to my father's house
to wash our clothes and have baths. We would
pile all of our empty containers into the car so
that we could refill them at Dad's house. If there
wasn't any fuel in the car, we would walk the
five miles or so we could at least have our baths.
It all seems now like the worst of night-
mares, the kind ftom which you awake all the
more appreciative of the safety and comfort of
your reality. But that was our reality, and since
we had no alternatives we did the only thing
we could, we lived it.
THE MILITARY WAS OPERATING IN A STATE OF
ANARCHY,
writing its own rules, sometimes at random,
and arresting people who broke them. The pun-
ishments they meted out to civilians were cruel
and at times even deadly. In many ways it was
even worse than before, when Acheampong
and Akuffo were in power.

Military brutality was, perhaps, worse in
Tamale than anywhere else in the country
because of the presence of so many garrisons,
especially in relation to the size of the civil-
ian population. We had the Bawah Barracks,
where the airborne forces were based; we had
the Kamina Barracks, which was the base of
the Sixth Battalion of infantry; we had the Ka-
ladan Barracks, which was yet another military
installation; and we had the Armed Forces Re-
cruit Training Centre, where newly recruited
soldiers were brought.
The soldiers in Tamale drove around haugh-
tily in Pinzgauers, a type of British all-terrain
troop-carrier, intoxicated with the power they
had over people. They could stop anyone at any
time for any reason. Their actions guided only
by their own discretion.
One group of soldiers became notorious
for their acts of barbarism. They came to be
known as the "Seven Gladiators." The very sight
of them was enough to make your heart stop.
They strapped bandoliers filled with bullets
176 VQR I S U M M E R 2 0 1 2
around their shoulders as if they were guerril-
las fighting jungle warfare.
Horror stories about their atrocities circu-
lated through town. There was one that that

made everyone fear the unmistakable sound of
an oncoming Pinzgauer Someone had reported
a woman to the military. They'd accused her of
hoarding cloth. The Seven Gladiators went to
the woman's home to arrest her. They searched
her house and found some wax-printed cloth.
She explained to them that it was not for com-
mercial sale; it was her personal collection. It
is a tradition in many Ghanaian ethnic groups
for a dowry to be presented upon marriage. In
our culture, more often than not these dowries
are gifrs given by the groom and his family to
the bride and her family.
The Seven Gladiators did not believe the
woman—or did not give a damn either way.
They arrested the woman and her husband,
led them at gunpoint into their Pinzgauer, and
drove off, ostensibly to the barracks. Somewhere
along the way, they stopped the Pinzgauer They
told the woman they were releasing her and or-
dered her to disappear.
"Run," one of the Seven Gladiators told h e r
"Vanish before we change our minds."
The woman turned and started to run in
the direction of her home. The Seven Gladia-
tors watched her for a few minutes. Just as the
woman was disappearing into the distance, one
of the Gladiators fired at her They started to drive
away. The woman's husband was understandably
traumatized. He started screaming hysterically.
Initially the Seven Gladiators ignored him,
but when his screaming didn't abate, they de-

cided to deal with him.
"Oh, you want to go and save your wife?"
one of the Seven taunted. Responding to the
cue, the Gladiator who was driving stopped the
Pinzgauer.
"Get down," the first Gladiator said to the
husband. "Go save your wife."
The man hesitantly got out of the vehicle.
Frightened that what had been done to his wife
would be done to him, the man walked back-
ward, stumbling.
"What? You won't go?" the Gladiator asked
him. Suddenly the man became afraid that they
would fire at him if he didn't turn around and
run, so he did. He ran and he ran until he heard
the gunshot and felt himself falling onto the
ground.
Luckily for the man, a passerby who was
rushing home to make curfew spotted him
lying in a pool of his own blood.
The passerby pulled over, picked up the
injured man, and put him in his car. Farther
down the road they found the woman, also
lying in a pool of blood. The passerby stopped
and picked her up as well, and he drove the
couple to Tamale Hospital.
The man lived; his wife did not. By the time
they arrived at the hospital, she was dead. The

story about the woman accused of hoarding
cloth was especially shocking because of the
senselessness of her death. Eventually it took
the intervention of the chairman of the PNDC
to disarm the Seven Gladiators.
TIMES REMAINED BOTH ECONOMICALLY AND POLITI-
cally uncertain.
Often on my father's farm at Tamale, my
brothers Peter and Alfred and I would take the
rifles and shoot wild rabbits and birds, usually
partridges and guinea fowls, and carry them
home with us to be cooked in a nice meal.
When it came to shooting, Peter was better
than all of us.
During one of my long vacations. Dad and
several of our siblings were at the house in
Accra, so Peter was looking afrer the farm in
Tamale. When school closed, I stayed in Tamale
to help Peter.
Dad had a rifle that he favored most when
hunting. It was a .22-caliber semiautomatic
with a scope and 24-round magazine. Some-
how the scope got dropped and the crosshairs
broke. Dad ordered a new scope from a com-
pany that was located abroad, but he lefr for
Accra before it arrived.
Because Peter was running the farm while
Dad was gone, that rifle was in his possession.
He'd been using it, even without the scope,

when he went to hunt.
JQHN DRAMANI MAHAMA 177
The new scope arrived by express parcel
service shortly affer I had returned home from
Ghanasco. Peter wanted to align the new scope
to the rifle barrel, and he needed my help. Or-
dinarily this is something that's done at a shoot-
ing range. Since there wasn't one anywhere in
the vicinity, we decided to improvise. We got a
piece of paper, drew a round target on it with
the bull's-eye, and stuck it to a piece of wood,
which we placed on a stand. Peter got another
stand for the rifle and placed it at a range of
about 250 feet ffom the target. We then began
to zero the scope.
The rifle was equipped with elevation and
windage knobs to facilitate the process of zero-
ing and help create a more precise shot. I was
responsible for marking the target and reading
out the instructions to Peter. I was supposed
to stand directly behind the tree, which was
directly behind the piece of wood onto which
we'd tacked the target. Anytime Peter was
going to fire a shot, I would go to my assigned
post behind the tree.
After Peter had squeezed off his shot, I
would signal him to ensure it was safe before
dutifully walking to the target to note where
the bullet had entered. I would point my fin-
ger at the spot. Peter would use the location of

my finger and the bull's-eye mark to determine
the direction in which he needed to adjust the
scope. When he was done, I would use a pen to
cross out the bullet hole so that when he fired
again I would be able to distinguish the new
hole from the old ones. That was my role.
Peter had fired maybe five or six shots al-
ready. He was about to fire another. I was
walking to my post behind the tree when I
remembered that I hadn't crossed out the last
bullet hole. If I didn't cross it out, we wouldn't
be able to tell the difference between his last
shot and the one he was about to fire. I quickly
went back to cross out the hole.
While I was bent over the target, I felt some-
thing brush up against my cheek in that small
bridge of space between my nose and my eye. I
thought it was an insect or a cricket. I instinc-
tively dropped the pen to swat it off. I think
that's when the sound of the shot registered in
my mind, at the same time I was touching my
cheek and realizing that the flesh somehow felt
different against my fingertips. It was unusually
rough. I pulled my hand away and looked at
my fingers, expecting to maybe find an insect.
There was nothing.
My skin still felt uncomfortable, so I rubbed
my cheek again. This time when I removed my
hand, there was blood. It all happened within
a matter of seconds. I didn't make the link be-
tween the blood on my face and the sound of the
shot I'd heard. I just kept rubbing my cheek, and

the more I rubbed, the more the blood flowed.
Affer the gun had gone off and Peter saw
me standing there at the target rubbing my
face, vidth blood streaming down my cheek, he
screamed and came running to me.
"John, are you hurt?" be asked. "Are you
hurt?" It was then that two and two became
four and I put it together that I'd been shot.
"I don't know," I replied. At that point, ev-
erything I'd ever seen get shot, whether on the
farm or on television, had died. In my mind I
believed that if you got shot, you died. I thought
I was in the midst of dying or already dead,
but I could hear Peter talking to me. His voice
sounded far away, like the final wave of an echo.
Nevertheless, I could bear it.
Would that be possible if I was dead?
"Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go," Peter cried
while dragging me to the car. When we got in
the car, he took off his shirt and gave it to me
to stanch the flow of blood. I pressed the shirt
to my cheek. I remember pinching myself over
and over, trying to figure out if I was alive or
dead, because I couldn't reconcile the fact of
being shot with the fact of being alive.
Peter, who was panicked, drove like a mad-
man through the streets of Tamale, weaving in
and out of traffic. It was the craziest driving I
had ever seen. I was afraid we would get into
a crash and die. It was that fear that convinced

me I had to be alive. If I were already dead, why
would I be so afraid of dying?
"Slow down, Peter," I said. "I'm okay. I'll be
okay. You just take it easy."
In the consulting room at Tamale Hospital,
Peter and I told the doctor what happened. He
178 VQR I S U M M E R 2 0 1 2
was someone our family knew rather well, so
we considered ourselves fortunate that he'd
been on duty when we'd arrived. The doctor
disinfected the wound and placed a temporary
dressing on it while waiting for the nurses to
prepare the operating theatre.
Inside the operating room, the doctor pulled
the lips of the wound together. He snipped off
the excess flesh, stitched up the wound, and
covered it with a plaster. When he was done and
I tried to get off the operating table, I couldn't
liff my right arm, no matter how hard I tried.
I told the doctor. He said he wanted to ex-
amine my arm. As he walked toward me, he
noticed a hole in the back of my shirt at the
shoulder. He came round to look at the front
of the shirt and saw there was a hole there, too.
The doctor asked me to remove my shirt.
When I did, it confirmed the theory he'd for-
mulated. He saw the holes.

The one in the back was an entry wound and
the one in front was an exit wound. The bul-
let had entered my shoulder from the back. It
had gone clear through, and because I was bent
over, it had grazed my cheek as it was complet-
ing its trajectory.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Alfred Mahama; Adamu
Mahama; Adam Mahama; Peter Mahama;
the author, John Dramani Mahama.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR FROM MAHAMA
FAMILY ALBUMS)
The doctor ordered an X-ray of my
shoulder. The bullet hole was visible
in the X-ray. The doctor pointed it
out to me as he studied the films to
determine what kind of damage I'd
suffered.
"John Mahama," the doctor said
after he'd finished looking at the
films, "God was on your side. You are
lucky."
The bullet that hit me went straight
through muscle tissue. Had the bul-
let hit my scapula, it would probably
have shattered the bone. My humérus
would definitely have been fractured.
Had the bullet entered my shoulder

anywhere other than where it did, it could have
passed through my bicep tendon or my rotator
cuff, causing permanent damage.
After the wounds healed, I regained full use
of my shoulder. I still carry a mark on my face
where the hot metal of the bullet made contact
with my cheek. People automatically assume
it's a birthmark or a tribal mark, so nobody ever
asks about it.
I rarely think or talk about it anymore. It
is but one reminder of a time that, thankfully,
is long gone; a time when Ghana was marred
by political and economic unrest, senseless
violence, and a debilitating brain drain. There
are many scars, most not visible, that were ac-
quired by those of us who stayed and weathered
the country's difficult coming-of-age process as
it moved toward peace and stability through a
democratic constitution and the rule of law. I
carried those scars as well, through my own
coming-of-age process, as I unwittingly fol-
lowed my father's footsteps into a political
career that has privileged me with a journey
through the halls of Parliament as a member,
and minister of state, and into the Executive
offices as the current vice president. •
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International Journal of Arts and Commerce Vol. 2
No. 2 February 2013
7
Intercultural Communication and Religious Beliefs
-- A Case Study of the American Film “Innocence of Muslims”
Xiaochi ZHANG
School of Foreign Languages,
China West Normal University,
No.1 Shi Da Lu, Nanchong, 637009,
Sichuan, P. R. China.
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract
The world will be harmonious one, the people with different
religious beliefs in the world should strengthen
close intercultural communication. And the intercultural
communication will avoid any different wrong
recognition about religious beliefs and respect different
religious beliefs from different countries and
cultures. Otherwise, it will cause unstable, inharmonious and
terrible disaster or incident in the world. Thus,
the authors takes the American film “ Innocence of Muslim” as
a study case, briefly introduce the serious
accident result of the film, deeply analyzes that religious beliefs
have an important influence on cultural
development and intercultural communication and are one of
cultural components. A film is one of major
bridges for intercultural communication. Any film should
respect different religious beliefs. However, the
American film” Innocence of Muslims” hurt the Islam people
and caused some incredible accident for the
peaceful world. Also, the American film
Keywords: intercultural communication, religious beliefs,
American film,

1. INTRODUCTION
As the world has become globalized, the need for intercultural
communication has also been increased
to create a conducive, progressive and peaceful world (Akhtar,
2010). Under the influence of globalization,
the intercultural communication and cooperation between
countries become more and more frequent. And
the intercultural communication across cultures in which values,
beliefs, standards, knowledge, moral, laws,
and behaviors shared by individuals and societies should be
taken into fully consideration and plays and
important role in the world communication; trade business and
the development of cooperation and
friendship between countries.
At the same time, people should know that religion, which
conveys impressive cultural connotation, is
not only a kind of particular belief, but also a kind of universal
cultural phenomenon. And then they should
recognize the influence of religious beliefs on different
cultures, because it will contribute to intercultural
communication and cooperation around the whole world.
Moreover, the religious beliefs will strengthen
mutual understanding and create harmonious world and
harmonious human being.

International Journal of Arts and Commerce ISSN 1929-
7106 www.ijac.org.uk
8
Now, the author will take the incident caused by the American
film “Innocence of Muslims” as a case,
and further study that religious beliefs play an important role in
intercultural communication and respect and
tolerance for different religious beliefs will make our
intercultural communication more deep and smooth,
and our world more peaceful and harmonious.
2. A CASE
The film, Innocence of Muslims, was made by an Israeli-
American who describes Islam as a “cancer”
and depicts the Prophet Muhammad sleeping with women, the
Wall Street journal reported (Al-Majbari,
2012). The film first sparked anti-American protests in Egypt
and Libya, and soon spread to more than 20
countries across the Middle East and beyond. Christopher
Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, was killed

along with three colleagues in an attack on the US consulate in
Benghazi. The violent protests also forced 65
US embassies across the world to issue warnings to Americans
to take precautions against violent attacks,
and the Pentagon has sent Marines to protect embassies in
Yemen and Sudan. Indeed, the range and violent
intensity of the present anti-American wave is unprecedented
(Hua, 2012).
With pretests against the film continuing from London to
Lahore on Sunday, Western diplomatic
missions were on edge. Germany followed the US lead and
withdrew some staff from its embassy in Sudan,
which was stormed on Friday. The protests peaked on Friday
and abated over the weekend. About 350
people chanted slogans outside the US embassy in London on
Sunday Sept. 15,2012) A small group of
protesters burned a US flag outside the embassy in the Turkish
capital, and in Pakistan there were protests in
a dozen cities ( Agencies, 2012).
Therefore, the controversial caricature was played off of the US
– produce amateurish film The
Innocence of Muslims, which has already set off violence in
seven countries that has killed at least 28

people, including the US ambassador to Libya ( Agencies,
2012).
Since the 11
th
anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Tuesday, the US-
made anti-Islam film has
been fanning the flames of a new wave of anti-US protests in
Islamic countries around the world, even
though countries criticized the film and leaders called for
restraint ( Zhou, 2012).
As a result, the American film Innocence of Muslims invited the
Muslim World against the America and
the West, and then the peaceful world caused the strong conflict
and bloody clashes. The incident made the
world unstable and hindered different people with different
cultures and different religious beliefs from their
intercultural communication. Hence, it’s necessary for us to
analyze the role and influence of the religious
beliefs in intercultural communication and discuss how to
enhance intercultural communication competence
for the people from different religious beliefs.
3. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Everyone knows that religious beliefs have many important

impact and factors in cultures, even in
intercultural communication. We should know some
fundamental knowledge about religions and its origins,
especial some things of Muslim, the relationship between
religion and culture and religious beliefs in
intercultural communication. And then we have to analyze
religious beliefs’ important impact and factors in
culture and intercultural communication, and further discuss
how to respect different religious beliefs in
No. 2 February 2013
9
different cultures and to deeply strengthen understanding each
other, and promote intercultural
communication.
3.1. Religions and Muslim
Religion, human beings’ relation to that which they regard as
holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine. Religion
is commonly regarded as consisting of a person’s relation to

God or to gods or spirits. Worship is probably
the most basic element of religion, but moral conduct, right
belief, and participation in religious institutions
are generally also constituent elements and worshipers and as
commanded by religious sages and scriptures.
(Britannica, 2005)
Now, the world has three great religions including Buddhism,
Islam and Christianity. The different
religions have different origins and teachings. Also, the
different religions have different group of religious
believer. Here, the author only introduces something about
Islam, so that we’ll further study on the case.
Islam is the Muslim religion based on the teachings of
Muhammad, which can also be spelt as
Muhammed, Mohammad or Mohammed. This Muslim religion
teaches that there is only one God. Allah is
the name of God in Islam. As the founder of the Muslim
religion, Muhammad is considered as His Prophet
or the Prophet, who teaches religion and claims to be inspired
by Allah. Among Muslims and among Arabs
of all faiths, a Muslim, a Moslem, a Muhammadan or a
Mohammedan is a believer of Islam and a follower
of Muhammad. Islam can also be called Islamism,
Muhammadanism, Muhammedanism, Mohammadanism

or Mohammedanism. Some people refer to Islam when they are
talking about all the countries where Islam
is the main religion. As Muhammad was born in Mecca, a city
in Saudi Arabia, it has become the holiest
city and the spiritual center of Islam. All Muslims face towards
Mecca when they say their daily prayers.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Muslims from various
countries go to Mecca to pay their tributes to
Muhammad, the founder of Islam. They are pilgrims who make
their pilgrimage to Mecca. The sacred book
of the Muslims is the Koran, which is written in Arabic,
containing the Prophet Muhammad’s revelations.
They are signs or explanations from Muhammad about God’s
nature and purpose. (Wang, 2008)
3.2 Religious beliefs and intercultural communication
Religious belief is the belief in the reality of the mythological,
supernatural, or spiritual aspects of a
religion. Religious belief is distinct from religious practice or
religious behaviors with some believers not
practicing religion and some practitioners not believing
religion. Religious beliefs, being derived from ideas
that are exclusive to religion, often relate to the existence,
characteristics and worship of a deity or deities,

divine intervention in the universe and human life, or the
deontological explanations for the values and
practices centered on the teachings of a spiritual leader or
group. In contrast to other belief systems,
religious beliefs are usually codified. (Wittgenstein, 2007)
In some content, religious beliefs are such an influential factor
in intercultural communication because
they affect our conscious and unconscious minds, as well as the
manner in which people communicate. The
religious beliefs of different people originate as they grow up in
their cultures. Different religious beliefs
form different views of death in different cultures. Beliefs as
one of the hidden aspects of culture, impact on
the culture by influencing other elements inner the hidden
aspects of culture, such as, aspirations, laws, and
10
symbol, religion itself is a symbol of culture. Each religion has
its own characteristic, and these

characteristics act as the symbols in various forms, such as,
doctrines, churches, badges, figures, even
speeches, and so on. Beyond this, these symbols of religions
also reveal the cultural components of each
group. (Luo, 2012)
3.3 Film and intercultural communication
Film is regarded as culture, and culture is in film. The
relationship between film and culture is
interactive. The global influence reflected through film in a
country that has become one of the most
powerful cultures in the world. To some extend, film is a bridge
in intercultural communication because
different people can admire actors’ performance from different
countries, enjoy different music, know
other’s life, understand the different social cultures and issues,
or even travel around world and so on.
Thus, film is not only to reflect its own country’s culture, but
also to be a good way for the foreign
people to know other culture. In this way, film will benefit the
different people from different countries to
understand respective different cultures and tolerant respective
different cultures. It’s no double that film

plays an important role and mission in intercultural
communication. However, the American
Film” Innocence of Muslims” didn’t play such a role in
intercultural communication. The filmmakers have
forgotten one important principle: film is an art, art doesn’t
change culture; art merely reflects culture. Films
have the power to impact people.” (Stone, 2012) Especially, the
film should respect people with different
religious beliefs and hurt Muslim people, so as to arouse the
Muslim people against the West, even not to
make the world harmonious and stable.
4. SUGGESTION
From the above analysis and discussion, we should have known
that religious beliefs are a part of
culture, every religion has its own cultural influence and
everyone should respect the cultural diversity. The
people with different cultures in the world only understand it
and then they may conduct intercultural
communication with other. It’s incredible that every religious
belief should be respected. Respect is just
basic. It will build harmonious relationship among peoples with
different cultures and religious beliefs.
Therefore, the respect for different religious beliefs is vital to

people when they talk with other, work with
other, even live with other in the same world. Now, it’s
necessary for us to discuss how to respect different
religious beliefs in intercultural communication.
4.1 Learn some basic knowledge about religious beliefs
Anthropologists Avruch and Black have noted that when paced
by an interaction that we do not
understand people tend to interpret the others involved as
“abnormal”, “weird”, or “wrong” (Avruch and
Black, 1993) No matter, what your beliefs or religious beliefs,
it’s important to learn other people and their
religions and spirituality is a common tie across all of
humanity, and we express that sense of wonder and
awe in countless ways. Thus, people should learn some basic
knowledge about different religious beliefs in
the world, especially about different world major religions,
their belief systems and values. In this way,
No. 2 February 2013
11

people with different communicative styles reflect deeper
philosophies and world views which are the
foundation of their culture.
And then people should know or understand that every religion
advises its followers to be good because
people are innately good. In general, people are supposed to
live peacefully with others, showing generosity
to those who are less fortunate. Lies, stealing, killing and
sexual misconduct should be avoided. If a person
properly followed his /her religion as taught originally, the
world would be much more peaceful. It is
ignorance which causes hatred between faiths and study of other
faiths helps to understand and respect other
religion. Hence, learning about different ways that people with
different cultures and religious beliefs
communicate with can enhance people’s intercultural
communication.
4.2 Maintain an attitude of respect
Look for similarities not differences. Set aside the notion that
your religion is “right” and other
religions are automatically “wrong” even if it is a tenement of
your faith. This means suspending judgment

and being diplomatic to show respect for people of other
religions. Treat the people you encounter as you
would want to be treated if someone of another faith was
attending a service at your church. ( Hou, 2012)
It is very important for people to keep this in mind when they
are in a dialogue or when they are
communicating with others with different religious beliefs.
Especially, when they are dealing with any
intercultural conflict, they should be mindful that people may
differ in what they feel comfortable revealing,
because the variation among different religions even religious
interpretations in respective attitude toward
different religions is also something to consider before they
communicate with people from different
religious beliefs.
4.3 Tolerate different religions
Tolerance is a very minimalist attitude whereas respect involves
something more active and positive.
Tolerance is a good cornerstone on which to build human
relationships. When one views the slaughter and
suffering caused by religious intolerance down all the history of
Man and into modern times, one can see

that intolerance is a very non-survival activity.
Religious tolerance does not mean one cannot express his own
beliefs. It does mean that seeking to
undermine or attack the religious faith and beliefs of another
has always been a short road to trouble.
People with one religious belief should have tolerance
awareness of other religions. Awareness of
religious beliefs does not have to divide us from each other. It
does not have to paralyze us either, for fear of
not saying that “right thing”. In fact, becoming more aware of
religious beliefs’ differences, as well as
exploring their similarities, can help us communicate with each
other more effectively. Recognizing where
religious beliefs’ different are in intercultural communication is
the first step toward understanding and
respecting each other.
In sum, people should be open to learning some things from
different religious beliefs, have an active
attitude toward different religious beliefs and then have
tolerance for different religious beliefs. In this way,
the people will really respect different religious beliefs in
intercultural communication.

12
5. CONCLUSION
An increasing source of conflict in the world today is centered
around religious believers’ demands for
respect. Muslims demand “respect” that would forbid criticism,
satire, or mocking of their religion,.
Christians demand “respect” that would amount to something
very similar. Nonbelievers are caught in a
bind when it’s not clear what “respect” is supposed to entail and
how it is supposed to be achieved. If
respect is so important to believers, they need to be clear about
what they want. (Cline, 2012)
Therefore, religious beliefs are a part of culture, have an
important influence on cultural development
and intercultural communication. However, the American film
“innocence of Muslims” did not respect and
the Islam people and caused an incredible serious disaster for
the peaceful world. Meanwhile, the American

film also hinder the Muslim believer to communicate with other
people with different religious beliefs. The
filmmaker should respect the Islam people and their God. And it
is vital for filmmaker or any people to
remember that intercultural communication is not conducted in
prejudice, stereotype and ethnocentrism,
especially in respecting religious beliefs, rather it involves too
many religious beliefs’ differences or cultural
differences that may leads to misunderstandings. Therefore,
people should be aware of the differences, show
understanding and respect to different religious beliefs and most
importantly, build bridges across
misunderstanding among different religious beliefs or different
cultures.
REFERENCES
Agencies in Paris. (2012). French cartoons fuel Muslim anger.
China DAILY. Sept. 20.
Akhtar, Nadeem. (2010). US’s “War Against Terrorism” in
Pakistan: Basic Intercultural communication
Barriers and a Case Study of Tribat Belt. Intercultural Studies:
New Frontiers. Beijing: Foreign Language
Teaching and Research Press, 83p.
Al-Majbari, Ibrahim. (2012). US ambassador Killed. China

Daily. Sept. 13.
Britannica. (2005). 15
th
Edition. Volume 9. 1016p. London: Encyclopedia Britannica,
Inc.
Cline, Austin. (2012). Should We Respect Religion? Does
Religion Deserve Respect?
Retrieved from
http://athism.about.com/od/aboutreli.,ion/p/RespectReligion.htm
. 2012-11-28
How to Respect Other Religions. Retrieved from
http:// www.ehow.com/how_2073687_respect-other-
religions.html. 2012-11-28
Hua, Liming. (2012). US cannot read runes in Mideast. China
Daily, Sept. 28.
Luo, Wen. (2012). The Role of Religion in Intercultural
Communication. Retrieved from
http://blog.163.com/[email protected]/blog/static/698130420068
2021628612. 2012-11-27
Xu, Lisheng. (2012). Intercultural Communication in English.
Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,
5p,6p.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (2007). Lectures and Conversations on
Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief.

California: University of California press. 53p.
Stone, Tara. (2011). Film and Culture. Retrieved from
http://www.
Asq.org/pub/sqp/past/vol4-issue4/biro.html.
Wang, Fengxin. (2008). English Culture. Beijing: Peking
University Press, 296p. 273p.
Zhou, WA. (2012). Washington needs to rethink policies:
Experts. China Daily. Sept. 15-16.

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