How Muslims are Treated in America

ABC News has a show called What Would You Do?, that informally tests how prejudiced people are by presenting them with what appear to be acts of discrimination and bigotry. The ‘bigoted’ individuals are in fact actors, as are the ones being targeted. The goal is to see how bystanders respond.

Here is an episode where a man pretends to be an Islamophobic shopkeeper, and treats one of his ‘customers’ unjustly.

I must warn, however, that this is not a scientific experiment. It is too informal, without appropriate controls etc. It should be viewed with this in mind.

CNN’s Generation Islam

On August 13th, Christiane Amanpour’s documentary Generation Islam debuted on CNN. The documentary reports on why some Muslim youth turn to violence, and how to prevent them from doing so. The message of the documentary is broadly that it is in America’s best interest to help Muslim children gain access to education and job opportunities, since it will prevent them from becoming terrorists. You can watch clips here, though I have not been able to find the full documentary online.

My major criticism of Generation Islam is that it is American-centric, framing the problem of human rights violations in the Gaza strip, and poverty in the Muslim world, in terms of American security. The purpose of the documentary was to tap into the ‘Muslim mind’, to gain knowledge of it for the purpose of controlling it. At various points, Amanpour glorifies Western and especially American efforts to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of Muslim youth, and even in the preview a voice narrates that Muslim children are prizes in a fierce battle. This framing of children as prizes or as rational investments for the West is objectifying in the extreme. It’s not as if Muslim children have inherent moral worth, oh no; it’s just useful to spend money on them, for our own sake don’t you see?

However, by the standard of what usually passes in mainstream American media, Generation Islam is progressive. Amanpour cast the people of Gaza in a humanizing light, as ordinary people trying to get on with their lives. She stressed the constant efforts being made by children everywhere to communicate with the rest of the world, and to be part of something greater. By focusing on children — who adults tend to love, whatever they may be doing — she helped the audience be sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians and Afghans, an audience parts of whom are certainly mired in Islamophobic prejudice. Her narrative (I suppose you could describe it as the ‘they’re-only-human’ narrative) is a refreshing alternative to the ‘clash-of-civilizations’ frame commonly seen, and from the Islamophobic one that characters such as Christopher Hitchens are always presenting.

Most importantly, Amanpour spent a considerable amount of reporting time on the traumas that children in the Gaza strip experience. Though she did not explicitly say so, it was strongly implied that these traumas are not only immoral, but also the source of the anger and violence behind Palestinian terrorist attacks. Her technique involved asking children how they felt, and letting them do most of the talking. She was effectively engaging in therapy sessions of sorts, by placing their subjective experience at the fore. This practice is several times more empathic and humane than the stated purpose of the documentary, which indicates to me that Amanpour is perhaps more progressive than she lets on.

The Liberal Supremacists

by Terry Eagleton, The Guardian

“One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies. This, surely, is the acid test of any liberal creed. Anyone can be tolerant of those who are tolerant. A community of the broad-minded is a pleasant place, but requires no great moral effort. The key issue is how the liberal state copes with those who reject its ideological framework. It is fashionable today to speak of being open to the “Other”. But what if the Other detests your openness as much as it does your lapdancing clubs?

There is no quarrel about how to treat those whose scorn for liberal values takes the form of blowing the legs off small children. They need to be locked up. But socialists as well as Islamists reject the liberal state, so what is to be done about them? Are they to be indulged only until they successfully challenge the state, at which point they too will find themselves behind bars with the zealots of al-Qaida?

It is not, of course, that the left rejects civil liberties: the working-class movement fought to secure so many of them. Marx had undying admiration for the great revolutionary legacy of middle-class liberalism. Even so, there is a fundamental conflict between liberals and leftists. Liberalism holds that the state should tolerate any opinion that does not seek to undermine that very tolerance. It is an ironic kind of politics. As Tony Blair warned: “Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain. So conform to it, or don’t come here.” Whether this is comically self-contradictory or properly paradoxical depends on your view of the liberal state.

That state is not too bothered about what you believe, as long as it does not thwart the right of others to their beliefs. A more cynical view is that advanced capitalism is inherently faithless; as long as you pay your taxes and refrain from beating up police officers, your opinions are mostly neither here nor there. The agnosticism peddled by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens as subversive stuff is part of late capitalism’s everyday routine. The liberal state has no view on whether witchcraft is more valuable than all-in wrestling. Like a tactful publican, it has as few opinions as possible. Many liberals suspect passionate convictions are latently authoritarian. But liberalism should surely be a passionate conviction. Liberals are not necessarily lukewarm. Only the more macho leftist suspects that they have no balls. You can be ardently neutral, and fiercely indifferent.

Any honest liberal, however, will acknowledge that the neutrality of the state is a form of partisanship. There should be laissez-faire in the realm of belief, just as there should be in the marketplace. The left objects to the liberal case not because it believes in crushing those who differ, or dislikes the idea of a partisan state, but because this case rules out the kind of partisan state that ­socialism requires. It rules out, for example, a state that would not be neutral on whether cooperation or individualism should reign supreme in social and economic life.

If the test of liberalism is how it confronts its illiberal adversaries, some of the liberal intelligentsia seem to have fallen at the first hurdle. Writers such as Martin Amis and Hitchens do not just want to lock terrorists away. They also tout a brand of western cultural supremacism. Dawkins strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, but preaches a self-satisfied, old-fashioned Whiggish rationalism that can be wielded against a benighted Islam. The philosopher AC Grayling has an equally starry-eyed view of the stately march of Western Progress. The novelist Ian McEwan is a freshly recruited champion of this militant rationalism. Both Hitchens and Salman Rushdie have defended Amis’s slurs on Muslims. Whether they like it or not, Dawkins and his ilk have become weapons in the war on terror. Western supremacism has gravitated from the Bible to atheism.

The irony is clear. Some of our free literary spirits are defending liberal values in ways that threaten to undermine them. In this, they reflect the behaviour of western states. Liberals are supposed to value nuanced analysis and moral complexity, neither of which are apparent in the slanderous reduction of Islam to a barbarous blood cult. They are noted for their judicious discriminations, rather than the airy dismissal of all religion as so much garbage. There is also an honorable legacy of qualifying too-absolute judgments with an awareness of context: the genuine liberal is appalled by Islamist terrorism, but conscious of the national injury and humiliation that underlie it. None of the writers I have mentioned is remarkable for such balance. On the whole, they are more preoccupied with freedom of expression than freedom from imperial rule.

There is an irony or paradox built into liberal thought: you must be properly intolerant of assaults on tolerance. But this irony is in perpetual danger of getting out of hand. For the liberal state to accommodate a diversity of beliefs while having few positive convictions is one of the more admirable achievements of civilization. But such neutrality, once under pressure, can easily slide into superiority, as sitting loose to other people’s faith comes to look like rising disdainfully above it. It is then only a short step from superiority to supremacism.”

Tragic Humanism

My first encounter with Tragic Humanism. The ending paragraphs of the article ‘Culture & Barbarism: Metaphysics in a Time of Terrorism’ by Terry Eagleton:

We find ourselves, then, in a most curious situation. In a world in which theology is increasingly part of the problem, it is also fostering the kind of critical reflection which might contribute to some of the answers. There are lessons that the secular Left can learn from religion, for all its atrocities and absurdities; and the Left is not so flush with ideas that it can afford to look such a gift horse in the mouth. But will either side listen to the other at present? Will Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins read this and experience an epiphany that puts the road to Damascus in the shade? To use two theological terms by way of response: not a hope in hell. Positions are too entrenched to permit such a dialogue. Mutual understanding cannot happen just anywhere, as some liberals tend to suppose. It requires its material conditions. And it seems unlikely these will emerge as long as the so-called war on terror continues to run its course.

The distinction between Hitchens or Dawkins and those like myself comes down in the end to one between liberal humanism and tragic humanism. There are those who hold that if we can only shake off a poisonous legacy of myth and superstition, we can be free. Such a hope in my own view is itself a myth, though a generous-spirited one. Tragic humanism shares liberal humanism’s vision of the free flourishing of humanity, but holds that attaining it is possible only by confronting the very worst. The only affirmation of humanity ultimately worth having is one that, like the disillusioned post-Restoration Milton, seriously wonders whether humanity is worth saving in the first place, and understands Swift’s king of Brobdingnag with his vision of the human species as an odious race of vermin. Tragic humanism, whether in its socialist, Christian, or psychoanalytic varieties, holds that only by a process of self-dispossession and radical remaking can humanity come into its own. There are no guarantees that such a transfigured future will ever be born. But it might arrive a little earlier if liberal dogmatists, doctrinaire flag-wavers for Progress, and Islamophobic intellectuals got out of its way.

Cosmopolitanism versus Multiculturalism

Kenan Malik is a British leftist and liberal critic of multiculturalism who has written a book that is just about to come out entitled From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy, an assessment of the post-Rushdie culture in the West. Last year, he gave a talk at The Institute of Ideas in London by the same title. You can watch/download the whole talk at Fora.tv. Below is a clip that I thought was relevant to this whole debate on multiculturalism, in which Malik talks about the effect of the Rushdie affair on publishing:
 

 
In the whole talk, Malik also talks about what multiculturalism should REALLY be. He and his co-speaker Amol Rajan make a distinction between cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, which I think is an extremely pertinent and valid point. I think diversity in the sense of cosmopolitanism should be encouraged, but that diversity in the sense of tolerating extreme, oppressive ideas and beliefs in the name of multiculturalism has proved to be an absolute disaster. I’m glad I rediscovered this talk just now as I’ve realized that this is a great way of explaining how I feel about this topic: I am pro-cosmopolitanism, but highly critical of multiculturalism.

I could not find a YouTube clip of this part of the original talk, but I thought Malik hit the nail on the head and so I’m giving a partial transcript of it below (about 32 minutes into the talk):

Rajan: … you said, “We must choose between a plural and an equal society, you cannot have both.” I’m never quite sure what your alternative is. I mean, are you saying now that since the ’80s you’ve had all these state policies which are all about, sort of, sanctifying victimhood and race and saying, you know, if you want to have your own center in Bradford, you’ve got to be Muslim. Are you after more of a monoculturalism? I mean, how much do you rate pluralism? I mean, if we abandon multiculturalism tomorrow, what do you want? … I’d like a name for what you’re talking about.

Malik: Right, I think you need to distinguish between two kinds of pluralisms, two kinds of multiculturalisms. Multiculturalism has come to mean two different things.

Rajan: One is lived experience.

Malik: (nodding) One is multiculturalism or diversity as lived experience.

Rajan: I call that cosmopolitanism.

Malik: Yeah, you can call it cosmopolitanism. But the point is, that when people talk about multiculturalism, they mean two different things. One is the kind of diversity created, for example, through mass immigration. The other is a set of political policies to manage that diversity. Now it seems to me that a set of political policies to manage that diversity actually undermines much of what is valuable about that diversity in the first place. The point about living in a cosmopolitan world is that it allows you to expand your horizons, to think about other people’s ways of doing things, their lifestyles, their beliefs and values and so on. Ask: which is better and which is worse? Are my values better than their values? And have a dialogue, a debate, a political dialogue and debate about that. And through that process, create, ironically, a more universal language of citizenship.

The problem with multiculturalism as a political process, is that it stops that possibility of dialogue and debate in the name of respect and tolerance.

Rajan: And perhaps fetishizes hollow differences.

What Malik is advocating here is multiculturalism or pluralism or cosmopolitanism in a positive sense, not in the negative sense of imposing a thought police that forces us to withhold our true opinions and criticisms of different worldviews. Any and all beliefs and practices from different cultures cannot be accepted as beautiful or as an asset to human civilization. Our task is to subject what various human cultures have developed or discovered to a critical analysis, and to keep the good and throw out the bad. Chinese Taoism? Brilliant. Chinese Maoism? Horrifying. The Hindu Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita? Sublime. The Hindu caste system? Atrocious. Western science? A phenomenal achievement. Western materialism and unrestrained capitalism? Terribly oppressive. The Sufi tradition of futuwwah (spiritual chivalry)? Inspiring. Islamic traditions of jihad against the unbelievers? Very problematic. Christian teachings about love and peace? Mazel tov. Christian teachings about original sin and total depravity? Psychologically unhealthy.

And so on.

Our love of identity politics and of the politics of guilt, is a flight from intellectual, ethical and spiritual integrity, and has done nothing to improve peace and harmony in this world. I am in favor of a politics driven by truth-visions, and NOT identities. Read Malik’s essay, Against Multiculturalism, for an expansion of these ideas. Now here is a leftist after my own heart.

FYI: I read The Satanic Verses ages ago and hated it. Rushdie’s written much better books than that.

Ex-Bush admin official: “Many at Gitmo are innocent”

You don’t say. Quote:

AN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. “There are still innocent people there,” Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. “Some have been there six or seven years.”

Heartbreaking Documentary on the Gujurat Pogrom

Rakesh Sharma made a powerful documentary on the pogrom in Gujurat called Final Solution.

A quote from the site:

During the making of this film, I noticed shocking parallels between India 2002-2004 and Germany of the 1930s – State-supported genocidal violence against Moslems in Gujarat and its continuing impact – segregation in schools, ghettoisation in cities and villages, formal calls for economic boycott of Moslems and attacks on intelligentsia by right-wing Hindutva cadres.

Watch it on Google Video. Just watch the first five minutes and see the interview with the little Muslim boy named Ijaz. If you don’t break down crying, your heart is made of stone.

Rakesh’s blog is here. He writes of the screenings of this film he did for Indian audiences in America:

“What about the burnt train”, thunders a Gujarati NRI, “what happened was a reaction to Godhra”. I pose a counter question – ” Do you think post-911, every New Yorker should have gone out to on the streets to rape any Muslim woman, murder Muslim babies and kill old and young men? That New Yorkers should have burnt all Muslim cafes and shops, set fire to Muslim homes and that the NYPD should’ve helped them do it? That mobs led by local politicians should have ruled the streets of New York in the same way they did in Gujarat?” Like a proud American citizen, he recoils and says no.

I wonder why they try to defend such barbarism for India. Long distance nationalism? A mistaken notion of what India is and what it needs? Or an implied assumption that NY is ‘civilised’ while India is ‘backward’ and hence rape, murder and mayhem are acceptable consequences?” It is a question I have posed to many ‘hostile’ members of my audiences – usually they have no answers. Politics of hate and intolerance doesn’t rely on reason; all it demands is faith.

Indeed.

The Shameful Islamophobia of Robert Spencer and Geert Wilders

Anyone who is at all aware of Islamophobia will be aware of people like Robert Spencer and Geert Wilders, and more benignly bigoted comedians who make terrible films and think they’re a lot funnier than they really are*.  It should be obvious that we apostates and liberal Muslims should condemn and distance ourselves from such people, but it appears that in the fervor against Islamism and Shariah law, some liberal Muslims, atheists and agnostics have joined forces with those who are much more viciously anti-Islamic and racist. Sam Harris is an example of someone who, probably put off by the violence some Muslims perpetrate, has turned over to the dark side. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tarek Fatah, Ibn Warraq and Tawfiq Hamid are even better examples. I would count Christopher Hitchens but I’m not entirely sure he’s a person.

Liberal Muslims and apostates, know that the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. If you do not heed this warning, you might just end up on Fox News in a panel with Robert Spencer and questioned by a ditzy Fox News anchor who comes across as leftist and anti-racist by comparison. Honestly though, if anyone can make a Fox News anchor look like a nuanced lefty, they need to sit alone and introspect for a few years.

People like Spencer and Wilders cannot understand Muslims in terms other than verses in the Quran and extracts from the Hadith, and occasionally the insane ramblings of obscure clerics. I wonder if either of them has ever met a Muslim, ever made friends with one, ever shared a house with one. It is easy to hate a people when you are distanced from them, and even easier when the hatred appears superficially to be non-racial since ‘Muslim’ is not a racial category. But Islamophobia is a kind of racism, with these elements I recognize as being distinctive of racism:

• When the ‘Other’ is represented as essentially savage. If not for genetic reasons, it is for civilizational reasons in the case of Islamophobia, but the image burned in our minds is the same. It may be the shouting, irrational Mongol or the violent, immature black man, or the turban-wearing beheader of 8-year-old girls who shouts ‘Allah-ho-Akbar!’. Civilized people almost can’t help but end up hating such ’savages.’ Unless we defend against it, the emotional manipulation that such propaganda engages in is generally very effective, since it appeals to our core values.
   
• When the ‘Other’ demonized is a social group defined either by birth or by cultural affiliation. Many who claim that Islamophobia doesn’t exist or that it is not racism pretend that being Muslim is like having membership in a golf club. You do not decide as an adult to join a club created for the indulgence of a hobby; you are, effectively, born Muslim. Sure people convert out of and into it, but it is still something that has meaning to people as a cultural identity, and the correlation between people’s faiths and their parents’ faiths demonstrates my point. Most importantly though, to Muslims and others, being Muslim is felt as a cultural and racial identity, and the fact that it is felt is sufficient to establish that it is.

There is a lot more to racism than just the above, but to avoid being overly long-winded, I won’t elaborate any more on that point. I’ll just mention that Chris Hedges describes the characteristics of extremist movements here (it’s audio). I can connect his analysis to mine, but perhaps that is the subject of another post.

In any event, what Spencer and Wilders need to realize is:

1. Muslims, like all human beings, are complex. Their religion matters to them to varying degrees, but they are also of different temperaments, of different cultures, of different social classes, different sects and so forth. Very few people who follow a religion live by acting out every sentence pulled out from their holy books. People do not act in such an unmediated, context-independent and mechanical way, Muslim or otherwise. Some people take their scripture more literally and more seriously than others, but when we examine those cases (e.g. the Taliban) we find that they are often of tribal, patriarchal and militaristic backgrounds. To understand that they are Muslim is not enough. If a single human being is so complex, what happens at the level of entire societies?

2. There are different cultures that are populated by Muslims. There’s no such thing as the ‘Muslim world’: this is a fictional collection of diverse people into one category for no reason other than their profession of a certain faith. Turkey’s culture is distinct from that of Indonesia, Pakistan’s culture is distinct from that of Malaysia and so on.  The sooner they stop treating Islam as a monolith, the better.

I would recommend to Spencer and Wilders that they read the nuanced and sophisticated interpretation of Islam held by a very well-spoken and rather beautiful Muslim man named Tariq Ramadan. I will end with the video of a debate between Tariq Ramadan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for your viewing pleasure and hopefully enlightenment.

* And have large noses.