Crossing the Crescent

Al-Qaeda’s voluble No. 2 figure Ayman Al-Zawahiri took a swipe at Obama in a recent audiotape, deriding him as a “house negro” working at the behest of America’s war machine.

Might conservatives, who spent the entire campaign bathing in foamy paranoid hatred over Obama’s supposedly “Muslim” and “terrorist” background, take this verbal blast as a clear sign that the former senator from Illinois is not hiding bin Laden under his bedsheets?

Not likely. Obama’s Christian identity somehow escaped conservative senses even when the president-elect came under withering fire for his association with the outspoken Rev. Wright.

That reality is in itself is revealing: painting Obama as a Muslim scarcely became more difficult when controversy over his Christian pastor erupted in the news, because both “black radical pastor” and “Islam” carry enough negative connotations to be lumped together in that general category of “things we can frighten white people with.”

Returning to the main point: al-Zawahiri unfavorably compared Obama to Malcolm X, and used the latter’s analogy of “field negroes” and “house negroes” to label the former an Uncle Tom.

The irony is that by the time Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and became a Muslim, he jettisoned that kind of Manichean rhetoric and adopted a much more open approach to working with other black leaders involved in the Civil Rights movement.

Subtlety, however, has never been al-Qaeda’s strong suit. In the same audiotape, Al-Zawahiri bellows with typical B-movie bad-guy bravado about the war in Afghanistan, “Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them.”

Verbal theatrics aside, however, the purpose of Al-Zawahiri’s message is clear: to dampen any hopes among Muslims that Obama’s election might move America way from its disastrously simplistic military approach to Islamic extremism.

And, perhaps, to goad Obama into continuing that approach, so that Al-Zawahiri and his acolytes may keep profiting from it.

[First published on Wiretapmag.org]

The candidacy - and now election - of Barack Obama has elicited an avalanche of commentary on race across the political and social spectrum.

Some pundits have posited that we now inhabit a “post-racial” society that has transcended racial differences with the victory of an African-American presidential candidate. That a nation which held blacks in bondage, and refused to grant them justice long after slavery was abolished, could elect a black man for the highest office in the land appears to most observers as a striking victory for the cause of racial unity and tolerance.

Lost in this celebration, however, has been any serious treatment of the Arab and Muslim question. Obama was ceaselessly and openly pilloried by conservatives as a foreign, exotic, unpredictable quantity, not only because he was of mixed racial heritage, but also because he was wrongly said to be Muslim and Arab. And while the Obama campaign fought firmly and intelligently to overcome voters’ fears about electing an African-American, they rarely took the extra step of condemning the anti-Arab and anti-Islamic caterwaul of their opponents’ campaign.

In this context, serious studies of how Arab and Muslim Americans are treated inside the United States should be welcomed to the discussion. One such study comes from Dianne Shammas, an American activist of Lebanese heritage pursuing her Ph.D in at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her thesis is the latest comprehensive study of racial discrimination against Arab Americans at community colleges in southern California and southeast Michigan.

She surveyed 753 Arab Christian, Arab Muslim, and non-Arab Muslim students from 21 community colleges using a 92-item survey and three focus groups to learn how this population viewed prejudice on campus and interacted with the larger campus community.

Previous studies have shown high levels of discrimination: a 2007 Arab-American Institute survey showed 76 percent of Arab-Americans ages18 to 29 experienced discrimination, and a 2004 Muslims in the American Public Square report showed 50 percent of American Muslims ages 18 to 24 experienced discrimination in the school and workplace.

However, Shammas said her findings did not bear out these previous reports. She found that Arab and Muslim students tend to cluster and form friendships on religious and ethnic lines, as do other minorities on college campuses. Examining 570 written responses, Shammas found that 38 percent of students formed friendships based on sameness of culture, heritage, and religious belief more than any other criteria.

But importantly, these campus friendships contributed to the students’ sense of belonging at college. There was no strong evidence, she notes, to support the idea that such group clustering was connected to the level of perceived discrimination.

Compared to non-Arab and non-Muslim students, Shammas observes, her Arab and Muslim sample did report higher rates of discrimination on four of the nine criteria by a factor of two to four. However, the bigger picture shows that overall there is no striking difference-the mean score was 2.21 for Arabs and Muslims versus 1.94 for the others.

Shammas believes that her results do not mean that discrimination has simply disappeared. She says that many respondents seemed hesitant to speak about discrimination for fear of sounding a false alarm or appearing weak. It may also be the case that, in sticking together, the respondents partially immunized themselves to bias

Whatever the case, Shammas says it is important to fine-tune such surveys to pick up bias when fear, or even the normalization of bias, makes it harder to detect.

In her book, Islam, Karen Armstrong describes the process of Muslim prayer as an effective way of cutting through the hard arrogance of the Arab tribesmen. In his biography, Malcolm X conveys the difficulty he experienced in submitting in humility by bowing as part of prayer as he made his first steps toward Islam.

From an outsider’s perspective, the Muslim practice of praying five times a day may appear excessive or strange. Prayer in many Christian and Jewish denominations is fairly straightforward. One sits on a bench, or perhaps kneels, along with other congregants once a week.

The Muslim prayer, with its bowing and dipping, kneeling, saluting of the angels, gesticulation insisting upon the oneness of God, is markedly different. It is a clear reminder that we surrender ourselves to God and before God.

But some of us are better about this than others. I have not prayed in my home in months. Why?

Because I can’t find a compass.

Muslims pray east—toward Mecca and the Ka’abaa—first built by Abraham and emptied of idols by the Prophet. The prayer mat I own has a built-in compass, but it is faulty. I went to a local store owned by Muslims to ask where I could get one, but the woman there didn’t seem to understand me.

My wife looked up Google Maps to help me try and figure out which way is East. By the time we ended our little exercise, I think we concluded that just about every direction in 20 degree increments was ‘east.’

Of course, this is not the real reason for my lack of due diligence. It is an excuse, a rationalization, a crutch; with more effort, I could probably locate a compass within a day or two.

But in failing to pray, I have been reminded of the importance of prayer. The importance of recognizing God in words and motion; of showing humility; of displaying reverence; of giving thanks; of understanding that the troubles and trifles and tiffs of daily life are transient and passing before He who is timeless and permanent.

Foregoing this symbolic, spiritual, and physical act has felt to me like a constant process of forgetting God, and of slowly accumulating a mass of debris in the soul, weighing it down like an anchor in a sea of worldly concerns.

I once used to believe that it is possible for one to either pray or not pray. This now strikes me as false: in a sense, we are always praying. We as humans are always meditating, obsessing, dreaming, hoping, fantasizing—in short, devoting our mental and emotional energies—towards something at all times. The only question is: to what?

Romance, work, hobbies, ambitions all occupy our attention. I sense that these other areas have expanded and inflated themselves inside me all out of proportion—even though I certainly remember God every day—because I have excised the daily, concrete remembrance of prayer.

For those who look at religion on a purely intellectual or theoretical level, as I once did, this seems puzzling: if you haven’t forgotten what you know, then how can you lose it? But faith is neither knowledge alone nor emotion alone. It is neither a collection of data stowed away inside the mind nor an impulse to reach for reflexively at one’s convenience. It must be an active process of remembering and recognizing God, and, therefore, recognizing one’s own very real limitations and flaws.

I have come to the realization that prayer does not have to be some kind of profound spiritual experience to be useful. This is what I used to hope for and I always came away disappointed.

The sheer physical act of bowing, kneeling, and reciting every day—performed in humility and with discipline—is no guarantee of a ‘connection’ with God. But it can be a guard against worship of worldly interests, a check on absorption into worldly pursuits and problems– a compass pointing to the ’straight path.’

Good news for those interested in my extensive 35-minute phone interview with gay Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma, whose recent work, “A Jihad for Love,” is still screening across the world: the bimonthly print magazine Colorlines has agreed to run a 1200-word excerpt for its February/March edition.

Once that comes out, I’ll post the full interview transcript online.

Posting has been sparse this month because, as you may know, it’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so I’ve been swamped at work.

The presidential candidates don’t argue over whether it is right to bomb Muslim countries, but rather over whether they’ve chosen the right Muslim country to bomb. A special interest group commanded by Israeli ex-officials unloaded 28 million copies of an anti-Muslim hate film in swing states to titillate idle exurban imaginations. The hammer of the “war on terror” is wielded against an ever-expanding pool of people who conveniently appear as wayward nails.

As these ominous realities unfold before their eyes, some American Muslims appear resigned and fatalistic.

Wajahat Ali is not among them. The 27-year-old California-born Muslim with Pakistani roots takes an aggressive but level-headed approach to politics and the arena of ideas. An attorney, activist, writer, journalist, and playwright, Wajahat aspires to the dynamism and versatility of Muslim scholars and poets of past ages.

There’s no rule that say you only have to be one thing,” he says, emphasizing the need for American Muslims to become valuable leaders within their own communities—and to make their own communities leading examples of Muslim values: tolerance, justice, and scholarship.

“Prophet Muhammad said, ‘Seek knowledge, even if you have to go as far as China.’ You want to be part of a renaissance, you want to be part of a cultural, spiritual, intellectual revolution, where you revive Islamic scholarship,” Wajahat says.

The Bay Area resident says he never sought out to take up that path; rather, the path sought him out.

“It was when I went to preschool and realized for the first time, like most minorities do, that you’re different,” he notes. Born into a traditional South Asian family and living with both his parents and grandparents, he spoke Urdu exclusively the first four years of his life, entering ESL in the first-grade.

“From elementary school, and even in high school, I ended up being the token Muslim guy” who teachers and classmates approached for knowledge about Islam, Wajahat explains. Sometimes, they also came for pranks: “Some of my friends would put bacon bits in my salad to see if I would go to hell,” he says in a bemused tone.

“It’s not that I wore religion on my sleeve…when you’re growing up as a minority, all you want to do is fit in like everyone else. You want the cutest girl to talk to you and you want to be one of the cool kids.”

But Wajahat quickly learned he could leverage his uniqueness. “You become an exotic…but you make a decision whether you’re going to be hermetic with your Otherness or whether you’re going to be proactive.”

Choosing the latter route, Wajahat wrote his debut American Muslim play, Domestic Crusaders, when he was 23. The play was produced by his writing teacher and Pulitzer-prize nominee Ishmael Reed.

Developing his repertoire through improvisational comedy (“I started doing jokes because I was a fat kid, and I saw that humor really worked”), he created the post-Sept.11th superhero “Captain Islam” and played an active role in the Muslim Student Association.

An associate editor of the publication AltMuslim.com—“it’s neither too apologetic nor too antagonistic”—Wajahat exhorts wealthier American Muslims to invest in their own future by creating think tanks and scholarships in art and media instead of collecting luxury cars. “We have to break out of our culturally isolated bubble,” he says.

Wajahat knows that Muslim mobilization will not immediately alter the political landscape—but he understands that the Muslim landscape must be altered by political mobilization.

“As the joke goes, the question is, ‘Who is going to kill us less?’,” he says of the candidates. “But [Obama] is the lesser of two evils. You have to be strategic. I’m a strong believer that Muslims have to engage.”

| Published at WireTap |

Much ink—likely too much—has been spilled on the subject of Sherry Jones’ debut novel, The Jewel of Medina, which was dropped by Random House but recently picked up by a British-based publisher.

The controversy stems from Jones’ decision to fictionalize the account of Aisha’s relationship with Prophet Muhammad and to describe, in fleeting but clearly sexual language, the marriage’s consummation.

Aisha’s age when she became part of the Prophet’s household—estimates vary from 9 to 14—has long been a source of snide commentary and polemics from Western critics of Islam, both in early Christian accounts and more “modern” ones elevated by war hysteria and the “clash of civilizations” narrative.

But I am not here today to opine about the novel. Opinions on such things are like belly buttons: everyone has one, and most are severed from the umbilical cord of reason and reflection. Perhaps the publication means nothing to you; perhaps it frustrates you; perhaps it amuses you. What of it?

The only indisputable fact at play is that a major novel centering on a key aspect of early Islam has just been written at a critical time—by a first-time Western novelist. Where are the Muslim writers? Where is the Muslim imagination? Where are the Muslim readers, the Muslim publishing houses, the Muslim presses?

We need to invest in our own scholarship, media, arts, and writing. Complaining—even elegantly and articulately—is still complaining. And there are only two things to be said about complainers: no one likes them, and they never win.

There are so many truly remarkable aspects of the Prophet’s life to be brought to light—and to life—for Western audiences. Instead of merely reacting to what an outsider has done and bemoaning what her effort has done to the Muslim image, why don’t we invest more time, resources, and money into crafting our own image?

If we stop obsessing over ephemeral efforts like The Jewel of Medina and learn the lessons revealed to the jewel of Mecca—Prophet Muhammad himself—we would understand, as the Quran says, that God only helps those who help themselves.

The Prophet placed great emphasis on learning. The custom of tribal warfare in his time dictated that those captured in war be taken captive, but he freed any man who could teach ten Muslims how to read. Yet where is our passion for scholarship, for the arts, for organized media efforts, today? We complain about domestic lobbies and foreign wars without organization, without discipline, like scattered sparks cascading into the invisibility of the night at the tail-end of fireworks.

Unless we Muslims study our own past and strategize for our own future, our past will be revised for us by others, our future will be carved out for us by others, and the stories of our key figures will be written for us—and perhaps against us—by others.

One is reminded of George Orwell’s warning: “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”

This is as true for novels as it is for nations.

As you’ve already heard (or have gotten tired of hearing), Eid, the culmination of the Muslim month of fasting, is a time of joy, laughs, celebration, sweets, and family gatherings.

But for myself – and, I suspect, some other American Muslims, none of the above apply.

I fondly remember a couple of Eids in Pakistan: an endless tour of relatives’ homes; cash gifts for the younger ones; mass prayers in which Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder, line after line, in an awe-inspiring display of disciplined unity rarely scene before or after such services.

But here and now, those memories seem faint and distant, like a dream whose contents disappear into the fog the harder ones tries to force them into focus.

Relatives to visit? The country is huge; even those within America are spread out across hundreds if not thousands of miles. Morning prayers? Work obligations sometimes make that impossible, even if you have nominal approval to take a religious holiday off.

A few acquaintances might offer an “Eid Mubarak!” but the greeting rings hollow and seems empty of content, like a skinned and stuffed deer on display. In the absence of any visible, tangible signs of celebration, it falls into the same ignominious category as the politically-correct “Happy Holidays!” sloganeering that pours out of lips as surely as snow falls from the skies during Christmas time.

It’s partly, but not only, the function of being in a minority. It’s also about living in a country that is divided between the extremely secular and the extremely religious. The former make little room for those who practice their faith, and the latter makes little room for those who practice another faith.

The intersection between America and Islam is sometimes a very lonely one.

Norman Finkelstein is one of the world’s most outspoken and tenacious scholars on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a fierce critic of the way Israel’s supporters try to wield the memory of anti-Semitism as a baton to beat up on those who criticize the country’s well-documented atrocities.

Author of “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History,” along with “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict” and other books, Finkelstein was hailed by a leading authority of Holocaust studies, the late Raul Hilberg, for his “acuity of vision and analytical power,” and by prominent Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim as “as a very able, very erudite and original scholar.”

In 2007, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University because of an intimidation campaign spearheaded by Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, whose book, “The Case for Israel,” was pilloried by Finkelstein as blatant plagiarism of an earlier work, Joan Peters’ “From Time Immemorial,” which, in turn, was long ago exposed as a hoax.

In our hour-long phone interview on Sept. 14^th, Finkelstein discussed a broad range of topics, including Gaza, the paralysis gripping the Arab world, and the reach and the limits of the Israeli lobby. He reflected on his teaching career (“I’ll almost certainly never teach again”), his pursuit of self- improvement, and the “battery of humorless lawyers” who vet his printed works, which frequently combine painstaking research with searing polemics. He also talked about his raging battles with Alan Dershowitz, who once mangled Finkelstein’s words to claim that he called his mother, a Holocaust survivor, a Nazi collaborator. Finally, acknowledging the consequences of his intellectual activism (“You speak out, you pay a price”), Finkelstein spoke about the meaning and impact of his scholarship.

The interview is separated into four parts. Read it here.

A brief entry today:

A new anti-Muslim film called Obsession was distributed in swing states recently, bundled with copies of newspapers.

I have not seen the film, nor do I plan to, although I have read synopses of its contents.

The editor of The American Muslim has compiled some material that answers the films charges:

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Resources for Responding to “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West” DVD Mass Distribution to 28 million Americans.

Who is behind Relentless, Obsession and The Third Jihad? for a background on those individuals and organizations responsible for the production, mass distribution, and promotion of the film.

In-Depth Summary & Analysis of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War on the West” for a point by point discussion of the films claims.

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What is important in this episode, to my mind, is that it illustrates once again the emptiness and cheapness of sloganeering about the “free press.”

Was this endeavor “free?” Hardly: the producers and distributors doubtlessly paid millions – and had millions to spend – to bring this nonsense to fruition. Do those demonized by the film have recourse to such millions? The question answers itself.

Much of the propaganda will be absorbed and internalized, regardless of whether any of the viewers see a counter-point. Some useful research has appeared in the last few years showing that among people who hold prejudices, invocation of the facts not only fails to move them, but actually reinforces their bigotry.

Therefore, there is no great Chinese Wall that separates such propaganda from other weapons of war  – indeed, its mass distribution is precisely intended to make the use of other weapons more palatable and acceptable. It paves the way for spilling blood.

And if another terrorist attack occurs on American soil, who will oppose round-ups or concentration camps for the “suspect” minority? With their calloused carapaces of bigotry hardened by films such as these, fewer Americans will bother to oppose such injustice.

The very title is revealing: Obsession. Ergo: Muslims bent on jihad are obsessed with trying to destroy you and your family. What theater! What titillation!

But are there Muslim tanks and Muslim checkpoints and Muslim soldiers lined up on the grassy knolls of rural America? Or is it rather the other way around? One would not be able to tell from this film’s title or poster – which is exactly the point.

For cloistered and close-minded people barricaded and bored in their monochrome suburbs, self-serving victim narratives in which they are featured as the ideological “star actor” under assault by evil hordes must offer a modicum of entertainment in otherwise dreary lives.

For Muslims, however, I doubt the consequences will be quite as enjoyable.

Nothing is of greater interest to me than the way in which words are wielded as bulldozers to carve out deep chasms between one tribe of humanity and another.

One such pairing of words is “honor killing.” Periodically we learn about an act in a remote rural corner of a Muslim country that involves the killing of a woman for the “honor” of her male relatives. We are invited to inveigh against these strange, unfathomable creatures and cultures that apparently permit such atrocities; we are enjoined to puff up with a great sense of satisfaction at our own inestimably more civilized status.

Naturally, in the present war-soaked atmosphere, the blame for the barbarism is laid at the feet of Islam and its “backwardness,” even though honor killings are deeply anti-Islamic according to the core precepts of the faith.

Equally naturally, we are led to believe that this brutal treatment of women in the name of male insecurity and domination is “unique” to Muslims, even though any domestic violence advocate in India or Russia or South Africa could point to countless counter-examples.

But a recent New York City report shows that we don’t have to look so far to find other instances of this phenomenon.

The 2008 Report from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, titled “Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in NYC,” reports that between 2003 and 2005, nearly half – half – of all women killed in the city were murdered by their partners.

Of course, few openly call these murders “honor killings” – though that is precisely what they are: jealous, enraged, angry, and chauvinistic men killing their current or ex-partners on account of suspicion or paranoia or an urge to exercise their patriarchal role. The violence faced by pregnant women in particular (also noted in the report) only reinforces this view.

But to utter such an admission - to call America’s honor killings by its proper name - would be impermissible. It would close the gap between “us” and “them;” it would unhappily curtail the ability to tongue-cluck sanctimoniously about “those terrible things that those people do over there.”

The report also contains useful insights – for those interested – about patterns in domestic violence. Women in minority groups, in poorer neighborhoods, and those bereft of police protection were the most vulnerable.

In a word, this isn’t a “religious” problem. It is a social problem, requiring social solutions. But social solutions require a sincere approach and commitment to funding civil society, not self-righteous and titillating rhetoric aimed at whetting the appetite for war and blood.

And where’s the profit in that?