Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters

In a society permeated with stereotypical portraits of Muslim communities intellectually honest narratives are regularly subordinated to sensational fairy tales replete with fear, xenophobia, and dehumanizing tropes purporting to explain violent behavior. Examples of this are too plentiful to enumerate. Dr. Omid Safi’s Memories of Muhammad chronicles the life of the Prophet Muhammad, the historical developments that characterized his time, and the various scholarly and theological interpretations that followed to provide an incredibly detailed description of Islamic teachings and the enormous influence they continue to exert today. In doing this Safi offers a much needed refutation to the monolithic conceptions of Islam that pervade US discourse. As Safi puts it, “If we are to understand the Islamic civilization that rightly sees itself as being shaped by the revelation given to Muhammad, it behooves us to engage the multiple ways in which Muslims have come to cultivate the memory of Muhammad.” Several realities must be factored into this analysis. Among these realities is the fact that “perhaps over 600,000 hadith reports came into circulation in the centuries after Muhammad’s passing” (“classical hadith scholars … accepted only 1 to 2 percent of the hadith in circulation as reliable”), that there is a rich tradition of devotional poetry uplifting the example of the Prophet Muhammad, and Muslim communities, from Sunni to Shia and Sufi, have brought their own unique interpretations to this body of work.

The sharply conflicting responses to the Burda, a devotional poem authored by Sufi Egyptian poet Busiri, is a paradigmatic example of just how radically disparate certain interpretations are within Muslim majority societies. While the poem is hugely influential in many parts of the world (“the Burda was translated … into Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Punjabi, Pashto, Swahili, English, Malay, and Shila-Berber”), it has been met with hostility in other quarters. Saudi Arabia, the center of Wahhabism, has been the principal opponent of this devotional strand of Islam.

“Under the influence of Wahhabi clerics,” Dr. Safi writes “Saudi authorities have … erased all but the last line of the Burda poem in praise of the Prophet that had been inscribed on the walls of the Mosque of the Prophet during the Ottoman reign.” Safi went on to add “had the Wahhabis had their way in 1812, it would not have been merely the Burda that was effaced but the entire Mosque of the Prophet.” More than a mere disagreement over the “devotional practices of Islam”, this event was likely reflective of a much deeper tension between Islamic orthopraxy as understood by Wahhabi clerics and dominant understandings within the Sufi tradition where the “connection to the Prophet is more existential,” with “knowledge [coming] from a less mediated source.”

Beyond these points of friction, it’s also worth acknowledging the role of certain Islamic teachings as a unifying force critical not only of intellectual divisions within Islam but, more broadly, parochial elements within the older Abrahamic religions (Judaism and Christianity). “The Qur’an,” Dr. Safi argues, “makes no move to negate the earlier revelations. In fact, the Qur’an criticizes the Jewish and Christian communities around Muhammad for having become too exclusivist and for denying the truth of other revelations.” Safi highlights this thoroughly Abrahamic ethos in the following passage:

“They say: ‘Become Jews or Christians if you wish to be guided.’
Say You: ‘No! I would rather be part of the tradition of Abraham, the true one, who did not associate partners with God.’” (Qur’an 2:135)

Examples this kind greatly complicate if not eviscerate completely jingoistic ideologies that promote a “clash of civilizations” where “our” “Judeo-Christian heritage” is perpetually threatened by the rise of the “Islamic menace.” Here we realize the dangers of reading religious texts divorced from the historical context and geopolitical disputes that constantly shape the world we live in. Much of the bigotry that today’s “intellectuals” direct at Islam and the Prophet Muhammad are merely parroting others who, despite their reputations as great thinkers, were just as steeped in ignorance. “Some classics of Western literature, such as Dante’s Inferno, depict Muhammad as being cut open right down through his torso and cast into the ninth circle of Hell.” Meanwhile, the celebrated figurehead of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, wrote the following in a preface to a 1543 Latin translation of the Qur’an (note the seething anti-Semitism as well):

“For just as the folly, or rather madness, of the Jews is more easily observed once their hidden secrets have been brought out into the open, so once the book of Muhammad has been made public and thoroughly examined in all its parts, all pious person will more easily comprehend the insanity and wiles of the devil and will be more easily able to refute them.”

Quite apart from an innocent investigation of “ideas”, as contemporary bigots love to contend, Luther was acutely aware that he was “living in the aftermath of the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.” Furthermore, he was “mindful and aware—even fearful—of the presence of Muslims (‘Turks’ to him) and was keenly interested in the study of Islam. Yet he was not interested in understanding Islam per se, or getting to know Muslims as human beings.” This brand of “study”–selectively quoting text entirely divorced from the complex lived experience of actual human beings who have devoted their lives to honoring the Prophet’s example–lies at the core of all ahistorical commentaries on Islam. The fact that so little has changed from the bigotry of Dante and Martin Luther to less influential, but just as intellectually feeble, denunciations of Bill Maher and Sam Harris is a screaming testament to this.

This is why Safi’s Memories of Muhammad is such an invaluable contribution to our troubled times. Safi’s scholarship is aggressive in its rejection of easy explanations and careful in navigating the spiritual paths that each community has charted to bridge their experiences in this world with the divine. “This is the goal of the community of Muhammad: to be led to Muhammad, and from Muhammad to God.” Many of the biographical insights Safi provides with regard to the world the Prophet inhabited mirror those of Karen Armstrong’s Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time, primarily his observation that the Prophet’s followers “saw their society as one in which the strong oppressed the weak and ‘the ways of the forefathers’ had become more sacrosanct than the ways of God.” In both biographies the Prophet resonates as a revolutionary messenger struggling on behalf of the marginalized.

“Islamic life is not usually black-and-white but rather takes on a full spectrum of color,” notes Safi. “People’s lives, cultures, ideas, and sensitivities are more fluid and water-like than rock-like: they are in constant motion.” This “fluid and water-like” character of Islamic life is embodied in the poetry of Rumi, Medieval Muslim miniatures, the thousands of hadiths, in the “well known artistic tradition called the Hilya,” where “it became customary to depict in a richly illuminated manuscript an edified description of Muhammad”, in the Dalia’il al-Khayrat—“a series of litanies” devoted to the Prophet—and in several physical sites imbued with historical significance from the al-Asqa Mosque in Jerusalem to the Topkapi palace in Istanbul. Unless this more inclusive, historically literate, and thoroughly humanizing method of analysis is embraced more widely many will be left to rely on the reductionist explanations of today’s political and intellectual elites. Reasons for avoiding this outcome are obvious, as are the destructive consequences of inaction.

A Critique of Sam Harris’ Commentary on “Martyrdom As a Genuine Metaphysical Principle”

Official doctrine requires that those recognized as members of the educated class scrupulously avoid any serious self-reflection. Any crime or atrocity must be traced back to the incurable savagery of the Great Enemy. Today that Great Enemy is “Islamic terrorism.” Much like the “international communist conspiracy” which preceded it, “Islamic terrorism” is meant to strike fear in the hearts of all right-thinking Americans. Any deviation in this arena is troubling a sign of one’s lack of patriotism or, even worse, “anti-Americanism.” In accord with these highly jingoistic narratives, one can easily find intellectuals willing to volunteer their talents in order to sustain this image of the US as a bastion of civilization valiantly resisting the “scourge” of Muslim “extremism.” Among the partisans in this campaign are the so-called New Atheists, in particular neuroscientist Sam Harris. Harris contends that the violence emanating from domains of US control are not the result of decades of imperial policies that has left the region in ruins. Instead, these incidents of sub-state violence demonstrate that Muslims believe in martyrdom as “a genuine metaphysical principle.” Harris made this argument in a 2006 debate with author Scott Atran.

In order to advance this view he relied on the oft-repeated myth of Iranian “human wave” attacks during the Iran-Iraq war. When astrophysicist Niel deGrasse Tyson asked if Muslims resort to suicide bombing because they lack an Air Force and tanks Harris was quick to dismiss it. “How do you get a mother to celebrate the suicidal atrocities of her children,” Harris asked. Absent from this complete fabrication was the fact that Iranians were compelled to engage in the “human wave” tactic because they lacked the military equipment to combat Iraqis by conventional means. This fact was pointed out in Flyntt and Hillary Mann Leverett’s excellent study of Iranian society, Going to Tehran. Here they observe that Iranians “did not have adequate [military] equipment.” Furthermore, “at times some Iranian soldiers did not even have rifles … or protective gear.” So not only was Harris incorrect in his conclusion that the desire for “martyrdom” lay behind the “human wave” attacks, but Tyson’s suggestion—that suicidal terrorism is partly traceable to the radical disparity in military technology—would be reinforced if Harris were more intellectually honest about Iranian history. Even the New York Times highlighted this disparity in a 1987 report on the human wave attacks in their description of “Iraq’s vastly superior military arsenal.” A recent report from Flinders University’s Suicide Terrorism Database undermines Harris viewpoint as well. The report concluded that “more than 90 percent of suicide attacks are directed at an occupying force,” and “Of the 524 suicide terrorists carried out in the past 30 years, more than half of the attackers were secular.”
None of these unacceptable facts are likely to enter into any discussion about the horrors of “Islamic terrorism.” Consequently, Harris joins the chorus of other scholars for empire who, in the words of the Leveretts, “embellished” this historical moment “with colorful but unsubstantiated accounts of plastic ‘keys to heaven’ being distributed to soldiers and actors dressed as Imam Husayn appearing on horseback to inspire frontline units.” Alongside this complete whitewash of the empirical record is a corresponding dedication to obscuring the US role in fueling atrocities in the Middle East. Therefore, Harris can feign moral indignation over mothers who “celebrate the suicidal atrocities of their children,” but this same sense of outrage it nowhere to be found in relation to US crimes. For instance, in the same video where Harris counters Tyson’s comment on how suicide terror may be linked to the disparity in weaponry he portrays the Iran-Iraq war as a conflict in which the US had no role: “Get the US out of this. Look at the war between Iran and Iraq.”

Any moderately informed student of history could easily point out that it’s impossible to “get the US out” the Iran-Iraq war. Not only did the US support Saddam Hussein in his aggression against Iran, but they also supplied him with the critical intelligence needed to use chemical weapons against Iranians (a fact affirmed in a recent Foreign Policy piece which elicited no cries of “barbarism!” from Harris or any of the other New Atheists). Harris’ response was similarly muted in the aftermath of Israeli terror in Gaza. In an article titled Why I Don’t Criticize Israel? Harris states “the onus is still more on the side of the Muslims here,” and “Even on their worst day, the Israelis act with greater care and compassion and self-criticism than Muslim combatants have anywhere, ever.”

One passage of particular interest is when Harris describes how “Muslims”—He doesn’t designate a specific organization. A crucial feature of essentialist narratives—“have committed suicide bombings, only to send another bomber to the hospital to await the causalities—where they then blow up all the injured along with the doctors and nurses trying to save their lives.” In military parlance, these kinds of attacks are called “double taps”, a clear sign that the culprit is engaged in terrorist atrocities. It’s therefore of special interest that Harris has no words to condemn President Obama, who also engages in double taps in his international drone assassination program. The UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has carried out meticulous analysis of this grotesque policy in multiple reports.

If one does a search through Harris’ blog one can only find one passing reference to drone strikes and it’s quite instructive, not only because of its brevity but also its content. On the necessity of drone strikes in Pakistan Harris writes “Yes, our drone strikes in Pakistan kill innocent people—and this undoubtedly creates new enemies for the West. But we wouldn’t need to drop a single bomb on Pakistan, or anywhere else, if a death cult of devout Muslims weren’t making life miserable for millions of innocent people and posing an unacceptable threat of violence to open societies.” Just two months prior to this statement from Harris (August 2013) the Bureau of Investigative Journalism released a report which stated “Across seven attacks, reports suggested the [CIA] had deliberately targeted a mosque with worshipers inside; to have targeted funeral prayers for a victim of a previous strike; and on six occasions, to have deliberately targeted people going to rescue victims and retrieve the dead from the scene of an earlier attack – a tactic also known as a ‘double-tap’ strike.”

As a thought experiment, suppose Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi responded to criticism of IS by saying “Yes, our fighters behead journalists and this undoubtedly creates new enemies for the Islamic State. But we wouldn’t need to behead a single journalist from the United States, or anywhere else, if a death cult of patriotic Americans weren’t making life miserable for millions of innocent Muslims and posing an unacceptable threat of violence to Muslim societies.” Even if all of al-Baghdadi’s claims were accepted as true—that the US was making life miserable for millions of Muslims—no rational person would accept such a statement as legitimate because it justifies the murder of innocent people. Yet this elementary moral observation is jettisoned when the security of Harris’ “open society” is under threat. Here Harris is endorsing policies which, by his own admission, “kill innocent people” (in fact, kill innocent people in a way strikingly similar to suicide bombers). Perhaps the “moral imbalance” between “Muslims” and “us” is not disturbed by these outbursts of mass murder because the perpetrator of these unspeakable crimes cannot be accused of religious fanaticism or Islamic “dogmatism”, a “psychopathology” exclusive to those with “frontal lobe anomalies.” We also must scrupulously avoid the fact that Obama consults the “just war” doctrines of Christian theologian St. Augustine to put a nice “civilized” gloss on his murders.

What Harris and other like-minded commentators have failed to do is recognize the transparently political character of the violence carried out by those who the US condemns as enemies. Makerere University professor Mahmood Mamdani articulated this reality in his book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. “Suicide bombing,” Mamdani notes “needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.” As these samples of imperial apologetics illustrate, Harris would much rather decry the savage “barbarism” of “Muslims” than investigate the roots of this violence or, more importantly, the violence carried out by the so-called leaders of his own country. Such hypocrisy reveals a commitment to power systems that rises above mere tribalism. This is state worship as a “genuine metaphysical principle.”

Sources: 

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani

Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran by Flyntt and Hillary Mann Leverett 

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/no-ordinary-violence

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/05/world/human-wave-raid-losses-iran-s-favor.html

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2013/08/01/get-the-data-the-return-of-double-tap-drone-strikes/

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/06/richard_dawkins_sam_harris_and_atheists_ugly_islamophobia_partner/

On an Orientalist Masterpiece

The subject: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/01/08/this-fascinating-chart-shows-how-middle-easterners-think-women-should-dress/

XB: Best comment on this orientalist masterpiece by Max Fisher: “Max learning little bit of geography will be helpful. Pakistan is not in middle east.”

ND: People love talking about how Muslim women should dress. Any discourse concerning Muslim women, particularly in the West, always comes back to clothing and what they’re wearing. Should they cover their heads or not cover their heads, cover their faces or not cover their faces? Nobody actually asks what Muslim women want or how they feel about the way they dress.

Furthermore, this obsession with hijab is just another way of reducing women to their physical appearance. Forget that Muslim women in the U.S. are as likely as Muslim men to hold college as well as postgraduate degrees and women in Iran make up 70% of engineering and science students. Forget the Muslim women winning Nobel prizes or fighting to stop gang violence in Chicago.

No, the important thing is what they’re wearing. /rant

DS: I disagree with you on this one, XB. I don’t think the issue is about what women are wearing, but about the mere fact that men and women are expected to dress differently. That’s a social construction. And an oppressive one that, under certain circumstances, can get women raped or killed if disavowed. Don’t forget that here we’re not talking about a veil that can/must be used by both genders without distinction. This is the issue. The day men also start to cover themselves, then, sure, this will become a different conversation.

@ ND: I’d like to engage some of the comments you stated above. #1: for many of us, citizens of the world, the reason why we engage with this topic is not as much the result of an “obsession with hijab” as it is a reflection on the ways used by patriarchal societies to objectify women. In my case, I’m not concerned about what women are wearing as long as their wardrobe is not a clear means for the perpetuation of male domination. #2: you stated above: “Nobody actually asks what Muslim women want or how they feel about the way they dress.” – I find this statement a little bit problematic. Given that there are places where Muslim women are not allowed to even step outside their homes without the supervision of a male, I believe assuming that these women can have a voice that is not being monitored at all of times by their oppressors is naive at best, misleading at worst. Now, I understand this comment of mine also calls for a caveat: not all Muslim women live under the same conditions, so, it may be argued that my comment does not apply to the majority of Muslim women. Still, if it applies to some, I think it’s worthy to consider its implications. Also, to this kind of arguments I normally reply: so what if some Muslim women have rationalized the tenets by which their oppressors have educated them? Just as during the American Civil War it was possible to find some slaves who argued that there lives were not as bad, and that their masters were not always “bad,” or today you can find very poor people in America who claim that capitalism does not oppress them because (if they work hard) they have “choices,” similarly, we can find Muslim women who embrace their situation and consider it to be the product of their choice. I challenge such assumption. In other words, just because the oppressed have come to terms with their oppression, such behavior does not make their situation “fair” or “natural.” The issue of the veil is delicate. I can see how questions of identity and autonomy intertwine to complicate an across-culture discussion of the topic. But it is my opinion that we should not let artificial borders and nationalism to push the conversation astray. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Muslim women from Indonesia, Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia, you should have the same rights that any other women (and men for that matter) in the world must have. The notion of “equality for all” should be religion, race, gender, and ethnicity blind. In your previous comment, you also talk about “Muslim women in the U.S. are as likely as Muslim men to hold college as well as postgraduate degrees and women in Iran make up 70% of engineering and science students. Forget the Muslim women winning Nobel prizes or fighting to stop gang violence in Chicago.” (point #3): To this, I would like to say that this information is beyond the point of this conversation. While these facts you mentioned are great, they do not invalidate the need to fight for those Muslim women who don’t enjoy the same kind of opportunities. Otherwise, we would be engaging in the dangerous exercise of assuming that the reality of the privileged can be assumed to be the reality of the whole. Also, I would like to know whether these Iranian women you referred to have any voice in public policy making. Because if they are only getting degrees in order to serve a male-dominated society that still addresses male-concerning issues only, then, I don’t see their academic success as a big challenge to the existing status-quo. Lastly, I would like to say that I hope that engaging in these kind of exchanges, we would be able to come up with new ways to “live” a multicultural way of life, instead of simply talking about it.

XB: @ DS: I’m assuming you’re responding to a comment I posted in response to this article but have since deleted. To paraphrase my response, I stated that this article was emblematic of what Deepa Kumar described in an interview as “the notion that Muslim women are horribly oppressed (without actually consulting or talking to Muslim women) and that Muslim men are misogynistic,” and “What followed from this was that Muslim women needed to be rescued by white men swooping in on their horses.”

I went on to say this poll conformed with this view of “misogynistic” men because it makes the assumption that Muslim men are moralistically judging what women wear and therefore feel they have the authority to decide what form of dress is “appropriate” for them. I said that the poll guaranteed this outcome because it didn’t ask should men have the right to decide what women wear at all.

I also criticized Fisher’s reductionist view that political identity in the Middle East could be separated into neat groups of secularists and religious conservatives. I said this separation makes it difficult to think of a religious person also endorsing the idea that a woman should be able to decide what she wears. In this sense, I said the characterization of Islam in this poll was that of an imposing set of beliefs that forces itself on women, in accord with the imperial norm.

I deleted this comment because I discovered that it was simply false that the poll did not ask if men should have the right to decide what women wear at all (It asks should women be able to decide to wear what they wish). I still think the poll could encourage stereotypes about misogynistic Muslim men but not using the argument I made. Also in my last comment when I note that Fisher separates religion and secularism to the point that it excludes any kind of self-determination in the religious context is possibly challenged when Fisher concludes the report by saying “piety” and “feminism” are not mutually exclusive.

If I’ve overlooked anything in this reproduction of my comment let me know. But I agree with you that the norms of dress are a social construction. In fact, I recall pointing out that Karen Armstrong describes the wearing of the hijab as a tradition borrowed from Byzantine Greeks. So I agree here that there are certain gender assumptions that influence what men deem appropriate dress for women but I think the heart of my comment was that this article furthered the portrayal of gender oppression as a unique feature of Middle Eastern societies that manifests itself in men policing the dress of women, an assertion I find categorically false.

Source:

http://mondoweiss.net/…/author-deepa-kumar-on-the…

ND: Note: My writing always sounds angry – it wasn’t intentional. lol

DS, thanks for your response, but I’m sorry to say I find it largely problematic. I understand what you were trying to express, but I can’t quite agree entirely.

So we can’t deny that oppression exists in the world, particularly the Muslim world. It does, and it’s a major problem. Muslims in many Muslim (and non-Muslim, for that matter) countries face intense struggles for equality, fights that they are indeed fighting and that female Muslim activists and female Islamic scholars are vocal about changing.

I disagree with your disagreement that the world is obsessed with hijab. I find the concept that hijab a “reflection” on the oppression of women shallow and also incredibly offensive as a Muslim. Now, I understand that you weren’t saying that exactly, but that is what was implied – it’s not an uncommon opinion whatsoever but it stems from a misunderstanding of Islam and the Muslim world.

1. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the only Muslim countries will laws requiring women to veil themselves, and if we’re talking about Saudi Arabia and Iran and their human rights violations, I could rant for hours about dozens of other things, including or not including hijab depending on how the conversation went. There are other pockets of areas where women face extreme pressure/force to cover by forces such as gangs or terrorist groups, like in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, that leaves a whole world of Muslim women who dress is a million different ways. I can’t say they’re all wearing hijab out of deep-seated religious conviction – maybe they’re doing it because their friends are, maybe their parents want them to, maybe they don’t like their hair. I am a firm believer that every woman should have the freedom to dress as she wants – and honestly, the idea that what Muslim women choose for themselves to wear is oppressive bothers me.

As for your arguments about women who live in situations that abound in Saudi Arabia due to their laws (although don’t represent all Saudis), where women and their movement is severely restricted – this is again a major issue facing the Muslim world. And their voices absolutely should be heard – Muslim women are working as we speak to help their voices be heard, but that doesn’t really get discussed much in face of ‘look what Islam does to these poor women.’

When I say ‘what about what we want’, you say ‘well, what about the women who rationalize their abuse?’ Honestly, that sounds to me as though they’re saying ‘you don’t know what you want.’ I’m not arguing that the situations you described doesn’t exist, but it seems like a way to sidestep the many Muslim women who do choose to cover up.

When I mentioned the successes of Muslim women, I was not saying so to ignore the plight of Muslim and non-Muslim women around the world who may be oppressed. The study was done to see what people think women should be wearing – and I’ve read several articles about the poll that are frankly ridiculous (“Gallup poll reveals what Muslim women should be wearing” – excuse me?). The conversation about Muslim women is always, always centered around their dress – we never go beyond that. In some European countries (and Muslim countries too, actually), forced un-veiling is required, which is also oppressive and traumatic, but is largely uncovered in the discussion.

My point is that this obsession with what Muslim women are wearing (or well, women in general, if you want to take this society as a whole) is not about trying to better the lives of Muslim women. Saying that women can’t better themselves with or without a hijab is ridiculous. The idea is to pat ourselves on the back about how these backwards people still do this silly oppressive thing we see no need for anymore because we do in a different form.

To your point about Iranian women, I’m sorry, but I’m a bit confused. The first step to releasing a group from oppression is education – the first step to oppressing a group is always taking education from them. An educated group is harder to control. Something like a quarter of people with STEM degrees in the US are women – in Iran, it’s becoming close to 70%. That to me seems like a magnificent way for women to start asserting their rights in society. Aside from ovethrowing the government, what other way do women have to claw their way up the ladder? I mean, the glass ceiling is still real in America – women make less money, and are hired and promoted less often. Misogyny is not a Muslim characteristic.

So finally, in closing, tl;dr – hijab has become the banner and easy marker for whether a Muslim woman is oppressed or liberated. That’s crap.

Also I’d like to respond to your comment to XB – while some definitely do argue that men and women being expected to dress differently is oppressive (and I won’t get into that now), this is something ALL societies do.

Last I checked, XB (sorry for using you as an example) wasn’t wearing dresses to class. Most women have longer hair than men – that’s the social norm. It is not to say that individuals should not have the freedom to dress however they please, but the idea that men and women dress differently isn’t a uniquely Muslim trait.

While one could also argue that not dressing “appropriately” could get someone killed (in places like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan), the idea that women are raped for removing a veil sounds like rape culture. Women don’t get raped for the way they dress.

Also, if the issue would be different if men veil, I would point you towards Saudi Arabia, where men are required to wear long-sleeved white shirts that reach the ankles and a headpiece that essentially covers all the parts of the body that hijab does. Indeed, historically, Muslim men have covered their heads nearly as often as Muslim women have.

Finally, I think the idea of the hijab being a distinctly female concept bothers some and leads them to deem it oppressive – but just because women do something men don’t does not make them oppressed. In a male-dominated society, the hijab or niqab obstructs the male gaze and creates a private sphere wherein the Muslim woman can see but not be seen, placing her arguably in a position of power. It allows her to control the parts of her body she wants to reveal and it allows her to demand interaction or respect/attention/whatever based on her actual intellectual merits rather than her physical appearance.

Now, is this why all women wear hijab? No. But to dismiss the hijab as something inherently oppressive because men don’t do it too is something I can’t agree with.

Another fun fact and then I’ll leave, promise:

More Muslim-majority countries have laws that prohibit women from wearing hijab than countries have laws requiring women to wear it.

XB: To add to ND’s point about the significance of education in conferring a certain degree political autonomy, it’s also important to note how facts of this kind undermine a hegemonic discourse that seeks to keep Muslim women in the judgmental “gaze” of the imperial power.

Notice the context in which these kinds of polls take place. It’s usually the US looking into the Middle East and making conclusions about the culture and social norms of Muslims. Typically the studies result in a negative portrayal of these societies. In Fisher’s article this is shown when he says “it’s too bad that, even in the countries most supportive of this very basic freedom, only about half support it.”

The underlying problem with this format is that it totally obscures the crucial and verifiable fact that the US has played a decisive role in propping up some of the most regressive ideologies throughout the Middle East, ideologies that exploit religious sentiment to brutalize others. This includes the funding of the mujaheddin, the sectarian warfare the US invasion elicited through its invasion of Iraq and the multi-decade support for the Saudi monarchy.

In this sense, the neutralist, seemingly disinterested study of gender relations in the Middle East serves to conceal more overt political ideologies. It’s supposed to appeal to people’s sense of justice without stimulating any serious self reflection about our role in creating conditions of inequality or how we have come to conflate certain norms–the hijab for example–with oppression irrespective of historical context or individual preference.

All of these forces are at work in most “western” descriptions of Middle East society therefore highlighting the central role education plays in the lives of women, quite apart from being “beyond the point”, opens up new interpretations of “the Other”, interpretations that are nearly inconceivable within the conventional narratives.

DS: @ND: Thank you, ND for engaging my comments. I really appreciate that you are taking the time to consider my opinion in this issue. To begin answering your response, I need to point out that I find it necessary to clarify that a clear definition of “choice” is needed before we can continue to engage with each other. But before we get there, I want to point out that your assertion “I am a firm believer that every woman should have the freedom to dress as she wants – and honestly, the idea that what Muslim women choose for themselves to wear is oppressive bothers me” is still not addressing my concern for those who do not have a choice. As I clarified in my former comment, I’m not implying that this is true for the majority of Muslim women, I’m just saying that the oppression of these women is not less real in face of the alleged “freedom” of other Muslim females. That being said, now is when we need to define what we understand by “choice.” And I have to admit, I don’t have a definite answer to this question. Yet, I do think that having a choice seems to imply that one has some level of power to decide what to do, embrace. But, is this really the case? When one is limited to pick an option among a restricted number of possibilities, is this a genuine “choice” or a strategy the status quo puts in place to simulate a sort of involvement with its subjects? Now, if you were to tell me that Muslim communities have specific laws in place to protect the integrity and well-being of those Muslim women who “choose” no to wear a hijab at all, then I’d have to agree with you that the women who still wear it are, indeed, exercising an individual right by using any kind of veil they choose. But, as far as I know, this is not the case. This allows me to move into another statement I find problematic, according to you: “The conversation about Muslim women is always, always centered around their dress.” I can only talk for myself, and, in my case, the conversation about Muslim women is not so much about their dress, but about their choices, and the way these choices are handled down to them. I really don’t mean to be offensive here, but you must admit that the fact that there are some successful Muslim women out there does not erase the fact that there are many who live in very different conditions. At risk of repeating what I’ve already stated: I don’t want to make this issue a question of glorifying, demonizing the non-Muslim world versus the Muslim-world, I don’t have any interest in doing that in the context of this conversation. That’s not my point. If people in South America were to start to do this, I would have the same kind of objections. So, I hope by now it is clear that my comment does not have anything to do with the idea that you mentioned in your response: “The idea is to pat ourselves on the back about how these backwards people still do this silly oppressive thing we see no need for anymore because we do in a different form.” I understand where you’re coming from. I’m not aligning myself with people who enter this conversation to push such agenda. Yet, your statement “Saying that women can’t better themselves with or without a hijab is ridiculous” sounds like a tergiversation of my argument. I was not claiming that the hijab, in and by itself, can serve as the only obstacle of women’s progress. The point here is that the hijab symbolizes, as I claimed before, a very specific understanding of femininity, and one that involves a specific subjectification of women while serving the purpose to attribute specific social roles to female subjects. Does this happen in the West? Sure. It does. I fight it too. I understand that many people, in order to utter and resist the imperial ways of the West, systematically oppose discussing the issue of the veil. But “defending” the hijab is a way, in my view, to align with a different kind of oppression, which, for many, seems to look less real because it is not that close to home (and by this I’m referring to the many, many women who do not have to see the oppressive conditions surrounding Muslim women who are forced into wearing a veil). I know you shared that the reality of these particular women is being addressed, “as we speak” by “Muslim activists and female Islamic scholars,” but, does this mean that we cannot talk about it anymore? Just because around this country there are activists fighting, say, for the increasing of minimum wage, does that mean we should not talk about it anymore? I don’t understand your comments in this regard.

Lastly (for now, as I really have to go :)), I want to address your comment “The first step to releasing a group from oppression is education – the first step to oppressing a group is always taking education from them. An educated group is harder to control.” I’m completely with you here, as long as we understand education as the fostering of critical-thinking. That’s not always the form that “education” takes. In theory, also the United States has a very educated population, if you look at its rate of college graduated citizens. We all know that this is an euphemism to refer to a well trained labor force. In America, it is more and more the case that people just learn recipes that will enable them to be good soldiers (literally and figuratively speaking). Likewise, if all these Muslim women in Iran are “educated” to enter their work force as it is, the percentage you mention does not say much about their agency, or level of equality they have reached. Also, if they do not have a real say in policy-making, I still see a problem with interpreting these statistics as evidence of women’s achievments. I also agree with your comment that gender-base inequality is not exclusive to the Muslim world. Sure, it is not. But, how does help your argument that obtaining a college degree challenges the idea that Muslim women are oppressed? How many women poiticians are in Iran right now (I’m asking an honest question here, because I don’t know). I’ve a lot more to say, but, as I say, I have to go now. I’ll be back

@XB: I will be happy to engage further when I have more time, but, for now, I have to say that while I wholeheartedly agree with most of what you stated above, I don’t see how your statements invalidate my point: hijab remits us to a context of inequality where women are systematically objectified and denied agency. I agree with you that reflecting on the historical, politic, and socioeconomic circumstances that brought about such “reality” is absolutely relevant, in particular for people engaging with the topic across-cultures. Yet, I don’t think the acknowledgement of such requirement should prevent us from calling things by their right name. I’m against all kinds of oppression, across the board, I don’t buy the rhetoric that says “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” In this way, I feel freer to challenge both enemies. I know there are Muslim women who are doing the same as we speak: they challenge the imposition of the hijab, without being “irrespective of historical context or individual preference.” It is my opinion that everybody should be able to fight or contest oppression beyond borders. I think this is what solidarity, in my opinion, is about. I do not believe that recognizing the influence, or impact the West had, and still has, in “propping up some of the most regressive ideologies throughout the Middle East” should prevent us from addressing and challenging the practices resulting from such ideologies. I believe the hijab to be one of such practices.

@ND: Okay, here we go again ND: in your second response to me, you mentioned “Last I checked, XB (sorry for using you as an example) wasn’t wearing dresses to class. Most women have longer hair than men – that’s the social norm. It is not to say that individuals should not have the freedom to dress however they please, but the idea that men and women dress differently isn’t a uniquely Muslim trait.” With all due respect, the fact that guys are not expected to wear the same kind of clothes women wear is, in effect, a truism. That doesn’t change the fact that the practice of requiring women to wear a hijab also involves the acceptance of a certain understanding of the female body that deems it as sinful, or provocative in nature. If you ask me,it is wrong that men in many cultures have to restrain themselves from wearing certain clothes because they are considered to be female-specific. That does not make the issue of veiling less controversial. In other words, I don’t think the issue of wearing or not wearing a hijab is so much about cultural autonomy, even though I understand that this is what it has been reduced to, but about the burden that it places on women’s shoulders and identity. Why do Muslim women have to ashamed of their bodies in a way that only applies to them and not to their male counterparts?

Moreover, you claimed “While one could also argue that not dressing “appropriately” could get someone killed (in places like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan), the idea that women are raped for removing a veil sounds like rape culture.” If we follow your rational, we have to wonder: isn’t the social practice of asking a woman to preserve their “modesty” by hiding their bodies as much as possible from the gaze of others, the clear product of a way of thinking that sees women as objects of temptation? How far is this way of thinking from that embraced by rape cultures?

Your comment ” In a male-dominated society, the hijab or niqab obstructs the male gaze and creates a private sphere wherein the Muslim woman can see but not be seen, placing her arguably in a position of power” is also disturbing to me. I really don’t see/understand the kind of power you are referring to here. Sure, obeying, following the rules that are imposed upon women in “male-dominated society” affords women a relative level of piece of mind, perhaps the peace of mind of knowing that they are not going to be censured, punished, or attacked for not conforming to what is expected from them. This does not make their conditions any more “fair” to me. Wearing the veil can guarantee a certain sense of belonging, sure. Does this award any kind of agency/power to the oppressed? I don’t think so.

Finally, you said “But to dismiss the hijab as something inherently oppressive because men don’t do it too is something I can’t agree with.” – No, this is not the reason why I object to the use of hijabs. The reason why I see it as a problematic issue is because, in my eyes, it legitimizes and perpetuates an understanding of the female body, and its role in interpersonal relations as problematic, and disgusting. The fact that some women have internalized this sense of guilt and have assumed the responsibility to police themselves in order to affirm their loyalty to their culture, religion, and/or ethnicity, still does not make the whole practice less disturbing in my opinion.

XB: @DS: I just want to comment on two sentences in your previous comments. You state “the hijab symbolizes … a very specific understanding of femininity, and one that involves a specific subjectification of women while serving the purpose to attribute specific social roles to female subjects.” You also state the hijab “legitimizes and perpetuates an understanding of the female body, and its role in interpersonal relations as problematic, and disgusting.”

Are you making this determination based on your understanding of the history of the hijab or some author who has written about it? Because this is a pretty significant statement to make without citing any evidence to support it. In fact, it’s a radical departure from Karen Armstrong’s explanation of the hijab. In her biography on the Prophet Muhammad and in an article in the Guardian she describes the hijab as “a symbol of resistance to colonialism.”

To be precise, Lord Cromer banned the veil in Egypt during Britain’s colonial rule. He called the veil a “fatal obstacle” to integrating Muslim women into Western “civilization.” Armstrong also notes “In Iran, the shahs’ soldiers used to march through the streets with their bayonets at the ready, tearing off the women’s veils and ripping them to pieces.” In fact, the shah banned the chador and afterwards women “wore it as a matter of principle – even those who usually wore western clothes.” This alternative, emancipatory meaning of the veil is completely absent from your explanation. I just don’t think the hijab can be described in such absolute terms.

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com/…/2006/oct/26/comment.politics1

Muhammad: A Prophet of Our Time by Karen Armstrong

DS: @XB: I made my previous “determination” as you called it based on the experiences of women “on the ground” as I have read them. I didn’t notice ND citing any sources, and I didn’t realize sources were needed. Moreover, I believe that your “understanding” of the hijab describes only in part the motivation that inspires many Muslim women to wear the hijab. Sure, we can talk about the history of the hijab. According to Geraldine Brooks, in Egypt, for example, the hijab “was the most obvious sign of the Islamic revival that had swept up […] many young women.” According to this writer, Muslim philosophers encouraged women to wear the veil as a way to object Gamal Abdel Nasser’s extremely secular government, and “urged Egyptians to return to the Islamic views they had abandoned.” At the same time, Brooks also cites other instances through history (Iran in 1935) where the hijab was banned capriciously, and how this affected a certain fraction of the population who just could not adjust to this change overnight. In my opinion, all these quotes do not invalidate my point. Independently of the reason why women pick the veil, the underling truth is still the same: women have no voice in the context of male dominated cultures, and the only way they can gain a little bit of agency is by endorsing practices that are put in place by men, and which prescribe them to feel ashamed of their bodies. Does this mean a “‘fatal obstacle’ to integrating Muslim women into Western ‘civilization.'” I think it does. Does this “liberate” women at all? I don’t think so, it just allows them to have some “choice” with regard to the type of oppression they feel more comfortable embracing.

Source: Brooks, Geraldine. Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women. New York: Anchor, 1995. Print.

XB: I didn’t ask ND for sources because much of what she wrote conformed to what I’ve read about the hijab. For example, when ND describes the hijab as a item of clothing that allows women to “to control the parts of her body she wants to reveal and it allows her to demand interaction or respect/attention/whatever based on her actual intellectual merits rather than her physical appearance,” this reminded me of Karen Armstrong’s comment that “the uniformity of traditional Muslim dress stresses the egalitarian and communal ethos of Islam.” I only ask people for sources when I find something questionable in what they write. If ND wrote something I found questionable I would’ve asked her for sources.

I agree that my explanation of the hijab “describes only in part the motivation that inspires many Muslim women to wear the hijab.” This was the purpose of my comment. I felt your explanation was missing this motivation. This is why I conclude my argument by calling it an “alternative, emancipatory meaning” (“alternative” because this is not the only meaning). You ask if I think imposing norms that make women “feel ashamed of their bodies” present a “fatal obstacle” to integrating women into Western “civilization.”

In the cases where the hijab is used to make women “feel ashamed of the bodies” I would say it does pose a threat to integrating women into civilization (civilization in the actual sense of the word and not in Lord Cromer’s sense) but I simply don’t think this understanding of the hijab, the dominant understanding in “the west”, engages with the social, cultural and historical background in the same way Armstrong’s explanation does. I think this kind of engagement is important because it helps repressed groups appropriate symbols for the purpose of dissent instead of oppression.

DS: @XB: I don’t see how ND’s statement “the idea that women are raped for removing a veil sounds like rape culture. Women don’t get raped for the way they dress” does not qualify as “a pretty significant statement to make without citing any evidence to support it.” But, in any case, what I really want to address in this comment is the connection you establish between ND’s assertion regarding the hijab as a means “to control the parts of her body she wants to reveal and it allows her to demand interaction or respect/attention/whatever based on her actual intellectual merits rather than her physical appearance,” and Armstrong’s claim “the uniformity of traditional Muslim dress stresses the egalitarian and communal ethos of Islam.” So many points to make here! Reading ND’s comment, I couldn’t help thinking: how can we say that a world where women need to cover themselves up in order to deserve some respect, in order to be valued for their “actual intellectual merits” is a world inherently “egalitarian”? There is nothing egalitarian about not being able to interact with a man without having to cover myself so that he can actually focus on what I am saying. I understand Armstrong’s quote was taken out of context for the sake of this conversation, and I understand that she is talking about “traditional Muslim dress,” and the ideal spirit of Islam, but that does not say much about the way things are in practice. I know that nowadays, in many Muslim countries, women are not allowed to own private property, only men can. How is that egalitarian? Likewise, when it comes to dress code, in how many Muslim countries today (with the exception of Saudi Arabia, according to ND’s previous comment) do men have to cover their bodies as well, and for the same reasons women must? If the idea is to resist imperialist oppression, why don’t men and women “appropriate” the same “symbols for the purpose of dissent”? I’ll tell you why: because these men and women are not equal in the context of their culture. As a consequence, Muslim women decided to “resist” the oppression from outside by accepting their place as subordinates at home. They may not be conscious of it, because they have internalized the interests of their direct oppressors as theirs. This is what Marx calls “false consciousness.”

To add to my previous point, I’d like to provide an example of what I consider a more egalitarian ways of resistance. The Spanish Civil War, for instance, provided an opportunity for women to make the cause of resisting oppression theirs, and this is why they joined their comrades at the battlefront. According to Dolores Martin Moruno, engaging in this fight gave Spanish women an opportunity to “become aware of their subjugated position for their first time in history.” According to this author, the eagerness to fight the Franquists insurgents that were trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of Spain, also enabled women’s emancipation insofar as they engaged in a fight that also sought to establish women’s legal and social rights for the time to come. This, Martin Moruno tells us, was the beginning of “Spanish Feminism.” At this point, it is important to clarify that most of the Spaniards who left their homes to go fight against Fascism and capitalism, were very modest workers, with little or no education at all. In addition, I’m not saying that Muslim should do exactly what Spanish women did or in the same manner, but I’m challenging the notion that, in order to resist imperial oppression, the only way women have to gain some agency is to embrace symbols that validate male-domination. It does not have to be this way.

Sources:
Mangini, Shirley. “Memories of Resistance: Women Activists from the Spanish Civil War.”Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17.1 (1991): 171. Print.
http://www.academia.edu/…/Becoming_visible_and_real…

XB: @DS: When ND says “the idea that women get raped for removing the veil sounds like rape culture,” and “women don’t get raped for the way they dress,” I think she means that we should not take it seriously when a rapist says he raped a women because she was not wearing a veil. There are cases that can be cited where women have been raped and their rapists have claimed that they carried out the crime because the woman wasn’t wearing a veil but that doesn’t mean we should believe it anymore than we should believe an alleged Christian who murders a doctor under the pretext that abortions violates their religious beliefs. To entertain these excuses as anything more than an attempt to conceal more vulgar motives–hatred of women, delusions of power, etc.–diverts attention away from the responsibility of the rapist. This shifting of responsibility is a dominant feature of rape culture. This is my interpretation of ND’s statement, a statement I agree with. That’s why I didn’t ask for any evidence. If this wasn’t what ND meant by her statement she will have to explain it.

You state “How can we say that a world where women need to cover themselves up in order to deserve some respect, in order to be valued for their ‘actual intellectual merits’ is a world inherently ‘egalitarian’?There is nothing egalitarian about not being able to interact with a man without having to cover myself so that he can actually focus on what I am saying.” If I may offer my interpretation, I think ND’s description of the hijab is basically saying that the ideas that we hold and the thoughts that motivate us to act are our most valuable human qualities, not how we look. It’s perfectly possible to converse with someone without a veil. ND was simply saying the veil is, to her, a commentary on the ephemeral nature of our bodies when compared to our ideas. One of the more interesting aspects about the life of Muhammad was that he held the concept of common humanity in higher esteem than the concepts of man or woman.

Probably the most illustrative example of this is in what Armstrong called the Prophet’s “revolutionary surah” where he states “men and women who remember God oft,” will receive “a mighty wage.” The inclusion of women alongside men in this particular surah broke with the patriarchal conventions of 7th century Arabia. In this respect, I think ND’s interpretation of the hijab has more to do with emphasizing the insignificance of the body within a religious context that gives precedence to our common humanity rather than an attempt to suppress sexual urges. Again, if you think I’m incorrect on this I think it would be better to ask ND.

You also state that “men and women are not equal in the context of their culture.” While I would agree that the distribution of power between men and women is unequal (not only in Muslim majority countries but in much of the “western” world as well) I’d be hesitant to use terms like “in the context of their culture” because this kind of oppression is so pervasive in virtually every society that I don’t think we can make these kinds of neat distinctions between “their” culture and other cultures. It would be like saying maximizing profit is part of General Electric’s culture and not corporate culture in general.

I disagree that “Muslim women decided to ‘resist’ the oppression from outside by accepting their place as subordinates at home.” In the case of Iran, where women wore the veil in defiance of the Shah, they were resisting oppression at home, not from the outside. Women also were resisting oppression at home during the British colonization of Egypt. Armstrong talks about Egyptian sycophants who ” obsequiously praised the nobility of European culture, arguing that the veil symbolised everything that was wrong with Islam and Egypt.” More than “accepting their place as subordinates at home,” these women were fighting to preserve a place they could recognize as a home.

Muhammad’s life also carries some relevance in your observation that “in many Muslim countries, women are not allowed to own private property, only men can,” because in his time he challenged the property relations of Arabia which advanced similar forms of gender discrimination. The Prophet devised what Armstrong called a “shocking innovation” in challenging pre-Islamic traditions concerning dower rights. Under Muhammad’s innovation “the dowry was to be given directly to the woman as her inalienable property , and in the event of divorce, a man could not reclaim it.” This was a sharp departure from custom where the groom would present a dowry to his bride but “in practice this gift had belonged to her family.” So if these Muslim majority countries were to follow the example of Muhammad they would devise new ways to undermine the property discrimination you speak of, property relations that are at odds with the egalitarian ethos of the Islamic tradition.

Lastly, I’d like to comment on the writings of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan, a group that is at the forefront of the women’s rights struggle in Afghanistan. They have decided not to wear the veil because the Taliban is trying to force them to wear it. They describe this as “fundamentalists … [using] the Koran as a bogey.” They conclude by saying “To wear, or not to wear, the Islamic veil is a completely personal issue and no one has the right to interfere with this decision or impose the veil upon us.” The main phrase to take away from this is that “no one has the right to interfere with this decision.” They don’t say the veil, in itself, is a form of oppression but the imposition of the veil to “unleash … misogynism through terror” is oppressive. This has been my argument all along, that Muslim women who choose to wear the veil are not participating in a “comfortable” form of oppression insofar as it is a decision they have made without coercion. To treat the veil as an oppressive symbol in its essence is to disregard the political realities that women face in their particular country and moment in history.

Though I think more can be said, I’ll limit my response here. And thanks for the link to the Academia article. I’ll be reading it.

Source:

http://www.rawa.org/points.html

https://xavierobrien.wordpress.com/…/muhammad-a-prophet…/

Failing to Insult Obama in Calling Him a Muslim

The topic:XB: What we really should acknowledge is the fact that calling someone Islamic or a Muslim is not a legitimate insult. If Obama was really Islamic he would oppose economic inequality as the Prophet Muhammad did in his opposition to the Quraysh establishment in 6th and 7th century Arabia. He wouldn’t implement corporate-friendly policies to enrich the wealthy and shield them from legal accountability. It’s also an Islamic value to look after the welfare of orphans, which, for some reason, isn’t listed above.

We also should be careful not to conflate the views of dictators in majority Muslim countries with the views of the population. But suppose the populations in Muslim majority countries did oppose multiculturalism: I doubt we can seriously get away with saying “Islamic countries” are alone in this.

Under the “liberal” Obama administration the FBI is carrying out massive surveillance against Muslim communities while the NYPD designates mosques as “terrorist enterprises”. Obama is also on track to deport a record 2 million immigrants, more than any Republican in US history. Is this not opposing “multiculturalism”?

And what gives us the hubris to designate other countries as “very supportive of the death penalty” while the US government presides over an extremely racist criminal justice system that placed in the top 5 countries in the world in the usage of capital punishment in 2012 (US, Iraq, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are the top 5)? Is being “very supportive of the death penalty” also an “American value”?

We should disavow ourselves of this historically illiterate caricature of Islam and “Islamic law” where it is associated only with extreme hatred toward others. Historically, Islam has been very inclusive in its reverence for all of the prophets of the Abrahamic tradition. Islamic teachings are also consonant with some principles of gender equality. I highly recommend the work of Karen Armstrong to anyone who’s interested.

Sources:

http://www.alternet.org/…

https://www.aclu.org/…

http://www.ibtimes.com/…

DR: Whoa Xavier – Obama does not support some of the things you have listed here. He cannot arbitrarily change laws, Congress has to do that and the states have many rights of their own. As far as deportation – It has nothing to do with multiculturalism and everything to do with the law, which I might add, Obama and almost all the Dems are trying to change. Obama is not perfect, but consider the alternatives. You do not make repairs your house by first burning it down!

XB: @ DR—On the immigration front, I think it is highly disingenuous to say Obama is “trying to change” the law. There’s an embedded assumption here namely that US presidents are engines behind social progress and not an active and informed public. All of the positive work in the domain of immigration reform is a tribute to grassroots activism that is outraged by the actions of the “deporter in chief,” as some call him. The DREAM movement is a good example of this. Also if one examines Obama’s statements on deportations they range from being supportive of the status quo (“I make no apologies for us enforcing the law as well as the work that we’ve done to strengthen border security.”) to a level of deceitfulness that is comical. For instance, Obama said he could not halt deportations because “it would violate federal law” and it would be “very difficult to defend legally.”

Note these statements are coming from an international warlord who very recently made a public announcement that he had the executive authority to bomb Syria without congressional approval, someone who defends NSA programs on the grounds that we can’t have “100% security and 100% privacy with zero inconvenience” , someone who publicly said Chelsea Manning “broke the law” while he was still in a pre-trial detention that UN torture chief Juan Mendez deemed “cruel and inhuman”, someone who delivers capital punishment to American citizens without trial (re: Anwar Awlaki, Samir Khan, Abdulrahman Awlaki, Jude Kenan Mohammad). In the case of Anwar Awlaki’s killing Obama is recorded to have said it was an “easy” decision.

Considering this vast criminal record–which violates both federal and international law– it’s very difficult not to laugh at the notion that he is somehow sensitive to the conventions of the legislative process or the rule of law. This argument about the restraints of law and congressional barriers only emerges when it’s politically expedient. It’s a method he uses to absolve himself of any responsibility, a method his most avid supporters have adopted. Another dramatic example is Obama’s policies vis-à-vis Guantanamo Bay where he made the same argument of Congressional intransigence he’s making for immigration. This argument so disgusted Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin that she was forced to stand up and shout him down in the middle of his speech.

On the topic of Obama defending the interests of the wealthy over those of the poor I think the evidence is overwhelming. Obama’s Department of Justice dropped the investigation of Goldman Sachs saying “the burden of proof to bring a criminal case [against Goldman Sachs] could not be met based on the law and facts as they exist at this time.” The Obama DOJ also granted retroactive immunity to telecommunications corporations found to have engaged in warrantless wiretapping of Americans. At this very moment he’s negotiating in secret what some critics are calling “NAFTA on steroids” in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This transnational agreement will install an “investor-state system” whereby corporations will be empowered to sue governments in “extrajudicial tribunals” while skirting environmental, health, and safety regulations at the expense of the American public. Here Obama is also engaging in a unilateralism that he refuses to apply on the immigration front.

There are many other examples to cite which show that Obama is, as you put it, “not perfect”, a stunning understatement I should say. Similar understatements were made after the death of Richard Nixon. In genuinely democratic societies the question of whether or not the president is “perfect” is an irrelevance. What is relevant is if the president is responsive to the overwhelming tides of public opinion. In Obama’s case I think it’s not controversial to say he has been disproportionately unresponsive.

Sources:

http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/tag/deporter-in-chief/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

http://abcnews.go.com/…/

http://www.democracynow.org/…

http://www.theguardian.com/…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xec48sUutuA

JH: Well said, but I suppose they [Muslims] should support orphanages since they have no problem stoning women. Look, no matter how you slice it, Islam is not a peaceful religion so cut the pr. I am all for religious freedom, but lets call a spade a spade. The only thing I give them props for is that they are not hypocrites. No one can accused them of that, they are by the Quran unlike watered down Christians who are clueless regarding the Bible nor would they follow it to the letter if they did get a clue.

XB: @ JH: Your comment reveals a level of historical illiteracy that is quite disturbing. You write that “they” have “no problem stoning women.” Who are the “they” in this statement? Simply because someone claims they are doing something in the name of Islam does not mean it is an Islamic practice anymore than when an American leader says they are doing something in the name of “democracy.” This is so elementary it shouldn’t need stating. I suppose you uncritically accept the pseudo-religious pronunciations of those who use the veneer of Islam to justify heinous acts of violence–the Taliban, al Qaeda, al-Shabaab etc.–because you are aren’t motivated or inquisitive enough to do your own research.

Read Karen Armstrong’s Muhammad: A Prophet of Our Time, Islam: A Short History or the Qur’an. Also where in my comment did you see me describe Islam as a “peaceful religion”? I described Islam as being against economic inequality, the suffering of orphans, gender oppression and in favor of revering the Abrahamic prophets. You, not me, use the phrase “peaceful religion” in order to distort and belittle my argument or as you call it “pr”. If I simply stated Islam “is a peaceful religion”, without any further detail, there would be no serious need to examine my argument, its sociopolitical content or the historical context in which it is grounded. You may think in such reductionist terms. I do not.

It appears that you interpret any commentary about Islam that is not hostile as tantamount to calling it a “peaceful religion”. Incidentally, since you mentioned it, Islam does promote principles of peace and reconciliation and you would know this if you took the time to study Islamic history. This is not only demonstrated in certain Qur’anic passages–“the true servants of the Most Gracious are they who walk gently on the earth, and who, whenever the jahilun address them, reply ‘Peace’ (salam!)”–but also in 7th century military history.

Perhaps the most meaningful encounter between the Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh occurred in the year 628 when Muhammad made a peace treaty with the Quraysh at Hudabiyyah. The Quraysh were driven by an ideology called jahiliyyah which Armstrong described as “a state of mind that caused violence and terror in seventh-century Arabia.” Here Muhammad dealt a devastating blow to this ideology by employing the Islamic concept of hilm which means “forbearance, patience, mercy, and tranquility.” I should say Muhammad’s allies were outraged by this decision because they interpreted it as a surrender to the Quraysh power structure. For example, part of the agreement was that Muhammad had to return all of the converts to Islam to Mecca but the Quraysh would not have to return any defectors to Medina.

Despite this clearly one-sided resolution, Muhammad maintained that, as Armstrong states, “It was not violence and self-assertion, but the spirit of mercy, courtesy and tranquility that would cause the ummah to grow.” In the Qur’an this is described as God sending down “his peace of soul (sakinah) upon His Messenger and upon the believers.” Islam only sanctions the use of force in self-defense and aggression is forbidden or as the Qur’an states “permission [to fight] is given to those against whom war is being wrongfully waged–and verily, God indeed has the power to succor them …” It was only after Muhammad died and the caliphs took over that wars of conquest were fought, wars with “no religious significance” (Armstrong’s phrase).

This crucial historical context is totally absent from your comment. The anonymous “they” who you refer to in your comment are not representative of the Islamic tradition anymore than Barack Obama and George W. Bush are representative of the democratic tradition or Pat Robertson is representative of the Christian tradition. None of this information is particularly obscure or hard to find. All it takes is a little independent thought and a willingness question authority.

Sources:

http://www.amazon.com/…/dp/0061155772/ref=sr_1_sc_1…

http://www.amazon.com/…/dp/081296618X/ref=sr_1_1…

If you wish to read my review on Muhammad: A Prophet of Our Time:

https://xavierobrien.wordpress.com/…/

Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

World history provides us with an unbounded chronicle of conflict, atrocities, struggle, and death. Interspersed within these narratives are emancipatory sociopolitical and religious movements driven forward by populations enduring the lash of oppression. Many of these movements are crushed permanently while others regenerate and persist, enlivened by the examples of courageous men and women. Karen Armstrong’s masterful biographical sketch of Islam’s messenger Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time is an indispensable source in understanding how such a struggle develops. At the center of Armstrong’s study is the Prophet Muhammad, a 7th century merchant born in Mecca who grew up to become a political and spiritual revolutionary who devoted his life’s work to challenging the prevailing socioeconomic and cultural orthodoxies of the Quraysh power structure

The dominant political/intellectual culture in Mecca was encapsulated in the term jahiliyah which Armstrong defines as “a state of mind that caused violence and terror in seventh-century Arabia.” To the culture of jahiliyah could be attributed a range of societal ills, many of which afflict current societies in the so-called third and “developed” world. For example, 6th and 7th century Arabia was characterized by deep economic inequality or as Armstrong writes “[the Quraysh] managed to secure a monopoly of the north-south trade, so that they alone were allowed to service caravans.” Armstrong adds “they were also able to control the mercantile activity within Arabia that had been stimulated by the influx of international commerce.” Essentially, the Quraysh constituted a capitalist class who acquired a “capital surplus” to make a “settled lifestyle possible.” Under Quraysh rule “the old communal spirit had been torn apart by the market economy, which depended upon ruthless competition, greed, and individual enterprise.”

Muhammad did not directly challenge this system of power until he received a vision while on Mt. ‘Hira. After receiving this vision he “stumbled down the mountain to [his wife] Khadijah,” and “flung himself into her lap.” At Mt. ‘Hira Muhammad perceived ruh or the “spirit of revelation” embodied in the angel Gabriel, an angel that “defied ordinary human and spatial categories.” “As for the orphan–do not oppress him and one who asks for help–do not turn him away,” read the message in this revelation. In secular terms, this encounter could be said to have represented a change in Muhammad’s mindset, a raising of social consciousness. After the visit from Gabriel Muhammad began applying the principles of this new religion called Islam which means “surrender” or “submission.” One can argue that Muhammad’s struggle against the capitalist norms of 7th century Arabia is consonant with the struggles of socialists, communists, and anti-capitalists in general in 21st century society. Islamic teachings, according to Armstrong, encouraged Muslims to “look after the weak and disadvantaged,” and “feed the destitute, even when they were hungry themselves”. These ethics clashed with those of the Quraysh who had “abandoned the badawah virtue of generosity and become niggardly, except that they called this shrewd business sense.”

Many of the earliest followers of Islam were women, a repressed population in the Quraysh male-dominated society. Muhammad’s treatment of women was the source of much resentment in establishment circles with many men complaining that Muhammad’s rise signaled God working to “take  away their privileges,” in particular patriarchal privileges. The magnitude of this threat to patriarchy can be sensed in what Armstrong calls Muhammad’s “revolutionary surah” where he proclaims “men and women who remember God oft,” will receive “a mighty wage.” Among the major changes Muhammad endorsed was the liberation of orphan girls from the control of their guardians so they could no longer be treated as “moveable property.” He also devised what Armstrong called a “shocking innovation” in challenging pre-Islamic traditions concerning dower rights. Under Muhammad’s innovation “the dowry was to be given directly to the woman as her inalienable property , and in the event of divorce, a man could not reclaim it.” This was a sharp departure from custom where the groom would present a dowry to his bride but “in practice this gift had belonged to her family.” Also notable is Armstrong’s assertion that Muhammad did not make a separation between his public and private life which meant his wives were not insulated from public events, a significant social advance in undermining norms of male supremacy. The Muslim women of Medina were the topic of much discussion in the Arabian peninsula as they were far more self-assertive than the women in Mecca who lived under a more authoritarian government. One of Muhammad’s rivals, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, is recorded to have rebuked his wife for arguing with him only to have her respond that “the Prophet allowed his wives to argue with him.”  Not surprisingly, Prophet’s revolutionary worldview did not endear him to the Quraysh elite. In fact, he was widely reviled among the powerful. Shortly before his exile from Mecca to Medina, Khadijah’s cousin, Waraqah, solemnly informed him that “a prophet was always without honor in his own country.” This sentiment has a special relevance today as American dissident Edward Snowden lives in forced exile for the threat he posed to American elites influenced by the same “state of mind,” that encourages “violence and terror.”

Along with Muhammad’s challenge to male-dominance was a more forceful attack on the reigning economic order, Mecca’s “aggressive capitalism”. This was done through a combination of armed raids and egalitarian ethics. Armstrong notes that Muhammad “could not help noticing that many of his followers came from the lower classes. A significant number were women, others freedman, servants, and slaves.” This collective formed the ranks of Muhammad’s military campaign. During these military raids various alliances were formed with Muhammad’s faction and the Quraysh elite trading victories and defeats. It’s worth mentioning that Islamic teachings forbid aggressive war. The concept of hilm–patience, mercy, tranquility–were, and remain, guiding principles of Islamic praxis. It is for this reason that the Qu’ran maintains that “the true servants of the Most Gracious are they who walk gently on the earth, and who, whenever the jahilun address them, reply ‘Peace’ (salam!)” The conflict between Muhammad and the Quraysh elite culminated with the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah where Muhammad agreed to return all Meccan converts to Islam to the Quraysh. Though Muhammad’s contemporaries interpreted the treaty as a humiliating capitulation to Quraysh power, Muhammad embraced the resolution as emblematic of the Islamic teaching that “it was not violence and self-assertion, but the spirit of mercy, courtesy and tranquility that would cause the ummah to grow.” Years later Muhammad died in the arms of his wife ‘Aisha and his successors, known as the “rightly guided” (rashidun) caliphs, “led wars of conquest outside of Arabia,” that had “no religious significance.”

Perhaps the most enduring intellectual contribution of Armstrong’s scholarship is its ability to subvert orientalist clichés about Arabs and Islam, challenging the hegemonic influence of media personalities, politicians, and a propaganda industry perfectly willing to market falsehoods under the banner of “national security”, “the war on terror”, and other State-backed doctrines. Her sober analysis of Islamic history dispels the myth of “terrorist enterprises” (the NYPD’s name for mosques) and exposes how necessary an understanding of Islamic history  and the Prophet’s revolutionary example is to subvert actual terrorists who, like the Quraysh, embrace the worst elements of humanity for the sake of profit. Quite apart from a path to “metaphysical certainty”, Armstrong recognizes that the Qur’an “wanted people to develop a different kind of awareness.” Muhammad is an essential read for anyone willing to cultivate this “kind of awareness” and an illuminating snapshot of how this awareness fundamentally transformed countless others.

Carnegie Extremism: Decoding Mainstream Discourse on Islam & The Dynamics of Orientalist Journalism

Since the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, the launch of the first Gulf War, and the onset of the current “war on terror”, a considerable amount of attention has been devoted to the so-called threat of “Islamic fundamentalism” and its alleged proponents who are disproportionately Arab. Most often, if not always, this hysteria has been rooted in deeply seated ideologies of racism, many of which have come to dominate the bulk mainstream media. While these racist sentiments are undoubtedly worth criticism, we can learn much more about ourselves if time were taken to understand the development of these beliefs. An ideal domain to trace such a trend can be found in the most prestigious media publications where US policymakers, experts, and scholars voice their concerns. It’s quite easy to condemn characters like Rush Limbaugh and Pastor Terry Jones but the real challenge is to highlight the equally venomous views of senior fellows and “distinguished” scholars. Take for example an article written by Joshua Goodman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled Shades of the Sinai’s Instability. This article, whose main focus is the growing conflict between Bedouin communities and state security forces in Egypt, furthers a conception of Arabs that is richly documented in scholarly literature, multimedia sources, and even declassified CIA documents. All of this documentation obscures a crucial fact, namely, that “radical Islam”, “Islamists”, and “Islamic fundamentalism” are all post-Cold War ideologies nurtured, in large part, by US policymakers and their apologists in the intellectual community or as Karim H. Karim points out in his study of Western media, Islamic Peril: “Prior to the collapse of the USSR, the confrontations of Western powers with state and non-state Muslim actors seemed to prepare the way for ‘Islam’ to become a post-Cold War Other”.  This reality can be keenly perceived in Goodman’s article and is typical when paired with other journalistic contributions of American “elite” media.   

Goodman begins his piece by alerting his readers to the “fragile security situation” in the Sinai due to “increasingly bold and open forms of militant resistance” carried out by Bedouin communities after the “partial withdrawal” of state forces. Before going into any great detail about the social or economic challenges that these communities face, Goodman creates an image of Bedouins as violent “militants” unable to convey their grievances by peaceful means. It should be noted that there’s nothing new about this description. In fact, it virtually echoes a sentiment articulated by the CIA in 1947. Back then the Bedouin was described as “a hardy type of fighting man, not only imbued with a warlike tradition (combining religious fanaticism with an enthusiastic devotion to looting, plundering, and raiding) but also trained in the use of small arms and the methods of desert warfare.” Aside from the clearly racist tone of this statement, it’s quite impressive how the writers of this report failed to detect its blatant hypocrisy. The report accuses Bedouins of having a “warlike tradition” driven by “religious fanaticism,” ignoring the fact that the United States, as a geographical entity, is founded on such forces. All serious historians, from the late Howard Zinn to Kevin Annet, would readily concede that the Puritans who “civilized” the indigenous populations of 17th century North America were, without question, religious fanatics intent on asserting their “warlike tradition” by means of genocidal extermination. Yet these crimes rarely, if ever, enter the historical record under such terms. Rather they are given the more sanitized distinction of “discoveries” carried out by “great explorers”. The same can be said of 15th century Christendom’s pillaging of  Muslim Spain, a human catastrophe movingly reconstructed in Tariq Ali’s 1993 classic Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree. Much like the Puritans, these criminals are also spared the distinction of marshalling a “warlike tradition”. In fact, this world historical moment is seldom mentioned at all in conventional colonial narratives.  

Not "extremist" but presidential.

In spite of these samples of self-imposed blindness, it should be noted that there have been some countervailing attempts  to make a connection between the terror of the “Islamist” and that of the “developed world”. Take for example a recent statement made by European Union Foreign minister Catherine Ashton in response to the tragic murders of a French rabbi and three Jewish schoolchildren. These  crimes were carried out by Mohammed Merah, an Algerian Arab in the French city of  Toulouse. Speaking at a conference on Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, Ashton remarked “when we think of what happened in Toulouse today, when we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and in different parts of the world – we remember young people and children who lose their lives.” For these very mild and uncontroversial statements, Ashton was bitterly condemned. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak denounced her statement as “infuriating and far from reality,” while Kadima chairperson Tzipi Livni charged Ashton as being incapable of making “the appropriate moral distinction,” namely “a hate crime or a leader murdering his people is not like a country fighting terror, even if civilians are hurt.” These statements of ridicule come just weeks after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech before the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee comparing the Iranian nuclear facility in Nantanz to Auschwitz concentration camps, a statement that not only fails to make the “moral distinction” for which Ashton is accused of violating, but does so by exploiting one of the most egregious  crimes in human history in the Nazi Holocaust.        
             
This double standard in the realm of terrorism is a dominant theme in the intellectual history of imperialism from the landing of Columbus in the “New World” to the current US policy of “nation building” in Afghanistan  and it finds vigorous affirmation in Goodman’s study. For example, Goodman repeatedly uses the word “terror” to mark the crimes of Bedouins but does not use this term to highlight the far greater crimes of the Egyptian state (possibly because Egypt remains a strong ally of the US). For example, when “Islamists” kill 65 tourists in a marketplace it’s justifiably called an “act of terror,” but when the Egyptian security forces illegally detain, beat, and steal from Bedouins it’s called “ineffectual military action.” This is to say nothing of the 800 plus civilians murdered in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria during the popular uprisings last year, another tragedy which escaped the category of terror because “a leader murdering his people is not like a country fighting terror, even if civilians are hurt” or as Karim suggests “the modern state tends to downplay its own massive and systemic use of violence as it simultaneously emphasizes its opponents’ violent acts”. Karim attributes this behavior to the general acceptance of the state “as a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory,” making it “the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.” The fact that Goodman is able to speak so freely about terrorism, despite the reality that the US remains the only country in the world to be condemned by the World Court for “the unlawful use of force” (international terrorism) in reference to atrocities carried out in Nicaragua, is a stunning indication of the ideological continuity that exists between old imperialist doctrines of Pax Britannica and contemporary ones embodied in the “Washington consensus”. The US and its allies do not engage in terrorism. As Robert Fisk stated “‘Terrorists’ are those who use violence against the side that is using the word.” This is even verified by an empirical study carried out by Shahzad Ali and Khalid in the European Journal of Scientific Research that revealed how the US elite media–Newsweek, Time Magazine–consistently produced negative reports about Muslim countries. In the coverage of enemy countries–Iraq, Iran, Libya, Afghanistan–the positive/negative disparity was particularly stunning. For instance, 56% of the sentences about Afghanistan were described as negative while a mere 6% were classed as positive. In this respect, we can see how certain geopolitical imperatives reinforce what Edward Said called “orientalist” conceptions of Muslims. Said defines Orientalism as an “integral part of European material civilization and culture ” that “expresses and represents [the Orient] culturally and . . . ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines . . .colonial bureaucracies, and colonial styles.”

Goodman’s analysis fulfills most, if not all, of these criteria in quite explicit ways. Of all the examples the most uncontroversial is Goodman’s use of the term “Islamist violence” to characterize certain factions of Bedouin resistance. Apart from the fact that “Islamist” is a term “whose etymological roots lie in Christian contexts”, the prejudice embedded in this religious classification of violence can be revealed by the observation that such labels are scarcely used in reference to the violence of others which could be argued, by this logic, to be religious in nature. To be precise, mass murderer Anders Breivik did not conceal the fact that he massacred scores of innocent civilians in Norway to “save western Europe from Islam,” much in the same way the Christian Crusaders carried out their atrocities in accordance with the demands of Pope Urban II. Though more egregious than the “acts of terror” for which the Islamists have been condemned these violent deeds fail to merit the label of Christianist. Moreover, this treatment of European terrorists is consonant with that of American terrorists. When US Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich was found guilty of participating in the savage slaughter of 24 Iraqi civilians, many of which included women and children, Lionel Beehner of the Council on Foreign Relations described it as a “military embarrassment” which would be “used by Muslim extremists for propaganda purposes and replayed on Arabic television.” Such treatment of our crimes preserves the dichotomy of the benevolent empire of the West versus the irrational barbarism of “Muslim extremists,” and the murder of innocent Iraqis is subordinated to higher concerns of anti-American “propaganda” broadcast on “Arabic television”. It is for this reason that Karim posits that “inter-cultural communication . . . remains problematic as long as the Other is viewed as the only transgressor and the Self is completely innocent.” Incidentally, Wuterich received zero prison time for this atrocity, as distinct from other “terrorists” handed life sentences for merely attempting to carry out attacks within the United States (Faisal Shahzad, the so-called “Time Square bomber”, is a textbook example).   

 And there are other, more subtle, discursive methods that add to this stereotypical portrait of Arabs. For instance, Goodman continues his study by describing how Bedouins in the south have resorted to “more drastic means of resistance” by taking hostages in retaliation to the detention of family members and theft of their land. In explaining how Bedouins handle hostages, Goodman remarks that “in keeping with tribal values,” the abductions were “not intended to cause physical harm”. In particular, “traditional Bedouin notions of honor and hospitality which demand[s] just treatment of strangers,” prohibits such abuse. Though Goodman concedes that Bedouins refrain from abuse of hostages, he couches this fact in a larger narrative of “tribal values”. In this sense, Goodman treats positive expressions of Bedouin culture as an adjunct to a criminal act. Bedouins are granted the rational capacity to act against socioeconomic injustices insofar that these actions ultimately find meaning in non-rational, criminal, and tribalist tendencies. Goodman fails to comprehend “whereas Islam may be described as a way of life, all that Muslims do is not necessarily Islamic”.  This tacit association between crime and Bedouin “tribal values”–an Arab counterpart to the Native American “noble savage”– has the effect of normalizing a mode of human relations that is, at bottom, anti-social and hostile. Such a process of normalization was powerfully expressed by Sina Ali Muscali who lamented that the American media portrays Islam as a “cold, primitive religion rooted in tribal norms rather than human well-being.” Furthermore, this negative conception of Muslims was shown to operate on a linguistic level in a study carried out in Human Communication.   In this publication, which used a data analysis program called CATPAC to assess the portrayal of Muslims in America, it was observed “that  for many people  it  is easier  to  think of Muslims as a group of religious people when referring  to  them, but  the word Islam is a word that provokes anger and is often associated with extremist ideas and terror.” It was added that such perceptions could be attributed to the fact that “the  word  itself  is  one  that many Americans  fear  simply  because  they  do  not  understand.”

These undeveloped pictures of Arabs and Muslim communities are  reflections of the American media’s failure to grasp a concept that was convincingly argued by Canadian anthropologist Bruce Trigger. Trigger held that there is “a close relationship between society and culture” and any analysis that neglects this relationship produces, at best, “low level inferences” based on what he called “artifacts”. Likewise, Goodman’s focus on “tribal values” and “Islamist violence of the mainland variety” obscures key socioeconomic factors like the fact that Egypt is a military dictatorship that receives $1.3 billion  in military aid from the US per year. This failure to provide a rigorous analysis Egyptian social structures produces an interpretation of Bedouin life that only attends to their “material culture,” an anthropological concept that  Trigger described as “the product of a very limited range of human behavior . . . [constituting] a limited basis for the reconstruction of the past”.  An illustration of these limitations can be observed in how Goodman describes the conflict between the northern and southern regions of the Sinai. After explaining how the south has attained some measure of “political stability” due to the growing tourism industry, Goodman states “In conjunction with the relatively greater economic opportunities enjoyed by the southern Bedouin . . . it is easy to imagine the resentment this has generated among the northern tribes towards their southern counterparts.” Goodman then claims that this resentment “explains some of the motivations of northern Bedouin in collaborating with the bombings of southern tourist resorts in the early 2000s. ”  Notice the “economic interests” which, until this passage, was at the core of the conflict between Bedouins and the state is now displaced by a more personal, politically narrow emotional disturbance on the local level which finds refuge in northern “resentment” of southern “stability.” It would be instructive to see how we would react to the argument that President Clinton bombed the Sudan’s al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in 1998 because of his “resentment” of sickly African children. Anyone who ventured such an argument would be roundly denounced as a lunatic yet when such emotional labels are applied to Bedouins it’s accepted as entirely legitimate. Emotional appeals of this brand obscure the general lack of material needs–potable water, arable land, adequate housing–that touch more on questions of social injustice rather than envious desires to validate oneself in the face of alleged rivals. Ironically, this perceived need to validate oneself in the eyes of a rival is precisely what the US does in their efforts to “win the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people or their efforts to “maintain credibility” by violating international law and bombing defenseless nations in the service of geostrategic goals. These policies, while emotionally potent in name, are placed into a wider political context of “democracy promotion”.  By reducing the grievances of the Sinai Bedouin to a north-south drama, punctuated by intense moments of resentment and “terror”, Goodman subscribes to what Karim calls a “cognitive script”. In cognitive scripts we find “all we know in our culture about a specific stereotypical type of episode,” and “how certain types of people (members of a professional group, adherents of a religion, etc.) behave in particular situations.” Here it is simply assumed, without citing an actual Bedouin from the north (or anywhere at all for that matter) that they are filled with “resentment” due to the economic transformations in the south. By orientalist standards, “regional tribal differences” suffice in providing an accurate picture of  their psychology. Such a mode of discourse reinforces a notion conveyed in the CIA’s study of the “radical pan-Arab position,” where it is claimed  that the core components of Arab nationalism can be deciphered in its “great emotional appeal” and not its overt challenge to US and European hegemony. This is the same doctrine behind George W. Bush’s idiotic slogan that Muslims abroad “hate us for our freedom”. Indeed, they must hate us for our “freedom” because if they hated us for our policies this would be conceding that Muslims can formulate a political stance beyond pure envy, something utterly unacceptable when dealing with “hardy fighting men” and “Muslim extremists”. Additionally, if Bush were to admit that Muslims “hate us” for our policies rather than our “freedom” it would not only help to explain their terrorism against us but, if we accept basic principles of universality, justify such acts as natural reactions to our much more horrific forms terrorism against them. For these reasons, it is of the utmost importance that we invest more intellectual and moral effort into figuring out what rests at the core of these racist, reductionist, and overtly imperialist doctrines.

One view was stated rather straightforwardly by intelligence analyst Peter Naffsinger in his infamous study on Arab populations published by the CIA Historical Review Program (“Face” Among the Arabs). Here the Arab is conceived of as an “animate pawn” imbued with an “all-is-from-Allah fatalism” which, by necessity, leads to actions where one is “not answerable to an inner God, a conscience.” Arabs are, to borrow Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s phrase for the besieged citizens of Haiti, “ little more than primitive savages”. Coupled with this mythology about Arab psychology is another, more prescient, assessment of Arab politics. Here Arab political aspirations are understood to be “aimed at a renaissance of the Arab people and a restoration of their sovereignty, unity, power and prestige”, objectives carried out with the ultimate goal to bring about “an elimination of foreign domination”. This struggle for human dignity, called “the problem of Arab nationalism,” in a 1958 CIA report, is ridiculed as an ominous threat to Western “influence” in Arab majority nations.  Any exercise of force in the service of “radical pan-Arabism” is wholly unacceptable as distinct from the force of Western-backed “conservative leaders” which is, by definition, legitimate with analysis politely confined to whether the resort to violence is effective or a “military embarrassment” enforced with an “empty hand”.   This is the standard orientalist conception successfully reiterated in Goodman’s piece. In contrast to these orientalist views are those expressed by Edward Said that “the tightening grip of demeaning generalization,” has “found a fitting correlative in the looting, pillaging, and destruction of Iraq’s libraries and museums,” and that “history cannot be swept clean like a blackboard so that ‘we’ might inscribe our own future . . .and impose our own forms of life for lesser people to follow.” This notion, scarcely endorsed by prestigious publications, finds ample expression in the courageous movements of oppressed people against unjust authority. It can be sensed in the struggles of people like the Bedouins in the Egyptian Sinai, the Palestinians in Gaza, the Sahwaris in western Sahara, the Afghans in Afghanistan  and many other “lesser people” whose stories have been “swept clean” like blackboards. As the latest upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa attest, the currents of transformation are quite unpredictable, brutal, and, in the most inspiring cases, emancipatory. But it will be up to a people, infused with a measure of intellectual honesty, to determine whether the outcome of these struggles forges new bonds of solidarity or simply furthers our infatuation with “Islamic radicals”, “militant jihadists”, and other manufactured ideologies.

References:

n.d. n. page. Web. 24 Mar. 2012. <http://www.cfr.org/human-rights/haditha-factor/p10819&gt;.

 n. page. Web. 24 Mar. 2012. <http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000045918/DOC_0000045918.pdf&gt;.

n. page. Web. 24 Mar. 2012. http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2012/03/15/shades-of-sinai-s-instability/a32u.

n. page. Web. 24 Mar. 2012. <http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/aluf-benn-booby-trap-between-natanz-and-auschwitz-1.416913&gt;.

Karim, Karim. Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2000. Print.

Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. New York : Holt Paperbacks, 2003. Print.

Trigger, Bruce. Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. Print.

Muscali, Sina. “Arab/Muslim ‘Otherness’: The Role of.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. 22.1 (2002): 131-148. Print.

Ali, Shahzad, and Khalid . “US Mass Media and Muslim World: Portrayal of Muslim.” European Journal of Scientific Research. 21.4 (2008): 554-580. Print.

Cagle, Alicia, Lindsay Cox, and Kelly Luoma. “Content Analysis of the Portrayal of Muslims in American Media .” Human Communication. A Publication of the Pacific and Asian Communication Association.. 14.1 1-17. Print.

Naffsinger, Peter. CIA Historical Review Program, n.d. Web. 25 Mar 2012. .

Consequences of the Partition of Palestine.” . N.p., 1947. Web. 25 Mar 2012. <http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000256628/DOC_0000256628.pdf&gt;.