Category: media

hitler’s chief propagandist joseph goebbels was a firm believer in the “big lie”. he understood that if you repeat a lie often enough, people start to believe it. and so it goes with the relentless accusations levelled at moderate muslims. to tell you the truth, i’m sick of the label. by identifying ourselves as moderate muslims we fall into the trap of defining ourselves in language designed to reduce us to a stereotype. yet, here i am, a muslim in america, and therefore under constant pressure to explain myself. not only that but i am also accountable for the actions of more than a billion muslims in countries as diverse as saudi arabia, bangladesh and sudan.

a friend of mine sent me an article by ayan hirsi ali, imaginatively titled “islam’s silent moderates” in which she holds the moderates responsible for human rights abuses committed by the saudi, bangladeshi and sudanese governments.

here is what i think of all three cases.

as far as the saudi government, human rights abuses there have very little to do with islam and everything to do with the fact that the country is controlled by a single family, the sauds, who keep a tight lid on dissent by using religion to repress and restrain. i have very little tolerance for the saudi government and am more than happy to condemn the many human rights abuses that occur in that country. it is one country in the world where i would flatly refuse to live. even though saudi arabia is the birth place of islam, it is anything but islamic. there is no concept of hereditary rule in islam and saudi arabia (the “arabia of the sauds”) fails that basic test. however, my condemnation, and that of other muslims, cannot be as effective in dissuading the saudis from committing crimes against their own citizens as a few harsh words from the american government (the self-proclaimed policeman of the world). interestingly enough, saudi arabia remains america’s biggest muslim ally in the world – the saudi dictators being best friends with their american counterparts, the bushes. being a pakistani-american muslim, i think that the part of my identity that is most sickened by saudi arabia’s human rights trespasses is the reality that my country openly supports such an illegitimate and brutal government.

as far as the gillian gibbons case, hirsi ali jumped the gun. her op-ed piece was published on december 7, 2007, when gillian gibbons had already been free for 4 days. i won’t get into the ny times sloppy fact checking – that’s a whole other story! what makes hirsi ali’s damning of the moderates even more ironic is that gibbons’s release was secured by moderate muslims. lord ahmed and baroness warsi of the house of lords, successfully lobbied the sudanese government and obtained her early release. check out the story.

apparently british foreign secretary david miliband tried to halt the mission but lord ahmed and baroness warsi defied the foreign office and flew to sudan at their own expense to win gibbons’ release. the foreign office warned them they were doing so at their own risk and that the british government would not bail them out if things went awry.

but can we expect to see an oped piece in the ny times based on this turn of events – a story that turns hirsi ali’s argument on its head? somehow i’m not holding my breath.

hirsi ali’s final accusation against muslims involves taslima nasreen, whom i frankly don’t know much about. it seems that she is being threatened and her freedom of speech is being curbed. i am against any kind of intimidation, from any quarter, which means to control free thought and free speech. what i don’t understand is why should these human rights abuses be more important to me than what is happening in my own country (like the orwellian home-grown terrorism prevention act which makes it convenient to define any form of dissent as a means to incite violence and therefore punishable by law – i posted the details of the act on 12/2/07).

as luck would have it i was browsing through the amnesty international web site a day before i was sent hirsi ali’s article. i am an amnesty international partner of conscience and support their efforts to protect human rights all over the world. the first case hirsi ali talks about was a major story on amnesty’s web site. but there are other stories hirsi ali’s skipped over. many of them involve the u.s. government (destruction of cia interrogation tapes, salim hamdan before a military commission for a second time, guantanamo, lethal injection, illegal detention). in fact, of all the countries cited for human rights infringements on AI’s news/reports page, the united states is mentioned with the most regularity.

definition of propaganda from wikipedia: propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented.

i see myself as a human rights advocate and feel equally appalled by all human rights violations, everywhere in the world. for me personally, america and pakistan are the two countries i can most relate to and am most concerned with. you have to only read a few posts on my blog to realize that i am not shy about criticizing human rights abuses by either country. through amnesty international i try to be a force for good in the rest of the world. yet why do i have to defend myself – my integrity, my humanity? why can we not ask the same question of other americans for example? do they constantly condemn and apologize for the unprovoked barbarity in iraq? do they perpetually agitate to end guantanamo? do they raise their voices against torture and illegal detentions? do they regularly campaign for and support equal rights for alaskan and native american women? the list goes on. why do we hold the american people innocent of crimes committed by their government when they, unlike most other people in the world, have the privilege of electing their representatives? let’s remember that george w bush was re-elected after iraq! should we not be asking the question: where are the american moderates? six years after 9/11, why haven’t these well-known, well-documented injustices been stopped?

who decides what crimes, against what victims, perpetrated by which governments are more egregious than others?

my friend sarita recently made a connection between the aftermath of 9/11 and women’s rights. i had never thought about that. i had never looked at the fallout from 9/11 and parsed it in terms of gender. being a muslim of pakistani descent, the religious and ethnic aspects of it are obvious and obdurately in my face. but what about the effects of this macho, capitalism-preserving, war-loving, world-domination driven culture on women – not the long-suffering, burqa-clad women of afghanistan, but the quietly marginalized women of america? i was still chewing on this new paradigm, when i stumbled upon a susan faludi interview on democracy now!, in which she talks about her new book, “the terror dream”. i found it fascinating.

in his book “the last mughal”, william dalrymple talks about how india went from a london-like, ‘culturally, racially and religiously chutnified’ melting pot where westerners (or so called white mughals) went native and lived in relative racial and religious harmony with local indians during the early days of the east india company, to the arrogance, racism and violence of 19th century raj. he attributes this unfortunate shift to two things:

‘one was the rise of british power: in a few years the british had defeated not only the french, but all their other indian rivals; and, in a manner not unlike the americans after the fall of the berlin wall, the changed balance of power quickly led to undisguised imperial arrogance. no longer was the west prepared to study and learn from the subcontinent; instead, thomas macaulay came to speak for a whole generation of englishmen when he declared that “a single shelf of a good european library was worth the whole native literature of india and arabia”.

the other factor was the ascendancy of evangelical christianity, and the profound change in social, sexual and racial attitudes that this brought about. the wills written by dying east india company servants show that the practice of cohabiting with indian bibis quickly declined: they turn up in one in three wills between 1780 and 1785, but are present in only one in four between 1805 and 1810. by the middle of the century, they have all but disappeared. in half a century, a vibrantly multicultural world refracted back into its component parts; children of mixed race were corralled into what became in effect a new indian caste – the anglo-indians – who were left to run the railways, posts and mines.’

this is how india moved ‘from a huge measure of racial intermixing in the late 18th century to a position of complete racial apartheid by the 1850s’. in his article “the last mughal and a clash of civilizations” (new statesman, october 16, 2006), dalrymple draws a parallel between the forces at work in 19th century british india and those affecting world events today:

‘just like it is today, this process of pulling apart – of failing to talk, listen or trust each other – took place against the background of an increasingly aggressive and self-righteous west, facing ever stiffer islamic resistance to western interference. for, as anyone who has ever studied the story of the rise of the british in india will know well, there is nothing new about the neo-cons. the old game of regime change – of installing puppet regimes, propped up by the west for its own political and economic ends – is one that the british had well mastered by the late 18th century.

by the 1850s, the british had progressed from aggressively removing independent-minded muslim rulers, such as tipu sultan, who refused to bow before the will of the hyperpower, to destabilising and then annexing even the most pliant muslim states. in february 1856, the british unilaterally annexed the prosperous kingdom of avadh (or oudh), using the excuse that the nawab, wajid ali shah, a far-from-belligerent dancer and epicure, was “debauched”.

by this time, other british officials who believed in a “forward” policy of pre-emptive action were nursing plans to abolish (emperor) zafar’s mughal court in delhi, and to impose not just british laws and technology on india, but also british values, in the form of christianity. the missionaries reinforced muslim fears, increasing opposition to british rule and creating a constituency for the rapidly multiplying jihadis. and, in turn, “wahhabi conspiracies” strengthened the conviction of the evangelical christians that a “strong attack” was needed to take on the “muslim fanatics”.’

this became the breeding ground for the great mutiny of 1857 (what we in the sub-continent call the war of independence). the mutiny was disorganized, ruthless and bloody. on september 14, 1857 the british squashed the mutiny and exacted fierce revenge on the local population.

dalrymple continues:

‘today, west and east again face each other uneasily across a divide that many see as a religious war. suicide jihadis fight what they see as a defensive action against their christian enemies, and again innocent civilians are slaughtered.

as before, western evangelical christian politicians are apt to cast their opponents and enemies in the role of “incarnate fiends” and simplistically conflate any armed resistance to invasion and occupation with “pure evil”. again, western countries, blind to the effect their foreign policies have on the wider world, feel aggrieved and surprised to be attacked, as they see it, by mindless fanatics.

and yet, as we have seen in our own time, nothing so easily radicalises a people against us, or undermines the moderate aspect of islam, as aggressive western intrusion in the east: the histories of islamic fundamentalism and western imperialism have often been closely, and dangerously, intertwined. in a curious but very concrete way, the extremists and fundamentalists of both faiths have needed each other to reinforce each other’s prejudices and hatreds. the venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other.’

i’ve often been asked why the moderate muslim majority in america is so silent and invisible. there is a two-part answer to that question. first of all, everyday muslims are afraid to raise their voices and be labeled “troublemakers” for going against the grain. in an environment where any anonymous phone call can land you in a tête-à-tête with the CIA, where your house can be arbitrarily ransacked and your personal possessions confiscated, where you can be detained indefinitely for “questioning” without recourse to due legal process and where the FBI can open a file and spy on you to their heart’s content, it’s better to lie low and not provoke anyone. secondly, it’s not easy for muslims to be heard or seen. even if moderate muslims are courageous enough to speak out and voice their opinions (which is something that many have done), you will never know about it. newspapers will not print what they have to say and broadcasting companies will not show you what they look like.

for example, PBS broadcast a series of documentaries under the title “america at a crossroads”. they gave an hour to richard perle, known as the prince of darkness in washington circles, former likud policy adviser, associated with the american enterprise institute and the project for the new american century, an architect of bush’s foreign policy and an ardent supporter of the war in iraq, to this day. they gave an hour to irshad manji, disaffected muslim with no scholarship in religious studies or islam and writer of “the trouble with islam” which can best be described as a collection of personal anecdotes. all in all, 11 documentaries were broadcast by PBS including perle’s “the case for war: in defense of freedom” and manji’s “faith without fear”. other topics included a secret sunni muslim sect, jihad, al-qaeda, terrorism in europe, terrorism in indonesia and the gangs of iraq. in the midst of all this fear mongering there was no place for an alternative voice – a documentary called “islam vs islamists – voices from the muslim center” which was, interestingly enough, funded by tax-dollars (up to $700,000 of them) but dropped by PBS. i’m not sure about the content of this documentary but it seems to me that it would have been a good idea to include the voices of moderate muslim scholars and mainstream american muslims. it’s not that we don’t want to be seen or heard, it’s a question of access. maybe the rest of america out there needs to talk TO us and not just ABOUT us!