Why Liberals Fear Islam
The Only Good Muslim is the Anti-Muslim
By M. JUNAID LEVESQUE-ALAM
28/08/08 "Counterpunch" - -- For some, Barack
Obamas stature as
a man of the left has fallen precipitously,
like late autumn
leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of
winter.
Disappointment has often been self-inflicted.
Supporters have
dipped their pens deeply into the inkwell of
Obamas inspiring
story and written their own lines on
Afghanistan, oil drilling,
or the death penalty - only to see these
wishful words
unceremoniously erased by presidential politics
or the senators
own views.
But for American Muslims and progressive
allies, both eager to
see an end to the vilification of Arabs and
Muslims in the
United States, Obamas mantra of hope and
change barely set in
before it expired.
First we witnessed the embarrassing spectacle
of micro-level
ethnic cleansing when two Arab women with
headscarves were
whisked offstage ahead of a campaign photo-op
in Detroit. Then
we heard Obama call false claims about his
purportedly Muslim
identity smears as if he was accused not of
belonging to an
Abrahamic faith observed by more than 1.2
billion people, but of
slinking out of Congress to visit a brothel.
Soon after we saw
the senator genuflect before AIPAC and call for
a permanently
Israeli Jerusalem - a vision the Jewish state
has assiduously
tried to realize by macro-level ethnic
cleansing, purging its
Arab residents.
A more recent political maneuver also turned
out to be a purge:
the Obama campaigns Muslim outreach
coordinator, Mazen Asbahi,
resigned this month after a brief stint of
several days. The
event went almost unnoticed.
But two sharply different responses to this
episode - and the
standing afforded to the authors of these
responses - reveal
that the senator is not alone in failing to
stanch Americas
anti-Islamic miasma. Rather, the shortcoming is
a collective
one, shared by many liberals whose prejudice
against Muslims and
Arab-Americans is surpassed only by an apparent
disinterest in
correcting it.
One response to the resignation came from James
Zogby. An
Arab-American Christian, Zogbys credentials as
a man rooted in
his community are matchless. He helped found
the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee. He led
non-sectarian campaigns to
assist war victims in Palestine and Lebanon.
And he serves as
president of the Arab American Institute, a
Washington, D.C.
think tank.
Yet despite 30 years of community advocacy and
experience, his
views on Arab and Muslim issues appear in just
two popular
non-ethnic publications. One is The Huffington
Post. The other
is in Egypt.
Commenting on Asbahis short tenure, Zogby
writes, In the brief
time he held his position we spoke almost
daily. He learned so
much and did so much to make Arab Americans and
American Muslims
feel included in the campaign.
Then, Zogby observes, it happened. One of
the many websites
monitoring Muslims in America discovered that
eight years ago
Asbahi served on a board which included a
controversial imam.
Asbahi resigned from the board after two weeks.
Like vultures eyeing a wounded gazelle, the
usual assortment of
right-wing bloggers descended on Asbahi. They
vilified him as a
closet fundamentalist for once belonging to the
Muslim Student
Association, a well-established mainstream
group with branches
on dozens of college campuses across the U.S.
and Canada.
Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal
threatened to amplify
the echo chamber, the walls of which
reverberate with the
hysterics of its associates in the right-wing
blogosphere.
Faced with mounting pressure and bereft of
support from any
quarter, Asbahi and the campaign agreed he
would relinquish
his post.
This sequence of events comes as no surprise to
anyone familiar
with neoconservative methods. It is but a
reenactment of
previous attacks: the mendacious 2005 campaign
to oust Columbia
University professors who used Israels own
archives to
dismantle pleasant fictions about its history;
the dissemination
of e-mails containing crude anti-Semitic
nonsense sent out in
professors names to destroy their credibility;
and the ongoing
efforts to publicly intimidate universities
into denying
academics employment or tenure.
But amid the past few years of attacks,
outrages, and, yes,
smears, hurled at Muslims and Arabs in this
country, one Muslim
figure stands curiously unsullied: Irshad
Manji. She, too, wrote
about Asbahis dismissal, though we would do
well to acquaint
ourselves with the author first.
Unlike most of her coreligionists, Manji has
been lavished with
attention and awards by mainstream and liberal
America. She
garnered Oprah Winfreys first Chutzpah
award, Ms. Magazines
Feminist for the 21st Century seal of
approval, New York
Universitys Wagner School Moral Courage
Project, a column in
The Huffington Post, production of a PBS
documentary, and the
list goes on.
In an era when Muslims find themselves boxed in
by political
attacks here and military assaults abroad, one
wonders: what is
Manjis secret to success?
She wrote a book - and not just any book.
Titled The Trouble
With Islam Today, hers won applause not only
from liberals but
other, more interesting quarters. The Wall
Street Journal
praised it as refreshingly provocative and
deserv[ing] of the
attention it is receiving. Daniel Pipes
declared, Manji - a
practicing Muslim - brings real insight to her
subject.
Phyillis Chesler beamed, Manji has written a
bold, sane,
passionate, compelling book. And Alan
Dershowitz announced,
Manji is a fresh, new and intriguing voice of
Islamic reform.
A fine example of damning with loud praise.
What could a Muslim have written that would
delight supporters
of bombing and torturing Muslims? What sweet
words could have
moved Daniel Pipes - who specializes in hyping
anti-Islamic
hysteria on Fox News and elsewhere - to welcome
into his
generous bosom the ideas of a practicing
Muslim? What might
motivate Alan Dershowitz, better known for
backing the torture
of Muslims than for reading their books, to
plug Manjis effort?
The answer lies in the content. The Trouble
With Islam Today is
an unhinged polemic that derides Muslims and
demeans their
faith. Examining a few of the books points
should reveal what
has caught the fancy of neoconservatives and
liberals alike.
The author devotes two pages to comparing Osama
bin Laden to
Prophet Muhammad. Is it mere happenstance,
Manji rhetorically
asks, that bin Laden spends so much time in
caves, like the
meditating [Prophet] did? With penetrating and
piercing logic -
in the sense that one must penetrate ones
skull and pierce the
cortex to succumb to it - she goes on in this
vein, declaring
camel saddles and online transactions twin
evils. The
parallels between Osama, the man who blesses
the murder of
innocent people, and Muhammad, the man who
forgave the murderers
of his closest companions, continue to
proliferate, Manji
insists, much to the delight of the
Muslim-haters behind the
curtains.
A good portion of the book is also dedicated to
attacking the
Quran (and the Quran alone), which the intrepid
author does
without any background in religious studies or
a single
footnote. But no matter. This book, Manji
intones, is
profoundly at war with itself. Religious
texts should
apparently read like do-it-yourself plumbing
guides, bereft of
subtlety or layers of meaning, particularly if
you are trying to
flush the whole thing down the toilet to boost
your celebrity
status among Islamophobes.
Manjis fans must especially enjoy her
excoriation of Muslims as
fake victims. Muslims wallow in their
screaming self-pity, she
snickers, as though one ought to see the
fuselage of cruise
missiles as half-full rather than half-empty as
they fly en
route to the nearest wedding celebration or
apartment building.
Manjis attacks on Muslims appear almost kind
next to the
beating she doles out to logic itself. She
surmises that since
Muslims have been more harmed by Muslims than
non-Muslims (based
on what data or criteria, we dare not guess),
there is little
reason to complain about atrocities authored
under the war on
terror. She does not add whether she also
ordered families of
Sept. 11th victims to get over themselves when
the casualties
were surpassed by that years domestic
homicides - a case of
Americans having been more harmed by Americans
than
non-Americans.
Finally, Manji enjoys ridiculing dispossessed
Palestinians.
Ignoring over two decades of work by Jewish
scholars and human
rights groups on Israeli ethnic cleansing and
massacres, she
neatly eliminates the Palestinians altogether
by dubbing them
Jordanians and hails Israel for its
compassion. It must have
been precisely this compassion that moved 23
ANC veterans,
several of them Jewish, to compare the Israeli
occupation with
South African apartheid during a recent visit.
Now well-acquainted with Americas favorite
Muslim, let us turn
to her article on the departure of Obamas
former coordinator,
Mazen Asbahi.
In a Huffington Post piece, she demonstrates no
concern about
the vilification enabled Asbahis dismissal.
Indeed, she fails
to mention it even once. Is this because Manji
is too busy
contributing to the problem to pause and
reflect? Or is it
because this would upset her core base - the
neoconservatives
who mount these smear campaigns?
Whatever the case, Manji performs her
predictable pre-programmed
attack routine, observing contemptuously,
Mazen Asbahi has
just resigned. I can't say I'm disheartened.
He'd been embraced
by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs
Council and the Islamic
Society of North America, renowned for their
conservative
politics and moderate double-speak.
Writing a piece occasioned by attacks on one
Muslim, Manji
manages to magnify the insult by attacking
thousands of other
Muslims.
According to her politics, anyone who does not
dance to the
detonation of cluster bombs is already suspect.
So her invective
aimed at groups representing thousands of
American Muslims,
which she never bothers to back up with
arguments, is
understandable.
Not yet satisfied with herself, she goes on to
pant about most
American Muslims being stuck in a 7th century -
or perhaps 10th
century, depending on her mood - time warp.
Serving as 21st
century Americas doctors, teachers, engineers,
shopkeepers, and
plant workers, Muslims have been too busy to
notice this
worrisome defect.
Concluding with a few shopworn words about
moral courage and
revolutionary ethos, Manji polishes off her
attacks on the
community by invoking vague platitudes about
Muslim reform.
This is Manjis sole gimmick: disingenuous
calls for Muslims to
move forward belied by support for those
pulling America
backward.
What does the liberal adulation of a
professional Islamophobe -
one openly adored by neoconservatives, no less
- say about the
state of American liberalism? Will liberals
come to respect and
support genuine Muslim and Arab voices, like
Zogby and countless
unrecognized figures? Or will they continue to
lazily rely on
self-professed stand-ins like Irshad Manji?
If liberalism persists on its present path, it
will not only
alienate a targeted community in America but
pave the way for
further persecution.
Perfectly illustrating this point is The New
York Times fawning
characterization of Manji as Osama bin Ladens
worst
nightmare. This is very far from the truth.
For years, many Muslim and non-Muslim voices
have said bin
Ladens ideology is a freak phenomenon,
fashioned in the
ghoulish laboratory of Cold War politics and
fed on a steady
diet of American Israeli assaults in the
Middle East. At odds
with more than 1,300 years of Muslim thought
and history, these
voices have insisted, bin Laden is a perversion
of genuine
Islam.
But Manji argues the opposite: bin Laden is a
genuine product of
Islam, which is itself perverted. Osama, we
will recall, is for
Manji the new Muhammad.
In showering attention and accolades on Manji,
many liberals
thus validate and promote the idea that
extremist Islam is Islam
itself. Could bin Laden dream of a greater
gift? Could the
neoconservatives?
Perhaps liberals find Manjis message appealing
because
ascribing extremism to some innate feature of
Islam disappears
from view the consequences of American foreign
policy. Invasion
and occupation disappear. Torture and abuse
disappear. Corpses
of slaughtered civilians and carrions of
neutralized nations
disappear.
The desire to own a clear conscience, even one
obtained through
the muddiest logic, should never be
underestimated.
There may be other answers: a fear of
questioning the dominant
narrative; of criticizing Israel; of
discovering Islamic
perspectives; of engaging the Other, who is
often harangued but
rarely heard.
Whatever the reason, American liberals would do
well to stop
glorifying anti-Muslim celebrities and start
building
relationships with honest Arab and Muslim
voices.
We are waiting.
M. Junaid Levesque-Alam blogs about America and
Islam at
Crossing the Crescent (
http://www.crossingthecrescent.com ) and writes
about
American Muslim identity for WireTap magazine.
Co-founder of
Left Hook, a youth journal that ran from Nov.
2003 to March
2006, he works as a communications coordinator
for an
anti-domestic violence agency in the NYC area.
He can be reached
at: junaidalam1 AT gmail.com
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Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny.
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