Common Ground

[dreamer_easy]

With my deadline passed, I've returned to Waleed Aly's stimulatin' book People Like Us. (Life is busy. If your time is limited, read the chapter "Women as a Battlefield".) These online dust-ups are such a terrific excuse opportunity to borrow far too many library books learn stuff. :)

As you know, my goal in these postings is to disagree respectfully with Elizabeth Moon's posting about Park51. Now, it's a long posting, and Ms Moon spends the first part of it setting out her ideas about good citizenship - stuff which many of us will agree with; it's the second part that's problematic. But as I've gobbled data, I've repeatedly come across Muslim commentators agreeing with some of the things she says in the second bit - or at least expressing similar views.

For example, Ms Moon stated:

"A group must grasp that if its non-immigrant members somewhere else are causing people a lot of grief (hijacking planes and cruise ships, blowing up embassies, etc.) it is going to have a harder row to hoe for awhile, and it would be prudent (another citizenly virtue) to a) speak out against such things without making excuses for them and b) otherwise avoid doing those things likely to cause offence."

Well, there are plenty of things in that sentence that I would argue don't really add up. But Waleed Aly is also criticial of

"...the seemingly incurable tendency, with several notable exceptions, for Muslim condemnations of terrorism to be expressed in conditional language. Certainly terrorism is to be condemned, but not without using the opportunity to make a political point or two about the war in Iraq... Muslim spokespeople who pursue this discourse only hours after a terrorist attack, in the raw aftermath of the killing, are blissfully unaware of how their words sound to their audience." (pp 45-46)

Muslims living in the West are surrounded by hostility. In large part, this is thanks to bullshit (ranging from uninformed nonsense to lies) from politicians, the media, and the pulpit. Aly and others argue that some Muslim commentators have also added fuel to the fire. But should Muslims be expected to assuage the baseless fears and prejudices of their fellow American or Australian citizens?

I'd argue that no, it's their neighbours' responsibility. But some Muslims would say yes - at least to some degree. For example, in the short documentary White, Welsh and Muslim, Omer Williams (who wonderfully describes his beard as his 'furry hijab') says:

"I've met some Muslims with beards two, three times longer than mine, and they're awful. Obnoxious and rude. And I'm thinking, no, looking as Muslim as you do, you should be even more careful, because you're ambassadors."

Williams himself, as a white convert with "one foot in each camp", feels "the weight of the world on his shoulders".

I doubt Aly or Williams would find much to agree with in Ms Moon's posting (tbh I'm sure they'd be infuriated by it); but for me, it's encouraging that there is some common ground.

Damn it, I've been trying to come up with a brilliant closing line to sum it all up for about fifteen minutes. You'll have to write one yourself.

ETA: After a good night's sleep, my point is more obvious to me. :) Plenty of people share Ms Moon's views. How might we persuade them to change their minds? One way is by providing facts which counter mistaken beliefs and assumptions; and another is by addressing legitimate grievances. Plus, acknowledging that Ms Moon's posting is a curate's egg is a step in the direction of a nuanced debate that looks for solutions, rather than a slanging match between sides.

ETA: Found comments from a chap railing against his fellow American Muslims for not isolating themselves - and yet who also says: "If people view us as foreigners, it's not because everybody is an evil racist. It's because sometimes we're presenting ourselves that way. We have to look at ourselves with a critical eye!"

Comments

[brendan-moody.livejournal.com]

But should Muslims, and so on be expected to assuage the baseless fears and prejudices of their fellow American or Australian citizens?

I've recently been looking through Adolph Reed's essay collection Class Notes, and came across this paragraph on black anti-Semitism:

"Black anti-Semitism's specific resonance stems from its man-bites-dog quality. Black Americans are associated in the public realm with opposition to racial prejudice, so the appearance of bigotry among them seems newsworthy. But that newsworthiness also depends on a particular kind of racial stereotyping, the notion that, on some level, all black people think with one mind. Ralph Ellison complained most eloquently about white Americans' general refusal to recognize black individuality. Charles Rangel put the problem succinctly: When approached to declare himself on Khalid Muhammad, he complained that he was tired of being called on to denounce people he'd never even heard of. Any black anti-Semite is seen not as an individual but as a barometer of the black collective mind; belief in Blackantisemitism [Reed's label for the notion of a unique and particularly virulent black form of anti-Semitism], therefore, is itself a form of racialist thinking." (pp. 34-5)

Looking at this in the context of the present debate, I think it might be more useful to suggest that such thinking is racialist in effect but not in origin, rooted instead in the human tendency to imagine any opposing group as having a collective mind. A third example of this tendency might be the perceived need for the American Tea Party movement to do more to denounce racism among its supporters, though of course one shouldn't necessarily push a comparison among religious, racial/ethnic, and political groups too far.

I worry that such calls for denunciation, whatever the intentions with which they're made, subtly insinuate that members of such groups can never do enough to "prove" that they're worthy of equality. There will always be something that they don't denounce, or don't denounce quickly enough or passionately enough. It's hard enough being responsible for our own opinions; can we really ask people to take on those of others who are vaguely comparable to them in some way?

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

"Charles Rangel put the problem succinctly: When approached to declare himself on Khalid Muhammad, he complained that he was tired of being called on to denounce people he'd never even heard of."

Bwa!

I remember debates (such as they were) in Usenet back in the 90s often revolved around picking some outrageous feminist statement (real, distorted, or entirely imaginary) and berating online feminists with their "failure to condemn" it. That tactic relies on characterising feminism as monolithic - while knowing perfectly well that it isn't, and so trying to drive a wedge between its many different streams.

Aly repeatedly points out how Westerners project stuff from their own history onto Islam, only producing confusion. I wonder if one of these projections is a perception that Islam is like, say, the Catholic Church - a hierarchical organisation with official views. That could contribute to the tendency to say that Islam itself is the problem, and to conflate its many branches and interpretations into a sort of violent blur.

IMHO denouncing a crime or a hateful statement should be a message to the people responsible for that crime or statement ("You do not have my support"), not message to everybody else ("See how nice and acceptable I am?" or "Yes, but..."). Aly describes it as fearlessly saying who you are.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

have you read Ziauddin Sardar's book Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim? Very engaging book about the difficulties in reconciling a Western, sceptical, academic, liberal background with Islam, and the various problems within the Islamic world he sees from that perspective. Well worth a read.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I spotted that the other day in the local library! Will peruse. Thanks!