Muslim Heretics Conference

By Mona Eltahawy

NEW YORK — A woman wrote to me recently to ask “how can a non-Muslim EVER trust the word of a Muslim.” She said she “knew it is ok for all Muslims to lie to infidels” and, just for good measure, informed me that being a Muslim was incompatible with being an American because “the ultimate goal of Muslims (or you are not a true Muslim) is to have Sharia in the U.S.”

“Please don’t argue that point,” she wrote. “I’ve read too many commentaries from the Arab world. The way to take America is from the inside.”

Well, then. Nothing there for me to add. Even if I wrote back, what’s to guarantee my response wouldn’t be just another lie to an “infidel”?

Welcome to the Catch-22 of American Muslim life — you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It is quite apparent today for the American Muslim supporters of Barack Obama — the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and a Christian who has been ‘accused’ of being Muslim.

For Jenan Mohajir, a program associate at Interfaith Youth Core — a Chicago-based international nonprofit — a conversation in October 2006 on a liberal campus in the Midwest was a lesson in what it was like to be an American Muslim supporter of Obama.

“I was at a lunch meeting with the campus rabbi when one of the women’s studies professors walked up to us. She primarily was in conversation with the rabbi about Barack Obama’s aspirations to run for the 08’ election,” Jenan told me in an email.

“Then she turned to me and said, ‘I’m sorry for YOUR loss, but America isn’t ready for a Muslim president,’ At which point, I was so shocked, that I could only reply with, ‘Barack Obama isn’t Muslim.’”

That professor is not alone — her misconception is alive today. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 12 percent of respondents believe Obama is Muslim.

Obama’s father was a Kenyan of Muslim ancestry and an atheist. Barack spent several years as a child in Indonesia — the world’s most populous Muslim country — with his American mother and her Indonesian husband. His African roots and his Indonesia years were common themes during Obama’s earlier campaigning when he wanted to illustrate the bridge he could build between a post-Bush America and the world it has alienated.

So how did Obama go from there to the rally in Detroit last June, when an overzealous staffer moved two Muslim women from directly behind him to keep women with headscarves out of a photo-op? Obama called the women to apologize and issued a statement that the actions were unacceptable and did not reflect his campaign.

But then in early August, Obama’s national Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after the Wall Street Journal asked questions about his alleged connections to a man named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a racketeering trial last year of fund-raisers allegedly for Hamas.

And it is difficult to ignore the childish but effective conservative and right wing chain emails and the chorus of inflammatory blog entries singing the tune “Obama sounds an awful lot like Osama” (of Bin Laden fame) aimed at eroding the steel of Obama’s bid for president.

The “smearing” was not confined to Obama’s Republican opponents and their racist allies. As reported in September’s The Atlantic Magazine, Mark Penn, former strategist to Hillary Clinton, suggested she “go negative” on Obama in 2007 — painting him as too foreign and exotic to lead America at war.

She did not heed the advice but her campaign did leak photographs of Barack wearing traditional Somali garb — a subtle but calculated message.

So what to do if you’re an American Muslim to overcome dismay at seeing your faith being used as a toxic catapult?

American Muslims are learning that in post-9/11 America, they must become more involved at every level of the country’s political process, and not least so that there’s always someone to say “So what if he’s Muslim?” whenever Obama is “smeared.”

More American Muslims are registering to vote and turning out at party conventions where they remind both Democrats and Republicans that many of their communities are concentrated in important swing states.

This week, the first ever American Muslim Democratic Caucus, launched in Denver at the Democrats’ convention, is especially encouraging. Besides showcasing the party’s Muslim delegates who turned out in Denver, the caucus launch was co-hosted by the two Muslim members of Congress, Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN), neither of whom campaigned on a Muslim platform but both of whom are role models for aspiring American Muslim politicians.

And what of all the American Muslim Obama supporters? Jenan Mohajir eloquently sums up the lessons they’ve learned. “I realized that perhaps it was better for me to be not vocal,” Jenan said. “I don’t think the rumors about him being a Muslim will be quenched if I stood on rooftops with my hot pink hijab screaming, ‘Obama’s not a Muslim! Obama’s not a Muslim!’

“So I’ve taken a quieter approach, and I’ve decided that the best I can do for Obama is to wear my brightly-colored hijab and drive my mother to the polls so that she can place her first vote in an American election. I’ll be voting too of course!”

Copyright ©2008 Mona Eltahawy – distributed by Agence Global

Mona Eltahawy Blog » Archives » American-Muslim Catch 22

As the recent case in Manchester shows, child cruelty is wrong, but for us the practice is a vital link to the heart of our Muslim faith

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• Nadeem Kazmi
• guardian.co.uk,
• Thursday August 28 2008 12:30 BST
• Article history

I was disheartened to read about the trial of Syed Mustafa Zaidi, a 44-year-old man who has been found guilty of forcing two young boys to engage in self-flagellation (also known zanjeer zani), the ritualistic act of self-flagellation that has been part of Shia Muslim practice for centuries.

In 2003, I was consulted by Scotland Yard on this issue (though not on this specific case). A letter, signed by a leading Shia cleric, was issued as a general circular at the time which advised that, while engaging in rituals that may result in self-harm was a matter for individuals, there were health, child-safety and legal implications that people should be mindful of. It also clearly discouraged children being asked to take part in “any activity that could subject them to physical harm”.

There are elements of the Zaidi case that will sound familiar to those who grew up in a Punjabi Shia household. There is nothing odd in the father of the household engaging in this particular practice. But I have personally never seen anybody coerced into it, although coercion can, admittedly, take many indirect forms. There is also nothing strange in seeing participants who, immersed in what appears to be a spiritual ecstasy, are made to calm down, often to prevent further injury to themselves.

It strikes me that, though Zaidi’s actions crossed the boundaries of what is acceptable, the danger of this case is that the ritual of self-flagellation itself is demonised. Those adults who engage in self-flagellation with knives, chains or blades, do so with a consciousness of the ceremonial nature of the act, keenly watched by onlookers, children and adults alike, who, though they have seen it all before, continue to be mesmerised by the sheer spectacle of it – the display. This excitement is, for most, mixed with an actual sense of profound identification with the suffering of Imam Hussain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Islamic history tells us that Hussain, a venerated saint in Shism, stood up to the tyrant of the day, Yazid, 14 centuries ago in order to save Islam and humanity from despotism and oppression, and to make the ultimate point about justice. During the 10-day siege, Hussain’s camp suffered unimaginable trials and tribulations, which, to many Muslims, not just Shias, has no equal.
Hussain was beheaded and his body mutilated and the few among his followers who survived were humiliatingly made to march on foot to the palace of Yazid in Damascus, where they were imprisoned: many of them died. It is said that bystanders along the route, realising what had happened, began to beat themselves and weep. This event is regarded as the beginnings of the self-flagellation rituals that we see today among Shia Muslims.
Even though I grew up in a Shia household that was fairly well-versed in an understanding of Islam, I have nevertheless always been fascinated by what devotion to Hussain means for those who participate in the various rituals that occur around the annual muharram remembrance ceremonies. Hence a few years ago I embarked on a journey that led me to make Ten Days, a documentary film that tries to capture the essence of these devotional practices among Punjabi Shia Muslims in Pakistan.
The experience of making the film taught me that Hussain’s tragedy will continue to resonate, not only because of what his martyrdom symbolises in the struggle of right against might (the struggle to renounce violence, despotism and tyranny through physical sacrifice), but also because, in an age where Muslim communities appear to be in a state of flux, it is this very sacrifice of Hussain that, paradoxically, provides an antithesis to extremism and violence. How? Because it gives a powerful sense of meaningful identification to those, especially among the younger generations, who see beyond the self-inflicted scars and the rituals themselves, and who in some way try and comprehend the significance of it all. The point about the apparent extreme self-violence is that extremism and violence in and of themselves are condemnable. Thus, without the essential dramatic immediacy that the practice conveys to both participant as well as audience, the rituals that comprise the passion of Hussain would be rendered meaningless.

It is possible that those few parents who encourage their children to participate in acts of self-flagellation see nothing wrong in encouraging children to understand the power of their faith through identification with the suffering figure of Hussain. Taking a decision to involve children in a ritual that might harm them, is, of course, wrong, as the Shia clerics such as Ayatollah Fadhil Milani, Maulana Zafar Abbas and others made clear. Harm to children would be against the sharia and the directives of Shia Muslim scholars in the UK. We must not allow our actions borne out of a “passion for faith” and an expression of one’s own personal piety, to spill over into the lives of others, especially if we are responsible for them as parents.

But it would be unjust if the Zaidi case were to poison the wider public’s view of a ritual that commemorates a death that, like the Christian concept of the crucifixion of Christ, is seen as the epitome of sacrifice for humanity, and the triumph of good over evil.

Nadeem Kazmi: Why self-flagellation matters for Shia Muslims | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The parameters have shifted: the rise of political Islam means feminism must now use the language of religion. Can it survive?

• 
• Faisal al Yafai
• guardian.co.uk,
• Thursday August 28 2008 10:00 BST

Two years ago, Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, Syria’s minister of expatriates, gave a speech in Damascus about the role of women. She recalled a story about an Arab woman who toured the United States in the 19th century, trying to persuade Americans to liberate their women, to allow them to move out of the home and into the workplace. How times have changed. (Although perhaps not that much: one is still lecturing the other.)

Shaaban, better known to western audiences as a regular voice for the Assad government on English television networks, is one of the Arab world’s most prominent feminists. She will be one of the keynote speakers at this year’s International Congress on Islamic Feminism in Barcelona, along with Britain’s Baroness Uddin and the American professor Amina Wadud, who gained notoriety when she led a mixed gender prayer group in New York.

Even in this one conference, one can see the threads of dissent among feminists in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Some, like Shaaban, come from a secular perspective, whereas Wadud looks to Islamic principles for her feminism. Both, however, use the language and example of Islam – and that has been their downfall.

Those feminists who come out of a more secular tradition tend to emphasise individual empowerment as a societal good. Thus traditional routes to gender equality – education, work and laws – are acclaimed because they allow societies to progress. In her speech, Shaaban quoted Syria’s former president Hafez Al Assad saying: “A society must not work with half its members, but must rather work with full power and all its members.”

But those days of appeals to patriotic ideals – as happened in the heyday of Egyptian feminism, in the 1950s – are gone. Today the appeal is made to Islamic ideals. When the doyen of secular Arab feminism, the writer Nawal El Saadawi says that “Women who wear the veil and say they choose to do so are either lying or ignorant” – at a time when Arab women across the region are reclaiming it as their right, it is clear the parameters have shifted. Take a walk through the urban centres of Cairo or Damascus – or even Beirut – and it is clear that those days of mini-skirts on every corner in the 1970s (as almost everyone in those cities seems to remember) are gone. There is a new reality in the region.

That reality is Islam. The rise of political Islam has affected even feminism. The Islamic feminists have a more individualistic model. For them, gender equality and empowerment is more a factor of being a good Muslim, of living an ideal Islamic life.

Wadud – like two other feminists, the US academic Margot Badran and the Moroccan doctor and writer Asma Lamrabet, both of whom will be at the conference – argue that the codification of Islamic law that took place during the 9th century drew heavily on patriarchal traditions of the day and thus, perhaps unwittingly, watered down the clear principles of equality they believe are found in the Qur’an. They aim their efforts at reinterpreting the religious texts.

Secular feminists, conscious of the way the language of Islam has permeated the Middle East, have tended to try and articulate their ideas of gender equality in Islamic terms (by, for instance, pointing out the wives of Islam’s founder were businesswomen and army commanders). The problem, however, is that that language of Islam, or religious reform, has been so totally appropriated by political Islam, that even when feminists who begin from a secular point of view use it, it sounds religious. When Islamic feminists use it, they are playing on the Islamists pitch, with an immediate disadvantage.

Take the burning of women’s schools in Pakistan (and Afghanistan). The now-resurgent Taliban say they are doing this because Islamic law forbids women’s education; the Islamic feminists reply that in fact education is a religious duty. It becomes a theological argument. Remember who wins theological arguments? The side with the most guns.

There is a way back. Feminism in the Arab and Islamic worlds, like feminism in the west, is struggling to find ways to remain relevant to a new generation. In the west, feminism’s trajectory was derailed from its early successes by increased freedom, legislation and materialism. There is a strong sense among women that feminism – as it is usually understood – no longer provides answers. It doesn’t even provide the right questions.

There is something of that, too, in the Islamic worlds. Feminism seems like a luxury, and a decadent one at that, unable to provide answers to pressing questions such as political reform, the end of foreign occupations, and the rise of political Islam. Worse, much feminism, in its haste to show how its ideas have Arab and Muslim roots – and are not just western imports, as their detractors charge – has looked too much to the past: to Islamic history, to Arab writers, to more open times. But feminists, of whatever stripe, need to show how their ideas can solve the problems that Jordanian and Indonesian and African and European women experience today. The problems of poverty, of education, of discriminatory laws. They need to show, for example, how better laws, and not more religion, can provide a solution to sexual harassment and violence in the region (a topic I will be writing about in a subsequent piece). Until then, they will always be talking the Islamists’ language – and not even speaking it well

Faisal al Yafai: Translating feminism into Islam | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk