Manufactured hatred

What I first took to be a storm in a tea cup ended up turning into anything but. Even more than the tragedy of September 11, the current mosque controversy will, I think, define for a generation what it means to be an American Muslim. While I'm not an American myself, my wife is American and Muslim, and so, like millions of others, I have a stake in this issue.

What shocks me more than anything about the mosque debate is that being a Muslim in the US is not as "normal" as I once took it to be. After all, I lived in the US for about five years, both in the Midwest and on the East Coast, both before and after September 11. My faith was pretty much never an issue in any of my dealings with non-Muslim Americans. The sense I got from my stay there was that, unlike the current climate in Western Europe, where being a Muslim automatically places you in the "dodgy" category for a large chunk of the population, in the United States you are judged more by your individual actions than any group identity (barring race, but that's not really the subject here). Well, that was then. Reading about the vitriol that surrounds the Park51 project has made me think again.

A Time poll shows a rather disheartening picture of Americans' attitudes about their Muslim compatriots. Only 55% of the people surveyed believe that most American Muslims are patriotic. Yes, that is a majority, but quite a slim one. Again, 55% would agree to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood. That means that we should be prepared for a slew of anti-mosque protests around the US from the 45% who disagree -- the kind of protests we've already been seeing in California, Tennessee and Wisconsin. It gets worse, though: around 30% of Americans think that Muslims should be prevented from occupying the post of president or Supreme Court judge. Only 44% say that they have a favourable attitude towards Muslims. What do you make of numbers like that? I'm not alone in making comparisons between the current American wave of Islamophobia and older, more ingrained European Islamophobia.

Politicians from both major US parties have been falling over each other in making outrageously Islamophobic remarks, the most infamous, of course, being Newt Gingrich's comparison of Muslims to Nazis. If Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is currently touring the Middle East on behalf of the State Department, is a "radical Islamist", as Gingrich claims, then which Muslim is not?

Some media players have not been much better. In particular, News Corporation, which owns the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News (among many other media outlets) unleashed the whole furore in the first place. The New York Times, which has launched a concerted and refreshingly sane attack on the mosque rejection movement, still featured a column that accused American Muslims of supporting "illiberal causes", and an article by the editor of National Review Online, who claimed that Park51 was "a Hamas-endorsed Islamic center". This is one example of the kind of demagoguery that has surrounded the issue. Yes, Hamas has "endorsed" the mosque, while "endorsing" churches and synagogues in the same breath. So are the Sarah Palins of this world going to "refudiate" churches next?

The pleasantly surprising part in all this has been that, as Maureen Dowd has pointed out, some of the most spirited defence for Park51 has come from Republicans, namely Michael Bloomberg and Chris Christie. Now Ron Paul has joined this group, issuing one of the most lucid statements that has yet been made in favour of building Park51. It is a sad thought, though, that Ron Paul, of all people, offers more hope on the issue than Barack Obama does.

So there's some hope here that even right-wing Americans will come to their senses. Newsweek suggests that the issue will go away after the primaries. Perhaps it will. But it certainly leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth, one which may linger for years to come. Perhaps one day Muslims will be praised for revitalising Park Place by building Park51 (some are doing so already). But rebuilding a secure place for Muslims in American society will most likely take far longer.

Netanyahu seeking Christian Zionist support

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is once again courting the Christian Zionists, that is, Evangelicals who believe that Israeli control over all of Biblical Palestine is necessary for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) to occur.

As M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum notes, Barack Obama is far more popular among Jewish Americans than Bibi Netanyahu is. Most American Jews are liberals who support the Democratic Party; Bibi is much more at ease with the Republicans, many of whom share his disdain for the two-state solution. Hence his appearance at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference, recently held in Washington.

The conference was organised by Netanyahu's friend of convenience Pastor John Hagee, who had infamously declared that God had sent the Holocaust to force the Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

As an aside, the official CUFI website, as seen today, states that "There is a new Hitler in the Middle East--President Ahmadinejad of Iran". This, of course, nicely matches Bibi's own stance on Ahmadinejad. The CUFI seems unashamed to say this, despite the obvious and sickening monstrosity of such a statement, given that the lives of Iranian Jews are in no danger, and that Iran, despite the faults of its government, bears no similarity to Nazi Germany.

In a fine example of his usual truthiness, Netanyahu said, addressing the CUFI, that "millions of Christians stand for Israel because they want to see genuine peace in the Holy Land." See, that may be true for some Christians, but Bibi knows better than anyone that the particular Christians he was addressing support Israel for one main reason: they want to hasten the End Days. Besides, by "genuine peace", Bibi obviously understands something akin to the Pirate Code: "Take everything. Give nothing back."

In any case, according to Rosenberg, all this posturing by Netanyahu will amount to nothing, since the Christian Zionists he is aligning himself with are already committed Republicans; they are likely to oppose Obama no matter what he does. Rosenberg believes that, to make a difference in US public opinion towards Obama's policy on Israel and Palestine, Bibi needs to win over Jewish Americans. And that just isn't likely to happen.

Meanwhile, ignoring this sideshow, Obama is in pursuit of some real Middle Eastern diplomacy. You go, Barack.

[This post was written in Istanbul.]

Wait until they find out Obama is a Christian, says "scholar"

In a piece of wacky logic and the worst example of Orientalism I've ever seen in the New York Times, Edward Luttwak, a fellow with the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), has claimed that, if Muslims found out that Barack Obama "chose to become a Christian", they would try to kill him. According to Luttwak, the hope among many Americans that a victory by Obama in the general election would improve American relations with the Islamic world is "a mistake".

Luttwak disingenuously calls Obama "the son of the Muslim father" (sic), while Obama has written that his father had become an atheist before marrying Barack's mother. In Luttwak's words, this fact "makes no difference". But according to whom? Which Islamic scholar would say that a child born to an atheist father and an agnostic mother must practice Islam when he has grown up? Can Luttwack cite even one such scholar?

Further, Luttwak argues that "under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother's Christian background is irrelevant." This statement, I'm afraid, is a simple case of deception. There is nothing in the Qur'an about punishing apostates, so Luttwak strategically employs the words "based on". Secondly, I lived in Kuwait when a Kuwaiti Muslim converted to Christianity, changed his name to Robert Qambar, and was declared an apostate by conservative Kuwaiti Muslim groups. He fled to the US despite assurances of government protection, but eventually came back with his Christian wife and reconverted to Islam. During the discussion sparked by the case, it was said in the Kuwaiti media that the apostasy law does not apply to people born of at least one non-Muslim parent. In that case, how would they apply to someone born of one ex-Muslim and one non-Muslim parent?

More importantly, the entire premise of Luttwak's article is based on what may be charitably called a false assumption, and less charitably called a lie. He says "that most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known". As my wife, an American Muslim, said when she heard this, "it's not like Muslims live in a hole". I think most Muslims already know that Obama is a Christian. Hundreds of millions of Muslims speak English, and can follow the debates and discussions surrounding the race for the American presidency in the original language. Non-English-language media worldwide are also discussing Obama. All the fellow-Muslims I've spoken to about Obama support him and wish him well, without exception. Each one knows that he is a Christian.

Luttwak attempts to paint "most citizens of the Islamic world" as ignorant, irrational bigots. I am encouraged by the dozens of comments his article has generated on the New York Times website, almost all of which say that his argument is ridiculous. The amount of goodwill that has already been generated for Obama in the Muslim world is very considerable. Islam stands for justice, fairness, dignity, truth and peace. These are values that Obama espouses as well. It is these values that Muslims, like anyone else, want to see in a presidential candidate, especially one who is running for the leadership of the most powerful country in the world. So if Obama wins the election and then acts on these values of his, I think the United States will find millions of new Muslim friends around the world.

Govt-Hizbullah clashes break out in Lebanon

After years of peaceful confrontation, the standoff between the pro-Western Lebanese government and Hizbullah has turned violent. When the government sent in the Lebanese army to dismantle a phone network operated by Hizbullah, the militant movement decided to fight back.

According to the head of Hizbullah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, "This decision was a declaration of war and the start of war on the resistance and its weapons. Our response to this decision is that whoever declares or starts a war, be it a brother or a father, then it is our right to defend ourselves and our existence." However, Nasrallah said that his movement would stop fighting if the army withdrew from the streets.

There is a danger of the armed conflict spilling over into mixed Sunni-Shi'ite neighbourhoods in Beirut. In one such neighbourhood, Sunnis chanted "God is with the Sunnis," while Shi'ites responded with the words "The Shi'ite blood is boiling". Lebanese army soldiers acted as a barrier between the two sides.

This may be the closest Lebanon has come to a new civil war since the last one ended in 1990 (New York Times).

Let's hope it blows over. I think Hizbullah should know that the support it enjoys among Sunni Arabs would evaporate were it to start a real civil war against the government. I don't think it can afford to risk that.

Muslim teacher in NY loses job because of hate campaign

Debbie Almontaser, a Yemeni-American teacher who led the drive to set up a new public school in New York called Khalil Gibran International Academy, was forced to resign her position as principal before the school opened its doors to new students. The reason was a campaign of Islamophobia unleashed by a group that called itself the "Stop the Madrassa Coalition". The group was, in some ways, orchestrated by the Islam basher Daniel Pipes.

The school's mission was to teach Arabic as a foreign language. Almontaser's plan was to have a student body that would be half Arab-American. In all other respects, the Gibran Academy was to be a regular New York public high school. Moreover, in its emphasis in Arabic, the school was similar to dozens of other schools in New York that stress a particular language, such as Spanish or Russian.

The campaign against the Gibran Academy (named after a Lebanese Christian poet) broke out when Pipes wrote an op-ed in the New York Sun, in which he argued that "Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage." He also called the planned school a "madrassa", which is simply the Arabic word for "school" but, as Pipes knows very well, means an "Islamic seminary" in English. More recently, Pipes has admitted that his use of the word "madrassa" was "a bit of a stretch" and a tool he used to "get attention".

Attention he did get: a group of people, including Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee at City University of New York, gathered around Pipes, and formed the above-mentioned coalition. Having very little information about the planned school to go on, the Coalition to Stop the Madrassa dug into Almontaser's past and her personal activities, and used the information obtained to smear her online and in the media. What motivated them was a desire to stop what Wiesenfeld referred to as "soft jihad", that is, the promotion of "radical Islam", in Pipes's words, through "the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like". In other words, the mere teaching of Arabic was construed by the group as equivalent to the promotion of "radical Islam".

What helped the Coalition clinch its case was an interview with the New York Post, in which Almontaser explained that the word "intifada" meant "a shaking off". She was asked about the shirts because some teenaged members of an Arab-American women's group she belonged to had been seen selling T-shirts that said "Intifada NYC" on them. The Post misquoted Almontaser as saying that the girls selling the T-shirts had been "shaking off oppression".

That was too much for the city's Education Department to bear, and Almontaser was asked to resign by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, who added that she had until 8:00 am the next day to resign, because Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted to announce her resignation "on his radio show". Almontaser resigned, but filed a lawsuit to try to get her job back. A panel of federal judges has recently ruled that the New York Post has misreported the comments she had made to the paper.

The school did open under the direction of a different principal, Danielle Salzberg, who does not speak Arabic and soon made a name for herself with her authoritarian methods. Meanwhile, Almontaser has been assigned to a school inspection job, and has been allowed to keep her principal's pay of US $120,000 (Canadian $121,722) per year. The Coalition to Stop the Madrassa, for its part, continues to protest against the existence of the school (New York Times).

Gülen schools promote moderate Islam in Pakistan

The Fethullah Gülen movement, led by a Turkish neo-Sufi, has been gaining international prominence in recent years due to its promotion of interfaith dialogue and moderate, apolitical Islamic practice. Apart from dialogue meetings with representatives of other religions, such as priests and rabbis, one of the movement's main activities is a network of schools that now covers over 80 countries.

The Gülen movement now has seven schools in Pakistan, where they are becoming increasingly popular with parents because of the way they promote Islam without preaching intolerance. Only one official, government-approved course on Islam is taught at the Gülen schools in Pakistan. However, the teachers encourage the practice of Islam in the student dormitories, and themselves act as an example of peaceful, practising Muslims. This is an approach that large numbers of Pakistani parents have been receptive to, given their frustrations with collapsing government-run schools, private Western-style schools that do not adequately teach Islam, and Islamic seminaries that are often tied (at least on the level of perception) with intolerance or even violence (New York Times).

I wonder how the recently opened Gülen school in Montréal is doing.

Police role questioned in tragic Kolkata marriage

Last September, a Muslim man named Rizwanur Rahman, 29, was found dead on the railway tracks in Kolkata. His death, attributed by the police to suicide and by his family to murder, ended a marriage that was not wanted by his in-laws and, more controvercially, the Kolkata police.

Rahman's widow, Priyanka Todi, 23, is a Hindu and, moreover, from a wealthy family. Rahman, on the other hand, lived with the rest of his family in a two-room apartment, and that is where he brought his new wife when they got married in August. The bride had prepared herself for the move by forgoing air-conditioning for a year.

Soon after Todi moved in with Rahman and his family, the police started showing up at their apartment. Acting on behalf of Todi's father, who couldn't persuade her to go back to her family's house, the "anti-rowdy" branch of the police employed threats to get the couple to go to the police station. However, no charges were brought against them.

Finally, the police succeeded in getting Todi to go back to her parent's house, with a written guarantee that she would be able to return to her husband in a week. However, she did not return within the week, and in two weeks, Rahman died under a train.

In a press conference over the matter, Kolkata's police chief, Prasun Mukherjee, who was later transferred to a different position due to a public outcry over the matter, said that the Todi family's opposition to the marriage was "natural".

There has been loud opposition to the actions of the police in Kolkata. Whether or not Rahman took his own life, many in Kolkata think that it was money that made the police act the way they did. As a Telegraph of India editorial put it, "The police seem to feel avuncular towards a particular economic class only" (New York Times).

A sordid tale this, but the uplifting part of it (as usual) is how people from different walks of life have come together over the issue and let their voices be heard. Since when is the police supposed to be a rich dad's enforcer squad?

Interest in religion growing at US universities

Anecdotal evidence -- as well as a recent survey -- seems to indicate that a religious revival is underway at American universities and colleges. Religious studies classes are attracting more students, students are forming a large variety of religious discussion groups, and, at some universities, a growing number of students are attending religious services.

According to Peter Gomes, Harvard University's preacher, "there is probably more active religious life [at Harvard] now than there has been in 100 years." (New York Times).

I witnessed some of this revival at Grinnell College in Iowa between 1999 and 2003, which had a number of active religious groups on campus, and hosted such diverse activities as Islamic Friday prayers, Shabbat services, and pagan worship ceremonies. It's nice to see this sort of openness to religion spreading around the US.

Iraq strengthens trade ties with Iran

Iran is accounting for an ever-increasing share of Iraq's foreign trade. According to Sami al-Askari, a Shi'ite Iraqi MP and advisor to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the more suspicious Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbours become of the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, the closer Iraq is driven to Iran (New York Times).

Call to ban tight animal cages

In a New York Times op-ed, Nicolette Niman, a cattle rancher and lawyer, is calling for the elimination of so-called gestation crates -- cages in which pregnant farm animals, such as sows, are confined in such cramped quarters that they can't even turn around. Niman's description of the treatment of factory-farmed pigs makes for some harrowing reading.

It makes you wonder what it would take for people to stop this sort of behaviour. There are several clear ahadith in Islam instructing us to treat animals humanely. There has to be something in the Bible on that score too. Am I wrong?