My Interview With Homeland Security

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

So since it looks like I’ll be traveling quite a bit in the foreseeable future, I thought it might be an idea to register with Homeland Security’s  trusted-traveler program and thus avoid the hassle and long lines at airport security.   Which is how come I turned up yesterday at SeaTac’s US Customs and Border Protection office for my interview.

I did kind of wonder how it might go in light of the fact that The First Muslim has just been published.  What would Homeland Security make of this?  Should I even mention it?  Were they likely to make a biographer of Muhammad a trusted traveler, or would stereotype win the day so that the subject alone would set off alarms in the bureaucratic mind?  There was only one way to find out.

The interview didn’t start off on quite the right note.

“Sorry to hear about Margaret Thatcher’s passing,” said the Customs and Borders officer when I told him that I had a British passport as well as an American one.

“I can’t say I am,” I replied before I could bite my tongue.  “Not least because my father was a doctor in the National Health Service, which she did her best to dismantle.”

“Sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t make assumptions.”

And with that he had my interest.  I hadn’t expected that apology.

“You’re a writer?” he said.  “What do you write about?”

“Religion and politics.”  And with that I had his interest.

“Big subject!” he said.

“Which you could say is why we’re here in this office right now,” I replied.

We both smiled kind of ruefully.

He pulled up the US customs record of my travels.  “So you focus on the Middle East?”

“Of course.  It’s where all three of the major monotheisms began, and it’s where religion and politics are most intricately intertwined.”

“Isn’t that so,” he said.  “In fact that’s what I studied.”  Turns out he’d majored in Middle East history — specifically the 1920s to the 1940s. “The Brits seem to have had a lot to do with creating today’s Middle East.”

“With a little help from the French, true,” I said. “They have a lot to answer for.  As do we, especially since we went marching into Iraq with no idea of what was really happening there…”  Oh god, what was I saying to an official of the US government?

Yet he was nodding, though whether in agreement or in acknowledgment of my hopelessly liberal point of view wasn’t clear until he said:  “We all need to know much more history.”

And that was my cue.  I reached into my pocket and handed him my card — the one with the cover of The First Muslim on the front.  “This might help some,” I said.

He studied it a moment, and then: “Interesting!  Thank you.  I have to read this.”

The next thing I knew he was taking my photograph and my fingerprints (on a neat little machine glowing with green light), explaining the intricacies of how to use my newly approved trusted-traveler status, and giving me his card.

As I picked up a coffee before wandering out of the airport, it occurred to me to ask why I was surprised at how relaxed and sensible the interview had been.

Partly, I think, we’re so used to inane encounters with low-level TSA contract employees in the security lines that it’s easy to forget that there actually are intelligent people higher up the line.

Partly,  as an immigrant to the US, my experience years ago of dealing with another branch of what is now Homeland Security, namely the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had been downright Kafkaesque.  (In fact I’d have said that the INS officials I encountered then had deliberately out-Kafkaed Kafka, except that I knew they’d never even heard of him.)

And partly too, of course, there’s the Orwellian Big Brother aspect of Homeland Security — the awareness that one way or another, we are all, however innocent, under surveillance.

That may be one more thing the Brits, among others, have to answer for.

Filed under: Islam, Middle East, sanity, US politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

What Happens When We Eat Together

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Let me say this upfront:  I’m lousy at interfaith gatherings.  They tend to have an oddly stilted feel.  There’s something of Tarzan and Jane about them: “Me Jew, you Muslim, we friends.”  Far better, I’ve long thought, to get together on a small scale, over the dinner table.  Cook together, break bread together, drink together, and allow the conversation to develop without that weirdly over-determined self-consciousness.

That’s part of what so impressed me in the response of New Zealanders Khayreyah Amani Wahaab and her husband Jason Kennedy to an Islamophobic rant (Muslims shouldn’t be allowed on airplanes, etc) by Richard Prosser, a New Zealand member of parliament:  as I reported here, they invited him to dinner.

And he came to dinner.  Here’s Khayreyah’s post on it last night on her Facebook page:

Tandoori-Chicken3Mr Richard Prosser has just left our house after having a lovely dinner of home-cooked tandoori chicken, salad and roti with raitha. He was very realistic about owning the words he said, but was very clear that whilst he is never going to apologize to terrorists, he is very apologetic and contrite about the hurt and whatever damage he has caused the rest of the Muslim community. He understands, accepts and recognises that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorist types and have the same fears, values and aspirations that he does.

We both agreed that aviation security is a wider issue that does need to be addressed [Kahyreyrah has a degree in aviation management -- LH], as well as that of Muslims having a louder voice in condemning extremists and their actions. Jason and I both thanked him in the end, since if it wasn’t for his brash words written in a news column, then we would not have identified these needs, that ultimately will benefit the entirety of New Zealand. All three of us are willing to forge a way forward for Muslims in New Zealand in order to make it a happier, safer place, and leading the world in Islamic – Western relations.

Richard did say, interestingly, that of all the mail, comments etc he received from people following the article, our letter by far made him feel worse than all the others. He finds himself to be a person who can deal with anger and resentment being directed towards him but felt out of place dealing with outreach born of love and a desire for understanding. Ultimately both sides agreed that we need to see each other as a whole and not just what the media had chosen to portray, that we cannot expect fair judgement if only one facet of ourselves are exposed to said judgement. We ended the night with a short TedX video of Lesley Hazleton’s talk about being a tourist in the Quran and we promised to have future interactions with a view to improving NZ as a whole. — with Jason Kennedy

Glad to have played a small supporting role.

Filed under: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, sanity | Tagged: , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

When things seemed to be getting ever worse in the Middle East — as they always seemed to, and still do — we’d look at each other and say, wistfully, “There’s always New Zealand.”  New Zealand, for us, was the image of peacefulness, where nothing ugly ever happened.  We didn’t enquire too closely.

But of course even New Zealand has its bigots.  Like Richard Prosser, a Member of Parliament from the right-wing New Zealand First party, who two days ago published an ugly Islamophobic rant suggesting, among other things, that Muslims be banned from air travel.

So an Auckland Muslim sat down and wrote an open letter in response, and today it appeared in The New Zealand Herald.  I”m running it in full here because I’m bowled over by the wisdom and grace of it, and because it gets better and better as it goes on:

Dear Mr Prosser,

Unbeknown to myself, I am your enemy.

I consider this strange as I have never met you and harbour no ill will toward you. I am certain that if I walked past you on the street your suspicions would not be raised. If you were a customer in my shop I am certain you would not suspect that I pose your family any risk. For you see, I am Muslim, I am 30, and I am also white. Throw in the fact that I am an American expatriate – accent and all – and I possess quite the subterfuge. After all, I could sit next to you on a flight, our arms negotiating the armrest for space, and you would think nothing of it. And yet if between us the subject of religion arose, my reply would disable you with fear.

Or so your column would lead me to believe.

I am writing an open letter to you out of sympathy, respect, and the desire for understanding. I do not write this so publicly in order to give your opinions greater status than they deserve. Instead, I hope to circumvent your vitriol from tainting the views of other people who, through lack of personal experience with the Muslim community, may be susceptible to your very limited and ignorant view of our religion and families.

I will start by, ironically, providing you with some defence. It is absolutely your right to speak your mind freely with whatever opinions you so wish. That is one of the great liberties of this nation.

But let me be clear: speaking your mind is your right as a private citizen. As a Member of Parliament, you are a public servant, and your public opinions need to be more carefully delivered. You must be aware that the words of MPs are granted greater political legitimacy than those of private citizens.

It is frightening when someone with so much power to sway the opinions of others is so cavalier in his delivery. We entrust MPs to make defensible, rational, and sympathetic judgments in pursuit of the common good. Counter to this, your words seek to generate divisiveness by fostering an indefensible ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality.

Do you actually believe Muslims are so different to you that we should be trusted less than any other human being? Wherefore this presumption that those who commit terrible crimes in the name of Islam are actually considered heroes or true Muslims by the rest of us? Are we really so homologous to you? Woe to the Sikh or Hindu who you might accidentally recognise for a Muslim in your eagerness to incite fear, all the while I, the unrecognisable white Muslim, sits next to you.

For you see, if the subject of religion is never broached between us, you will feel safer the entire trip knowing you sit next to a safe and reliable Pakeha. Let me assure you, I want that plane to land safely just as much as you do. I have family and friends who I want to be around for a good long time, and so do they.

The only reason I can think that you would harbour such ill-sentiment is that you have very little first-hand experience with Muslims. I can relate. I was not born into a Muslim family. However, with age I came to recognise my beliefs were congruent with Islam. That seemed a bit of a scary prospect, as I am sure you can appreciate that there is a great deal of Islamophobia in the United States, as well.

Once I actually met some Kiwi Muslims, I quickly realised my presumptions were entirely inaccurate. Muslim culture is not some monolithic fiction. Muslims are just like the majority of Kiwis: we love our summer barbecues, we avidly follow the All Blacks’ domination of rugby, we wear jandals, we buy fish n’ chips down the road. You see, Muslims come from all different backgrounds. I was born in the US and descend from Irish stock. My wife was born in Fiji, and her Indian ancestors were relocated during the British slave trade. Many Kiwi Muslims are from India, the Middle East, east Africa, Indonesia, and Malaysia. We have all come here to share in what it means to be Kiwi. Between us we have a similar pathway to God, but we also respect that every non-Muslim is on their own pathway to God.

Your family and my family, we are each equally Kiwi, despite the fact that we may worship differently. We are equal to you in many other ways: my wife and I both happily pay the highest tax rate, our business creates revenue and employment for many New Zealanders, and our education benefits the New Zealand economy. We are even socially and politically active (gasp!).

If you think supporting terror is somehow intrinsic to Islam, or is somehow an inevitability of our religion, ask anyone in the Muslim community here: no one supports any act of violence or terror against any other living being, human or animal. That is what we call haram in Islam, which means “forbidden by God”. We have no support for terrorists who do such horrible things, and we cannot understand how they can call themselves Muslims. Their actions are entirely incompatible with Islam.

In order to establish better communication on this issue, my wife and I would like to invite you to dinner at our place the next time you are in Auckland. We would like to hear your story, and we would like to share ours. I believe that if you would grant us the pleasure of your company, it will give you a much more enlightened perspective on Muslims and Islam in general. I will leave my contact details with the editor if you wish to make good on our offer.

khayreyahTwo enemies who wish
to be your friends,
Jason (Naveed) Kennedy and
Khayreyah Wahaab

Update:  Prosser has accepted the invitation to dinner.  I’m sorely tempted to start a contest for suggestions as to what will be on the menu, but that wouldn’t do justice to the spirit of Jason Kennedy and Khayreyah Wahaab.  Talk about the better angels of our nature…!

Filed under: Islam, sanity | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Morsi’s Anti-Semitism

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

I wish I could say that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s anti-Semitism surprised me half as much as it seemed to surprise The New York Times.  (“Egyptians should nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists, Morsi declared in a videotaped speech three years ago. “They have been fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout history. They are hostile by nature.”)

But the rampant use of anti-Semitic imagery in political rhetoric both in Egypt and in other Muslim countries (“apes,” “pigs,” “bloodsuckers,” said Morsi) is hardly news.  It comes right out of the convoluted paranoia of The Protocols of the Elders of the Zion, which far too many Egyptians still take for fact instead of the fictional fake it was long ago proved to be.  What concerns me is how it seeps into even the best-intentioned minds, in far less obvious but nonetheless insidious ways.

Consider, for instance, an exchange like this one, which I seem to have had a number of times over the past several years:

– “What do the Jews think they’re doing in Gaza?”

– “The Jews?  All Jews?  Which Jews?”

– “The Israelis, of course.”

– “Which Israelis?”

– “Well, the Israeli government.”

– “So why do you not say ‘the Israeli government’ instead of ‘the Jews’?”

This is what you might call the low-level shadow of anti-Semitism.  My interlocutors (I love/hate that word) would never dream of using Morsi’s inflammatory language of hatred.  They’re liberal and moderate American Muslims (some are believing mosque-goers, others self-described agnostics or atheists).  And yet even they are not always immune to that conflation of politics and ethnicity, of Israeli policy and Jewishness.

Each time such an exchange occurs, there’s a pause in the conversation — a moment of discomfort as my interlocutor (that word again!) realizes what I’m responding to.  And then comes a nod of acknowledgement, one that takes considerable courage, since none of us appreciate being called to account.  Call it a small moment of sanity.

I recognize this because it’s mirrored in Israel, where talk of “the Arabs” — a generalization as bad as “the Jews” — veers more and more not just into outright racism, but into a kind of gleeful pride in that racism, as shown in David Remnick’s long piece on “Israel’s new religious right” in the current New Yorker.

Israeli politicians have taken to presenting themselves as defenders of “the Jewish people,” regularly using “Jew” as a synonym for “Israeli,” even though — or because — over 20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs.  They do this deliberately, of course, just as the Morsi-type anti-Semitic rhetoric is deliberate.  The emotional resonance of “Jew” is deeper and far older than that of “Israeli,” and thus far more useful as a carrier of both covert and overt pride and prejudice.

As a Jew I find this political claim to represent me both insulting and obnoxious.  Like an increasing number of American Jews, I’m appalled by the policies of the Netanyahu government (let alone those of its predecessors), and at the development of what has clearly become an apartheid regime.  I deeply resent being lumped together with the Netanyahus of this world — and I equally deeply resent the attempt by the Netanyahus of this world to lump themselves in with me and define my Jewishness.  How dare they?  And how dare Morsi?

I’d ask “have they no shame?” but the answer is obvious.

Filed under: Islam, Judaism, Middle East, sanity, ugliness | Tagged: , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

The Rhythm of Connection

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Amour movieI’m still thinking about a single word from a movie I saw last month — a difficult, transcendent movie about love.  Real love.

Amour is not an easy film, and it’s certainly not for anyone who’s afraid of ageing, let alone anyone nurturing fantasies of immortality.  Written and directed by the hard-edged Michael Haneke, it’s about a loving, companiable couple in their early eighties, played by two veterans of the French new wave:  Emmanuelle Riva (Alain Resnais’ classic Hiroshima Mon Amour) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman).  And it’s about what happens when she has a stroke — a relatively minor one — and then another, devastating one…

I saw it at a small private screening, and thought it beautiful — quietly courageous, uncommonly real, and truly loving in a way that goes so far beyond Hollywood stereotypes as to make them hollow caricatures of humanity.  So I was quite dismayed when others there called it depressing.  It was too long, they said.  It made them uncomfortable.  It dwelled too much on the small details of life.  It took far too long it took to arrive at its inevitable denouement.

All these things were part of what made me admire the movie so.  And why I went home convinced that it would win no awards.

What a delight to be so very wrong!  Though I didn’t yet know it, Amour had already won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and was now being talked about as the front-runner for the best foreign-film Oscar (thus the private screening copy) — talk that ramped up this past weekend when it won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for best picture of 2012.  The Oscars might actually redeem themselves this year.

But what’s stuck with me ever since I saw the movie — and the reason I’ll see it again –  is one seemingly simple detail in the couple’s everyday life:

Whenever one does something for the other, even something as minor as putting a cup of coffee on the table or taking the empty cup to the sink, the other says “Merci.”

That’s it — a simple thank you.  Said not automatically, but not with great stress either.  Said quietly, but appreciatively. “You mean it was polite,” someone said.  But no, that was not at all what I meant.  This was far more than mere politeness (I grew up in England, so I know how shallow politeness can be):  this was courteous.  Real courtesy: an acknowledgment of the other’s existence — of the small kindnesses and fond accommodations that make up the couple’s daily life together.  It was, in a beautiful phrase I heard over the dinner table just last night, part of “the rhythm of connection.”

The word is said, in its quiet, companiable way, many times before the second stroke deprives the wife of speech.  So it hovers in the air, unsaid, when she can no longer speak.  In the end, when her husband finally brings himself to do what he knows she wants him to do, I found myself saying thank you for her.

I don’t want to act the spoiler, so I won’t spell it out for you.  Enough to say that yes, death can be a courtesy all its own.  And as it happened, I thought “Yes, that’s real love.”

Filed under: art, existence, sanity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

A Huge Sense of Relief

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

I stood.  I paced.  I sat down and immediately hopped up again.  I fiddled with rubber bands until they broke.  I tried to follow six or seven websites at the same time — when I wasn’t staring at the two big screens set up at Town Hall Seattle.  Every now and then I’d sneak out for a smoke, only to stub it out after a few pulls because I had to rush back in again to check what was happening.

I tried to reassure myself by putting my faith in Nate Silver, the meta-analyst who’d repeatedly said to pay no attention to the pundits and who’d calmly analyzed the data and predicted an Obama victory of over 300 electoral votes.  I mean, I do have faith in Nate Silver, but hey, what kind of faith is it that never gets tested?

The signs were encouraging:  on the state level, bigots and rape-defenders and all-out idiots being defeated, and good, intelligent people winning. But that popular vote was still so close, and Florida kept changing from pink to baby blue and back to pink again, and I wanted to march up on the stage with a dark-blue marker and simply color it in…

So when the magic mark of 270 electoral votes came up far earlier than anyone expected, yes I cheered and whooped and hugged and high-fived both friends and total strangers, but what I felt more than anything else was relief.   Sanity had prevailed — narrowly, but clearly.  And decency had prevailed.

There was no cluster-fuck in Florida.  The right-wing attempt to suppress the vote failed, with people waiting for hours to cast their ballots (“we have to fix that,” said the president, and he might look to Washington state, with its all mail-in ballot system, for the fix).   And I confess it was a pleasure to switch occasionally to Fox News and see the somber faces.

Big money failed, and several billionaires were left holding a bad investment in Romney/Ryan.  Marriage equality passed in Maine and Maryland, and is ahead here in Washington state — the first time a majority of voters have endorsed it, as opposed to its being decided on by legislators.  Ditto with legalization of marijuana in two states, giving the lie to the so-called “war on drugs.”

Just two decades ago, all of this would have been unthinkable.  A black president being elected to a second term?  Laughable.  Gay marriage?  Absurd.  Legal pot?  Gimme a break…

So yes, we do move forward.  In fits and starts.  Three steps forward, two and a half steps back.  We fight off insanity, and redefine sanity:  not Obama’s dream rhetoric of “a perfect union,” but the real, down-to-earth and difficult work of balancing pragmatism and idealism.

No elation today, then, not here:  just a huge sense of relief.  And a renewed faith in the idea that one way or another, whatever the odds, sanity can prevail.

Filed under: sanity, US politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

In Love With The Bishop

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

There I was, agnostic Jewish me, eager as a teen music fan to meet an Episcopal bishop at Town Hall Seattle on Monday night, to shake his hand and thank him for his courage.

Then Hurricane Sandy intervened.  The bishop’s flight was canceled, so I went home and read his new book, God Believes in Love:  Straight Talk About Gay Marriage.

Which is how come I can now tell you that if you can read this book and not fall in love with Bishop Gene Robinson, head of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, then there is something seriously amiss with the state of your soul, let alone your heart and your mind.

Robinson was married – to a woman – for 15 years.  Now he’s married again – to a man.  This second marriage has lasted 25 years, and has led to multiple death threats against him, forcing him at times to wear a bullet-proof vest in public.  It’s also created an absurd rift within the Episcopal church.   And it’s brought out the big guns in his support.  There are only two blurbs on the back of this beautifully lucid book, but both are from Nobel Peace Laureates:  one from a guy called Obama, and the other from a guy called Tutu.

Robinson directly addresses ten FAQs on marriage equality, among them:  “Why should you care about gay marriage if you’re straight?”

His answer, and mine:  “It’s the civil rights issue of our time.”  Why did white activists put themselves in the line of fire in the 1960s?  They weren’t black;  they could always have claimed that it wasn’t “their” battle.  Except of course it was.  As Emma Lazarus put it – she of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free” – “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

Besides, if you think gay rights don’t affect your straight life, you’re living in as alternative a universe as Mitt Romney.  As Robinson points out, “Orthodox Jews, conservative Muslims, and  fundamentalist Christians are just as likely  to raise a gay son or daughter as any other mother or father.”

Think about that:  Wherever you are as you read this, and no matter what you think about same-sex marriage, chances are that at least one person close to you – someone you know and love and wish everything good for — is gay.  So what do you wish for that person if you call the love they feel for someone else an abomination?  The only abomination involved here is in calling love an abomination.

Still think “This isn’t my fight” because you’re not gay?  Robinson has this to say:

No it isn’t.  Unless you care about the kind of society we have.  Unless you want the society of which you are a part to be a just one.  Unless you believe that a free society, not to mention a godly religion, should fight injustice wherever it is found…  Unless you care about our children.  Unless fairness matters to you.  Unless violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people concerns you.  Unless ‘liberty and justice for all’ is something you believe applies to all citizens.

Are you in love with him yet?

Filed under: Christianity, light, sanity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments »

Breaking Through On Iran?

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Today the NYT reports that “the United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.”

(I’m not at all sure what to make of that phrase “one-on-one negotiations.”  I’m assuming it means face-to-face meetings between American and Iranian officials as opposed to “back-channel” contacts, but in the land of diplo-speak, who knows?  Moreover, this is hardly “the first time” the US and Iran have negotiated over nuclear issues, not least since Iran’s nuclear program began with full-on American support decades ago, under the Shah. But I’ll stop with the cavils for now…)

The new agreement is still informal.  It comes after “intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term,” the NYT reports, but it’s unclear if Ayatollah Khamenei has yet signed off on it, or even when negotiations might begin.  “After the US elections” is all that’s being said.  And of course if Romney wins, forget it.

If this works out, it’s excellent news.  Long overdue.  There’s no way this whole standoff is going to be resolved without direct talks.  So it was hardly a surprise to see the Israeli reaction, via ambassador Michael Oren:  “We do not think Iran should be rewarded with direct talks.”  Instead, he said, sanctions and “all other possible pressures on Iran” should be increased.

“Rewarded?”  More sanctions?  “Other pressures?”  Does he imagine that Iran will simply collapse and disappear?  That it can be bombed into submission?  That no direct talks are ever necessary?  Where exactly does he see any form of resolution in all this?

The answer is:  he doesn’t.  Conflict resolution is not the aim so far as he’s concerned.  That’s his government’s stand toward Palestine:  no negotiation, no resolution, and yes, per Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, bomb ‘em into submission.  No give and take, no flexibility, no live and let live.  Just build more walls.

If US-Iran negotiations do indeed take place, the logical outcome would be that Iran ends up with nuclear energy but not nuclear weapons.  From Iran’s point of view, that’s a huge concession:  Israel has nuclear weapons, after all, and the US has been one of the world’s largest exporters of nuclear-arms technology.  It doesn’t take much to see why Iran objects to being lectured on nuclear issues by two nuclear powers, or that the very idea of “allowing” Iran to develop nuclear energy — “allow” is a word that crops up often in the NYT article — stinks of paternalistic hypocrisy.

But Iran’s leaders — its real leaders, that is, not front-man clowns like Ahmadinejad — may turn out to be a lot more realistic than Israel’s ones.

One thing is for sure: This news is going to figure large in Monday’s foreign-policy debate between Obama and Romney.  And Obama couldn’t do better than quote R. Nicholas Burns, whom the NYT cites as the man who “led negotiations with Iran as under-secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration.”  Burns sounds as though he’s had quite enough of diplo-speak:  “While we should preserve the use of force as a last resort,” he says, “negotiating first with Iran makes sense.  What are we going to do instead?  Drive straight into a brick wall called war in 2013, and not try to talk to them?”

—————–

Update, Monday October 22: The NYT reports that  everyone’s back-tracking.  Looks like someone was pushing a little too hard.  Or to use an unfortunate metaphor, jumping the gun.

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‘Silent Majority’ Of Muslims? Not Any More

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Great conversation on Al Jazeera’s The Stream yesterday:  I was with Lisa Fletcher and Anushay Hossain in the studio — I love her blog Anushay’s Point  — and Omid Safi, Nouman Ali Khan, and Michael Muhammad Knight joined in on Skype.  Plus an excellent video comment from Hind Makki in Chicago, which led to a lively post-show discussion, starting at the 25.15 mark, on reclaiming the narrative from both ‘Islamist’ extremists and Islamophobic bigots.

It’s a good thing Nouman Ali Khan wasn’t in the studio, because I’d only have totally embarrassed him by leaping up to give him a huge hug.  I really do have to figure out how to be cool on TV…

Like I say, hang around for the post-show segment — the silent majority is silent no longer!

Filed under: fundamentalism, Islam, sanity, ugliness | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

The Real Muslim Rage

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Oh what a bandwagon that noxious little anti-Islamic video has set in motion.  There seems to be no end of people eager to hop on it for personal and political gain, no matter how many lives it costs.

There’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, reeling from backlash against his support of Bashar al-Assad’s ongoing massacre of Syrian civilians.  What a perfect opportunity to deflect criticism by calling for more and larger protests — not against the Syrian regime, but against America, in the name of “defending the Prophet.” Except that’s not what he’s doing. To cite the headline of Nick Kristof’s NYT column today, he’s exploiting the Prophet.

There’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she of the soft voice and the compelling back story, who just can’t stop talking about what she calls “the Muslim mentality.” (Pop quiz:  if someone who generalizes about a stereotyped “Jewish mentality” is an anti-Semite, what’s someone who generalizes about a stereotyped “Muslim mentality”?  Click here if you don’t know.)  Hirsi Ali told her story yet again in Newsweek‘s “Muslim Rage” issue (to which the best answer was the often hilarious #MuslimRage meme on Twitter).  Strange to think that the rapidly failing Newsweek was once a reputable publication.

There’s the sophomoric French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose idea of cutting-edge humor is cartoons of politicians with their pants down around the ankles.  This week they ran similar cartoons of Muhammad in order to inject some life into their plumetting circulation by creating controversy.  Oh, and as a beacon of free speech, of course.

There’s Pakistan’s Minister of Railways — the man responsible for the system’s chronic debt, constant strikes, and devastating crashes. What better way to distract people from his total failure than to make himself out to be a “defender of Islam” by offering a $100,000 bounty for the life of the director of that inane video?  There’s nothing quite like incitement to murder to cover up your own corruption.

There’s more — there’s always more of such people, including of course the miserable little bigots who made the video in the first place –  but that’ll do for now. Because none of this reflects the real Muslim rage:  the palpable outrage not only at the killing of Ambassador Stevens, but also at the blatant attempt of Islamic extremists (and their Islamophobic counterparts) to hijack Islam.

Listen, for instance, to Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem, aka Sandmonkey, who was one of the voices of 2011′s “Arab spring” in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.  Violent protests over the video are “more damaging to Islam’s reputation than a thousand so-called ‘Islam-attacking’ films,” he writes, and calls on Egyptians to condemn Islamic fundamentalists as “a bunch of shrill, patriarchal, misogynistic, violent extremists who are using Islam as a cover” for political ambition.

Twitter is spilling over with similar protests and disgust from Muslims all over the world at the way the “defenders of Islam” are destroying it from within.  And this disgust was acted on in Benghazi on Friday when 50,000 Libyans marched to demand the disarming of the extremist militias suspected of attacking the US consular buildings, then stormed the headquarters of two of the biggest militias and forced them out of town.  Two other Islamist militias instantly disbanded.  Yes, if you unite, you can face down the thugs, even well-armed ones.  This, of course, is not something you’ll see on the cover of Newsweek.

As Libyans, Egyptians, Tunisians, Yemenis, and with especial pain, Syrians know, the “Arab spring” is not a matter of a single season.  The moniker itself is a product of Western media shorthand, of the desire to label a “story” and assign it a neat, self-contained timeline.  But this was no mere story for the people living it.  It was and still is the beginning of a long process.  But one that once begun, cannot be undone.

All over the Middle East, real voices are making themselves heard, unmediated by government control whether in the name of “security” or of an extremist travesty of Islam.

And this is surely the real manifestation of that much abused principle:  freedom of expression.

Filed under: fundamentalism, Islam, Middle East, sanity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

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