Updated (11.48pm October 13th.) I have received two comments on this post, one critical and the other critical, except in a different way. Apparently the brother(s) in question do not represent ITS but were from Revolution Muslim. I don't see a meaningful difference (both groups are basically Hegelians claiming to be Muslim scholars), but there you have it (what kind of group would want to correct negative coverage of itself? You need a P.R. guy, except that and he are haram).
In the "story" below, replace ITS with Revolution Muslim. Figures. Two organizations with very similar rhetoric, who are nonetheless two, and somehow still think they will establish a unitary Islamic state in which they will probably be the first group to be knocked off.
Note to Revolution Muslim/ITS: You don't speak for us. Stop pretending to and claiming to (and the proof is in the pictures; Revolution Muslim had a "handfull" [sic] of supporters; the parade got hundreds, if not over a thousand, and probably so.) You can stand for your harmful, simplistic and completely unsourced, unreferenced and unscholarly take on Islam, but that's all.
Two stories to drop your way. The first comes from the front page of the New York Times, reporting on a sharp uptick in violence between Hindu and Christian communities in eastern India. The second concerns a report released by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), titled Smearcasting [pdf], detailing how Islamophobes attack Muslims, insult Islam, and use their inaccurate rhetoric in order to advance a social and political agenda of ugly and unfair consequence. The point is to marginalize, and often in favor of an agenda that is ultimately economic -- how race cum religion becomes a tool for exploitation needs to be considered far more deeply by our media. (Here's hoping!)
Yesterday, I was at the Muslim Day Parade which takes place annually and sees a small group of Muslims travel from Madison Ave. and 41st St down to 23rd St, the Madison Avenue Park, where a small street fair is set up. Personally, I don't like the idea of the parade although I still attended, in part because I wanted to see it and to see other people there; still, I think it's strategically not very helpful and actually possibly hurts more than helps (the image and reality of Muslims marching -- how does that really benefit the community, or correct unfair stereotypes?). The idea of the street fair at the conclusion, however, was a wonderful concept, especially since a large crowd of Muslims and non-Muslims mingled inside the fair for some time, from hippies to professionals to munaqqabas, together sampling the different types of food available (candies, South Asian and Indonesian cuisine) and shopping around, very respectfully and warmly, for books, incense and "ethnic" clothes and knick-knacks. Could be a great chance for outreach and for a positive image; our holiday becomes a chance for the city to celebrate, learn and engage with its huge Muslim population...
Anyway, here's my point. All this Islamophobia is mistaken, of course, exaggerated and dangerous. But it capitalizes on the Ummah's knuckleheads, the enraged alienated and uninformed fringe that can do little more than hypocritically froth at the injustice of the West while living in the West. I call out racism and prejudice "outside" the Muslim American population, particularly with respect to McCain's recent and unacceptable campaign themes and topics; what about prejudice and ignorance "inside" our community? That too needs to be addressed.
My anecdote concerns a member of the Revolution Muslim -- and not the ITS, which is very amusingly named since it is simultaneously 1) not remotely Islamic; 2) the last thing its members do is think (I'd love to see who can possibly describe an adherent of the movement as a "thinker"); and 3) these people are the last people on earth who would have any clue how to set up a society. They are something like a radical version of entropy acting upon sectarian politics; about all they accomplish is burned themselves out, alienate people around themselves and damage the good-faith efforts of others around them.
This "Thinker" began to yell and scream and make a general fool out of himself because he was told to leave the grounds of the street fair, which is only fair, because he was not part of the organizing committees' invited guests (as I should have told him, "set up your own fair. You can yell from your own stalls all day long.") Basically this bearded "thinker" made a ridiculous scene and, in so doing, insulted and embarrassed the entire Muslim community, both present and not present, since predictably the media and public attention quickly flocked to the angry bearded man screaming about "Muslim revolution" and the evils of "capitalism and democracy!"
At the moment this "Thinker" was being evicted, I remarked to my wife that it was unfortunate that the man had shot in the foot the efforts of so many people to put together a parade -- regardless of whether or not I agree with the idea of it, I am not such a child that I would go around and ruin the parade for everyone else in order to draw attention to my pathetic little pseudo-Islamic but actually Marxist-Hegelian ideology. I remarked also, predictably, that all the media would converge on this man and that was the fate of so many Muslim efforts. A man who was standing next to me -- most likely he was not a Muslim -- jumped in: "Good!" In other words, he was happy that the entirety of the parade had been reduced to this image of an angry Muslim and that that was all the media would pick up on. I turned to him and said, "Actually, it's not a good thing. But I thank you for your opinion."
Not surprisingly, he was too taken aback by this to respond to me.
It shocked me -- though of course it should not -- that people can be so petty. We all have disagreements, some of them political, some of them cultural. And while we are worried by and threatened by certain groups, never have I allowed disagreements over policy or over the agendas of specific groups mutate into a general desire to see the embarrassment and humiliation of an entire population. Many hundreds of Muslims, many of them just school children, came together for a parade, and this man was just happy that they all ended up looking like a bunch of crazy, radical, unstable hotheads. I do wonder what kind of humanity so many ideologies preach that they empty us of any sympathy for "the other," as much as the term itself is inappropriate. How is another human being an "other," and why are we so glad to see each other put down? It is a moral failure; and, predictably, a group like ITS, which offers only angry, inaccurate politics, can produce nothing but anger and inaccuracy.
Recent Comments