Facebook Commentary - a response

The following excerpt from a NYTimes article responds in part to my Facebook Commentary; thought I'd share:

It would be hard to overestimate how much communication and an informal tone means to this generation. They have poured out their foibles and triumphs on blogs, MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Older Americans see this as dangerous exhibitionism, but young adults believe the conversation leads to open-mindedness and consensus.

“This generation has been knocked for putting all of their personal stuff on full display,” said Mik Moore, 34, a founder of the Great Schlep, which used a Sarah Silverman online video to help young Jews win their grandparents’ support for Senator Obama. “But there is an upside, too, which is a willingness to communicate with large numbers of people in your network about what’s important to you.”

Women's Access to Mosque: Subverting Dialogue

On my last evening in Norway, I attended a reception at the DCM's residence. Most of the people we had met throughout the Norway tour were present at this official reception, the purpose of which was to network and solidify connections. I was surprised to be approached by some of the Pakistani law students I had met at the Pakistani mosque. 

During the mosque visit, I had asked what the status of women's access to mosques was in Norway. I recounted the story of the woman-led prayer in the U.S. some years back, stating that it had been motivated by a deep frustration with Muslim women's physical and social space in the mosque. When I posed the question to the Norwegian group, the imam of the mosque was quick to step in and answer my question, assuring me that Muslim women in Norway are happy with their degree of access. When the imam was further prodded about whether women were given a seat on the mosque board, he said that women had their own organizations which they formed and led. In other words, no, they don't have a seat on the board.  

The question had actually come to me when I had first stepped inside the Norwegian mosque and saw that the second floor gallery had a glass railing and there was a woman sitting behind the railing reading the Qur'an. I was pleased that the women's section was integrated into the larger mosque setting and that they weren't forced to sit in a separate room or behind a concrete or frosted glass railing that blocked their view of the imam on the lower level. What I didn't notice, but my colleagues did, is that the moment we stepped in, the imam signaled impatiently to the woman to leave the room. As the imam later confirmed, women were generally not permitted to use the upstairs balcony and had instead been allotted a separate room at the back of the mosque.  

When I asked my question about women's space, the only response I received other than the imam's - which I now realized was intended to set the tone of the discussion - was from a woman who had recently moved to Norway from Denmark, and who said that she preferred to pray in the separate room as it gave her privacy. For classes, however, she preferred that she be given space in the main room. She went on to cite the structure of classes at programs held by the Zaytuna Institute in the U.S., which she had attended. She failed to note whether she was given equal space in classes held by the Norwegian mosque.  

Several days later, at the DCM's reception, I was approached by some of the Muslim law students who had been present during this awkward discussion of women's space. They informed me that what had been discussed was not true - that women were rarely given permission to enter the mosque and use its main space. In a society where immigrant Muslim women don't know the Norwegian language and are generally excluded from most activities outside the home, the mosque is one of the few spaces they can go to for social interaction. And according to these students, even that space has been denied to these immigrant women, such that when the rare occasion arises where the mosque doors are open to them, these women flock to the mosque in almost a state of desperation.  

What I took from this revelation by the Muslim law students was not only that women are going through perhaps a more difficult struggle than American Muslim women are vis-a-vis mosque access, but that the purpose of the Citizen's Dialogue Tour was in some instances being subverted. Instead of an open discussion of different or similar problems in Norway and the U.S., when it came to controversial topics, a front was being put up. The discussion on integration and secular extremism was open and meaningful, but discourse of women's issues was kept under wraps.

Muslims and Minorities in Norway

Tonight's my last night in Norway. As I pause to reflect on the past 4 days and the many conversations I have had with activists, politicians, religious leaders, journalists, and students, I am amazed by how much I have learned. Common themes include integration, secular extremism, social welfare, racism, employment discrimination, and the vast proportion of Muslim immigrants who are uneducated and/or of refugee status. Despite instances of blatant racism, Norwegians recoil at the very word "racism" for "to be Norwegian is to be good". In many if not most ways, Norwegians are very good. I have received nothing but kindness and hospitality while here. And the Norwegian government uses its oil wealth to take care of each and every one of its citizens, guaranteeing each an upper middle class lifestyle. The 121 homeless people in all of Oslo are homeless because they refuse to take help from the system; the moment they accept conformity (i.e. fill out the necessary aid forms), they will be living comfortably - without ever having to work.

And yet, these same luxuries are what hinder progress in certain areas. For instance, new immigrants who can stay at home and receive money from the government instead of having to work for it have little or no incentive to do so. In refusing to work, they are also refusing to learn the language and customs and interact with native Norwegians on a daily basis. Integration as a whole is therefore severely hampered.

Similarly, when the Muslim community is handed money from the government, the community has little or no need to work together to fundraise.  Each mosque with its ethnically-segregated congregation can take government money and continue to isolate itself from the rest of the Norwegian Muslim community. In contrast, in the US, the plethora of fundraising dinners and other fundraising initiatives force the community to work together, looking past their ethnic differences in their quest toward a common goal.

Aside from these counterintuitive downfalls of a seemingly fabulous social welfare system, while in Norway, I came to a better understanding of Europe's secular culture. This secular culture is exemplified in Norway's secular extremism, where the very discussion of religion or anything religious causes great discomfort.  This is true despite the fact that the Norwegian constitution requires that the head of government and almost half of its Parliament members belong to the Lutheran sect of Protestant Christianity.

In the case of immigrants, especially those from Muslim countries, this requirement to keep their religious identity out of the public sphere and to air their grievances - if they must - in non-religious terms comes as a great affront to their sense of self.  It's hard to discuss the issues when they are intrinsically linked to religion, and religion is a taboo subject for public discourse.

On the flip side, when it comes to battling serious human rights violations among the Muslim community - whether it be honor killings, FGM, or forced marriages -- instances of such violations among Muslims are generalized as representative of Muslims/Islam generally. So the selective discussion of religion, where it is used to conflate the actions of specific individuals with the actions of an entire community, but where religion is generally not an acceptable topic of discussion, leads to gross media distortions and huge gaps in public knowledge of Islam.

Globalized Muslims

Currently gearing up for the Citizens Dialogue Tour to Norway, Ireland, and Belgium. I'll be leaving May 10 and will return May 24, full of observations and conversations worth sharing. In the meanwhile, my preparation has included reading some articles on Islam in Europe and in those countries specifically, and I am shocked by not just the vast differences in the Muslim experience over there, but also by my ignorance of it up till now. How did I before assume that all Muslims in all Western countries lived the life of mutual respect and dignity that I as a Muslim American live here, among my fellow Americans? European Muslims, though more politically involved than American Muslims, are subject to discriminatory actions on the part of their governments and some fellow citizens too. European Muslims are also less educated and less prosperous than their American brethren, and are composed primarily of immigrants rather than the indigenous Caucasion and Black Muslim contingency in America that constitutes 35% of the American Muslim population. And, perhaps linked to that is the fact that European Muslims are more likely to hold extremist views than the vastly moderate Muslim population of America.

On that note, I have to mention an interesting article I read by Olivier Roy about how globalization is in fact the root cause of Muslim extremism. He points out that it is a mistake to assume that extremism is something that Muslim immigrants bring from their homeland to their new European/Western homes. The displacement of Muslims from Muslim countries where Islamic rituals and way of life are supported and fortified by cultural practices to their new Western context forces Muslims to make the culture v. religion distinction. In separating those two concepts, Muslims often decide to let go of the cultural elements and practice only the religious ones, which in turns focuses them on rules and rituals. Rules and rituals make you measure your religiosity in terms of the degree to which you abide by them.

Which reminds me of an interesting, but sort of unrelated, point made by Hijabman at yesterday's bookclub meeting for Blue-Eyed Devil: He noted that extremists, both present and those who have left that ideology but still haven't found a stable middle ground, tend to be inherently contradictory. One second they will be lambasting women who don't cover completely, and the other second they will be ogling women. Strict ritualists who realize that it is impossible to abide perfectly by the rules, all the time, all the way, become disillusioned and sway to the opposite end of the spectrum.

In Roy's terms, where does that leave globalized, displaced Muslims? At the opposite end of strict ritualists? And what is that exactly?

Infidel: It's Finally Over

I finally finished the book a few days ago. Throughout my reading, I periodically abandoned the book but whenever I finally made it back, I found it hard to put down. The drama, deceit, and sensationalism kept me hooked, I guess. These 80 pages to the end of the book, however, were quite painful, and mostly I plugged through it because I just wanted to be done with it.

First, the parts of her story that I can understand: I can understand her frustration with lack of cultural integration. The Dutch government, in wanting to give immigrants their space, decided against forced assimilation. Hirsi Ali is right in demanding that the government not use its anti-integration policy as a way of turning a blind eye to existing human rights violations.

A bit trickier: I also understand her insistence on pointing to the religious bases of some of these human rights violations. But, I think this approach is about cultural sensitivity rather than about attacking religion. When it comes to religiously-motivated crimes, it is not enough to blame culture alone, when such demarcation between culture and religion fails to get to the crux of the matter as the perpetrators themselves understand it. That is, if a father feels it is his religious duty to kill his daughter for her illicit love affair, then in counteracting that problem, the government must deal with the role of religion in that man's worldview. Again, dealing with religion is about understanding it enough to come up with a solution more attuned to the problem. In the case of religion, it may be about counteracting a particular interpretation with another one. In no case is it about attacking all forms of the religion itself.

Now, the parts I don't understand and which, essentially, belie understanding: I don't understand how someone purportedly tied to the values of liberalism, such as respecting diversity, can continue to attack a major world religion in the crudest of ways, and then wonder why the reaction is so virulent. Of course, actions such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh are not justifiable, but to describe the incident as "I don't understand how someone can be so angry at a mere film" (as Hirsi Ali states in her book) is ridiculously blind to the fact that Submission was not a mere film. It was a film that insulted its Muslim viewers in the deepest core of their being. At the end of her book, she notes that some people have told her that her criticisms of Islam are too aggressive, but she goes on to say that the pain oppressed women suffer is far worse. But do all Muslims have to be constantly insulted in order for women oppressed in the name of Islam to find relief? According to her atheist dogmatism, religion is the bane of all existence. And so despite billions of people's intimate, meaningful connections to their faith tradition, it is perfectly okay to insult them.

Though her atheism makes it legitimate, in her eyes, for her to insult religion and religious folk, she does take some pains throughout the book to distinguish Islam from Judaism and Christianity. She notes, for example, that "unlike" Judaism and Christianity, Islam requires that its followers' relationship with God be entirely about submission. I am not sure where and when she educated herself about Judaism and Christianity, but she seems to have completely overlooked each of these religion's fundamentalist strains.

For Hirsi Ali, "submission" requires blind following, with no space for questioning or interpretation. In fact, earlier on in the book, when her father tells her about his relatively modern views of Islam, she blows him off by stating that his views are mere interpretations and that real Islam is about literal interpretation. She echoes this thought toward the end of her book when she claims that Saudi Arabia practices the "purest" form of Islam.

In all of this talk of purity and what Islam really is, it never occurs to her that she has basically internalized a particular rhetoric about "pureness" and the essential superiority of literal readings of Scripture. She decides somewhere along the line that this particular rhetoric is the truest expression of Islam. Unlike millions of Muslims who undergo spiritual evolution in the course of their lives as they attempt to better understand their religion, Hirsi Ali somehow knows, for certain, what Islam is. She never doubts it or checks it against the practice and belief of the full diversity of Muslims across the world. Again, I find her naïveté unsettling – and her rise to a position of political prominence even more disturbing.

Infidel - Revisited

So now I'm on page 270 of Infidel. You may be wondering why I don't just finish the book and write some sort of composite review, but I find some value in recording my impressions when they are fresh...like an evolving relationship with a supposedly evolving character.

As I near the end of the book, I am seeing more and more of what I had picked up on earlier in the book - that many, if not all, of her conclusions about Islam are simplistic and logically fallible. She states her conclusions point-blank, and doesn't even acknowledge the existence or possibility of counterarguments. I'm at the point in the book right after she learned of the 9/11 attacks and is reevaluating her views on Islam. Her colleague states that this attack is due more to socioeconomic, political and cultural matters than it is to religious belief. She denies his position vehemently, using as proof that because, for example, the hijackers weren't Palestinian, there is no way this can be related to the Palestine-Israel conflict. Or that because they themselves are not poor and oppressed, it has nothing to do with social and political oppression. For someone who fancies herself deeply connected to rationalism and Western Enlightenment, she doesn't exhibit much in the way of either logical consistency or sociological sensitivity. Just because the hijackers claim to be committing crimes in order to attain religious reward doesn't preclude the fact that (1) the hijackers' version of religion is taught and encouraged by social circumstances and that this version may be entirely distinct and even antithetical to the religion itself; and (2) that the hijackers don't have to be poor, or Palestinian for that matter, to feel tied enough to those causes that they feel the need to act for them.

Although the attacks cannot be justified, some holistic explanation is in order, something that pinpoints a problem that needs to be intelligently addressed. Racist, simplistic conclusions that are not related to the core issue are not going to help. That the Dutch commentators point to Islam's history of peace and intellectual fervor doesn't make them somehow out of touch with reality, as Hirsi Ali states. Instead, these commentators are looking for reasons why a culture that bred tolerance and rationalism can suddenly be used to justify totally barbaric acts against humanity. Particular religious interpretations feeding off of peripheral issues are the problem, not the core itself - otherwise the entire history of Islam would be about violence and hatred.

To the extent that she uses her own experiences of poverty and oppression as a way of reaching conclusions about Islam, she seems oblivious to other causes of socioeconomic depravity. She also doesn't realize that the Islamic Empire itself was vastly more wealthy and sophisticated than the Western world. By viewing all of Islam through the lens of the current global situation and, even more narrowly, her particular experience of Islam is to discount a million factors and influences, ranging from the political to the social and to the psychological results of such influences.

From the moment she steps into Europe, she remains completely enamored. She acknowledges in passing that Holland does have some problems, but overall, it seems to her that the Dutch are living an almost idyllic life. It's unfortunate that in all of Holland she didn't find a compassionate, rational Muslim to connect with (or at least she conveniently excludes such characters from her book) but that such Muslims exist is, I'm sure, something she learned of from her colleagues or readings. But she ignores the possibility of such a thing - a modernized, intellectually-aware Muslim, and chooses instead to conflate all things bad and poor with Islam and Muslims, as if one cannot be extricated from the other. That her initial childish impressions of Europe and modernization were not at some point tempered by intellectual subtlety is not merely unfortunate, but evidence of a conscious disregard for anything that would shake her predetermined notions of Islam and Muslims.

Feeling Biological

I feel so biological. I have a dull headache, a runny nose, and a congested nasal cavity. My body, too, is tired, since I decided to surprise it today with the rigors of a 30 minute run that it hasn't experienced for a year now.

You might think I am not feeling well. But really, I am feeling pretty good about not feeling well, and so overall, I am feeling well. Instead of the metaphysical and intellectual hiding our physical experiences, in sickness, we feel totally biological. There's something sort of...fun...about laying in bed all day, reading a book, eating chicken soup, and moaning about feeling ill while our family members serve our needs.

The joy of sickness lies in its temporary-ness, and so obviously terminal illnesses do not carry the same entertainment value. With minor illnesses, we know that this is a mere stopping ground before we head back to our busy lives, our list of to-do items, appointments, expectations and performances. A fever or flu, or even a bad cold, gives us a moment of respite.

And with that respite comes the feeling of being biological. Biological in a vulnerable way, so that it's the help people give us when we're sick that makes us feel good about being sick. Biological in a healthy way, knowing that our body is gradually rehabilitating itself. Biological in a celebratory way, enjoying the little pleasures of life, hidden in the most unexpected of places.