On the lookout for domesticated, peace-loving Muslims

March 13th, 2007 by yaman | Posted in Comment |

The right in America is not Islamophobic. In fact, it often goes to special lengths to emphasize its impartiality towards the Muslim faith. In the March 2007 edition of the California Patriot, for example, Aditya Kashap confirms suspicions that there are good Muslims somewhere in the world: “it is quite obvious to me that most Muslims are not violent, are law abiding, and are also diligent workers.” Some of these law-abiding Muslims are even so grateful that they work day and night to prove themselves by taking up employment at Wal-Mart and registering Republican. But this isn’t good enough for Kashap, who goes on to justify racial stereotyping in television. No matter how you twist it, these prejudices end up affecting all Muslims.

In the same magazine last November, Sid Radhakrishnan wrote an entreaty to the Muslims of the world, calling upon the good moderate ones to speak up. “More than a billion Muslims worldwide are lovers of peace and family” so Sid is horrified: “moderate Muslims everywhere, does [the violence in Iraq] not boil your blood?” As he wallowed in desperation thinking of all the good Muslims’ souls, Radhakrishnan managed to remain unperturbed by the ongoing American occupation of Iraq. He similarly wouldn’t want death-by-foreign-occupation to bother any Muslims or, god forbid, cause their blood to boil.

Again last March, eager to jump on the Danish cartoons bandwagon, the California Patriot went to great lengths to show how much it hurt to republish the cartoons. “We sympathize with any peace-loving Muslims who just wish that we would use our free speech in a different way. We wish we didn’t have to publish these cartoons.” Really, they don’t want to hurt you, but you’ve been a bad bunch and you need to be reprimanded. If you’re a moderate peace-loving Muslim, you’ll understand. And never mind that after going to great lengths to show how much it loves Muslims, the California Patriot did somewhat masochistically end up printing the cartoons, blaming any sense of hurt on hatred of freedom.

Fortunately, the phenomenon of the diligent, hard-working, peace-loving, and moderate Muslim has found its way outside the confines of the glamorous California Patriot. In August 2006, the Daily Mail, a British paper, wrote an editorial shortly after a plot to hijack a plane was foiled. The Daily Mail wants Muslims around the world to know that it “bows to no one in its admiration for the decent, hardworking Muslim majority who abhor the dreadful things being done in the name of Islam.” In fact, the editorial board decided to step it up a notch and let the audience know of its certainty that “concerned Muslims played a part in foiling this latest terrorist conspiracy.” And yet, shortly after declaring its belief that Muslims are not the problem, it goes on to blame those same “diligent, hard-working, peace-loving” Muslims for not doing enough to fight the Bad Muslims. It had nothing to say about the decent, hardworking non-Muslims in the world who abhor the dreadful things being done outside of the name of Islam.

A February 2007 article in the Des Moine Register felt the need to qualify its description of a man who reunited with his wife after 6 years as a “hard-working Muslim from Kono.” Presumably this reunification story would not have been appropriate if this was an unemployed, angry, and oppressed Muslim from Kosovo.

But despite all the patronization, some Muslims have bought into the Cult of the Peace-Loving Muslim. In response to the California Patriot’s publication of the Danish cartoons, one student begged that “peaceful Muslims and Christians alike turn the other cheek to the ignorant violent Muslims.” The California Patriot was challenged to “respect the peace-loving Muslims here at campus and around the world.”

One group called Muslims for America brags about “the role that approximately 7 million hard-working Muslim-Americans play in our society as doctors, businessmen, lawyers, engineers and research scientists.” Had they been construction workers, liquor store owners, or field laborers, maybe we wouldn’t be so proud of them, and maybe they wouldn’t deserve the same respect as everybody else. But they look, walk, and talk just like the rest of upper middle class America–so maybe they’re alright.

The Muslims on Little Mosque on the Prairie love life, and they work hard and go to school. They wear business casual and even have a sense of humor. By these virtues, they deserve to be treated as human beings in the West.

Another article written by Maria Hussain of IslamAmerica is a guide on how to “Dress for Success.” It cynically calls upon Muslims in America to understand the psychology of the United States, noting that a “smart-dressed Muslim businessperson who is well-mannered, well-groomed, standing tall on the subway, saying nothing, has done more to enhance the image of Islam in this country than another hard-working Muslim standing on the corner handing out 1000 pamphlets.” The Cult of the Peace-Loving Domesticated Muslim who only speaks when spoken to.

What is this fascination with Muslim diligence? Are we to assume that in calling for non-violent Muslims, writers from the California Patriot are actually espousing the principles of non-violence? Or is their call for Muslim lovers of peace to speak up indicative of their now uncompromising pacifism? Are the persistent appeals to the moderate Muslim actually a call for moderation in method and approach?

In the face of the occupation of Iraq, unrelenting support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the illicit ties between the American administration and some of the worst governments in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan, and Egypt, the answers to all of these questions are so clear as to make their very consideration patently absurd. Labels like “moderate,” “peace-loving,” and “hard-working” have a singular meaning in political discourse, especially in today’s context with regard to Arabs and Muslims, and that is to identify persons who are complicit with or unwittingly tools of American ambitions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

It is only through this lens that the Saudi royal family can be described by every American mainstream media source and diplomat as “moderate” when less than two weeks ago bank robbers were sentenced to beheading, and women are still treated like children, requiring male approval to travel freely. Only in this context can the arrest of a man who spoke out after being sodomized by police, the jailing of a college-age blogger for insulting religion and the President, and the detainment of a producer preparing a documentary on torture in Egypt all be understood as “moderate.”

Since when have the qualities of moderation, diligence, and peace-loving been a prerequisite for equal rights or respect in society? One does not need to don business attire and be a proclaimed pacifist to have legitimate political concerns and social or economic grievances, yet this is the impression the popular image of the model middle-class Muslim gives. But if to be moderate is to be willingly complicit with injustice, then moderation is worthless; if to be peace-loving is to be silent and stupid as oppression persists, then loving peace is meaningless; and if to be hard-working is to be an unremitting servant of imperialism, then hard work itself is a vice.

That Muslims themselves would willfully engage in a discussion that is inherently framed in a bigoted and chauvinistic manner is deeply disturbing. Participation in such a discussion legitimizes both the terms of the discussion and the agenda it serves at the same time. It is clear that these appeals to the “hard-working,” “peace-loving,” and “non-violent” Muslim are disingenuous at their core and only serve to mask intentions to make Muslims politically impotent and culturally docile.

Moreover, it gives credence to a style of discussion that does not ever address the issues in a useful way. What do the labels “moderate” and “peace-loving” tell us, especially when their application is so indiscriminate and manipulative? Do the core problems of the Middle East really have anything to do with people who “love peace” versus people who love war, or even moderation versus extremism? Does “diligence” have anything to do with it? None of these terms even touch on the complexities of the region and Western entanglement in it.

The reason these terms are so effective–and so dangerous–is that their superficial definitions differ greatly from the meanings they assume when used. How can you oppose somebody who is “peace-loving?” But “peace-loving Muslim” does not mean somebody who loves peace. It always refers to somebody who categorically opposes military resistance to American or Israeli military occupation, and in some cases the definition might even require, ironically enough, enthusiastic support of or sympathy for the military occupation in the first place!

Masquerading as pressure on Muslims to assimilate culturally to what might be considered good-natured and universal norms, these terms are ultimately a means by which to urge Muslims to conform politically. They are a way to push Muslims into silence and chill speech regarding contentious issues by encouraging self-censorship. Muslims begin to refrain from voicing their dissent because they fear that this dissenting speech itself might be called violent or extremist. As such, every effort must be made to resist the acceptance of these standards and their continued usage in political discourse, anywhere they may appear. Only then can important discussion regarding the “real issues” proceed.

Tags: california patriot, human rights, islam, media, muslims, politics, racism