Voices of Islam (274 page)

When there are Muslims who show up on TV, they show up as ‘‘obviously Muslim,’’ with a singularly religious identity that does not refl the multiple and fractured identities of most Muslims today. The women almost invariably wear a conservative type of
hijab,
and the males are typically conservative, immigrant, bearded, and speak with an accent. Going back to the analogy with Judaism, it would be similar to having only Ultra- Orthodox Jews on TV, rather than a full spectrum that would cover every- thing from Orthodox to Conservative and Reformed. That great marker of humanity, humor, is uniformly lacking from Muslim subjects on TV. Muslims on TV experience grief or outrage, but almost never joy or laughter. Also absent from media depictions are the delicious wit and affectionate sar- casm for which so many Muslim cultures are known. When we laugh not at someone but with them, we have experienced their full humanity. The humanity of American Muslims will be acknowledged only when we come up with our own successful and widely distributed version of Adam Sandler’s ‘‘Chanukah Song’’! That project and others similar to it will have to take place alongside the daily struggle to achieve social justice, gender equality, and so on. Yet it would be foolish to underestimate the interconnectedness of issues of culture and politics, as Said and others have reminded us.

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Political Participation

It is one of the great ironies of American political life that some 72 percent of American Muslims voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 elections,
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only to see the Bush regime impose the most severe erosion of civil liberties in the last 40 years and initiate a hostile and potentially unending ‘‘war on terror- ism’’ almost exclusively on Muslim populations all over the world. The assault on civil liberties, which affected Muslims in America more directly than other Americans, began with the so-called PATRIOT Act, passed hastily and with- out any opposition after the 9/11 attack.
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Even more terrifying attempts to erode civil liberties are underway in the so-called ‘‘PATRIOT 2’’ Bill.
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Muslims have underdeveloped infrastructures of participation in American politics. It is fair to say that no other group with over six million members in American society is so politically fragmented and ill-organized.
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While one is beginning to see the formative stages of development of Muslim Public Affairs Committee groups, there are still a number of substantial challenges ahead. The first is overcoming the divide between immigrant and African American communities. It remains to be seen how much unity can be forged between the immigrant Muslim population in America and the African American Muslim population. There are profound class divisions between the two, which often dictate communal, social, and political participation.
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The second challenge is that of investing in American political structures: this is a particular problem for immigrant Muslims. Many came to this country for the same reasons that other immigrants have: the pursuit of a better life, the promise of freedom, and so on. Yet at least the first generation of immi- grants have often looked back toward their origin as their real ‘‘home’’ and have not fully invested monetarily and emotionally in American political and civic structures. Many immigrant Muslims have led lives of political neu- trality and passivity, seeing their primary mission as that of providing for their families. There are, however, signs that this political lethargy is beginning to change in the charged post-9/11 environment, particularly among the second-generation immigrant Muslims.
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The foremost leader of African American Muslims, Warith Deen Muhammad, is a conservative Republican who is largely uninterested in engaging the critiques of American foreign and domestic policy that many Muslims are invested in. Western Muslims realize that one has no way of transforming a society along the lines of justice without participating in it and remaining engaged with it. Passivity is no lon- ger an option, if it ever was, for American Muslims.

Education

As previously mentioned, there are currently no credible institutions of higher learning for training of Islamic scholars in the United States, although

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organizations such as Zaytuna and the International Institute of Islamic Thought are moving in that direction. There are ongoing conversations about a Crescent University to be established outside of New York City. Many of the leading scholars of Islam in America, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr and John A. Williams are involved in this ambitious project. It seems clear that this is a necessary step in the further evolution of an American Islamic identity.

American Muslims, like other Americans, are drawn into the controversies over the teaching of religion in public education systems. A vivid recent example was the University of North Carolina controversy in which a transla- tion of the Qur’an (by American scholar Michael Sells) was chosen for a summer reading program.
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These struggles are not confined to university curricula, and in some ways, the most widespread impact will come from revi- sing junior high and high school offerings. The founder of the Council for Islamic Education, Shabbir Mansuri, recalls how he became involved in these struggles. His daughter’s eighth grade social studies textbook included sections on every major world civilization. Whereas the chapter on every culture began with a picture of a historical fi the chapter on Islam was introduced by a picture of a camel!
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This dehumanizing depiction of Muslims is so widespread that it will take a massive engagement with the system to transform it.

Christian Zionism: the Bastard Offspring of Christian Evangelical Movements and Pro-Zionist Organizations

One of the largest obstacles to the integration of Muslims into American civic and political life is the power and pervasive influence of what has been called Christian Zionism. The usage of this term requires some background explanation. It is far too customary for American Muslims to point to the power of Jewish lobby groups such as AIPAC as part of conspiracy theories. It is equally common for supporters of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) to describe those who undertake a critical discussion of pro- Zionist political structures in America as anti-Semitic. One has to enter this minefield with caution and clarity.

On one hand, it is important to recognize AIPAC as one of the four or five largest and most powerful lobby groups in Washington, according to the sources as varied as
Fortune
and BBC.
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This power and prestige from a group that has roughly the same population in America as American Muslims has led to situations of resentment and envy. On the other hand, it is simplis- tic to imagine that the entire American foreign policy support for Israel is due to the infl ence of groups like AIPAC. An equally important reason has to be sought in the political emergence of the Evangelical Christian Movement. Depending on the survey that one consults, one-fourth to

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one-third of all Americans describe themselves as Evangelical or ‘‘born again’’ Christians. It is in the context of this Evangelical Christianity that an unwavering support for Israel has developed in American Protestantism. In terms of number, funds, and political infl e, this voting block vastly dwarfs the impact of groups like AIPAC. It is perhaps one indication of the secular bias of much of the American media that this group by and large goes unexamined (or at least under-examined) in the national media.
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In 2006, another episode indicated the extent to which discussions of the extent of the influence of the Israel lobby are contested in the public sphere. A Harvard professor at the Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Walt, working in tandem with a University of Chicago professor, John Mear- sheimer, published a lengthy study titled ‘‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.’’ This 82-page study represents one of the lengthiest documentations of the extent to which American foreign policy in the Middle East is shaped by Israeli interests.
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The fury over the debate—although not so much the particular evidence and the conclusion—is another representation of the taboo nature of this topic. In an ironic twist, the pressure put on Harvard to remove its seal from the paper (an unprecedented move) supports the argument for the power of the Zionist lobby in the United States. A more balanced perspective can be obtained from across the Atlantic, where an English journalist, Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote:

The degree to which this has affected American policy, up to and including the war in Iraq, has been discussed calmly by sane British commentators – though also, to be sure, played up maliciously by bigots.

In America, by contrast, there has been an unmistakable tendency to shy away from this subject.
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The power and relevance of Christian Zionist groups is underscored by the fact that they were largely responsible for bringing the George W. Bush regime to power. It is no accident that the South and the Midwest, regions that largely voted for Bush in the 2000 elections, are the parts of the country with the largest percentage of self-identifying ‘‘born-again’’ Christians. Fur- thermore, many prominent members of the administration, including President George W. Bush himself, identify themselves as Evangelical Chris- tians. One such member is former attorney general John Ashcroft, who summed up his views on Islam and Christianity as follows: ‘‘Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you.’’
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While many members of the secular media scoffed at President Bush’s evocation of Jesus Christ (at a strategic Republican debate in Des Moines, Iowa) as his ‘‘favorite philoso- pher,’’ they failed to understand the implication of that signal for the Evangelical voting block.
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It is this circle of Evangelical Christianity that is responsible for perhaps the most vigorously pro-Zionist and simultaneously anti-Islamic statements in the American public scene. The two need not be linked, but in today’s America they are increasingly emerging from the same corner. Evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson repeatedly recall that ‘‘The Bible Belt in America is Israel’s only safety belt right now.’’ Linked to this support for a vision of an exclusive Jewish state in the ‘‘Holy Lands’’ (as they prefer to call it) is a distinct hatred of Islam, Arabs, and Muslims. Falwell’s ministry has even put together a webpage to spread some vicious and hateful accusations against the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.
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Some of the ten- sion with Muslims is traceable to medieval theological polemics between Islam and Christianity. More pertinent is the distinct messianic, premillennial theology of Evangelicals who believe that the establishment of the state of Israel is a necessary prequel for the return of the Messiah. The massive popu- larity of Christian fiction genres such as the ‘‘Left Behind’’ series is directly due to this messianic eschatology. This has made for a very strange relation- ship between Evangelical Christians and largely secular Zionist Jews in their one-sided support for Israel.
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It is for this reason that I referred to Christian Zionism as a ‘‘bastard’’ child. This is no permanent ‘‘marriage,’’ but a con- venient assignation. Theologically speaking many of the same Evangelical Christians may be guilty of horrendous levels of anti-Semitism. If asked openly, they would recognize Judaism either as an incomplete or a misled religious tradition, since according to their reading of the Bible, ‘‘none shall come to the Father except through Christ.’’ Furthermore, according to this Evangelical eschatology, when the Messiah returns, two-third of the Jews will perish. The rest will convert. While many American Jews and Israelis are aware of the bigotry of these Evangelicals, for the time being it has proven convenient to prolong this cooperation to bring ‘‘security’’ for the state of Israel (that is, military and foreign aid support, United States vetoing of U.

N. resolutions). A joint meeting of Christian and Jewish Zionists in the summer of 2003 declared President Bush’s ‘‘road map’’ for Palestinians and Israelis to be a breach of God’s 4000-year-old covenant with Israel.
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It is hard to overemphasize the degree to which this Evangelical compo- nent is responsible for creating and maintaining a hostile attack on Islam in America. Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham, the famed Crusader (pun intended) who has counseled almost every single American president for five decades. In the weeks after the 9/11 attack, Graham (Jr.) disagreed with Bush (Jr.) over the President’s description of Islam as a religion of peace that had been hijacked. Graham instead stated that Islam is an ‘‘evil and wicked religion’’ and maintained that any attempts to describe Islam as con- taining peaceful messages were fundamentally mistaken. It was only much later that President Bush distanced himself from these comments, and even then he did so without referring to Graham by name.
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Still, Graham deliv- ered the Good Friday sermon in April of 2003 at the Pentagon, which

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confirmed the worst Muslim anxieties about the juxtaposition of Evangelical prejudice and arrogant militarism in the Bush administration.
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Graham speaks for many Evangelicals in this country who do not share President Bush’s benevolent, if somewhat simplistic, attitude toward Islam.
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Nor was Graham’s comment the only such statement. The former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jerry Vines, who is from Jacksonville, Florida (this author’s birthplace and hometown), described the Prophet Muhammad as a ‘‘demon-possessed pedophile.’’ Vines, who was also the board chairman of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, went on to repeat typical Evangelical assertions that Muslims worship a different God than Jews and Christians, thus revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of Islamic thought according to both Muslims and most Christian theologians from various denomina- tions.
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Christianity has had to come to terms with the insidious anti- Semitism that it nurtured for centuries. Now, it will have to reckon with its ‘‘new anti-Semitism,’’ Islamophobia.