Voices of Islam (275 page)

NATIONALISM OR PATRIOTISM?

Hyper-nationalism and fl waving are entrenched modes of response to both tragedy and war in America.
69
Many American Muslims have partici- pated in this mode, becoming more flag-waving than all the rest in order to protect themselves from charges of serving as a fifth column in this country. Much of the visual imagery put forth by American Muslim organizations— and distributed by mainstream media sources—has consisted of ‘‘obviously Muslim’’ fi (meaning veiled women and bearded immigrant males) carrying the American fl At least one intended meaning of such symbols is to assure us that Muslims are ‘‘just as American’’ as everyone else in this country.
70

There are groups of contemporary progressive Muslims who have responded to the above by going over to the other end of the spectrum, one which rejects all nationalist based forms of identity. They see Muslims instead as a part of a global spiritual community (the
Umma
), or simply as human beings whose humanity both precedes and transcends their national identity. These are important means of showing solidarity with all those outside the world hegemon, the United States.

There exists yet another option for American Muslims, especially ones who wish to engage both their Muslimness and in some sense their American affi iation. This distinction is one introduced by other liberal social critics, and seeks to identify a distinction between being patriotic and nationalistic.
71
The majority of American Muslims reject nationalism as a mode of identity politics, since rooted in the very idea of nationalism is affiliation with those members of humanity who happen to be born inside a modern nation-state above and beyond other human beings outside of those borders. For many

I and Thou in a Fluid World
217

Muslims, this form of identity ultimately serves to create an ‘‘us’’ versus ‘‘them’’ means of identity, one that is ultimately divisive rather than unifying. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a more redeemable term. The term ‘‘patri- otic’’ is also contested. Some use the term as virtually synonymous with nationalism. For others, it means an unquestioning, unwavering support for the foreign policy of United States, especially in time of war. For them, being patriotic means to ‘‘support the soldiers’’ when they are overseas fi

wars. There is, however, another usage of the term that would seek to resort to a type of being American where one is simultaneously invested in being patriotic but feels called to hold America responsible for the highest standard of justice it is capable of. This type of a patriotism is reminiscent of the attitude of civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, who fully recalled the high ideals of the unfulfi American dream while remaining mindful of the realities of injustice against Native Americans, women, African Americans, and others throughout American history. It is this variety of patri- otism that many American Muslims who wish to engage their American-ness as a significant aspect of their multilayered identity call upon.

CONCLUSION: WHAT DOES THE EMERGENCE OF ISLAM MEAN FOR AMERICA?

It is safe to say that the engagement of Islam with America is now entering its critical stage. In the next two generations, both Islam and American soci- ety at large will have to change to accommodate each other. At the heart of this emerging relationship is a central set of questions: Will America be an ostensibly (Judeo-)Christian country, whereby other religious communities are merely tolerated? Muslims have pointed out that the term ‘‘tolerance’’ has its origin in medieval toxicology and pharmacology, dealing with how much foreign substance and poison a body can tolerate before it dies. For Muslims, as indeed for other pluralistic human beings, there has to be a higher calling than merely
tolerating
those different from us until it kills us! Our challenge is to push America toward what Eck and others tell us it has already become, the ‘‘most pluralistic nation on Earth.’’ This America will be more than merely ‘‘Abrahamic,’’ since even that wonderful umbrella which brings together Jews, Christians and Muslims still leaves out our Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, Atheist, and Agnostic friends.

Will this America be one that truly believes in the equal protection of all human beings before the law, or rather will it target disempowered racial, religious, and ethnic minorities? Will civil rights be seen as necessary sacrifices in an ongoing ‘‘war on terrorism,’’ or will they be seen as the very foundation of what is worth saving about America itself? Will immigrant Muslims realize that in every civilization where Islam has fl shed it has done so through

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Voices of Change

the interaction of timeless spiritual teachings and timely cultural contexts? Will the highest and most humanistic elements of American culture be blended into the collage of Islamic values? Can American Muslims be a part of the movement to confront the racism, sexism, classism, consumerism, and militarism of American society while upholding the yet unfi shed American dream as a noble experiment?

These are open-ended questions, and the answers, as Bob Dylan tells us, ‘‘are blowing in the wind.’’

NOTES

1. Edward Said,
   Culture and Imperialism
   (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), xxv.
   

2. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, ‘‘European Colonialism and the Emergence of Modern Muslim States,’’ in
   The Oxford History of Islam,
   ed. John L. Esposito (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2000), 549–600; Bruce Lawrence,
   Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence
   (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998).
   

3. The classic statement of this perspective is Frantz Fanon,
   The Wretched of the Earth,
   trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Weidenfeld Press, 1968).
   

4. ‘‘Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders,’’ available through http://copia.library
   . cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/wif.htm.
   

5. Letter cited in http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/fatw2.htm.
   

6. From the interview ‘‘Muslims have the right to attack America,’’ published in
   The Observer
   , November 11, 2001. See http://www.observer.co.uk/afghanistan
   / story/0,1501,591509,00.html.
   

7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/middle_east/1598146.s
   tm. It is worth not- ing that Bush and Blair are personalized, while Israel remains a state entity. It is as if Al Qaeda members can conceive of a non-Crusader American and British leadership, but Israel is beyond redemption.
   

8. One such example is that of the group Tikkun, led by Rabbi Michael Lerner: www.tikkun.org.
   

9. For an example of nonviolent, civil disobedience by a Palestinian Christian, see Mubarak Awad in http://www..org/Media%20Project%202/mpaa1002.html.
   

10. See the witty cover on Tariq Ali’s
    The Clash of Fundamentalism,
    which shows George W. Bush and Usama Bin Laden morphing into one another.
    

11. A sympathetic study is Irving Kristol,
    Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea
    (New York: Free Press, 1995). One critical evaluation is Michael Linds’ ‘‘The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush’s War,’’ http://www.newame
    rica.net/ index.cfm?pg=article&pubID=1189. Also worth seeing is Gary Leupp’s essay expos- ing the anti-democratic and Neo-Straussian foundations of the Neo-con movement, which is available at
    http://www.counterpunch.com/leupp05242003.html. Seymour Hersh’s expose´ in
    The New Yorker
    is a solid source of journalistic investiga- tion in demonstrating the business interest of Neo-con Richard Perle. See: http:// newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact.
    

12. Edward W. Said,
    Orientalism
    (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
    

    I and Thou in a Fluid World
    219
    

13. Edward Said, ‘‘Orientalism: An Exchange.’’ [Letter]
    New York Review of Books
    29 (13) (August 12, 1982): 44–46. On Bernard Lewis, ‘‘The Question of Orientalism,’’
    New York Review of Books
    29 (11) (June 24, 1982): 49–56. Lewis’ reply is on 47–48.
    

14. The hardback version of
    What Went Wrong,
    which came out in 2001, bore the subtitle: ‘‘Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.’’ By the time the paper- back version came out in 2003, ‘‘Middle Eastern’’ had mysteriously morphed into Islam/Muslim, resulting in: ‘‘The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East.’’ Modernity among Muslims is assumed by Lewis to be entirely due to ‘‘Western impact.’’
    

15. Bernard Lewis,
    The Middle East and The West
    (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 135; cited in John Trumpbour, ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations: Samuel P. Huntington, Bernard Lewis, and the Remaking of Post-Cold War World Order,’’ in
    The New Crusades: Constructing the New Enemy,
    eds., Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells, 93.
    

16. Bernard Lewis, ‘‘The Roots of Muslim Rage: Why so many Muslims deeply resent the West, and why their bitterness will not easily be mollifi
    Atlantic Monthly
    , September 1990. Available online at:
    http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/ 90sep/rage.htm.
    

17. Lewis, ‘‘The Roots of Muslim Rage.’’
    

18. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec01/powell_9-1
    3. html.
    

19. By attempting to define through a discussion of the absent item (posited to be present in Western civilization, Lewis follows in the footsteps of anti-Semitic Oriental- ists like Ernest Renan, who described the ‘‘Semitic race’’ as ‘‘recognized almost entirely by negative characteristics. It has neither mythology, nor epic, nor science, not philosophy, nor fi nor plastic arts, nor civil life; in everything there is a complete absence of complexity, subtlety or feeling, except for unity.’’ For Renan, both Muslims and Jews belonged to the ‘‘Semitic race.’’ Lewis subsumes the Jewish civilization under Western, but the framework remains much the same.
    

20. Lewis, ‘‘The Roots of Muslim Rage.’’ 21. Qur’an 4:135.
    

22. Lewis,
What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 153. 23. Ibid., 153–4.

1. See
   Jerusalem Post
   , April 30, 2001, interview with Maj.-Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, head of military research and development, Israeli Defense Force.
   

2. One such resolution (A/RES/46/30) of the General Assembly on December 6, 1991, states: ‘‘Bearing in mind the consensus reached by the General Assembly at its thirty-fi session that the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the Middle East would greatly enhance international peace and security, Desirous of building on that consensus so that substantial progress can be made towards establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the Middle East, Welcoming all initiatives leading to general and complete disarmament, including in the region of the Middle East, and in particular on the establishment therein of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,
   .. .
   ’’
   

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   Voices of Change
   

   See http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/46/a46r030.ht
   m Resolution 687 of the UN Security Council (April 3, 1991), in addition to ending the fi Gulf war involving Iraq also calls for a nuclear-weapons free Middle East:
   http://ods- dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/596/23/IMG/NR059623.pdf? OpenElement.
   

3. Lewis,
   What Went Wrong,
   155.
   

4. Said,
   Orientalism,
   316.
   

5. Lewis,
   What Went Wrong,
   159.
   

6. Ibid.
   

7. Samuel Huntington, ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations?’’
   Foreign Affairs
   72, 3 (1993): 22–25.
   

8. I am here (and elsewhere) indebted to the wonderful insights of a dear friend and leading anthropologist, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, who pointed out Huntington’s racism in a lecture at Colgate University in Spring 2003.
   

9. See for example, Samuel Huntington,
   The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order
   (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1996), 207–208, 245–265, 266–298, 312.
   

10. Huntington, ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations?’’ 22.
    

11. It is tempting to note that in the article the Clash was posited as a question mark, whereas by 1996 Huntington was confi ent enough to remove the question mark and affirm the self-fulfilling prophecy.
    

12. Huntington,
    The Clash of Civilizations,
    49.
    

13. One could easily point to many encounters in the realms of science, medicine, philosophy, trade, and so on.
    

14. Huntington,
    The Clash of Civilizations,
    184–206.
    

15. Huntington,
    The Clash of Civilizations,
    129.
    

16. For an excellent study of Muslim Andalusia as a model of pluralism, see Maria Rosa Menocal,
    The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Cre- ated a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
    (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, 2002).
    

17. Huntington,
    The Clash of Civilizations,
    217.
    

18. Huntington,
    The Clash of Civilizations,
    217–218.
    

19. Huntington, ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations?’’ 35.
    

20. Huntington,
    The Clash of Civilizations,
    256.
    

21. Mottahedeh offered a point by point refutation of Huntington in his ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicist’s ’Critique,’’
    Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review
    2, 2 (1996): 1–26. This essay has been reprinted in the Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells volume,
    The New Crusades.
    

22. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2495.
    

23. Diana Eck,
    A New Religious America: How a ‘‘Christian Country’’ Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation
    (San Francisco, California: Harper Collins, 2002), 2–3.
    

24. The classic study here is Edward Said,
    Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
    (1997; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1981).
    

    I and Thou in a Fluid World
    221
    

25. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/54/story_5402_1.html.
    

26. Very useful here is Bill Moyer’s interview with the head of the Center for Pub- lic Integrity, at http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_lewis2.ht
    ml For ACLU’s evaluation of the PATRIOT Bill, see
    http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/ SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12126&c=207.
    

27. Center for Public Integrity has obtained a leaked copy of this memo. Among other powers, this bill would grant the Attorney General the power to strip U.S. citi- zens of their citizenship. See:
    http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/downloads/ Story_01_020703_Doc_1.pdf.
    

28. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/50/story_5010_1.html.
    

29. For a frank discussion of these tensions, see Sherman A. Jackson,
    Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection
    (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
    

30. Rachel Zoll, AP religion writer, ‘‘U.S. Muslims Lobbying for Civil Rights,’’ June 8, 2003. The article can be accessed at:
    http://www.newsday.com/news/ nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-american-muslims,0,2912861.story?coll=sns-ap- nation-headlines.
    

31. For this controversy, see http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells
    /UNC_ ApproachingTheQur’an.htm.
    

32. As conveyed in the video
    Islam in America
    , produced by the Christian Science Monitor.
    

33. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1969542
    .stm (BBC) and
    http://www.fortune.com/fortune/power25 (Fortune), which ranks AIPAC as the fourth most powerful lobby group in the United States.
    

34. One notable exception was a 60 Minutes piece (June 8, 2003). Access at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/03/60minutes/main524268.shtml.
    

35. The paper, minus the JFK Seal which was removed, can be downloaded at: http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf
    /rwp/RWP06-011/$File/ rwp_06_011_walt.pdf.
    

36. ‘‘Most Favored Nation,’’ http://www.boston.com/ne
    ws/globe/ideas/ articles/2006/04/02/most_favored_nation/?page=1.
    

37. The statement is from an interview with the syndicated columnist Carl Thomas, at http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1108858.html.
    

38. http://www.cnn.com/1999/ALLPOLITICS/sto
    ries/12/15/religion. register/.
    

39. http://www.falwell.com/historical_data.html.
    

40. For a historical overview of this complicated relationship, see
    On Behalf of Israel: American Fundamentalist Attitudes Towards Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865–1945
    (New York: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1991).
    

41. ‘‘Zionist meeting brands ‘road map’ as heresy’’: http://www.washtimes. com/national/20030518-114058-5626r.htm.
    

42. ‘‘Bush Takes on Christian Right Over Anti-Islam Words,’’ http:// middleeastinfo.org/article1607.html.
    

43. http://www5.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/04/18/gr
    aham.penta- gon/.
    

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    Voices of Change
    

44. See for example Bush’s comments about Islam inside the Washington Islamic Center (http://usin
    fo.state.gov/usa/islam/s091701b.htm), and the comments as part of the speech to the joint session of the congress after
    9/11(http://usinfo. state.gov/usa/islam/s092001.htm).
    

45. Susan Sachs, ‘‘Baptist Pastor Attacks Islam, inciting cries of Intolerance,’’
    

    The New York Times,
    June 15 (2002).
    

46. Chris Hedges,
    War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
    (New York: Public Affairs, 2002).
    

47. This discourse has been advocated by authors ranging from Asma Gull Hasan to Feisal Abdul Rauf.
    

48. For an insightful commentary, see Bill Moyers
    http://www.pbs.org/now/ commentary/moyers19.html.