Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Syed Farooq Is an American: Let's Stop the Muslim vs. Christian
Debate and Take a Look at Ourselves
________________________________________
Syed Farooq Is an American: Let's Stop the Muslim vs. Christian Debate and
Take a Look at Ourselves
By Steve Salaita [1] / Salon [2]
December 3, 2015
Dear Compatriots:
I address you in a moment of collective stress, with another mass shooting,
this one in San Bernardino, California, dominating the news. Guessing the
identity of shooters-black or white, Christian or Muslim, man or woman
(though masculinity is almost guaranteed)-has become a vicious social media
ritual. Too many people seem to believe we can discern motivation by
ethnicity, or that ethnicity alone determines what type of terror can
rightly be deemed terrorism.
It was with much sadness that I witnessed your gleeful reaction when police
named Syed Farooq, a devout Muslim, as one of the suspects. You seem to be
under the impression that a Muslim shooter absolves the United States of
brutality, forgetting that Farooq is also an American. This worldview
allows you to embrace mythologies that exonerate you of political violence.
But we must acknowledge Farooq's nationality, because his terrible deed does
not arise from an unknowable foreign culture, but from one endemic to the
United States. You can exempt yourself from Farooq's actions only if you
are willing to exclude minorities from your national identity. Many of you
are happy to do that, but it's an intellectually lazy choice.
It is why I greet you as a compatriot. The greeting might make you
uncomfortable because I am Arab, but I am also American. Being American
requires no special ethnic, religious, or ideological character, even though
our nationality contains implicit demands. One of those demands is to not
be Arab or Muslim.
Enough about technicalities, though. I don't approach you to be pedantic or
to beg for your acceptance, nor do I have any interest in situating mass
murder into hierarchies of tolerability. I merely ask you to consider why
those hierarchies exist and why it's so easy to name state violence as
necessary or desirable. There's a connection between the supposed deviance
of Farooq's shooting and your endless, adamant justification of U.S.
bloodletting throughout the world.
To put it plainly: thinking about violent behavior as something innately
foreign is a terrific rationale for delivering violence to foreign places.
It forces you to hate people and demands your loyalty to institutions
designed to contravene your interests.
I think you've been hoodwinked by politicians and luminaries into hating
Arabs and Muslims. This hatred is bad for Arabs and Muslims, of course, but
it also does you little good. It might make you feel better about your place
in the American racial hierarchy. It might alleviate your majoritarian
anxieties. It might reaffirm the superiority of your faith. It might make
patriotism easier to accept.
It doesn't, however, help you better understand this world and it certainly
won't keep food on your table. In fact, it deprives everybody of
intellectual and economic sustenance.
The attitudes you possess-that Arabs are beholden to violent culture, that
Islam singularly produces religious evil, that Syrian refugees threaten
American safety, that the Middle East and South Asia are places of mystical
barbarity-have existed since before 9/11, but they seem to have a particular
resonance in the current presidential election.
It's become remarkably disturbing, to be honest. It reminds me a bit too
much of the rhetoric preceding the internment of Japanese Americans during
World War II. I don't select the analogy at random: more than one eminent
conservative has suggested interning Muslims. Liberal beacon Wesley Clark
did, too, when he spoke approvingly [3] of interment and proposed it as a
remedy for the "disloyal."
Every day I hear another demagogue inflaming your outrage, urging you to
maintain an acutely resentful psychology. Ben Carson, often described as
judicious and presidential, recently proclaimed [4] that he "would not
advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," a flagrant
constitutional violation and a vulgar bit of pointless scapegoating.
Last week, Donald Trump repeated the canard [5] that Arabs in New Jersey
celebrated as the Twin Towers collapsed, claiming that he witnessed "a heavy
Arab population that were cheering as the buildings came down." Trump
implies that all Arabs supported 9/11. None, therefore, is trustworthy.
There is no reason to make this sort of comment other than to manipulate our
desire for safety and thereby create a pretext for unthinkable
possibilities.
Is it too difficult to recognize the many problems of a discourse that
relies so heavily on demonization to generate support? The demagogue can
enact violence only when his audience refuses to recognize the violent
nature of demagoguery.
Politicians love nothing more than a frightened, uninformed citizenry. It's
how they convince us to cosign our dispossession. People who discern gray
areas and have the ability to reason through propaganda are their most
undesirable clients. The United States cannot be a functional democracy if
we make ourselves so compliant.
Believe it or not, Arabs and Muslims (and other minorities) are not the
source of your problems. Turn to the politicians who promise you an
uncomplicated world for a better target of your anger.
I know you're ready to counter with "terrorism," but the term is largely a
bromide in the American political vocabulary. It's useless to debate which
groups commit more violence. No week passes that we don't hear of another
white supremacist plot to murder South Asians, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics or
African Americans. The U.S. and its allies generate extraordinary
destruction in the regions of the world said to be uniquely barbaric.
Police kill with impunity. Our president orders death by remote control.
Everybody suffers but the people who oversee this horror.
Displays of spectacular cruelty pervade the United States, but you embrace
any opportunity to disavow them as an exotic problem. And still more people
will be killed today-many by those for whom you voted and to whom you pay
taxes.
We should work to better understand how the elite apportion discourses of
violence into categories of good and evil, civilized and savage, rational
and unreasonable. Who creates these binaries? Who suffers their finality?
Who profits from their endurance?
Let's explore these questions together. We'll surely be surprised by what
we learn through the simple act of listening. Before we do, though, I ask
you to remember that I am proudly Arab but legally American, and I refuse to
entertain the possibility that either category invalidates the other.
Steven Salaita currently holds the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies
at the American University of Beirut. His most recent book is Uncivil Rites:
Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom. @stevesalaita
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________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/syed-farooq-american-lets-stop-mus
lim-vs-christian-debate-and-take-look-ourselves
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steve-salaita
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/the-frightening-new-proposal-to
-intern-muslim-citizens.html
[4] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34309051
[5]
http://gawker.com/donald-trump-invokes-long-discredited-rumor-about-arabs-17
44103579
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Syed Farooq Is an
American: Let's Stop the Muslim vs. Christian Debate and Take a Look at
Ourselves
[7] http://www.alternet.org/
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Syed Farooq Is an American: Let's Stop the Muslim vs. Christian
Debate and Take a Look at Ourselves
Syed Farooq Is an American: Let's Stop the Muslim vs. Christian Debate and
Take a Look at Ourselves
By Steve Salaita [1] / Salon [2]
December 3, 2015
Dear Compatriots:
I address you in a moment of collective stress, with another mass shooting,
this one in San Bernardino, California, dominating the news. Guessing the
identity of shooters-black or white, Christian or Muslim, man or woman
(though masculinity is almost guaranteed)-has become a vicious social media
ritual. Too many people seem to believe we can discern motivation by
ethnicity, or that ethnicity alone determines what type of terror can
rightly be deemed terrorism.
It was with much sadness that I witnessed your gleeful reaction when police
named Syed Farooq, a devout Muslim, as one of the suspects. You seem to be
under the impression that a Muslim shooter absolves the United States of
brutality, forgetting that Farooq is also an American. This worldview allows
you to embrace mythologies that exonerate you of political violence.
But we must acknowledge Farooq's nationality, because his terrible deed does
not arise from an unknowable foreign culture, but from one endemic to the
United States. You can exempt yourself from Farooq's actions only if you are
willing to exclude minorities from your national identity. Many of you are
happy to do that, but it's an intellectually lazy choice.
It is why I greet you as a compatriot. The greeting might make you
uncomfortable because I am Arab, but I am also American. Being American
requires no special ethnic, religious, or ideological character, even though
our nationality contains implicit demands. One of those demands is to not be
Arab or Muslim.
Enough about technicalities, though. I don't approach you to be pedantic or
to beg for your acceptance, nor do I have any interest in situating mass
murder into hierarchies of tolerability. I merely ask you to consider why
those hierarchies exist and why it's so easy to name state violence as
necessary or desirable. There's a connection between the supposed deviance
of Farooq's shooting and your endless, adamant justification of U.S.
bloodletting throughout the world.
To put it plainly: thinking about violent behavior as something innately
foreign is a terrific rationale for delivering violence to foreign places.
It forces you to hate people and demands your loyalty to institutions
designed to contravene your interests.
I think you've been hoodwinked by politicians and luminaries into hating
Arabs and Muslims. This hatred is bad for Arabs and Muslims, of course, but
it also does you little good. It might make you feel better about your place
in the American racial hierarchy. It might alleviate your majoritarian
anxieties. It might reaffirm the superiority of your faith. It might make
patriotism easier to accept.
It doesn't, however, help you better understand this world and it certainly
won't keep food on your table. In fact, it deprives everybody of
intellectual and economic sustenance.
The attitudes you possess-that Arabs are beholden to violent culture, that
Islam singularly produces religious evil, that Syrian refugees threaten
American safety, that the Middle East and South Asia are places of mystical
barbarity-have existed since before 9/11, but they seem to have a particular
resonance in the current presidential election.
It's become remarkably disturbing, to be honest. It reminds me a bit too
much of the rhetoric preceding the internment of Japanese Americans during
World War II. I don't select the analogy at random: more than one eminent
conservative has suggested interning Muslims. Liberal beacon Wesley Clark
did, too, when he spoke approvingly [3] of interment and proposed it as a
remedy for the "disloyal."
Every day I hear another demagogue inflaming your outrage, urging you to
maintain an acutely resentful psychology. Ben Carson, often described as
judicious and presidential, recently proclaimed [4] that he "would not
advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," a flagrant
constitutional violation and a vulgar bit of pointless scapegoating.
Last week, Donald Trump repeated the canard [5] that Arabs in New Jersey
celebrated as the Twin Towers collapsed, claiming that he witnessed "a heavy
Arab population that were cheering as the buildings came down." Trump
implies that all Arabs supported 9/11. None, therefore, is trustworthy.
There is no reason to make this sort of comment other than to manipulate our
desire for safety and thereby create a pretext for unthinkable
possibilities.
Is it too difficult to recognize the many problems of a discourse that
relies so heavily on demonization to generate support? The demagogue can
enact violence only when his audience refuses to recognize the violent
nature of demagoguery.
Politicians love nothing more than a frightened, uninformed citizenry. It's
how they convince us to cosign our dispossession. People who discern gray
areas and have the ability to reason through propaganda are their most
undesirable clients. The United States cannot be a functional democracy if
we make ourselves so compliant.
Believe it or not, Arabs and Muslims (and other minorities) are not the
source of your problems. Turn to the politicians who promise you an
uncomplicated world for a better target of your anger.
I know you're ready to counter with "terrorism," but the term is largely a
bromide in the American political vocabulary. It's useless to debate which
groups commit more violence. No week passes that we don't hear of another
white supremacist plot to murder South Asians, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics or
African Americans. The U.S. and its allies generate extraordinary
destruction in the regions of the world said to be uniquely barbaric. Police
kill with impunity. Our president orders death by remote control. Everybody
suffers but the people who oversee this horror.
Displays of spectacular cruelty pervade the United States, but you embrace
any opportunity to disavow them as an exotic problem. And still more people
will be killed today-many by those for whom you voted and to whom you pay
taxes.
We should work to better understand how the elite apportion discourses of
violence into categories of good and evil, civilized and savage, rational
and unreasonable. Who creates these binaries? Who suffers their finality?
Who profits from their endurance?
Let's explore these questions together. We'll surely be surprised by what we
learn through the simple act of listening. Before we do, though, I ask you
to remember that I am proudly Arab but legally American, and I refuse to
entertain the possibility that either category invalidates the other.
Steven Salaita currently holds the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies
at the American University of Beirut. His most recent book is Uncivil Rites:
Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom. @stevesalaita
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [6]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[7]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/syed-farooq-american-lets-stop-mus
lim-vs-christian-debate-and-take-look-ourselves
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steve-salaita
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/the-frightening-new-proposal-to
-intern-muslim-citizens.html
[4] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34309051
[5]
http://gawker.com/donald-trump-invokes-long-discredited-rumor-about-arabs-17
44103579
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Syed Farooq Is an
American: Let's Stop the Muslim vs. Christian Debate and Take a Look at
Ourselves
[7] http://www.alternet.org/
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
