I am getting tired of watching my fellow Muslims around the world treated like juvenile delinquents. And I am getting tired of watching my fellow Muslims around the world behave like juvenile delinquents.
So a nut down in Florida – a certain Pastor Terry Jones, leader of a tiny church boasting a grand total of 50 members — decides to burn copies of the Qur’an to “commemorate” September 11th. He says that he wants to send a message to his fellow Americans that “Islam is of the Devil” (which also happens to be the title of his polemic anti-Islam pamphlet). The news, of course, gets picked up by the Blogosphere, then duly by the mainstream media, and shortly after by extremists and opportunists in the Muslim world. The result: massive crowds are incited to take to the fabulously fabled Angry Arab and Muslim street to condemn the desecration of the Holy Book.
The predictability of the reaction in the Muslim world to such infantile provocation is depressing. In fact, the surest way to cause death and injury to scores of Muslims without firing a single shot, letting them do all the handy work by themselves, is to disrespect their religion. Draw a cartoon of the Prophet (and it does not even have to be unflattering) or threaten to desecrate the Holy book, and your job is done. In countries where gatherings are strictly controlled or outright prohibited, massive demonstrations to denounce the “Evil West” are not only tolerated, but organized and encouraged by the many shades of dictatorship that rule with an iron hand most of the Muslim world today.
Of course, such reliable, near absolute determinism is always useful to those with designs and schemes to manipulate. Politicians love nothing more than a trusty bag of tricks, and this one is as trusty a trick as any that have ever been devised by mortal man.
But living trapped in societies dominated by stifling authorities, where consequential free expression — expression that leads to organization and fruitful civil and political action, as opposed to the meaningless “free expression” one finds in Egypt, or Algeria, or Morocco, or Jordan, to name the ones who tolerate any form of “expression” — does not exist, most of my fellow Muslims simply cannot comprehend that in the United States, people are free to act and say almost whatever they please, as long as they don’t violate the law. They cannot fully conceive of the basic fact that in a free and open society, a million things happen every day that are completely out of the control of any central authority, civilian, military, or religious. In such a society, someone somewhere will do something that will anger, insult, demean, and debase someone else. But what is important is not what happens, but who picks it up, what they with it, what they highlight, and the timing they pick to stoke up the fires. And even more important, is what the victims do to defend themselves.
In this case, the pastor’s stunt dove-tailed nicely for some with the row over the Islamic Center in downtown Manhattan, which, itself, had quickened the appetite of Republicans smelling blood in the waters of the mid-term elections of 2010. Muslims had a right to build their center wherever they pleased, insisted President Obama in his initial response, but then furiously back-paddled when his detractors — predictably enough — attacked him for such “cold insensitivity” to the victims of 9/11. Somewhat as predictably, sadly enough, the President then “clarified” his statement and qualified his assertions by suggesting that, perhaps, the Islamic Center should be moved a little further away from the site of the Twin Towers, to “show respect” to the victims and their families.
Enter Pastor Terry Jones and “Burn the Qur’an” day, and now the unsavory likes of Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and the whole Republican establishment, make their move, and put forward an offer they are certain the American people can’t resist. Pastor Jones should desist and call off burning the Qur’an, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man leading the Islamic Center project, should desist and call off building the Center. What could be fairer than that?
And here is where the juvenile part comes in. First, rather than condemn the Pastor purely for the dastardly nature of his act (now that the story was out of control and had gotten to the front pages), President Obama instead condemned the action on grounds that it would incite Muslims to violence against American soldiers around the world. That Muslims would riot and go bonkers was, in essence, taken for granted, not subject to a second thought. In other words, Muslims are juveniles, so we had better not provoke them.
By the same token, rather than insist that Muslims have an absolute right to build their places of worship wherever they legally can build them, and that Islam the religion, faith, and tradition, has NOTHING to do with 9/11, and that asking Muslims to move their house of worship away from Ground Zero is akin to asking Germans not to speak German when they are in Israel, Imam Abdul Rauf instead argued that moving the Center would provide the extremists in the Muslim world with yet another proof that Islam is under assault in the United States. In other words, Muslims are juvenile and we had better not provoke them.
My fellow Muslims: Islam is not under assault in the United States. This country is far from perfect, and minorities of all sorts continue to struggle daily for their rights. And to be sure, the type of abusive language and imagery tolerated against Arabs and Muslims would ignite firestorms with swift and concrete consequences if they were leveled against any other minority. But know this: Arabs and Muslims, like all minorities here, do have the democratic space they need to struggle peacefully for their rights. None of the gains made by any of the other minorities have came easy, and Arabs and Muslims will not to be the exception. The responsibility is on our shoulder to engage in a constant struggle to educate and enlighten our fellow citizens. The task is long-drawn and arduous, but the friends and allies we can count on our side in this struggle far surpass in numbers our detractors. When you hear or read someone in the so-called “West” attack “Islam,” remember that they are just “someone” and they don’t embody the whole “West”. The best reaction that you can have against such a “someone” is to ignore them. Let them be and they will vanish. Frothing with rage against them does absolutely nothing but reinforce the dehumanizing stereotype they are bent on promoting against you and revitalizes them.
Enough of being played and manipulated by crass opportunists and extremists from all sides. They have their plans, and their plans do not include your welfare and prosperity. It is time we entered adulthood.