By Guest Contributor Nicole Cunningham Zaghia, cross-posted from Muslimah Media Watch

One of the main criticisms of TLC’s All American Muslim was that the show’s characters were representative of only a small part of the American Muslim community.  If you felt that way, then a great antidote is Me, the Muslim Next Door, a web documentary produced for Radio Canada International.  Filmed in Montreal and Toronto in both English and French, Me the Muslim Next Door is over two hours of audio, video, and still photography, broken up into 4-6 minute segments, with each of the show’s participants having several segments.  These segments took place in the participants’ personal landscapes – at home, on the street, with their families.

Me, the Muslim Next Door is cast like a cross between the United Nations and a Benetton ad. I love it.  We have:

• Eduardo, a Brazilian convert who, by his own admission, used to hate Muslims;
• Dania, whose father is Eritrean and whose mother is a convert from  Quebec;
• Mehdi, a Moroccan married to Laila from Afghanistan; they met on Facebook;
• Suad, whose mother is Syrian and whose father is part Palestinian, part Bosnian and, to add some fun to the mix, her husband Karim is part Finnish, part Egyptian;
• Rizwan, of South Asian background, who lives in Toronto and takes us to his neighbourhood masjid.

One of my recurring problems with Muslims in the media is that we are often portrayed answering the same questions in the same ways. Every show has something about polygamy or hijab or “fitting in.” We either go on tape with platitudes (“oh but you can only be polygamous if you afford it, isn’t it great that widows can be taken care of”), with statements designed to shock the middle classes (“jihad is ok for the kuffar!”), or with instant fatwas about how our religion says things in black and white (“Islam says music is BAD”).

These topics show up in Me the Muslim Next Door, but the  “personal landscape” format of the videos allows a fresh, personal light without bringing down the level of the discourse.

Mehdi and Laila, a mixed Sunni-Shia couple, explain that for them, the most important part of Islam is at the level of the shahada. If you say the shahada, you’re ok, and sectarian or other differences don’t matter.  That spoke to me. Jamila, part of a large family, explains why she stays close to her parents – because they made sacrifices for her when she was a child, so she will make sacrifices for them as an adult. Suad and Karim had a marriage semi-arranged by their MSA, “but” played the piano at their wedding. And Dania’s 23^rd birthday party was alcohol-free. She mentions alcohol – that she has never had it, but doesn’t see what it could bring to an already good time. These are people and situations I can relate to and the type of Muslims I want people to see when they ask me about my religion. The show’s participants leave out “Islam says this” and instead talk about these topics in the terms of personal choices they have made in their private lives.

As a francophone Louisianian who lived and studied in Canada, I absolutely LOVED seeing normal Muslim people I could relate to in their living rooms talking about their families, hopes, jobs and dreams. I found my place more in this show than I did in All-American Muslim. The difference is that the goal of Me, the Muslim Next Door isn’t sensational. It nails the fine line between “educating the mass market” and giving Muslim viewers characters who are different enough to be interesting yet similar enough for all of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to find common ground.

By Special Correspondent Fatemeh Fakhraie

Sir Richard Burton is most famous for sexing up The 1,001 Arabian Nights. Two centuries later, Craig Thompson has graciously provided some accompanying imagery.

I feel like I have no choice but to hate Thompson’s latest graphic novel, Habibi. I’ll admit that it was beautifully drawn, though some of the panels seem needlessly garnished with alchemy symbols or random Arabic letters. But I’ll let Robyn Creswell’s review for The New York Times handle the fact that Thompson clutters his story—my beef with Thompson is about his staggering Orientalism, which I’ll get to shortly.

Themes of longing and survival permeate Habibi. The protagonists, Zam and Dodola, long for each other, likening this to a yearning for the Divine – Middle Eastern poets have done this for centuries. Zam and Dodola endure horrible events in the name of survival, perhaps tying in with Thompson’s conservationist theme by implying that our disregard for the earth is tantamount to rape and castration of the planet. These themes, however, are often drowned out—no matter how much Thompson underlines them—by the towering gaffes of his misrepresentation. The country of Wanatolia may be fiction, but the cultures it mimics and clumsily muddles together are real.

When one opens Habibi, one might assume that it takes place a long time ago, in a fictional, far-away land that happens to look and feel just like Disney’s Agrabah. But, lo! Wanatolia has steam punk-themed palace guards and high-rise condo construction that flies in the face of a village’s pollution and resulting poverty and famine. Is it to represent the “Global South,” as Thompson claims in a Guernica interview?

No. It’s simply an Orientalist reimaging of a modern Arabia—Thompson needs modern machinery to further his conservationist theme, but he still wants his pre-modern harems full of odalisques with no cell phones and his pre-modern camel caravans crossing a desert that his very same construction companies would build roads through.

Thompson admitted to Guernica that he drew inspiration for Habibi from the Orientalist art movement. Orientalist paintings are a primary example of Orientalism as a racist point of view because they are Western depictions of Arab lands based on preconceptions of the painters (who often had never been to the region they were depicting). Thompson traps himself by not realizing that his magical land full of djinns and harems is exactly the kind of fantastical interpretation that many Middle Eastern people and Muslims have had enough of.

And then we come to the other huge problem: its portrayal of women and the sexualizing of rape. The female protagonist, Dodola, is raped constantly: as a child, by her first husband; as a child and teen, by men in the caravans she tried to steal food from; by the sultan whose harem she lived in. Dodola’s history is a history of rape, also falling into the Orientalist trope of brutal male savages and their oppressed women. And once Zam (or Habibi, the male protagonist) witnesses one of these rapes, both his consciousness and his dreams are plagued by sensual reenactments of her rape. Do I really have to make the point here that sexualizing rape is dangerous and unacceptable?

Tasnim at Muslimah Media Watch highlights the tired savage men/oppressed women dichotomy that Thompson’s novel rehashes: “Dodola’s narrative in particular features an endless array of savage men victimizing sexualized women, with hardly a page passing without nudity or brutality.” Every other page, Dodola was naked for one reason or another: being raped, bathing, birthing. The way Thompson portrays the female form is little more than a screen on which to project his Orientalist, new-agey crap. And with the current lack of female representation in comic books and graphic novels, you’d think he’d try a little harder to make his female protagonist more than a naked body.

I genuinely appreciated Thompson’s attempt to include the Qur’an in a positive way, which is why I wanted to like this novel. G. Willow Wilson, who has a foot in both worlds because she is both Muslim and a graphic novelist, tried similarly, writing, “the sheer dearth of sympathetic Muslim characters in western literature (and the fiercely secular world of comics and graphic novels in particular) makes me want to forgive a few small sins of inauthenticity.” And the beautiful drawings almost sway me before I realize that just because it’s beautiful doesn’t mean it’s okay.

But mixing Middle Eastern fairy tales with Qur’anic passages, new-age-y alchemist references, and a constantly naked female protagonist-turned-odalisque makes it apparent that Habibi is Thompson’s attempt to write his own Arabian Nights.

Longtime Racialicious readers know this time on the calendar has prompted the R to read someone (or several folks) about their racist costumes or some other Halloween-related foolishness. Well, this year, Ohio University’s Students Teaching about Racism in Society (STARS) put on posters what we’ve been putting into words for quite a while.

I think that, for the most part, the campaign deserves the accolades, coverage, and support it’s been getting around the web, from Angry Asian Man to the 17,575 (and counting!) responses on the STARS president’s Tumblr to The Root to Bitch to the former Racialicious owner Carmen Sognonvi .

Of course, we can argue, among other things, that phenotypes don’t equal culture and cultures aren’t static or even talk about the historical-religious appropriation of Halloween itself.

My only quibble with the campaign is that I may have chosen photos where the models conveyed different body language. Not that the models didn’t pose how they wanted, being a student-driven campaign. What I do think is quite a few photographers rarely get The Shot in one shot; in fact, several photographers submit several photos for clients/collaborative partners to choose from.

I would have chosen, say, the Latino looking down at the photo, the East Asian woman giving the “geisha” picture the side-eye. Or all of the models giving their respective photos the side-eye. Or all of them looking out at the viewer. Or all of them looking down. As is, the photo of the East Asian woman looking down may suggest non-confrontation (“meek Asian girl”)

juxtaposed with the men of color (the photo at the top of the post and this one)

and the Black woman

may  inadvertently suggest stereotypes of anger and aggression (“angry Arab,” “Latino with a temper,” “aggressive Black woman”). Just a thought if and when STARS decides to tweak this incredible campaign.

But, again, that’s my only quibble. STARS did a wild-applause-and-rose-tossing job with this campaign.

Others, however, have taken this serious and timely message and parodied—if not downright attacked–it. (Color me unshocked by this, Racializens.) Now, some of the parodies made me chuckle, like this Avatar-based one

and the zombie one

mostly due to the ideas of the creatures being symbols for people of color.

The ones about white people, especially poor whites, produced mixed results mostly because the parodies don’t quite grasp that, yes, poor white people do have a mitigated privilege via their skin color and that white people of various class standings making fun of poor whites may be viewed as “inside joking,”

but white poverty is also thoroughly ridiculed and dismissed—and, therefore erased–in US society by that very same mitigated privilege.

Oh, and let’s not forget the sexism and the fatphobia in these parodies.

As we’ve witnessed in our posts about racism in costuming, people have rushed to defend their choice to dress up in racially offensive Halloween garb in some of the comment sections about the campaigns, with the usual mixture of the “I got my rights!”, “my best [insert race and/or ethnicity here] friend/partner/co-worker/neighbor didn’t find my costume offensive,” (bonus points if the person saying this is a person of color wears the stereotyping costume of a PoC culture), “y’all are being oversensitive/overemotional/hostile,” “you’re the racist for calling out my racism,” and other derailing techniques.

Some of the Derailing/Apologist/Other-Blaming hits and remixes?

From “Jerry Stein” at Autostraddle

OMG, get a life. This is pathetic. Would an Asian woman be OK to go as a Geisha on Halloween? If not why not? And if so are we now saying that only people of the exact origin or race can have fun dressed as a CHARACTER on Halloween? Stop being so sensitive. If America is to get passed all of this nonsense then it needs to get some perspective and start smiling again.

Watch any movie or TV show and you will see a racial stereotype. Are all stereotypes negative NO! Why is it that this campaign only sees that.

This country is dividing itself. Nobody wants to be American. Everyone is so narcissistic and self important it makes me sick to my stomach. Bring back people with humility and a sense of humor before we all end up selfish deluded idiots thinking the world owes them something.

Based on this all costumes which feature Cowboys, Irish Leprechauns, Michael Jackson, Lady GaGa, Bin Laden, OJ Simpson, Madonna, Jersey Shore cast members will all now be banned because they offend the Irish, African Americans, Italians and Muslims. Thats pretty much Halloween cancelled.

This country is becoming a laughing stock for the wrong reasons.

Mohamhead from GOOD

I am not white myself but I don’t see what’s wrong with people doing that kind on stuff on Halloween. I might even dress up as a white guy. Is that racist too? Or is it only racist if white people do it? Hypocrites.

didimydoe3, also at GOOD

I don’t mind stereotypical costumes of my race because I’m mature enough to know it’s a costume.

Sometimes it is offensive. Mine is. It’s the only reason I’m doing it. I’m going blackface.

Oh, I could go on and on and on with these kinds of comments–because these comments are out there ad nauseum–but you get the jist.

But see, here’s the thing, People Who Defend Racist Costumes: you all are proving STARS’—and Racialicious’—point…and quite well. You’re welcome.

As Bitch’s headline says, don’t mess up as you dress up, and have a Happy Halloween!

Image credits: Uproxx and Hard to Be Humble When You Stuntin on a Jumbotron

With the timing and awareness of the new Harold and Kumar movie, everyone in America who likes to smoke out will be watching the episode and even better–they’ll be too wasted to find the remote and switch the channel even if the show sucks. I noticed on your upcoming schedule that no host has yet to be confirmed for either the October 29 or November 5 episodes—either date would be perfect to take advantage of the Harold and Kumar synergy.

You also have the added insurance of two hosts so if one of them sucks, you still have a good shot that the other can carry the show. ‘Cause I’ve seen episodes where the lone host sucked and it was not a pretty 1 ½ hours. At the least, two Asian guys have to be worth one Matt Damon, right?

And lest you mistakenly think that having an Asian host will negatively effect the ratings and a segment of the audience (i.e. in-bred racist hicks in the South) will not tune in, Let me remind you that one of the highest-rated episodes in ALL of SNL’s history was when Jackie Chan hosted on May 20, 2000. That show received a 7.3 audience share. Compare that with the Justin Timberlake-hosted episode from this past May, which was considered one of the highest-rated in recent years. That outing “only” netted a 7.0 share.

Now that I’ve addressed your business concerns, let me turn to the artistic ones. Having both John and Kal co-host will definitely open up your creative options because between these two guys, you’ve pretty much got everything covered. You can do ethnic jokes, you can do stoner jokes, you can do 3-D jokes, you can do Star Trek jokes, you can do political jokes (remember Kal worked for the Obama administration), you can do musical comedy (John fronts his own band)—the possibilities are endless. Hell, you can finally do sketches like this with actual Asian people in them.

- From You Offend Me, You Offend My Family

By Arturo R. García

And things only got more disturbing after that video.

CNN’S partnership with the Tea Party for Monday night’s Republican presidential debate in Florida was definitely a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a news organization that likes to paint itself as being above political pettiness was visibly validating an astro-turfed faction of a party even longtime supporters are comparing to death cults. But on the upside, this was a chance for more people to see just how beyond the pale these folks really are.

In that regard, they did not disappoint.

So while many of the contenders busied themselves taking shots at Texas Governor Rick Perry, the audience made its’ presence known in ways perhaps not even the candidates anticipated – or wanted.

Perry, who came into Monday evening with some media-driven momentum, was jeered by members of the crowd for defending the Texas DREAM Act. Of course, he was also behind a state ban on sanctuary cities for immigrants, but it was enough of an opening for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to accuse him of supporting “people who have broken our laws or who are here in the United States illegally.”

For his part, ex-Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum doubled down on the xenophobia. Not only did he accuse Perry of trying to attract “illegal — I mean Latino — voters,” but he took aim at Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) criticism of U.S. foreign policy before this past Sept. 11th, leading to some pushback from the audience. The transcript of the exchange is under the clip.

SANTORUM: We were attacked because we have a civilization because we have a society that is antithetical to the civilization of the Jihadists. And they wanna kill us because of who we are and what we stand for. And we stand for American exceptionalism. We stand for freedom and opportunity for everyone around the world and I am not ashamed to do that.

PAUL: As long as this country follows that idea, we’re gonna be in a lot of danger. This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and they’re attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have been explicit (boos begin).They have been explicit and they wrote and said, ‘We attacked America bcause you had bases on our holy land of Saudi Arabia. You do not give Palestinians fair treatment and you have been bombing (boos intensify) I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing. At the same time, we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for ten years. Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, there’s some problem.

Paul was also involved in the other major audience flare-up, when host Wolf Blitzer asked him about healthcare costs:

BLITZER: You’re a physician, Ron Paul, so you’re a doctor, you know something about this subject. Let me ask you this hypothetical question: a healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, ‘You know what? I’m not gonna spend $200 or $300 a month ’cause I’m healthy, I don’t need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who’s gonna pay for, if he goes into a coma -

PAUL: In a society that expects welfareism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of it.

BLITZER: What do you want?

PAUL: What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself. My advice for him would have a major medical policy.

BLITZER: But he doesn’t have that. He doesn’t have it and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

PAUL: That’s what freedom is all about – taking your own risks. (Applause) This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody …

BLITZER: But, Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yeah!

Late in the debate, businessman Herman Cain said he would bring “a sense of humor” to the White House if elected, “because America is too uptight.” Right now there’s plenty of comedy to go around in this field, alright – if you’re into gallows humor. It’s gonna be a long race, folks.

Top video courtesy of Crooks and Liars
Other videos courtesy of ThinkProgress

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for DC Comics gave the official reason for the switch as follows:

“This fill in issue contains a lost classic, Lost Boy: A Tale of Krypto the Superdog, set shortly after Superboy died in Infinite Crisis and Superman went missing.

DC Comics determined that the previously solicited story did not work within the ‘Grounded’ storyline. However, Chris Roberson, will be back for the final two issues of Superman’s year long walk across America. As we near the conclusion, catch up with Superman next month as he makes stops in Portland and Newberg, OR.”

The statement that it “doesn’t work within ‘Grounded’” is vague enough to raise questions all by itself, because — fittingly enough for a series about Superman walking across America — that story has been all over the map in terms of tone. That’s to be expected with a story that has two writers as different as J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Roberson (and a third if you count the fill-ins G. Willow Wilson did before Straczynski’s official departure), but there’s no getting around it. In the past year’s worth of Superman comics, we’ve seen stories about Superman smugly lecturing passers-by about Thoreau, burning down drug dealers’ houses with his heat vision, helping space aliens build a factory to revitalize the economy, visiting the extradimensional headquarters of a team of Superman-inspired heroes from the future and fighting an army in Tibet with Batman.

- From “Why Did DC Cancel Superman’s Team-Up with a Muslim Hero?” by Chris Sims, June 22

“Two things are important to me,” she says over a sushi supper in downtown Corvallis. “Justice and love, and both of them clicked for me in Islam.”

Fakhraie grew up in a family where religion was respected but not forced on her or her younger brother, Anayat, 24. Her father, born in Iran, did not practice his faith. Her mother, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, studied religion with another woman but didn’t attend services.

“I was raised as a white girl with a funny last name and a foreign dad,” she says. As an adolescent, she was “the black cloud” over her parents’ house. “I was sullen. I hated everything.” Today she says she and her family are close, but her brother, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, remembers her black cloud days.

“At Christmas, we’d be opening presents and she’d be sulking in the corner,” he says. “She didn’t want anyone to take pictures. ‘Do we have to do this?’ she’d complain. She embodied the quintessential teenager angst.”

“I was a ‘why’ person,” she says. “I always wanted to know why.” Why, for example, was her father so strict with her when it came to boys? An avid reader, she began reading about Persian culture, which led her to the subject of Islam. She kept on reading. When she got to college, she read Fatima Mernissi’s “The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam.”

It was a breakthrough moment for her.

“I could be a feminist and a Muslim,” she says. “I was a feminist before I knew what a feminist was.” Fakhraie’s mother was the family breadwinner and her dad was “Mr. Mom.” She remembers being upset that her mom came home from work and picked up household chores.

“It was like a double shift,” Fakhraie says. “Fairness has always been an integral issue with me.”

–Excerpted from Fatemeh Fakhraie: A Feminist Muslim Breaks Stereotypes

Photo Credit: Utne

Satoshi Kanazawa’s Monday blog post about black women and beauty standards, since taken down, was only the latest in a string of questionable contributions to both Psychology Today and his field.

In 2006, Kanazawa was accused of reviving eugenics-era theories after publishing a paper in England blaming low IQ levels for low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates in the continent of Africa – seemingly ignoring decades worth of political and social unrest. This led to him being called “the great idiot of social science” by renowned biologist PZ Myers in an article last year on Alternet.

Daniela Perdomo’s piece for Alternet focused on another study by Kanazawa, this one alleging that atheists are “more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism…) than less intelligent individuals.” Perdomo writes:

… Not only does Kanazawa wax over structural inequalities that may lead to varying IQ levels in American society, even the disparities he finds in this imperfect measure of intelligence are relatively miniscule. For the most part, he is not speaking of a difference of more than six IQ points between liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers — a negligible difference one would never notice in real person-to-person interactions.

Kanazawa isn’t the first to study the intelligence-religiosity nexus. Other studies have also found a three- to six-point IQ difference between atheists and religious believers, in the atheists’ favor. But those studies didn’t claim that atheists were more evolved, as Kanazawa presumes, and merely conclude that they are more skeptical due to a certain kind of schooling and cultural exposure (which might also account for why some people perform well on IQ tests), leaving room to account for why so many people — say, like William F. Buckley, Jr., the late conservative public intellectual — can be so religious and conservative and yet quite intelligent.

In February 2008, Kanazawa defined his position as “extremely purist” in a post in Psychology Today, saying findings can only be either true or false:

No other criteria besides the truth should matter or be applied in evaluating scientific theories or conclusions. They cannot be “racist” or “sexist” or “reactionary” or “offensive” or any other adjective. Even if they are labeled as such, it doesn’t matter. Calling scientific theories “offensive” is like calling them “obese”; it just doesn’t make sense. Many of my own scientific theories and conclusions are deeply offensive to me, but I suspect they are at least partially true.

Once scientists begin to worry about anything other than the truth and ask themselves “Might this conclusion or finding be potentially offensive to someone?”, then self-censorship sets in, and they become tempted to shade the truth. What if a scientific conclusion is both offensive and true? What is a scientist to do then? I believe that many scientific truths are highly offensive to most of us, but I also believe that scientists must pursue them at any cost.

It is not my job as a scientist to “use” scientific knowledge in any way to improve the human condition; that’s the job of politicians, policy makers, physicians, and other social engineers. Their goal of helping people and improving their lives is a noble and important (albeit nonscientific) one. Any successful intervention, however, must be based on the true understanding of nature. If these social engineers don’t know the true causes of what they are trying to create or eliminate, how can they possibly hope to succeed? By opposing and entirely disregarding certain scientific theories and conclusions a priori on ideological and political grounds, because they believe they could not and should not be true, they risk the chance they might not achieve their goal of helping people.

Less than a month later, however, he engaged in a rather unscientific – and genocidal – bit of speculation as to how the United States could have ended the “war on terror” more quickly, emphasis his:

Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.

That post is still active on PT’s website, while Monday’s has been pulled – justifiably, according to fellow PT blogger Mikhail Lyubansky. But it wasn’t because Kanazawa’s work arrived at an unpopular confusion, emphasis his:

The point is that there are also group differences, not in attractiveness (as Kanazawa claims), but in cultural messages about what is and is not attractive. Standards of beauty, like most other beliefs, are socialized and change not only from place to place but also over time. In both the United States and England, (where Kanazawa lives and works), standards of beauty are essentially “White” standards, because whites comprise the majority of the population and have disproportional control over both media and fashion. And while it is not just White respondents who are socialized this way (internalized racism has been well documented), it is certainly the case that White Americans and Europeans (who are less likely to have received more positive messages about Black beauty) would show the strongest anti-Black bias.

As long as this is understood and framed accordingly, there is no problem with the data Kanazawa reports. What they show is that because Black faces and bodies don’t fit mainstream White standards of physical attractiveness, both respondents and interviewers show an anti-Black bias. Unfortunately, Kanazawa fails to consider either sample bias or socializing effects. Even if he believes, as he apparently does, that human behavior is entirely “evolutionary”, good science requires a careful analysis of sample bias and an explicit discussion regarding the study’s generalizability. Without this kind of methodological analysis, Kanazawa’s entire premise — that there is such a thing as a single objective standard of attractiveness — is fatally (and tragically) flawed.

It is worth noting that Kanazawa repeats this same flaw of omission when he explains that the attractiveness results are not due to race group differences in intelligence, as though there are no scholarly critiques of IQ measures in general and their racial bias in particular.

These are not trivial omisisions. They are the necessary context that gives readers the information they need to draw their own conclusions.

It is frustrating and disappointing to catch hell in mainstream society for being Muslim and also within the Muslim community for being African-American. When I am not perceived as an oppressed Muslim woman in need of liberation, I am seen as an ignorant and potentially unruly black woman.
- Jameelah Xochitl Medina, PhD candidate and author, excerpted from I Speak For Myself (via The Christian Science Monitor)

At a time when America’s Muslim communities are constantly under scrutiny by both the media and political figures, I Speak For Myself is an especially relevant – and especially necessary – work.

Edited by Maria Ebrahimji, an executive producer for CNN, and Zahra Suratwala, a writer and business consultant based out of Chicago, ISFM is a collection of 40 essays by American Muslim women. And I’m pleased to no end to report that among them is our friend, recognized badass and editor of Muslimah Media Watch, Fatemeh Fakhraie, whose essay was highlighted in MMW’s own review of the book:

Perhaps put most intimately by Fatemeh is the theme of longing for the country of our parents as a means to getting closer to our identity. She writes,

“Searching for himself and a better life drew Baba away from the Islamic Republic of Iran; searching for myself and my roots draws me nearer to it. Yet in reality, it is not the republic I am drawn to. Rather, I am trying to get nearer to my father through this land where my ancestors are buried.”

Other reoccurring themes include birth names, balancing hyphenated identities, the need to be validated by both Americans and Muslims and, of course, hijab.

While these themes seem to be woven, to some extent, into each narrative, the narratives themselves are varied in scope.

We’ll have more on ISFM in the coming days, but for now, we want to encourage you to order the book here.

A few weeks ago, Jonah Goldberg wrote an op-ed claiming that feminism’s work in the West is “mostly done” and that’s it’s time to take feminism “overseas” to Muslim women.

We disagree.

Diana: Where do you begin in tearing apart Jonah Goldberg’s “Talking feminism overseas?” I can almost see Gayatri Spivak shaking her head as she waves her finger back and forth, saying as she has before, “white men saving brown women from brown men.”  So much for novelty in the discourse surrounding “third world women.” Can someone please throw something new at us?!

Azra: I’ll admit, after reading Jonah Goldberg’s article, I had to read it again (unfortunately), as I considered the chance that it was an excellent piece of farce. If only that were the case …

Sara: Oh, please, Jonah. Feminism is hardly a completed project in the United States. Who hasn’t ratified CEDAW yet? Measuring access to rights by national boundaries is problematic for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the oasis of equality that Goldberg mentions is a myth, and really only applies to certain groups. The rights of women change according to socioeconomic factors and race.  Drawing empowerment or access to rights through national boundaries or groups pushes injustice into invisibility. Saying that the “work is done” is a flat-out insult to the work of modern American feminists.

Azra: Is feminism over in the United States? I think there are other women who have more eloquently addressed this assertion before. But I will say a few things: 2/7 LA Times Oped columnists are women. In 2011, 16.4% of US Congress members are women—irrespective of their political leanings. As for health outcomes, women are more susceptible to experiencing mental health conditions than men and are more likely to die of heart disease than men in the United States. The situation is even direr if you are a woman who also belongs to an oft-marginalized group—be it based on religion, sexual orientation, or race.

Fatemeh: And we haven’t even talked about the rates of violence against women in the U.S. Does he honestly think that feminism in the U.S. is just about getting a college degree and making as much money as a man? What about the endemic rates of domestic violence, rape, and harassment?!

Azra: Neglecting to look at how women in the United States are disadvantaged due to societal expectations seems to have become increasingly en vogue over the past few years.  As Americans look abroad to countries undergoing massive political change and conflict, some have condescendingly appointed themselves cultural experts of international gender relations—with a particular interest in Muslim women’s lives. It’s an excellent way to overlook social inequalities American women face here at home and instead look at an “other “ (and hence worse) social inequality faced by Muslim women.

Sara: I do not deny the lack of protection that many Muslim women abroad have, and how religion and culture are used to abuse the rights of women. The fight for equality is not the fight for an “enlightened outsider,” but rather based on giving the right tools to those who want to fight injustice in their communities. At the end of the day, what is most important is to protect the rights of individuals. What really matters is not what faith women practice, or outsourcing Western feminists to save “poor Muslim women,” but actually giving women the tools to fight for their own rights, as defined by themselves.

Diana: Goldberg’s narrow construction of Muslim women as segregated and subjugated through a few cited cases undermines the work that Muslim women overseas are doing for themselves. The reality he overlooks is that women’s equality is already a battle being fought in foreign lands by those women. This fight is so specific to these women that only they have the power to authoritatively negotiate matters of agency from within the framework of existing cultural, social and religious norms, which bear some value to these women, despite the constant scorn heaped on them.

Azra: I’m not sure why Mr. Goldberg doesn’t just come out and say that he means exporting his version of feminism to Muslim women abroad. Because in almost every paragraph following his declaration for exportation, I read some reference to how Muslim women needed to be saved from the specter of sex-crazed, violent Muslim men.

Fatemeh: As if all Muslim women “over there” are cowering in the shadows and waiting for someone to come save them. Ugh.

Diana: Goldberg, don’t tire us with clichéd rhetoric, stop recycling Laura Bush’s campaigns, and please stop stealing the oomph from “behind the veil.”

Azra: God forbid these women—no, ANY woman—be subject to Mr. Goldberg’s definition of feminism.

Readers, you can imagine our surprise when we received an email inviting us to the screening of CNN’s latest documentary for the latest in their In America series.

After all, we had a lot to say about the first few:

Thoughts on CNN’s Black in America Series
Going For Broke: The Racialicious Review of Black In America: Almighty Debt
Latinos Under Siege? A Look At CNN’s Latino In America
Latino In America goes out with a whine
The Fallout from Latino in America

But hey – they offered an advance screening, free breakfast, and a Q & A with Soledad O’Brien and the producers afterward. How could I resist? So Art RSVP’ed and I hopped on the Boltbus and made it to NYC in time for the 9:00 AM screening.

The newest addition to the In America family is called Unwelcome: Muslims Next Door. Here’s the trailer:

The Unwelcome: Muslims Next Door special revolves around the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, situated about 35 miles from Nashville. According to O’Brien, her team first heard about the tensions flaring in Murfreesboro when researching the “Ground Zero Mosque.” While the proposed Islamic Center in New York made national headlines, the drama playing out in Murfreesboro illuminated a different issue: how smaller towns were coping with the Islamaphobic rhetoric currently in vogue and how local Muslim populations were beginning to feel the heat.

Unwelcome begins by looking at the community of Murfreesboro, where even amid the fever pitch of hateful rhetoric, the citizens describe each other as neighborly, and defend Murfreesboro as one of the best places to live in America. For decades, Muslims in Murfreesboro have been free to worship as they see fit – there is one Islamic center in the town and around 250 currently practicing Muslims. Some of the Muslims interviewed in the documentary remarked that Murfreesboro remained peaceful and civil even after 9/11 – the idea of Muslims living and worshiping in the town was just a non-issue.

That is until plans to expand the existing Islamic center came to light last year.

The residents cited all kinds of issues to back up their claims as to why the Islamic Center should not be built – many of which were based in bias, ignorance, or just straight up bigotry. Here are a few quotes:

• “Here is this enormous building which is going to be occupied by people who are of the same religion that the people are who we’re fighting in Afghanistan.”
• “Why are they building a mosque and needing 53,000 square feet? That is a lot of square footage.  And it’s going to be a very expensive thing.  Now how are 200 families – or 200 muslims, however many there are – how are they gonna pay for it? I know when we expanded our church, we’re still paying for it.” [Ed Note: The documentary explains what the footage will be used for - in addition to a 10,000 square foot mosque, there will be a gym, cemetery, swimming pool, basketball court, tennis courts, and a small school.]
• “In a post 9/11 world, we should be a little suspicious of any group trying to relocate to this community.”
• “I didn’t say to hate ‘em – I just said we don’t need ‘em here!”
• “It wasn’t Baptists and Catholics that put bombs in the bottom of the World Trade Center.”

The documentary follows a few different people in Murfreesboro looking at how the controversy has impacted them.  Lema Sbenaty, a nineteen year old practicing Muslim sheds a crucial light on all of the controversy, noting that she’s grown up in Murfreesboro and is suddenly seeing an entirely new side of the townsfolk there. Sbenaty’s story is heartbreaking – numerous times during the show, people talk right past her or through her, ignoring her experiences to talk about Sharia Law and the oppression of women in the Middle East.  The documentary also speaks with Imam Osama Ballul (sp? – there were no titles for the correct spelling of surnames in the doc).  Imam Osama (as he is referred to in the doc) talked about his journey from Egypt to the US, landing first in Texas and then moving to Murfreesboro.  Along the way, Imam Osama wed Ivy, a white Methodist who had converted to Islam.  The two have a daughter and led a fairly peaceful life in Murfreesboro, up until recently.  The documentary also interviews opponents of the new center.  Most notable of these are Kevin Fisher (who sites traffic and corruption of the ground water by the cemetery as reasons why he would oppose the construction) and Sally Wall, a longtime Murfreesboro resident who doesn’t believe it is bigotry to oppose the onset of sharia law – which again, is not the issue at hand.

But facts don’t seem to hold the weight they should in the case. In addition to the marches in the street and heated community meetings, some people in Murfreesboro decided to resort to violence and vandalism. Initially, the vandalism began by someone spray painting “not welcome” on the sign proclaiming the site of the new Islamic center. The sign was replaced for free by the sign makers, but eight months later, it was hacked at until it broke in two. Then, after the groundbreaking on the site, someone set fire to the construction equipment:

We’ve often criticized the In America series for presenting stereotypes and providing little to no context for what is happening.  O’Brien and her team have acknowledged some of those issues, and responded by tweaking the idea – instead of doing a bad job of telling multiple stories simultaneously, they instead are drilling down to tell one or two stories that could translate into a variety of contexts.  The shift was immediately evident in this documentary.  The people who were profiled felt real and relatable – even the misguided residents of Murfreesboro reveal more about their own fears than they intend to.  We heard from women both in an out of hijab, from practitioners and imams, received a view of one of the most diverse depictions of Muslims ever seen on television. and

At the end of the hour, most of us in the room were impressed by what was covered, though a few questions arose that I will get to in another post.

Outside of the documentary, CNN’s Belief Blog seeks to fill in some of the stories that didn’t fit into the hour long special. One of these stories is Matthew Miller, a 30 year old convert to Islam who currently lives in Murfreesboro:

Ultimately, the special reveals how easy it is for bigotry to triumph over common sense – and the difficult road facing those in Murfreesboro, who are suddenly considered outsiders in their own hometown.

Unwelcome: Muslims Next Door will air on CNN on Sunday, March 27th, at 8PM ET.  Racialicious will be hosting a live chat and post the rules for the drinking game to those who wish to play along.

Who does Rep. Peter King (R-NY) actually represent?

According to his website, the 3rd Congressional District is:

• Overwhelmingly white
• Overwhelmingly involved in cis-hetero marriages
• Making more income per household (median income $56,060) than the national average (median 2010 income $49,777)

Has King always had issues with Muslims?

Not according to a profile piece on him by CNN: King reportedly supported then-President Bill Clinton’s military push to defend Muslims in the Balkan regions, and had close ties with the small Muslim community in his own district, but renounced them after he found local Muslims “covering up” for Al-Qaeda in the wake of the September 11th attacks, and refusing to cooperate with “police at all levels.”

That’s a pretty serious charge. How many law-enforcement officials does King plan to call on to provide evidence?

Zero.

Isn’t this hearing reminiscent of Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communism crusade?

King might know the answer better than we think; as Politico noted, he worked for McCarthy’s counsel, Roy Cohn, early on in his career. Of course, King also dismisses the comparison as “fanaticism.” Uh huh.

Who is Zuhdi Jasser, and what qualifies him as an expert on Islam?

According to The Washington Post, Jasser is the only witness King plans to call who isn’t a legislator. King also plans to call Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim. Democratic members of King’s committee plan to call Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to respond to King’s allegations that Muslims are “not cooperating” with law enforcement.

Jasser has already made himself a favorite in conservative media circles, though, by being their Muslim Friend (even though he admits to not being “a formal expert” in Koranic Arabic) and through his work with the Middle East Quarterly with Daniel Pipes, a man described by Media Monitors Network thusly:

Daniel Pipes is as much a scholar on Islam and Muslims as David Duke is a scholar on Judaism and Jews. He does not seem to know where scholarship ends and where political advocacy begins. He does not initiate his research by asking questions for which he seeks answers, but by providing answers for which he cherry-picks evidence.

Pipes is wedded to his personal political agenda to such a point that it dominates his worldview invalidating his ability to act as a neutral scholar on Muslim-related topics. Concerned with the interests of Israel above all else, he consistently defines Muslim-Americans exclusively as a function of their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Pipes, a “bad” Muslim is a Muslim who challenges his views on Israel and a “good” Muslim is one who agrees with them; in his “scholarly” lingo, the code terms are “Islamist” and “moderate” respectively.

Who else is King going to for advice on this subject?

At least one person we can confirm, thanks to Lee Fang at Think Progress, is Brigitte Gabriel, an anti-Islam activist who, though she will not be testifying, shed some light into what King will be talking about during the hearings:

GABRIEL: Glenn Beck is right in what he’s talking about and what I’m holding in front of me right now is the Muslim Brotherhood project for North America. [...] The Muslim Brotherhood wrote a plan in 1982. It’s a one hundred year plan for radical Islam to infiltrate and dominate the West and establish an Islamic government on Earth.

FANG: So what’s going on in Western Europe and North Africa, what’s going on in Egypt, this is all part of the plan?

GABRIEL: [nods] In the counter-terrorism circles this plan became known as The Project. [...]

FANG: Is Peter King, in his hearings, is he going to talk about this issue? And is he going to ask about this wider, global threat; its happening in Egypt, its happening in Western Europe and frankly it could be happening here?

GABRIEL: Exactly. He’s going to be talking about these issues.

Who’s standing up against this?
We’ve already seen protests being held against the hearings. And at least 28 members of the House of Representatives have added their signatures to a letter of protest being circulated by Reps. Pete Stark (D-CA) and John Dingell (D-MI). For his part, Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA) wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle calling King out:

Rep. King’s intent seems clear: To cast suspicion upon all Muslim Americans and to stoke the fires of anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia. By framing his hearings as an investigation of the American Muslim community, the implication is that we should be suspicious of our Muslim neighbors, co-workers or classmates solely on the basis of their religion.

This should be deeply troubling to Americans of all races and religions. An investigation specifically targeting a single religion implies, erroneously, a dangerous disloyalty, with one broad sweep of the discriminatory brush.

Honda’s column speaking out against King, according to the Post, is part of a larger bond between some Japanese-Americans and Muslim-Americans on the West Coast, fueled by the similarities between the ethnic targeting both groups have faced.

What’s being ignored by the media because of King’s shameless plea for attention?

Lots of things, but here’s one particularly vile omission: the fact that, even after they went viral, the following public remarks by elected officials were not written about or dissected nearly as heavily by CNN, or MSNBC, or most major network outlets – at least online:

“A big part of the problem that we face today is that our children have been taught at schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticize others’ positions, no matter how odious. And what do we call that? They call it multiculturalism and it has paralyzed too many of our fellow citizens to make the critical judgments we need to make to prosper as a society.” – Congressman Ed Royce

“I know quite a few Marines who will be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.” – Villa Park City Council member Deborah Pauly

Where’s that investigation?

TR: What role would you like the U.S. to play?

NS: I don’t expect the power or support or interference of anyone, of any government. We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism. Obama is a pragmatic person and thinking of the interests of his country; I understand this. But now he is confused: One minute he supports Mubarak, one minute he doesn’t; one moment he is afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood, the next he is not. Now I believe in the people of Egypt only, I depend on the people of Egypt only.

~~Excerpted from interview with Rebecca Walker at The Root. Read the rest here.

Image Credit: myhero.com

By Arturo R. García

Bill Cosby seems to be behind the idea of a “Muslim Cosby Show,” which is understandable – until we remember that he paid for research that contradicts his argument on its behalf.

According to The Root.com’s Jenée Desmond-Harris , Cosby called the site to defend the concept, brought up almost flippantly by CBS’ Katie Couric on her webseries this past December. As part of a panel discussion – which included Desmond-Harris’ colleague, Sheryl Huggins Salomon – Couric made this suggestion:

Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show… I know that sounds crazy, I know that sounds crazy. But The Cosby Show did so much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people are afraid of what they don’t understand — like you, Mo… If they became part of the popular culture …

During the call, Desmond-Harris wrote, Cosby emphasized his show’s focus on the family unit as a way viewers could find common ground:

When I get into taxicabs and/or limousines — and you know the taxicab situation in Washington, D.C.; that’s little Africa — every time I take the cab and I go to the hotel — the Madison, the Jefferson — the guy will look in the rearview mirror with recognition. And then I say, ‘How is the family?’

That’s when [the cab drivers] will break out pictures of the children. These are people from different countries in Africa, all of ‘em males — I’ve not met the females yet. But they talk about the family, they talk about what the children are doing, what they themselves are doing. They work 16 hours a day, and they all echo the same thing: You know why I like that [Cosby] show? Because it’s about family.

Later in the interview, he says a family-friendly show involving American Muslims would “put the truth out” and force the viewers to ask themselves key questions:

Am I a person who needs to change my attitude about [someone]? Was I a hater, and enjoying hating, and enjoying the fact that I really did not understand? That like an awful lot of racists, I didn’t care to know the truth, I just enjoyed hating? In the Muslim religion and culture, it can be different [from what we believe], but it’s what they believe in. If we take the good [from it] and the good works, it’s all there and it’s all about the same thing: Do good unto others. The strength of oneself.

What Cosby doesn’t mention are the less-than-positive results of a study he funded by University of Massachusetts-Amherst professors Sut Jhally and Justin M. Lewis, released in 1992 under the title Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences and the Myth of the American Dream. A synopsis of the findings is posted at Professor Jhally’s website:

[The Cosby Show] promotes the dangerous myth that blacks who don’t “make it” have only themselves to blame. The authors interviewed 52 focus groups, learning that viewers involve themselves deeply with the show and often see it as reality. White viewers can identify with and accept TV’s Huxtable family as “nice” blacks; black viewers appreciate the show’s lack of racial stereotyping. However, the authors argue, The Cosby Show ‘s images of the black upper class — like most images broadcast in recent years — hide and distort how most blacks live, thus relieving white viewers of responsibility for such inequalities.

However, Azeem Ibrahim, a Fellow and Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, defended the idea in a column for Illume Magazine, citing the work of playwright Wajahat Ali as a guidepost:

Ali’s characters bicker, laugh, complain, pontificate and discuss topical issues such as racial profiling, the War in Afghanistan, religious values and the importance of lamb biryani in a refreshingly honest, self critical and amusing manner reflecting the diversity of opinions that exists within Muslim communities.

But the core of the play deals with their very common and universal issues that everyone struggles with on a daily basis regardless of religion or race — questions of identity, purpose, sibling rivalry, dating, and parental expectations. The globalized dialogue, which mixes slang, proper English, Urdu and Arabic, feels authentic and reflects the multicultural mosaic of modern America.

By creating real, complex human characters, who just happen to be Muslim and American, Ali’s play illuminates the beautiful thread of commonality that exists and is shared between two allegedly alien cultures that some incorrectly assume are destined to clash. The play is a rare cultural story that simultaneously satisfies both Muslim and non Muslim audiences and proves conclusively that being Muslim and American is not mutually exclusive.

Plays like The Domestic Crusaders and TV shows like The Cosby Show cannot shoulder the burden in magically erasing bigotry and the cultural divides that persist. However, these universal stories, in conjunction with active political and civic engagement, education, responsible and effective foreign policy, fair and balanced stories by the media, and successful partnerships with multicultural communities, can help eliminate fear and misunderstanding.

Phrased like that, the thought of an American counterpart to Canada’s Little Mosque On The Prairie sounds more plausible. But if anything, a more informal “study” by The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi showed … well, it’s apparently going to take a lot to win over the “average American”:

In the story, Mandvi interviews Cordoba Initiative chairman Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a consultant on The Cosby Show, before unveiling a near pitch-perfect mock-up of the show featuring a suburbanite family – the teenage son listens to Toby Keith! – to a focus group that is less than receptive, offering up these critiques:

• “If you’re trying to portray Islam, maybe you should talk about Islam.”
• “You gotta have that closet terrorist or something.”
• “You could have, like, an uncle Rahib or something, who came over and he’s a Bedouin and he lives in the basement in a sandbox or something, with a goat.”

Like a lot of the Daily’s best stories, Mandvi’s conclusion is as cringe-worthy as it is true: “Apparently, the best way for a show to combat Muslim stereotypes is to confirm Muslim stereotypes.” It would seem Jhally’s and Lewis’ findings still hold up.

What is the tipping point for a revolution?

Normally, there are many different things brewing – a political climate, social unrest, gross inequality that all contribute to turn a nation inside out. Yet many reports want to trace a revolution back to a single, definitive event. Crispus Attucks is considered the first martyr of the American Revolution, Rosa Parks is widely considered the catalyst of the US civil rights movement, her actions sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Mohamed Bouaziz is the name behind the sudden surge in interest in self-immolation.

Bouaziz’s last protest made its way to cameras, which then spread the news that Tunisia was on the cusp of a revolt. Al Jazeera frames the story:

In a country where officials have little concern for the rights of citizens, there was nothing extraordinary about humiliating a young man trying to sell fruit and vegetables to support his family.

Yet when Mohamed Bouazizi poured inflammable liquid over his body and set himself alight outside the local municipal office, his act of protest cemented a revolt that would ultimately end President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-rule.

Local police officers had been picking on Bouazizi for years, ever since he was a child. For his family, there is some comfort that their personal loss has had such stunning political consequences.

“I don’t want Mohamed’s death to be wasted,” Menobia Bouazizi, his mother, said. “Mohamed was the key to this revolt.”

And yet later, it is revealed that Bouazizi was one of many who had started to sound the alarm – an alarm suppressed by government officials and widely ignored by media under governmental control:

Mohamed Bouazizi was not the first Tunisian to set himself alight in an act of public protest.

Abdesslem Trimech, to name one of many cases occurred without any significant media attention, set himself ablaze in the town of Monastir on March 3 after facing bureaucratic hindrance in his own work as a street vendor.

Neither was it evident that the protests that begin in Sidi Bouzid would spread to other towns. There had been similar clashes between police and protesters in the town of Ben Guerdane, near the border with Libya, in August.

The key difference in Sidi Bouzid was that locals fought to get news of what was happening out, and succeeded.

“We could protest for two years here, but without videos no one would take any notice of us,” Horchani said.

I often wonder what ignites a protest and what does not. I specifically think of Lee Kyoung Hae, who stabbed himself in protest of the World Trade Organization’s policies toward South Korean farmers and their agricultural policy at large. I was in high school when the Battle in Seattle occurred – I’ve been fascinated by the World Trade Organization ever since. But while Lee did not die in vain, his protest did not lead to the type of uprising that could topple the WTO. Why? Why do some protests galvanize into movements, and others fade into time?

There are no clear answers to these questions, and yet the world keeps moving. Egypt, hot on the heels of Tunisia, also underwent a revolution, one that garnered a bit more attention from media outlets here.

Reader Lara tipped us to this amazing piece by Sarah Ghabrial, which delivers some much needed context:

As much as Egyptians may have surprised themselves and their neighbours, no one seems more caught off guard by this recent turn of events than members of western mainstream media and political officials. The western media appear bewildered, their commentary halting and unsure. Perhaps this is because, for so long, news agencies have stacked their rolodexes with analysts on the Middle East whose area of expertise lay primarily in terrorism and religious fundamentalism. They now seem ill prepared to comprehend this past week’s events, which have been so free of religious rhetoric, much less offer any insight on what the world may expect to come next. More than one commentator has remarked on the possibility of an Islamist take-over in Egypt and elsewhere, as though for lack of anything else worthwhile to say. Some appeared at a loss as they reported that protesters were not shouting “Death to America.”

The response to civil unrest in Egypt has been strangely unlike the response to the Iranian would-be “Green Revolution” of 2009. Because Iranians were standing up to a long-hated Islamist regime, their struggle was immediately embraced in the west across the political spectrum.

By contrast, western observers in the cultural mainstream have been hesitant about the Days of Anger, as they lack a clear and ready-made approach for identifying and understanding Arab discontent. This is probably due in part to the ostensible “secularism” of these regimes, and because instability in the Middle East is seen as a breeding ground for terrorism. Ironically, most terrorists out of Egypt are largely a product of the Mubarak school of stability — imprisonment, repression, and torture. But apparently the alternative is more horrifying: a scenario in which Egyptians may choose their own government. One can picture the Egyptians who populate the imagination of policymakers and journalists: a pious and incorrigible bunch, impelled in the direction of fanaticism as though by gravity. (Read the rest…)

And Larbi Sadiki pinpoints the real catalyst - and why so many news outlets missed the signs:

Regimes in countries like Tunisia and Algeria have been arming and training security apparatuses to fight Osama bin Laden. But they were caught unawares by the ‘bin Laden within’: the terror of marginalisation for the millions of educated youth who make up a large portion of the region’s population.

The winds of uncertainty blowing in the Arab west – the Maghreb – threaten to blow eastwards towards the Levant as the marginalised issue the fatalistic scream of despair to be given freedom and bread or death. [...]

From Tunisia and Algeria in the Maghreb to Jordan and Egypt in the Arab east, the real terror that eats at self-worth, sabotages community and communal rites of passage, including marriage, is the terror of socio-economic marginalisation.

The armies of ‘khobzistes’ (the unemployed of the Maghreb) – now marching for bread in the streets and slums of Algiers and Kasserine and who tomorrow may be in Amman, Rabat, San’aa, Ramallah, Cairo and southern Beirut – are not fighting the terror of unemployment with ideology. They do not need one. Unemployment is their ideology. The periphery is their geography. And for now, spontaneous peaceful protest and self-harm is their weaponry. They are ‘les misérables’ of the modern world.

Already, discussion of a domino effect looms large – and while some pundits are wondering which country is next, the larger question is what will these changes symbolize in the world within the next decade?

By Guest Contributor Azra, cross-posted from Muslimah Media Watch

Women Without Men, directed by Shirin Neshat, looks at the visually evocative and at times interspersing lives of four women in Iran in the early 1950s.  It is a time of political unrest, as Prime Minister Mossadegh faced increasing opposition from US and British-backed movements.  The film explores the women’s relationships with men and their understanding of sexuality, friendship, faith, and political involvement.  It is based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran, first published in 1989.

The film is beautifully shot.  Neshat’s background in photography is clearly apparent, as each scene could easily exist as a series of photographs.  The colors of the film are rich.  At times I was reminded of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, not only for the beautiful cinematography, but also for its similar (albeit far more understated) use of magical realism during a time of stark political change.  I found myself wondering about how both films use female protagonists and the setting of a natural space to drive their narrative, leaving male characters in the background of their experience.

The film follows four women in Tehran who are from different ages, economic backgrounds, and religious fervor.  There is Zarin, a young waif who works at a brothel for an overbearing madam.  One day, a customer appears without a face. Frightened, she flees the brothel and scrubs herself raw at a public bath.  She never speaks during the film.

There is Munis, who at 30 is more interested in hearing about the political upheaval on the radio instead of her inconvenient single status from her brother Amir Khan.  Soon after her death Munis is reborn in a moment of magical realism, unearthed by a friend during her brother’s wedding, and joins a young group of (all male) revolutionaries.

There is Faezeh, Munis’s best friend who has a crush on Munis’s recently-engaged brother.  Faezeh tells indifferent Munis: “You should hear the rumors about her.  They say she’s not a virgin.”  Faezeh later must come to terms with her own sense of sexuality and understanding of a feminine ideal after a group of men rape her.

And then there is Fakhri, a distinguished 50-year-old woman who leaves an emotionally abusive husband to live in an orchard away from the city.  This magical place becomes an idyll where Zarin, Faezeh, and Fakhri are able to be themselves away from the expectations society places upon them.

The scenes from the film could easily stand on their own (the film started as a video installation).  In one memorable scene, Zarin runs through the streets of the city after she visits the public bath and pauses in front of a group of men who are in sujood.  They remain in prostration before her as she looks at them from a pillar; after a moment, they arise to see her.  She scampers away soon afterwards.  The image is striking—it is as if the men are seeking atonement before her (a woman).

Each woman must arrive at her own conclusion of how to live their lives, absent from the influence of men.  In her rebirth, Munis is able to act as a revolutionary, free of the pressure to marry.  Faezeh embraces her own understanding of femininity while at the orchard following her rape, refusing to abide by an “ideal Muslim woman” identity Amir Khan expects.  Fakhri asserts her individuality by leaving her husband to live at the orchard, and arrives at her own understanding of motherhood through providing a loving and restorative environment to Faezeh and Zarin.  Zarin, unfortunately, is unable to recover from her experience with men while at the orchard.

This could be the story of four women from anywhere, irrespective of their culture or religious beliefs, and how they find solace on their own terms (sometimes with loving support from each other) from the damaging societal expectations of how women “should” live.  A rich allegory, it is a film that requires multiple viewings in order to see the different layers of meaning within it.

Near the end of the film, there is a shot of Faezeh returning triumphantly back to Tehran on the well-traveled dirt road after recuperating at Fakhri’s magical orchard.  Almost half the screen is sky and the other half earth—a reminder of the half-dream and half-real world women find themselves in as they walk between an identity of their own and the identity forced upon them by society.  It is a recurring, lonesome course that women take for the duration of their lives.

The film “Bijli” opens with an off-key rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s haunting Sanu Ik Pal Chain Na Aave. The poetry of the song describes a man who cannot find a moment’s peace without his beloved.  Some might consider this analogous to Bijli’s predicament as a woman trapped in a man’s body: constantly ill at ease without his other “half.”  Bijli is Fayaaz, the drag alter ego of this Pakistani-born dancer, who presently resides in New York City.

This short film by filmmaker Adnan Malik is a 15-minute foray into a man’s struggle with gender identity, religion, and social acceptance set against the bustling metropolis of Manhattan.  While Begum Nawazish has gained popularity internationally and in Pakistan, carving out a niche for himself as a “credible” entertainer, Bijli tells the story of a man who by day passes off as an ordinary New Yorker and by night transforms into “Bijli,” dancing on stage to Bollywood numbers in sequined chiffon, dainty wigs and fake eyelashes.  The word “bijli” is Urdu for electricity or electric current and is a name bestowed upon the dancer by a writer who, for lack of a better word, found her “electrifying.”

Fayaaz’s parents died when he was very young and the film makes no mention of a sibling or close relative, which makes the mystery of his coming to the U.S. all the more intriguing.  Bijli especially holds fond memories of his mother.  “She loved me.  She cared for me like a little girl.  She gave me clothes, earrings and bangles on Eid, as if I were her daughter.”

Like many transgendered individuals, Fayaaz is in constant battle with his Islamic upbringing and the crisis of gender that has society in his native Pakistan conveniently shuffle him into the folds of the have-nots and promiscuous.  While Begum Nawazish has a solid education to rely on, empowering him to rise above his circumstances, Fayaaz does not have this luxury.  Not being formally educated, he comically describes his “allergy to English” as a child and how he learned the language only after he left Pakistan.

Although faced with prejudice in various social settings, Fayaaz shrugs it off as part of life and the challenges that God places upon him.  “I am not hesitant about going to a mosque for prayer.  Except there is a natural shame in me,” he says.  This is a somewhat contradictory because shame is why he does not pray with fellow worshippers.  Fayaaz also wants to avoid the resulting awkwardness with anyone who may have witnessed any of his performances.  If a Muslim who visits a mosque after a night of watching him dance does not feel shame, why should he feel any different?  The social stigma associated to “mujras” or dancers like Fayaaz are deeply rooted in Pakistani society, considered inherent to Mughal culture and not accepted in a “true” Muslim community.

Fayyaz appears most vulnerable while wearing the traditional red headdress of a bride’s outfit and responding to the producer’s off camera comment.  “One day I’m bridal” he says in broken English, perhaps referring to a time when he too will have the opportunity to wear one.  “I think so,” he answers when prompted again by the producers.

“Adorning myself like a woman is not a hobby, it is a fulfillment of my soul’s desire.”  As Bijli, Fayaaz appears happy but to a discerning viewer his perky responses and good will to man attitude at times it feels like a façade, as if overcompensating for the harsher reality of being a transgendered Muslim transvestite.  Had he remained in Pakistan, things might have been different and perhaps his little slice of Americana makes all the difference between misery and basic survival.

Fayaaz insists he is not gay and this is probably the only time the producer’s voice is most prominent otherwise the questions asked off camera.  “My soul is like a woman’s.  My feelings and desires are also like that of a woman.  I even see my body as a woman’s body.  But I must accept that God has made me a man.”  Although for all intents and purposes a man, Fayaaz has been in relationships with other men where he “presents himself as a woman and not a man in drag.”

On the whole, the movie humanizes him, but one leaves feeling sympathetic to his plight in that he wants more out of life, perhaps a partnership of sort—to be loved and cared for.  The movie conveys this. What it does not convey is whether that someone should be a man or whether a snip at the doctor’s office might do the trick.

Fayaaz turns the tables on the producers at the end of the clip with a query of his own.  “If you see me at a party, and are attracted to me, even though you realize I am a man in drag, what would you do?”  The silence on the other end is palpable, followed by a sad tune which plays briefly until bookended by the same Khan song heard in the beginning.  “In everyday situations, I can’t reveal the woman inside of me.  But at least at parties and performances, I can become that woman.  What is the point of living in fear?” he asks.

I was unhappy to read that “Draw Muhammad Day” creator Molly Norris had voluntarily gone into hiding. While I thought the concept of “Draw Muhammad Day” was ridiculous and viewed it in the same light as the South Park episode that supposedly depicted the prophet, I recognize that Norris’ intent wasn’t to be offensive or malicious. In Islam, intentions count for something just like actions, and no one should be punished for simple naïveté. It’s atrocious that Norris has received threats and feels unsafe enough to go incognito.

Which is why I’ve added my name to the list of American Muslims in the media who support Molly Norris and her right to free speech. My signature on a statement isn’t going to do much for her, but I hope she understands that she has our support.

A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS

We, the undersigned, unconditionally condemn any intimidation or threats of violence directed against any individual or group exercising the rights of freedom of religion and speech; even when that speech may be perceived as hurtful or reprehensible.

We are concerned and saddened by the recent wave of vitriolic anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment that is being expressed across our nation.

We are even more concerned and saddened by threats that have been made against individual writers, cartoonists, and others by a minority of Muslims. We see these as a greater offense against Islam than any cartoon, Qur’an burning, or other speech could ever be deemed.

We affirm the right of free speech for Molly Norris, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and all others including ourselves.

As Muslims, we must set an example of justice, patience, tolerance, respect, and forgiveness.

The Qur’an enjoins Muslims to:
* bear witness to Islam through our good example (2:143);
* restrain anger and pardon people (3:133-134 and 24:22);
* remain patient in adversity (3186);
* stand firmly for justice (4:135);
* not let the hatred of others swerve us from justice (5:8);
* respect the sanctity of life (5:32);
* turn away from those who mock Islam (6:68 and 28:55);
* hold to forgiveness, command what is right, and turn away from the ignorant (7:199);
* restrain ourselves from rash responses (16:125-128);
* pass by worthless talk with dignity (25:72); and
* repel evil with what is better (41:34).

Islam calls for vigorous condemnation of both hateful speech and hateful acts, but always within the boundaries of the law. It is of the utmost importance that we react, not out of reflexive emotion, but with dignity and intelligence, in accordance with both our religious precepts and the laws of our country.

We uphold the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Both protect freedom of religion and speech, because both protections are fundamental to defending minorities from the whims of the majority.

We therefore call on all Muslims in the United States, Canada and abroad to refrain from violence. We should see the challenges we face today as an opportunity to sideline the voices of hate—not reward them with further attention—by engaging our communities in constructive dialogue about the true principles of Islam, and the true principles of democracy, both of which stress the importance of freedom of religion and tolerance.

You can see the entire statement and signatories here. May God keep you safe, Molly Norris, wherever you are.

By Guest Contributor Janan Delgado, originally published at Gender Across Borders

Despite a title that makes skins crawl among Muslim women the world around, The New York Times’ “Behind the Veil” article published a few weeks ago was a welcome relief from the usual sensationalist and mystery-clad coverage of veiled women. In a funny, inspiring and down-to-earth fashion, Lorraine Ali recounted the stories of two niqabi (face-veiled) American Muslim women; why they decided to adopt this dress, how it affects their life in Albuquerque, NM, and what this choice means to them.

The article sparked hundreds of comments from readers in America and abroad, unveiling some of these individuals’ stereotypes and misconceptions about Muslim female dress, as well as an inability –or refusal- to hear about the meanings of the veil from those who actually wear it. Nancy from the USA is a case in point. She wrote, “The message this sends to women is be invisible, be subservient, be asexual. As an atheist and a feminist, I find it repugnant that any woman would hide behind a dozen yards of cloth to please a nonexistent God.”

Though most obviously applicable to the face veil, the critique of ‘invisibility,’ is commonly associated with the Muslim veil in general. Muslims believe, the trope goes, that withdrawal from society is necessary because this is “impure, corrupted and dangerous.” However, this astonishingly simplistic claim ignores that Muslims’ opinions about the societies in which we live are as diverse as these societies themselves, be it in China, Senegal, Egypt or Ecuador. In America, veiled Muslim teachers, lawyers, doctors, academics, etc., send a clear message: behavior, not clothing, determines social invisibility.

So if not to hide from society, why do Muslim women veil? Ascribing motives is a tricky business, and the question itself is worth a pause. Unlike what seems the norm in secular liberal spaces, for many veiled women this dress isn’t a puzzling matter, nor is it on our top ten issues of concern. When asked ad infinitum about the veil, many of us wish to say, ‘the veil is what it is, can we talk about female education, world poverty, social inequality, military occupation, anything but this dozen yards of cloth?’

Yet, fixation on the veil remains a fact, and questions are asked. Many individual women, as the ones in the NYT piece, explain that the choice to veil stems from a desire to submit to God. This being the case, Nancy almost got it right about subservience. To God, though, not men. To those who think Islam is an evil male hoax designed to subjugate women, the distinction between subservience to God and subservience to men may be illusory. Yet to those of us who choose to believe in Islam, and find solace and comfort in it, the conflation of two is meaningless.

Nancy also mentions repugnance in her comment, and this feeling is not uncommon. Many veiled women have seen our dress inspire a visceral reaction in people who believe it goes against their core beliefs and values. Behind these feelings often lies a fear of the unknown or an incapacity to relate to a different worldview. Hence, the fulfillment Muslim women feel under those dozen yards of cloth is unimaginable, their place uninhabitable.

While this repugnance may be harmless if kept under check, it is hardly conducive to feminist sisterhood (which Nancy the feminist may wish to care about) or to societal harmony. Hence, a first step to get rid of it is to dismiss once and for all the ill-conceived notion of universality of desire; Not all women find fulfillment and happiness in the same life choices. A woman may actually find happiness under a dozen yards of cloth, seeking to please a God Nancy as an atheist believes non-existent. A second step is not to insult each other’s intelligence. Muslim women have not been brainwashed into Islam, nor are we waiting for anyone’s help to awaken from our supposed “false-consciousness”. Islam is our informed choice.

So is this informed choice the case for every Muslim woman? A recurrent critique of articles that focus on empowered Muslim western women is that “while women in the West have the freedom to veil, one should not forget that in Saudi Arabia…etc…” But who is forgetting? It is perfectly legitimate to speak about an American Muslim reality independently of the experience of frustrated veiled women in Iran (forced to veil), or frustrated unveiled women in Turkey, France, etc. (forced to unveil) (though people are usually not equally interested in the latter).

Experiences vary across countries, and it is ludicrous to insist someone must tie all these experiences together, unless she has offered to provide a comparative study of Muslim women across the world. It is similarly ludicrous to ask Muslim Western women to apologize for the misguided policies of Middle Eastern regimes they have no relation to whatsoever. This analytical mishap is the direct product of some people’s incapacity, unwillingness, or flat-out refusal to accept Western Muslims as Western. Hence the insistence on tying their Western experience to Middle Eastern regimes.

As Tom from Virginia comments about the veiled women in the NYT piece, “They can dress as their conscience allows in our country, but we can’t dress as our conscience allows in their country.” Except, of course, Tom forgets “their” country and “his” country happen to be one and the same.

By Guest Contributor Diana, originally published at Muslimah Media Watch

Urban fiction novels have been filling up bookshelves across America for generations. Characterized by city settings and an incline towards the profane and dark, these novels are made to appeal to a mainly African-American reading audience. Urban fiction’s cousin, the Christian urban fiction genre, does not entirely exclude the profane, but instead inserts images of God and faith. Similarly, a new category of urban fiction is squeezing its way onto the bookshelf mix: urban Islamic fiction.

Differing from its Christian or irreligious counterparts, urban Islamic fiction opens up the relatively unexplored space of African-American Muslims and blended American Muslim families, which are often overlooked as part of the Muslim American community.

Spoken word artist Umm Juwayriyah crafts this relatively new genre with her first novel The Size of a Mustard Seed. This novel is aimed at American Muslims living in urban cities throughout America.

The novel strays away from the typically violence- or sex-based plots of urban fiction novels and instead tells the story of a single, ethnically blended American Muslim woman, Jameelah, who works as a hair stylist in a Muslim-owned-and-operated hair salon.

In addition to introducing the reader to a Muslim woman who is very much an active member of a multiracial American Muslim community, the novel tackles topics such as blended American Muslim families, Muslim marriages in America, conversion into Islam, as well as the prejudices multiracial American Muslims face from within their own community as well as from outside their community.

Unprecedented in its attempt to present Muslim American urban society and thought, urban Islamic fiction will not only serve to educate non-Muslims, but also Muslims who are unfamiliar with or even apprehensive toward blended American Muslim families or African-American Muslims—groups that are often marginalized within the greater Muslim American community.

Since this is a very new genre, I am very curious to see whether urban Islamic fiction will be primarily written by and for an African-American Muslim audience (as most urban fiction and urban Christian fiction is). It would be interesting for this genre to appeal to the ethnically diverse urban American Muslim communities consisting largely of first- and second-generation Arabs and South East Asians—perhaps urban Islamic fiction is where the narratives of these different communities can be woven together.

Thanks to Brooke for the tip!