[News] Placing Palestine Back at the Center of Muslim Discourse in the West

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://english.palinfo.com/articles/2020/5/3/Placing-Palestine-Back-at-the-Center-of-Muslim-Discourse-in-the-West
Placing
Palestine Back at the Center of Muslim Discourse in the West
By Ramzi Baroud - May 3, 2020
------------------------------
It was nearly twenty years ago at a Muslim conference in Washington D.C.
that I heard the distressing argument that Palestine should not be made a
central topic in the American Muslim political agenda.

The point, which took many by surprise, was enunciated by a young American
Pakistani Muslim academic, whose name is not important for my purpose here.

What I found reassuring then, however, was that almost everyone at the
gathering shook their head in disagreement. The young academic was clearly
an intellectual pariah. It was clear that Muslims, at least the attendees
of that specific conference, will not be abandoning their advocacy for the
freedom of the Palestinian people anytime soon.

A few months later, the September 11 attacks took place, unleashing a
Pandora’s Box of violence, racism, orientalism, and Islamophobia, the
outcome of which would continue to be felt for years to come.

A less discussed portion of the American war on Islam and Muslims in the
last twenty years is the systematic and centralized attempt at breaking
down the American Muslim society. The same can, of course, be said of the
anti-Muslim sentiment that flourished in Europe during the West’s wars on
Afghanistan and Iraq, and other Muslim countries.

Since then and till today, American Muslims found themselves forced to make
bleak choices to avoid media demonization and government persecution.

Some chose to toe the line, in fact, to become an advocate of the very
colonial, savage powers that were unleashed against Muslims everywhere –
killing, torturing, imprisoning and sanctioning with no regard whatsoever
for the very international law that the West itself had fashioned following
World War II.

The likes of Hamza Yusuf, formally known as Mark Hanson, was and, perhaps,
remains the best example of the so-called ‘pet Muslim’, as he became known
due to his collaboration with the George W. Bush regime during the
genocidal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The likes of Yusuf became immensely crucial to the American-Western designs
in Muslim countries, being the ideal amalgamation between the ‘native
informer’ – as a supposedly learned Muslim, although a white person himself
– and the typical orientalist – the Western scholar that can be trusted in
deciphering and dissecting the Muslim ‘Orient’ to the colonialist West.

According to the Guardian newspaper, Yusuf once told Muslim political
dissidents, “If you hate the west, emigrate to a Muslim country”, thus
displaying the same racist sentiment often lobbed by far-right chauvinists
to anyone who dares question government policies on war, immigration, or
anything else.

This very sentiment was repeated by US President, Donald Trump, when he
tweeted last July, “In America, if you hate our Country, you are free to
leave.”

According to the infinite wisdom of Yusuf and Trump, one can only earn the
right to be a fully bonified citizen if one fully abandons one’s right to
display any disagreement with one’s government’s policies.

In Yusuf’s shameful thinking, it also follows that a Muslim can never truly
be a permanent citizen in any western polity, a sentiment embraced by the
very neo-fascist movements that are currently plaguing Europe.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when US Secretary of State and
well-known anti-Muslim bigot, Mike Pompeo, announced the formation of the
Commission on Unalienable Rights – another platform for political and
religious prejudices targeting Trump’s enemies around the world – Yusuf was
immediately handpicked to be a member of that commission.

The problem, however, is bigger than a single orientalist. It has become
clear that the terrible consequences of September 11 – the bloody wars that
followed, and the tragic but predictable backlash of anti-Western militancy
in the US, Europe and elsewhere – have, sadly, emasculated mainstream
Muslim discourse in Western countries, the US especially.

Once upon a time, every Friday, hundreds of Imams throughout American
mosques would breach solidarity with Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan,
Chechnya, and so on. Money would be raised for various organizations that
provided aid for victims of wars throughout the Muslim world. In fact,
unity around Palestine seemed to bring millions of Muslims together despite
their vastly different cultures, classes, and even their very own
interpretations of Islam itself.

The outcome of September 11, namely the so-called ‘war on terror’, has
changed all of that, imposing a new paradigm and a stark choice on Muslim
communities all across the country.

The shutting down of the Holy Land Foundation, because of its support of
Palestinian and other victims of Israeli violence, was only the tip of the
iceberg. The accounts of many Muslim charities and organizations were
drained, while hundreds, if not thousands of well-educated and outspoken
Muslim intellectuals were either detained, deported, fired from their jobs
or forced into silence by other means.

Sadly, it was the dawn of a new and tragic era where the self-loathing,
self-seeking and opportunistic Muslim intellectual peddlers reigned supreme.

It is through this compromising bunch, that Western governments managed to
tailor their own version of the ‘good Muslim’, to be juxtaposed with the
radical, God-forbid, free-thinking Muslim, unfairly but incessantly seen as
a terrorist sympathizer.

I had the displeasure of knowing or learning about many of these ‘good
Muslims’ in the last twenty years, who are so keen at claiming the spots at
phony ‘interfaith dialogue’ conferences, giddily serving the role of the
well-behaved Muslim whenever demanded of them.

For this odd breed of Muslims, Palestine is an obstacle and Kashmir is a
forgotten, wasteland, for their mission is not to advocate on behalf of the
oppressed. Instead, they are often used as middlemen who convey the
official diktats of governments, states, and city councils to their fellow
Muslims. In other words, they become the ‘official’ Muslims, whose agenda
is not that of their own community – helping to mobilize, organize and
advocate while building solidarity with other marginalized groups – but, as
in the case of Yusuf, embracing the agenda of Trump himself.

The problem with these spiritual charlatans is that they feed the misguided
view that Muslims can only be either quisling hacks or potential
terrorists; that Muslims must be subdued or they become a danger to
society; and that Muslims cannot be part of a larger collective of
political dissidents who advocate justice and equality in their own
society, and  the world over.

Currently, at many mosques across the US, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan,
and other places of great and perpetual injustice are hardly mentioned.
Many shy away even from political advocacy and intersectionality within
their own communities. Perhaps, they fear that doing so would place them at
the radar of the FBI or local enforcement agencies.

But, what is Islam without justice?

In one Quranic verse (5:8), God says, “O you who have believed, be
persistently standing firm for God, witnesses in justice, and do not let
the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer
to righteousness”.

The emphasis on justice, and the building of communities and nations that
stand for what is right is at the core of Islamic values, and neither Mark
Hansen nor any other self-proclaimed Muslims can possibly change that.

As for governments that are constantly caricaturing Muslims and Islam to
fit their own agendas, they are not doing themselves any favors either, for
a strong society is predicated on the freedom of individuals and groups to
operate within a legal and democratic framework, with the overriding goal
of advancing the interests of the entire nation.

Freedom for Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, as well as the rights of
minorities, social justice, gender and racial equality, all go
hand–in-hand. No sincere justice advocate, self-respecting scholar, and
needless to say, true Muslim, would disagree with the notion that justice
is indivisible, a moral doctrine has defined Islam and Muslims for fifteen
centuries.

*- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.
He has authored a number of books on the Palestinian struggle including
‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine
Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at
Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of
California Santa Barbara. *
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