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Good Muslim, Bad Muslim
by Ayesha Ahmad
04/12/2001
Good Muslim, bad Muslim. Time was, not too long ago, these terms meant something along the lines of "a Muslim who tries to follow the Qur'an" versus "a Muslim in name only."
Now - if you go by the editorials, scholarly opinions (from Muslims and non-Muslims alike) and articles about Muslims pervading today's American media, you'd think a good Muslim is one who waves a flag or supports Bush, and a bad Muslim is one who criticizes U.S. foreign policy or Israel, or condemns the airstrikes on Afghanistan.
In the past two and a half months' of intense media scrutiny on Islam and Muslims, I have not yet heard one voice in the American media daring to say that there are those of us who believe that the true Islamic system is better than capitalist secular democracy and at the same time unambiguously condemn violence against innocent civilians.
Can I express my belief that Islam is truly the answer - in all ways - without being accused of such crimes as being a terrorist, harboring terrorists, supporting terrorist groups, or perhaps having once caught sight of someone on the street three years ago who may or may not have sent money last year to someone in Saudi Arabia with the same last name as one of the suspected hijackers?
Oh wait - they're not "suspected" anymore. It's been proven that if you were an Arab on one of the doomed flights, you were one of the terrorists. Actually, one of them even rose from his ashy grave recently to explain to federal prosecutors how his passport flew out the window before the plane hit so it could be found two blocks away unscathed. No, really… I mean, how else could the government be so sure?
According to a BBC report, one of these fanatically devout Muslims even sent a letter to his German girlfriend just before the attack, saying he did what he had to do and she should be proud of him. Anyone else catch the irony here, or is it just me?
But, I digress. All this sarcasm arose in response to a November 19 Washington Times editorial by columnist Suzanne Fields, entitled, "Who are the good Muslims?"
Fields, in the best tradition of the new breed of sudden scholars on Islam, says that, "the Islamists seek to create a revolution in social values designed to destroy the freedoms we take for granted."
The "Islamists" she refers to are the general population of Muslims across the Muslim world who believe in an Islamic political system - as she says, "in several Arab countries [Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria] where political ideology cannot be separated from faith." Aside from the fact that Iran and Algeria aren't really Arab countries, she says that Islamic faith-tainted political ideology is "puritanical, confrontational, repressive and anti-modern."
I'm not Arab either - or Iranian or Algerian, fancy that - but I'm waiting for just one of these new scholars to prove that the way of life proscribed by our beloved Prophet (saw) is repressive, or against the best of modernity (as opposed to modernism), or violently confrontational… and I have to say I resent the association with the witch-burning, fearful Puritans.
Fields refers to a "scholar" named Charles Freund, who says that the U.S. is seen as an enemy of Islamists because "America's seductive and pervasive secular culture undermines their revolutionary goals." I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what the heck he was talking about, and then I realized he was just echoing what our president said the week after the attacks: "They hate our freedoms."
Fields also slams Columbia University professor Edward Said, well-known for his deep scholarship in books like "Orientalism" and "Culture and Imperialism." Said, alas, is Palestinian, so Fields must disregard him and his view of the West as responsible for "Othering" the East, because he "threw rocks at Israeli soldiers on the West Bank and said it made him feel good." Apparently, as a scholar, even a Palestinian one, he ought to be above feeling so strongly about his homeland being illegally occupied and denied independent statehood for decades.
And finally, Fields brings in the director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, Daniel Pipes, whom she names both a "scholar" - because he "knew" before September 11 of the "peril to the West in the Islamist philosophy" - and as a "prophet" because he warned beforehand about militant Muslims in the U.S. Because of Pipes' scholarship and prophetic abilities, Fields is able to warn us that we must distinguish between "faithful Muslims who are good Americans and the malign fanatics of the faith," - the latter of whom she says represent major Muslim organizations here.
Can you feel the eyes watching you, all of a sudden? Do you hear the whispers as you walk the streets, heads turning briefly at your too-long beard or the scarf wrapped around your head?
Fields is using these scholars to justify her right to say prejudiced things, complaining that Bush is too nice to us Muslims and that "we" - I guess she means Americans other than me - must remember that not all Muslims in America are worth being nice to. I suppose because "they hate our freedoms."
I should say before I go further that anyone who quotes Daniel Pipes as a scholar - or as a "prophet" - perhaps should not be taken so seriously, but the fact is that Pipes, and his sidekick, Steven Emerson, are respected in some corners. One New Jersey senator said that Emerson's 1994 "Jihad in America" video "'played a real role' in winning House passage of the recent anti-terrorism bill,' according to a Nov. 14
Washington Post article. Scary, huh?
Fields, on the other hand, frames her editorial with references to the newfound liberation of the Afghans from the Taliban, specifically in terms of men who were shaving their beards and women who were "radiant" when they "threw away their veils in Kabul." She takes a token stab at
hijab (Islamic headscarves) when she says a woman who covers modestly "and exotically" - what on earth does that mean? - can still be beautiful "wearing cloth of many colors, cut in sensual lines, but forcing her to hide her beauty is a cruel insult to femininity."
Well, Fields has every right to her opinion (and I agree that forcing it, which is un-Islamic anyway, is a bad thing) but her expression of it here only adds to the sublime ethnocentrism of her editorial - once again, that women around the world must have the kind of Western "liberation" that forces them to display their femininity for all to see. Why is it so hard for Fields to understand that we "veiled" Muslim women find our liberation in another way, express our femininity by the way we choose to protect it? Ms. Fields, nobody is asking you to wear a
hijab, so please get over it and let me wear mine in peace!
This brings me to another point. At a recent conference on Palestine here in Washington, a number of panelists expressed their frustration with the feeling that if they want to explain to someone why Palestinians are victims, they have to start in 1948 and tell entire tomes of information in order to make people understand.
I know how they feel. I'm tired of having to talk for ten years to explain why I'm not oppressed, why Islam is not evil, why Muslims are not violent, or why some Muslim countries repress their own people but Islam doesn't. Oh well, at least now I don't have to explain where Pakistan is anymore! (That's where I'm from. Pakistan is not an Arab country either, by the way.)
But, I understand my responsibility to keep explaining anyway. So here it is: Ms. Fields, and every other columnist out there is paving the way for a real repression of Muslims' freedom of religion in this free country.
And to all Muslims who are apologizing for something they carry no culpability for:
Yes, this country gives us freedoms we wouldn't have anywhere else, especially in "Muslim" countries. We should understand and appreciate them, and give thanks to Allah for providing us with the opportunities provided by living here. As a journalist, I find the most important freedom in the First Amendment, and I claim the rights given to me by that historical paragraph to say the following:
Islam is the Truth, given to us by our Lord repeatedly throughout history and culminating in the final message of the Prophet Muhammad (saw).
Islam is not a religion, but a deen - a way of life, all-encompassing, touching everything from the core of one's personal spirituality to the election of the head of state. (Yes, election.) Islam's social, political and economic systems are the only truly just systems because they come not from other people, who are fallible and have their own motives, but from the Creator, Whose guidance is perfect and Who knows what is best for His creation.
Islam is ultimately the only hope against the tyrannies of oppressive regimes around the world, and the tyrannies we are shielded from within the borders of the superpower we call home. As Muslims, we must accept that someday, by the grace of Allah, we can have a real Islamic state - not the brutal dictatorships or puppet excuses that exist today - in which people of all races and creeds can live peacefully, practicing their own faiths, under the just legislation of God, where Muslims' practice of true Islam can shine with a light strong enough to reach the most hardened hearts.
And we believe in this possibility without an inch of room for accepting the kind of violence we saw on September 11. We reclaim the true meaning of being a good Muslim by denouncing injustice and wanton bloodshed, and by unequivocally upholding the message we were put on this earth to proclaim.
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