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Your letters - posted March 21, 2007

Posted in Q & A on Mar 21, 2007

 

With students at University of California, Santa Barbara

Posted March 21, 2007

People: Before we get to this week’s Q & A, notice that I’ve re-organized some content on the site so that it’s more user friendly. The new section called “Got a Question?” offers instant support to students, queer Muslims, and Muslim/non-Muslim couples. I’ll keep adding to this section as your emails identify your needs and priorities. Enjoy the new resources. Now back to our regularly scheduled dialogue…

The challenges I love most are those that come from fans of my book. Yes, even fans dissent with me! Being clever (which I adore), they take my words and turn them against my arguments. So it is with the young woman whose letter you’re about to read…

“I am 20 years old, living in Morocco. I have read your book in French, Musulmane Mais Libre [Muslim But Free] and it was a chef d’oeuvre [masterpiece]. I cheer. You tell us that we do not have to believe in something without reflecting on it first and without exercising critical thinking. That is what I did when I read your book.

So I would like to say something without making you upset, please. What you say about the USA, I think you exaggerate. If I have understood what you mean, you were saying that Bush’s United States has not done a lot of mistakes. I am especially referring to your statement “il est possible que les americains aient besoin de notre aide pour exprimer leur glorieu potentiel d’humanistes.” [”It may be that Americans need our help to express their glorious humanitarian potential.”]

The USA is not humanitarian at all. The government has not done anything to stop the downsizing of the corporations. I mean, when I hear Nike, for example, exploiting children and earning a lot of money, I think that if the States were reaallllllyyyy humanitarian as you say, they would do something to stop that!!! Moreover, is it humanitarian to turn down Kyoto because some people do not want to save our shared planet?

I am open to your criticisms of what I am saying, and I know you will not hesitate. What I am trying to do here is learn more and more so we have an Islam where everyone can live without problems.” - Zineb

Irshad replies: Merci bien for your passionate message, Zineb. I’m thrilled that you don’t accept everything I wrote; it shows that you have a mind of your own and I respect that about you.

You’re right that I won’t hesitate to challenge much of what you’ve said. For starters, I do criticize America, especially in Chapter 5 of my book. Nowhere do I imply that the U.S. is perfect. That’s why I talk about its humanitarian “potential.” You focus on the word “humanitarian,” but equally important is the word “potential” - by which I mean a capacity that has not yet been realized.

At the same time, humanitarianism does exist in the USA. An American can denounce her country — and her president — with the most vicious, hateful statements and she won’t be thrown in jail or have her tongue chopped off for doing so. In my book, I give the example of Jello Biafra, lead singer of the 1980s punk band The Dead Kennedys. After 9/11, he toured North America and mocked President George W. Bush. He was never “cautioned” by the FBI, CIA or anybody else to stop.

Similarly, the American press is constantly pointing out the faults of American corporations and governmental institutions — from the refusal of the White House to participate in the International Criminal Court, to its dissing of the Kyoto Protocol, to sweatshops operated by Nike and many other (non-American) multi-nationals. In highlighting this fact, I’m actually emphasizing two things: first, for all the hypocrisy of America, freedom of expression still lives; and second, that thanks to freedom of expression, everybody knows America is far from perfect.

But maybe the most important point is that ordinary Muslims in America are treated far better than average Muslims in Islamic countries. In fact, in the last 100 years alone, more Muslims have been tortured and murdered at the hands of other Muslims than at the hands of any foreign imperial power. I document this fact in my book.

My bottom line is this: instead of trying to identify the “perfect” society, let’s accept that none of us is perfect and then engage in self-criticism to begin cleaning our own houses — be they White Houses or mosques. Thousands of American journalists, and millions of American citizens, are exercising self-criticism every day, which is why the US is so deeply polarized right now. Can we truly say that millions of people in the Middle East are openly engaging in self-criticism? Of course not. And that’s an act of betrayal to ourselves as well as to Allah, because as the Quran tells us: “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (13:11).

Americans are well on their way to doing this. When will non-Americans, especially those in the Muslim world, do the same? With you as a leader of young Moroccans, Zineb, I’m optimistic about the future.