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The “who the hell are you?” hand grenade

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road on Mar 23, 2008

Packing the hall to discuss Islam and democracy at Syracuse U. (Photo: David Medeiros)

Maybe it was the full house. Or the hot lights. Or my multi-media approach. Then again, it could have been my deliberate use of humor to make difficult conversations less threatening and more engaging for people of varied backgrounds.

Whatever the reason, I recently got scolded at Syracuse University. There, during a sold-out screening of my film, the chair of religion accused me of putting on a “rock star” performance.

Frankly, I took that as a compliment. After all, the topic was “Islam and Democracy: Do They Have a Prayer?” How could I be elitist in communicating the potential to reconcile Islam and democracy? As a faithful Muslim and an observant democrat, wouldn’t I have integrity showing that scholarship should be accessible to ordinary people?

Not to my critic, who complained about never having been invited to appear on CNN. Bingo! In alleging that I’m a “rock star,” she meant to dismiss my credibility. The esteemed professor succeeded in revealing her own snobbery.

Over years of advocating for Muslim reform, I’ve noticed that frustrated academics silence reform-minded Muslims by hurling the “who-the-hell-are-you?” hand grenade. Funny thing is, history abounds with individuals who had no legitimacy in established circles but who pressed forward.

Socrates is a screaming example. His refusal to shrink and slink away ultimately produced a student known as Plato. Not bad for a self-educated lover of questions.

Then there’s Baruch Spinoza, among the greatest modern voices of religious toleration. If we can applaud him for being banished from Holland’s Jewish community by the rabbis, we can be equally impressed that he worked as a grinder of glass.

Closer to our own time, consider Albert Einstein. For years, he toiled as a patent clerk but didn’t let that stop him from publishing some of his scientific masterpieces. Self-appointed arbiters of authority dismissed Einstein at first.

Maybe my favorite example of maverick legitimacy is Rosa Parks, who stayed in her seat on a bus when a white man told her to move back. She didn’t defy him out of naivete; she’d calculated her decision for maximum moral impact. You could call her a tactician extraordinaire.

And who was Rosa, anyway? A seamstress. A tailor’s assistant. By today’s career standards, a veritable nobody. Yet a simple and strategic act of conscience, animated by a love of justice, made her the mother of America’s civil rights movement.

At Rosa’s funeral, another “unqualified” upstart spoke. His name is Barack Obama.

Which brings me back to the struggle of reform-minded Muslims today. I’m by no means the only one who faces the who-the-hell-are-you hand grenade. So does Zia Sardar, a British Muslim, journalist and public intellectual who blogs about the Qur’an from his liberal point of view.

Not long ago, Sardar responded to a fellow Muslim who accused him of lacking the proper tools and thus interpreting the Qur’an for “mere five minutes of fame.” Sardar’s response should be read fully; here’s a taste:

“In the end, the issue of authority comes down to power and territory. For too long, a group of narrow-minded, ill-educated elite have usurped the power to comment on the Qur’an and defended this territory with the rhetoric of fire and brimstone. It is time ordinary Muslims took this power back to where it belongs: with all Muslims, whatever their background, whatever their state of knowledge…

Rather than being told what to think, concerned Muslims everywhere need to get back to the religious duty of actively participating in interpretation — which can only come from lively debate.”

Supposedly inclusive professors can be no less dogmatic than puritan imams in defining the limits of legitimate conversation, let alone debate. As the chair of religion at Syracuse U announced, I’ve undone “decades” of scholarship in a 45-minute appearance!

While thrilled to wield such power, I’d rather use it to ask a question: Who needs conservative mullahs when you’ve got the progressive priests of academe?

But there I go again believing I’m allowed to question. She might wonder what gives me the right to speak. I wonder what gives me the responsibility not to.

View the entire video of my rock star performance.