Author: Ophelia Benson

This piece by Karen Armstrong has a big gaping hole in the middle of it.

[Blair’s rebuke of ‘moderate Muslims’] ignores the fact that the chief problem for most Muslims is not “the west” per se, but the suffering of Muslims in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Palestine. Many Britons share this dismay, but the strong emphasis placed by Islam upon justice and community solidarity makes this a religious issue for Muslims. When they see their brothers and sisters systematically oppressed and humiliated, some feel as wounded as a Christian who sees the Bible spat upon or the eucharistic host violated.

Speaking of ignoring facts – why is the chief problem for most Muslims the suffering of Muslims in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Palestine to the exclusion of the suffering of Muslims in Afghanistan, Saudia Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia and indeed Iraq as well as many other places, that is caused not by ‘the west’ but by other Muslims? Why do ‘most Muslims’ not have a problem (or if they do, why does Armstrong not think they do, or if she does think they do, why does she not mention it?) with suffering that is caused to Muslims by other Muslims who beat them up, kill them or their friends or relatives, tell them what to do, impose sharia on them against their will, lock them up in their houses for life, tell them what to wear, stone them to death in front of their children, explode them in markets and hotels and buses and other crowded places, frighten them, tyrannize over them, set off civil wars around them, and generally make their lives hell? If most Muslims feel wounded when they see their brothers and sisters systematically oppressed and humiliated, as indeed they might, as might all of us, whether they are our ‘brothers and sisters’ in religion or not, as we all might simply because they are fellow human beings – then why is that feeling supposed to explain the connection between Tony Blair’s foreign policy and the rise of Islamism? Why couldn’t the people who feel wounded at the suffering of their ‘brothers and sisters’ feel justifiable rage at the Islamists instead of feeling inspired to join them in blowing people up? And why does Karen Armstrong, who is no fool, appear not to have asked herself that question?

Here it is again. Yet again. The BBC declaring the head of the MCB a ‘leading Muslim’. But what makes him a leading Muslim, who says he’s a leading Muslim? The MCB is a self-appointed, very reactionary ‘council’ that gets treated and deferred to as if it represented all UK Muslims in some way, but it doesn’t. It’s very annoying and unhelpful and lazy and obscurantist that the BBC keeps pretending it does, keeps handing it a giant megaphone by rushing to ask its opinion every ten minutes and by refraining from asking non-MCB Muslims and people of Muslim background for their opinion at the same rate. Why does the BBC do that? Why doesn’t it stop doing that? People keep complaining about it, so why doesn’t the BBC pay attention and do better? Surely it’s not that difficult to figure out! The MCB is not elected, not representative, and not the only possible strand of opinion that could be consulted, so why does the BBC treat it as if it were some sort of official body? Just because it’s too much trouble to spin the Rolodex, or what?

Munira Mirza says some good things.

‘I have forsaken everything for what I believe in. Your democratically elected governments continue to perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world.’ So spoke Mohammad Siddique Khan, the 30-year old ringleader of the London bombings, in a video message he recorded before his death…the audacity of Khan’s homemade video diary is breathtaking. First he whines to the viewer that he has sacrificed a lot for his cause, and then he claims to speak on behalf of all Muslims everywhere.

That’s the work all this community-speak does, I think: it hammers home the idea that there is such a thing as ‘the Muslim community’ and that it thinks and feels as one. It’s a small step to decide that that one is best represented by grievance-frotting narcissistic young men, that their worked-up rage about ‘their people’ is the truly authentic One that the ‘Muslim community’ thinks as.

What we see in these videos are not soldiers in a war, but self-righteous young men who believe that their own moral certainty absolves them of the need to explain themselves properly. Nobody elected Khan or Tanweer…Obviously, Khan or Tanweer did not show much interest in trying to win people over to their worldview – they thought that ‘democratically elected governments’ had less claim to act on behalf of people than they did. Khan and Tanweer took a remarkably narcissistic approach to politics, which short-circuited the need actually to engage with the people they claimed to speak for. Yet since 7/7, and straight away following the release of Tanweer’s video yesterday, journalists, politicians and so-called Muslim community leaders have all been duped into taking seriously these loners’ claims to be the voice of ‘the ummah’ and angry Muslims all around the world.

In much the way many journalists and politicians last fall took the rioters in the banlieues weirdly seriously as ardently political revolutionaries with rational grievances, blithely ignoring the obvious possibility that they were just testosterone-addled young males tearing things up.

Khan and Tanweer had no legitimate claim to speak on behalf of Muslims. Their connection to victims abroad was in their minds, created out of a desire to be part of something global. But in a world where any old hack can be called a ‘community leader’, it is hardly surprising that they also thought they were qualified to speak as one. What Khan and Tanweer’s terrible action shows is the price of endless, meaningless community consultation, where some people are rewarded political power for merely being the right skin colour or religion.

And it’s not just a Muslim thing, as Munir points out.

Animal rights extremists in Oxford have felt no inhibitions about using violent tactics against local scientists, feeling that their moral outrage against the building of a new laboratory is sufficient justification…We need to challenge the anti-democratic nature of contemporary politics and stop flattering individuals who have no claim to speak for anyone but themselves.

Listen up, Beeb. Seriously. Cut it out.

The Ward Churchill matter, as I’ve mentioned before, raises some interesting issues. One issue is that of free speech, which Norm and I along with Eve and, later, Jonathan, kept disagreeing about a few months ago. I still disagree with all of them – but I think the disagreements may have rested on various confusions among terms. The terms kept shifting, I think, back and forth between legal and moral, law and principle, without being nailed down often enough. Still…I think my point stands: there is no free speech right to falsify evidence. There is no free speech principle that protects Churchill’s right to falsify evidence. Falsification of evidence is not always a criminal offence (although it certainly can be), but that doesn’t make it a protected right, or a principle. It’s not usually something that people can or should be punished for (though there are plenty of exceptions), but it is something people can be prevented from doing. Academics who get fired for scholarly malfeasance are not being punished (though it is a punishment in fact), they are being prevented from doing their job the wrong way.

One key instance of “falsification and fabrication” was Churchill’s writing about the Mandan…In an essay titled “An American Holocaust?,” he wrote that the U.S. Army infected the Mandan with smallpox by giving them contaminated blankets in a deliberate effort to “eliminate” them. Churchill footnotes several sources as providing evidence for this claim, including UCLA anthropologist Russell Thornton’s book American Indian Holocaust and Survival. But Thornton’s book says the opposite: the Army did not intentionally give infected blankets to the Mandan. None of Churchill’s other sources provide support for his claim.

There is no free speech principle that protects that. It’s not a crime, but it’s also not protected. It’s neither.

Many of the comments are also very interesting. This one is particularly fascinating:

The committee peremptorily dismisses Churchill’s contention that his interpretation of the epidemic was influenced by the Native American oral tradition. This is treated as no more than an ex post facto defense against the allegation of misconduct. The committee also discounts Native American witnesses who support Churchill’s interpretations as well as his fidelity to oral accounts. The centrality of the oral tradition is evident in many of Churchill’s writings. His acknowledgments frequently include elders, Indian bands, and the American Indian Movement.

His fidelity to oral accounts – oh well then.

Community again. Sometimes the helpless dependence on the word ends up in confusion.

“We are sure that the overwhelming majority of all communities are united in condemning any attempt to justify last year’s terrorist attacks in London,” he went on.

The overwhelming majority of all communities…I’m confused already. Does that mean that some entire ‘communities’ are not united in condemning any attempt to justify last year’s bombs? If so, which ones are they? What are we talking about? Or does it mean that the overwhelming majority of all people are united that way? But then why say ‘communities’? If it is the first, if what is meant is that some ‘communities’ are not united that way, does that mean that what is so very often called (or rather labeled) ‘the Muslim community’ is not united that way? Well, no, probably not, since that doesn’t seem to be the point of what Hayman said. But then why say ‘communities’? Perhaps he meant that within the usual ‘communities’ there are a few ‘communities’ that are not united. But then that’s a confusing way of putting it, isn’t it. He should have said ‘sub-communities’ or some such. But then that would have detracted from the rhetorical force of the majority of communities being united.

“The Muslim community has been very badly affected by [the bombings], particularly in the Beeston and Leeds area,” Mr Chaudhry said. “This will just make life even more difficult, with all the media attention and the rest of the community pointing the finger, which is not justified.”

Okay now I’m really confused. The rest of what community? Pointing what finger? At what, or whom? And why is it not justified, and by what, or whom? Who are all these people, I mean communities? Is this finger-pointing rest of the community the rest of a different community from the antecedent Muslim community, or is it the rest of the very same community? And whose finger are they pointing and why are they pointing it? What does it all mean?

Only the community knows for sure.